Word: seconds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...second session of the Congress of People's Deputies had barely begun last week when a bald, stoop-shouldered man hesitantly made his way to the front of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. Mikhail Gorbachev motioned for Deputy Andrei Sakharov to step up to the podium, then settled back in his seat, not quite sure what to expect...
There have probably been moments, like the one last week, when Gorbachev had second thoughts about the telephone call he made to the city of Gorky in 1986, informing Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner that they could return to Moscow after seven years of political exile. Like the prophets of biblical times who appeared before kings at the most inconvenient times with uncomfortable truths, the distinguished nuclear physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner was always insisting that Soviet citizens deserved better, much better, than what the Soviet system had to offer. But last week's brisk exchange was destined...
...second sheet announced a silent demonstration on Dec. 5, Constitution Day. I decided to attend. In Pushkin Square I found a few dozen people standing around the statue. At 6 o'clock, half of those present, myself included, removed our hats and stood in silence. (The other half, I later realized, were KGB.) After a minute or so I walked over to the monument and read the inscription aloud...
...second scenario of Soviet catastrophe is a coup from the Soviet "right" engineered by the army, perhaps in conjunction with the KGB. Though many top Soviets -- including Yeltsin -- dismiss this scenario, Central Committee members voiced fears of a coup to Marshall Goldman, a leading American Sovietologist, last summer. The coup menace is exacerbated by the growing strength of Russian ultra-nationalist organizations. Extremist groups like Pamyat have targeted Jews (a paranoid Jewish-Masonic conspiracy theory), "intellectuals" and "Russophobes" as scapegoats for national decline. The nationalists are at heart anti-Communist, but their appeal overlaps with a growing blue-collar nostalgia...
...certifies the purity and safety of one-quarter of all U.S. consumer products, in addition to regulating the $400 billion food, pharmaceutical and medical-devices industries. But throughout the 1980s the FDA has been traumatized by budget and staff reductions, fusses over testing of drugs to combat AIDS, second- guessing over poisoned Chilean grapes, corrupt employees and controversies over the nutritional claims adorning food packages...