Word: reformist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...elections," Yeltsin said last week, "it will be not for the sake of power but for the sake of Russia. I do not need power, but it is necessary to prevent a deviation from the [reform] path the country has taken." Since Russia's reformist future is clearly at risk from communists and nationalists, that statement provides a good indication that Yeltsin will be a candidate. The strongest challenge to the reformers comes from a restructured Communist Party that rose from oblivion to win the most votes in the Dec. 17 elections for the Duma, the national parliament. Although...
Zyuganov may campaign from both sides of his mouth, but his critics think they know exactly who he is. Yegor Gaidar, a reformist rival, argues that while the former communist parties of eastern Europe are moving toward social democracy, the Russian party "is evolving toward national socialism." Otto Latsis, a Moscow political commentator, says Zyuganov heads "the worst part of the old party apparat, the most reactionary fringe." In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, a Russian expert, says Zyuganov's Communists are "the inheritors of the most brutal system this century has known, except for the Nazis. We have...
...schoolteachers in southwestern Russia, Zyuganov began his career as a full-time party worker in 1967. He was serving as a deputy chief of the ideology department of the Soviet Central Committee in 1990 when he helped found a separate Russian Communist Party. It was created to oppose the reformist course of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by Mikhail Gorbachev. Zyuganov proudly says he served as "a leading ideologist" in the failed 1991 communist putsch against Gorbachev...
...great shift in the vote to opponents of Kremlin economic policies, such as the communists or the nationalists, could mark the beginning of the end of the reformist cycle that started after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. The powers of the parliament have been so watered down in the new constitution that it is virtually impossible for Deputies to remove Yeltsin from office. But a solid Yeltsin opposition with a majority in the new parliament could obstruct government-reform policies. The result would be a return to the debilitating power struggle that triggered Yeltsin's dramatic 1993 showdown...
...start last week when the Central Electoral Commission refused to register the Yabloko bloc of economist Grigori Yavlinksy, citing a technicality: the group had violated election laws by dropping six names from its list of more than 200 candidates without supporting documents. The surprise decision to exclude the only reformist group in the present parliament with a serious chance to do well in the election set off an immediate firestorm of protest. Yavlinksy claimed that officials "in the top echelons of power" were taking advantage of the President's illness to settle political scores. Chernomyrdin said the decision "damaged...