Word: russia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Butson makes hay of British Prime Minister Margaret I hatcher evaluation of Gorbachev after his visit last year: "I like Mr. Gorbachev We can do business together." Fair enough, but not a basis for worldwide jubilation over Russia's new J.F.K...
...some ways Gorbachev owes his rise to hometown connections. The future Soviet leader was born in 1931 in the fertile Stavropol region of southern Russia, where Yuri Andropov also was born and where Mikhail Suslov, the country's leading ideologist until his death in January 1982, had worked for several years. Gorbachev's first job was driving a tractor. In 1950 he made a significant leap forward by gaining entrance to Moscow State University. Admission is notoriously hard to win; unless a student is exceptionally talented, he needs family influence to enter. The farm boy apparently got his boost from...
Most of the Soviet Union's economic and social ills can be traced to one source: the bureaucracy. Therein lies Gorbachev's basic problem. The bureaucracy is the Soviet system, its ubiquity guaranteed by the cardinal socialist tenet of central planning. Born in the mists of Russia's czarist past, rooted firmly in the totalitarian present, this permanent government has so far survived all attempts, most half-hearted, at reform...
...views prerevolutionary Moscow from a lofty perspective. His mother Rosa Koffmann was a celebrated concert pianist. His father Leonid, an impressionist painter and graphic artist, became a dominant figure in 20th century Russian art. Brother Boris started out as a promising composer and became one of Russia's greatest poets and, in 1958, a Nobel laureate...
...rains washed away the dirt and dust, drawing colours from the heart of the stone, their chance mosaic was far richer than the asphalt's colourless monotony." Winter is a cause of wonderment as sleighs move silently through the snow-hushed city. Finally comes the happiest of seasons in Russia, spring, with its ritual opening of windows. "Fresh spring air, wild and cool, fills the room, bringing with it the city's bright polyphony of voices, bells, and squealing wheels . . . the pulse of the living town...