Word: samovars
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...Germany attacks and destroys millions more. Members of the Gradov family, led by Dr. Boris Nikitovich, make their separate ways through history. Aksyonov impressively spreads out a panorama of suffering, but he overlays it with shameless melodrama, unconvincing uplift and grotesque humor. Readers who sling their hammock, move their samovar onto their veranda and settle down for an old-fashioned summer read may be distracted by a narrative farrago that includes a scene in which Dr. Gradov nearly wins the Order of Lenin for giving Stalin an emergency enema...
...fair enough. At his press conference the following evening, President Reagan sidestepped questions about recent Soviet criticism of his policies. "We're trying to go forward," he maintained. "We're planning for a summit here." As part of his ritual of leave-taking, Dobrynin presented Reagan with an electric samovar for making tea and nine blue-and-white porcelain figurines. More important, he gave the President a letter from Gorbachev in which the Soviet leader expressed his desire for "concrete agreements" at the next summit and said that he was "still serious about maintaining the dialogue" begun at Geneva...
...they are. Though Salyut 6 may be smaller and more primitive than Skylab, which tumbled back to earth last year, the samovar-shaped space station has performed impressively. Launched three years ago, it weighs 20 tons, has as much room as a small dacha (the amenities: a shower, 20 view ports, sleeping facilities for four), and has been occupied for 578 days, a little more than half its time aloft. The Soviets, using their new breed of Progress spacecraft-small, automated single-shot ferry ships-have repeatedly refueled and re-equipped Salyut, with a total overhaul of its inventory...
...public service, Pravda editors often look into reader complaints. "I have long dreamed of buying a samovar," wrote one frustrated consumer from Stavropol. "How often have I searched in stores with, alas, no results." A resident of Zaporozhye wrote that her stores carried a model for 25 rubles, but added: "It looks like a galvanized bucket with a spigot." Pravda approached the proper ministry for an explanation and printed its response: 28 models were available, and "much is being done to improve their external appearance," said a spokesman, adding that samovars had not been overlooked in the latest Five-Year...
...Night in the Ukraine, Groucho lives. So do Chico, Harpo and that lady of the formidable embonpoìnt, Margaret Dumont. The program note says that this exercise in dementia is "loosely based on Chekhov's The Bear." Groucho (David Garrison) is the shysterish Samovar the Lawyer. Chico (Frank Lazarus) is a larcenous tongue-in-cheeky footman to the imperious Mrs. Pavlenko (Hewett), the Dumont role. Perfectly at ease as Harpo, Priscilla Lopez is a creature from another planet, who at one wonderfully zany moment plucks out the inevitable harp solo on the spokes of an upside-down bicycle...