Word: rasputine
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...many Soviets, however, the fascination with the magical and the extrasensory is a distasteful reminder of the final years of the Russian empire -- with its demagogic holy men and a royal family under the sway of Rasputin. "It's deplorable that the state-run media would contribute to this hysteria," said Dr. Yakov Rudakov, a leading psychotherapist with the Institute for Physical-Technical Problems. Even the obsession with UFOs may be a projection of Soviet anxieties, a pseudoscientific distraction from the increasing economic and political burdens of daily life. Enraged that TASS publishes such reports, one Muscovite said...
...find Russian history particularly fascinating because it seems that in no other period have individual personalities--the Czar [Nicholas II], Lenin, Rasputin--played such crucial roles," Joslin says...
...protected by pseudonyms. Others are fictional or, as the journalists prefer, "composites." In addition, dialogue that could not have been recorded firsthand is approximated for maximum effect. Here, for example, is a murder scene in which the victim, repeatedly shot, stabbed and bludgeoned, is as hard to kill as Rasputin...
...shakily in control after the death the previous May of his son Edsel from cancer. In his dotage, the old man had surrounded himself with managerial incompetents and given them enormous power. Among them was Harry Bennett, Ford's pistol-toting aide-de-camp, who had become the company Rasputin. Young Ford demanded that his grandfather turn all management control over to him. "I want a completely free hand," he said. The old man finally relented. In 1945, at 28, Henry Ford II took charge. His first act was to fire Bennett...
...controversy, this time over who would play her in a four-part nbc version of Anastasia shot in Vienna for broadcast this winter. According to Amy Irving, the producers picked her first. When she passed, the role was offered to Nastassja Kinski. Then, for reasons as inscrutable as Rasputin's stare, Kinski was out and Irving was back in. Why? Olivia de Havilland, who plays Anastasia's grandmother, notes that Irving "looks very much like Anna Anderson." Kinski is not talking. Irving cites the signing-on of Rex Harrison, who plays Grand Duke Cyril and with whom she co-starred...