Word: serfdom
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Allen was born into Bronx serfdom, the son of Martin and Nettie Konigsberg, still happily married after 62 years. His psychograph is to be found mainly in the emotional autobiography he has transformed into comedy routines and then movie art. As Ice-T can attest, it is treacherous to mistake the singer for the song. And it is presumptuous for the public to believe it "knows" Woody $ Allen. And yet Allen's work presents itself as so nakedly, ostentatiously about himself that it seems fair to subject it to a critic's equivalent of the psychoanalysis he has undergone...
With all of that, the people of Russia last week purchased their freedom and citizenship. They abolished serfdom in Soviet political life. The event is one of the turning points of world history, proclaiming the end of a totalitarianism that has destroyed so much of the 20th century...
...RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: Serfdom...
...Serfdom in Russia and slavery in the U.S. were both abolished in the 1860s, but the legacy of serfdom has been even more enduring. No wonder; only about 12% of the inhabitants of the U.S. were enslaved in 1860, but almost two- thirds of the Russian empire's people were serfs at the time of emancipation. In 1918 the Bolsheviks instituted a totalitarianism more complete than that of the Nazis, in the judgment of Soviet sociologist Boris Grushin. "Even under Adolf Hitler, German industry was relatively independent of the system," says Grushin, "but in the Soviet Union, everything was swallowed...
...other academics, some in the plains. Vine Deloria Jr. of the University of Colorado, an Indian activist (he's a Sioux) and author (Custer Died for Your Sins), feels that such a scheme might help break the cycle of welfare and subsidy checks that have held many Indians in serfdom for decades...