Word: pragmatist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...have difficulty with the half-submerged facts. He was born into an affluent family in 1925. His father, who appears in the book as a brilliant though ineffectual figure out of a Chekhov play, was a revolutionary but not a Bolshevik. He was individualistic and something of an eccentric pragmatist. While waiting to be drafted during World War I, he practiced writing with his left hand in case he lost his right...
...series of interviews and statements aimed at newly elected President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatist considered eager to end the isolation of the Khomeini era and repair his shattered economy, Bush held out the possibility of warmer relations in exchange for help in freeing the U.S. hostages. While Bush did not disavow the Reagan-era prohibition against direct bargaining with terrorists, he shifted ground enough to make some kind of negotiation possible. His private communiques, sent via the Swiss embassy in Tehran and other intermediaries, elicited encouraging replies from Rafsanjani...
Much has been made of the differences between Mao and Deng. Mao was massive; Deng is diminutive. Mao was an ideologue; Deng is a pragmatist. But they have had one shared frustration: arranging an orderly succession. First Liu Shaoqi and then Lin Biao disappointed Mao; Hua Guofeng, his last designated successor, held power after the Chairman's death, from 1976 to 1978. In 1980 Deng put his approved team in place -- Hu Yaobang as party General Secretary and Zhao Ziyang as Premier. Seven years later, Hu was forced from power as a deviationist. Now Deng is purging Zhao and other...
...uncomfortable with Hekmatyar's plan to turn Afghanistan into a Muslim state governed by shari'a (Islamic law), which could take an anti-American course. Should Washington be supporting someone with the potential to be a U.S. enemy? Defenders say Hekmatyar, despite his Islamic zeal, is also a pragmatist. But abetting someone with a reputation for ruthlessness in pursuit of power could be incompatible with Washington's goal of peace and reconciliation...
There they were, shoulder to shoulder, about as disparate as a pair could be. The business-suited pragmatist and the fatigue-clad revolutionary. Mikhail Gorbachev and Fidel Castro. New thinking and old orthodoxy. Castro talked the most, but Gorbachev had the last word. He coolly rejected Castro's policy of exporting revolution, a central tenet of the Cuban leader's 30-year rule. Until a very few years ago, Moscow's leaders too preached worldwide support for wars of national liberation. But Gorbachev's words in Havana seemed intended to reinforce his professed determination to replace such vaporous ideology with...