Word: schecters
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Western visitors have brought back conflicting reports about the quality of Russian medicine. Some have praised it; others have been appalled, often after traumatic personal experiences. Jerrold Schecter, chief of TIME'S Moscow Bureau, has observed the system more closely than most. At various times, his wife and five children have all been patients in Soviet hospitals or polyclinics. Schecter offers this appraisal...
Despite the military's extreme sensitivity, Schecter gained an understanding by assiduously studying the press, attending parades in Red Square and checking military bookstores for new regulations, articles and speeches. "One talks to former soldiers and friends, reads memoirs and learns about military life-styles by watching officers shopping, meeting them while traveling, at diplomatic receptions or seeing who has a chauffeur and who takes...
This holds true for all other reporting as well. Western journalists are only allowed to meet top officials under carefully controlled circumstances. Yet Schecter and Correspondent Stanley Cloud, who joined the bureau last September, found the leaders' TV appearances and play in the press invaluable as indicators. After receiving a coveted invitation to the Lenin memorial celebrations, Schecter bought a pair of 6 x 24 binoculars in order to get a better look at Politburo members from the foreign press balcony. "A Kremlinologist could construct a whole theory of leadership," reports Schecter, "on the basis of who talked...
...keep the military men on relatively short rations, Brezhnev may feel obliged to keep them well fed in exchange for their recent backing. That would further distort the economy, already heavily oriented toward military needs, and the very quality of Russian life as well. As TIME Correspondent Jerrold Schecter cabled from Moscow: "Guns have been built at the expense not only of butter but also of soap, toilet paper, furniture, dishes, flatware and household appliances. There remain glaring imbalances?sleekly engineered missiles and submersible tanks, on one hand, and rickety apartment-house elevators and bathroom plumbing that is 50 years...
...implementing the new economic program, says Schecter, "Brezhnev's guidelines are likely to be short on expanding economic reforms and long on increasing party efficiency." As the leader of the party, he is also likely to stress the worker's sense of duty. "Today we live as well as we worked yesterday," he says. "Tomorrow we shall live as well as we work today...