Word: russian
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These actions epitomize the sense of insecurity that Russia feels in the Western-dominated post Cold War world. Russia is frightened, almost mortally terrified. On a recent trip to China, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin responded to President Clinton's criticism of the war in Chechnya by touting the power of Russia's nuclear arsenal. To Dartboard, it brought to mind our own experience as a scared teenager. When we felt threatened, we too ran off to find our six foot, 250-pound football-playing buddy to back...
...guide for this trip (and I do mean trip) through history and literature is the eminent 19th-century translator of Russian literature Constance Garnett, whose unrelenting Englishness (read: priggishness) has been a scourge to modern translators from Nabokov on. Fashioned by Durang as a kind of Charles Kinbote for the entire Western cannon, Garnett is as much a mangler of Russian literature as a scholar of it. (The Russian word for frustrated homosexual is Peter Tchaikovsky, she says). Played with unrelenting and downright hysterical formality by Thomas Derrah, Garnett becomes as loveable as she is overbearing. Listening to her roll...
...latest round of Western hand-wringing looks unlikely to stop Russia's Chechnya campaign - particularly since it's not backed up by any credible threat. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned Friday that the U.S. was "reviewing" loans to Russia as she joined G7 foreign ministers and her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, in Berlin for talks on the crisis. But President Clinton last week emphasized Washington's belief that sanctions are an inappropriate response to the Chechnya situation, and Moscow isn't likely to lose any sleep over the latest warnings. Having reportedly lost an armored column...
...video showing the ambush did occur could prove embarrassing to Russia's generals." It would prove even more embarrassing to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has built his political reputation almost exclusively on the Chechnya campaign. "The plan may have been for Putin to fly down and raise the Russian flag over Grozny on the eve of Sunday's parliamentary elections," says Meier. "But if reports of the ambush prove true, that could throw a wrench in the works." Once Sunday's elections are over, Russia may be more inclined to seek a political solution. Seizing Grozny is, after...
...democracy gives nations the governments they deserve, Russians may be forgiven for wondering what they did to deserve the field for Sunday's Duma elections. For the third time since communism's fall, Russian voters go to the polls to choose between parties variously comprising unreconstructed Stalinists, reconstructed Stalinists, Kremlin apparatchiks, opportunist demagogues and a veritable army of dubious former prime ministers...