Word: russian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...deprivation, acrimony and tedium. There was no running water, and food was limited. Though the Khmer Rouge guards stole a few watches and other valuables, they generally treated the foreigners correctly if sternly. As the days passed, one baby was born, another died. When the seven Russian diplomats arrived from their abandoned embassy, they were loaded down with huge supplies of tinned meat and vodka. They refused to share the goods with the other inmates, thereby becoming the bitter tar gets of Westerners' jokes about revisionist influence...
...czarist capital intoxicating. As a dancer, he could not help visiting the Kirov school. There he happened to attend a class taught by the late Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin, a great master who coached Nureyev and Valery Panov. Not hoping for much, Baryshnikov approached Pushkin (no kin to the famed Russian poet) and said, "I would very much like to be your pupil." Pushkin felt his legs and body and asked him to jump up and down. Says Baryshnikov, "I was like a young goat knocking over tables and chairs." Pushkin quickly conducted him downstairs, where the school's doctors...
...Baryshnikov. The school is very demanding, the students working from 9 in the morning to 10 at night. Misha studied fencing, makeup, French, Russian and Western literature as well as classical dancing. The Kirov is famous for its instruction in acting, particularly mime. Still, it is not solely or even largely this grounding that makes Baryshnikov grateful for his school years. What made them unique was Pushkin's presence...
Even Baryshnikov admits that he is running on "nervous energy. I am entering my new life, but I am not there yet. Until schedules and organization come, it's all nervous energy." Remi Saunder, a Russian émigré who devotes herself to helping Russian artists resettle in the West, believes that some of this nearly manic activity is inevitable right now. Major performing artists in Russia are treated very well materially but have little training in the use of initiative. Says she: "There you are given food, but not the choice of food." As a man who came...
...spends his spare time at plays, operas and especially movies. He is a considerable student of television, whether afternoon cartoons or old movies on the late show (he has worked up imitations of Humphrey Bogart's "Hello, sweetheart" and any number of commercial pitchmen). In a more Russian vein, he has begun reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose books fill him with "pain and awe," according to Mrs. Saunder...