Word: russian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Talbott, it was the 13th trip. A student of Russian since prep school days, he has served as TIME's diplomatic correspondent and has written four books on relations between the two superpowers. Early on, Talbott spotted Gorbachev as a political comer -- a little too early, it turned out. "When Yuri Andropov died in February of '84," he recalls, "we had an office pool on the succession, and I put a dollar on the dark horse, Gorbachev. I lost. It wasn't until Konstantin Chernenko's death 13 months later that...
That excitement is understandable. Gorbachev's reform campaign represents potentially the most wrenching transformation in the lives of Soviet citizens since World War II. But can he succeed? Many Western experts are doubtful. Predicts former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Arthur Hartman: "Russian history will prove stronger than the modernizers. Real reform means distribution of power away from the center, away from the party. I don't think those guys will accept that voluntarily." Some students of Soviet history, noting that periods of reform have typically alternated with periods of reaction, suggest that Gorbachev's policies may proceed for a while...
...like a Western country, competing for capital and markets, lowering the barriers to foreign investment and even making its currency convertible. "The present seems to be an unusually promising time for doing business with the Soviet Union," says Peter Reddaway, director of the Washington-based Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. A senior U.S. diplomat in Moscow agrees, saying that Gorbachev "may be for real, in the sense that he's tackling the fundamentals...
...Both fear that such a war could spin out of control, engulfing not only the protagonists but also their superpower protectors. If the Soviets are able to persuade the world community that its presence in the region can help forestall that calamity, the U.S. will have difficulty chasing the Russian Bear away...
Pivot has had his share of scoops. In 1983 he was the first to be granted a television interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn after the Russian writer moved to the U.S. This spring he made headlines after he flew to Poland and surreptitiously taped a lengthy conversation in Gdansk with Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa, whose autobiography was recently published in France...