Word: pravda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Soviet press over the adequacy and execution of the reforms, introduced with much fanfare in 1965, that were intended to bring more flexibility into the ponderous, centrally controlled Soviet economy. In a secret speech last month, Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev severely criticized the economy's performance. Last week Pravda, reflecting his words, conceded that the Soviet economy is in serious trouble because of widespread waste, bureaucratic mismanagement, buck-passing and loafing workers-despite the reforms...
...birthday parties. Factory workers and farm hands promised to double, triple and quadruple their production norms as a present to their leader. The Italian Communists sent an Alfa Romeo sports car to the Kremlin, while the French party dispatched a chromium-plated racing bicycle. For the next eight months, Pravda's pages had room for little except birthday greetings...
...dissidents' worst fears were unfounded. In its birthday editorial, Pravda criticized Stalin for "diverging from the Leninist principles of collective leadership," which resulted in "unfounded reprisals against prominent party, state and military figures." Shorn of its jargon, the statement means that the present collective leadership is not at all tempted to return to the principal feature of Stalinism: absolute one-man rule, reinforced by mass police terror. The men in the Kremlin well know that the Stalinist system would devour those who set it in motion again, as it once devoured tens of thousands of Stalin's colleagues...