Word: post-soviet
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...next Romanov, should he get the job, must understand that he has been commissioned to reign, not rule. His usefulness to his country, and to the future of his family, depends on his being above politics -- a symbol, not an autocrat. The first post-Soviet parliament could audition all living Romanovs (of whom Grand Duke Vladimir, now living in France, is the most prominent) and pick the one who seems most amenable to these goals -- just as the English Parliament, in 1688, replaced a king it didn't trust (James II) with his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William...
Establishing a post-Soviet monarchy in such a utilitarian spirit may seem to undermine the emotional aura that would be the new czar's chief benefit. But that aura can coexist with practical considerations. Shakespeare's tragedy of kingship, Richard II, contrasts Richard, an immoral and incapable king, yet one who believes he was divinely appointed, with his deposer and successor, Henry Bolingbroke, who, for all his cunning and competence, is haunted by the knowledge that he is a usurper. Shakespeare presents the shift from Richard to Henry as a changing of the guard, a clean break from one style...
...remains to be seen whether the new post-Soviet government will have the political authority to put any unified economic reform plan into practice. Harvard's scholars at the Russian Research Center are dubious, if not pessimistic. "Economically it's pretty easy to say what should be done, but it's difficult politically to tell if they'll be able to do it," says Kramer...
...always been a cruel and hopeless mess. Perestroika has been largely a matter of restructuring a ruin, a contradiction in terms that makes for a sorry spectacle. Yet the world is, as never before, invited to watch. Glasnost has led to a kind of reverse, and perverse, Potemkinism, a post-Soviet tendency to portray the situation as even worse than...
...commander, leads an independent faction of the Islamic Party. A former village mullah dismissed as something of a bumpkin by his rivals, Khalis sports a henna-dyed beard and in 1987 took a 16-year-old bride. He vehemently opposes elections; in his view, the only constitution needed for post-Soviet Afghanistan is the Koran...