Word: shmelev
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During the four-day congress the Soviet leader heard some of the bluntest public criticism to date of his policies. Economic reformer Nikolai Shmelev complained that "as far as the economy is concerned, we have built a madhouse and continue to live according to the laws of a madhouse." Conservative Deputies warned that society was "slipping into a swamp even more boggy than in the stagnation period." At one point Deputy Teimuraz Avaliani, from a Siberian coal-mining region, even urged the parliamentarians "not to vote for Gorbachev under any circumstances...
...much trouble Gorbachev faced at home: ethnic unrest, secessionism, economic deterioration, labor strife, an emboldened political opposition. When Eduard Shevardnadze visited the U.S. in September, he seemed preoccupied with domestic issues, especially the Soviet Union's problem with nationalities. A surprising and revealing addition to his entourage was Nikolai Shmelev, an economist who specializes in dire predictions and drastic prescriptions for the Soviet economy...
...difficult rebuilding the Soviet economy will be. The obstacles are greater, the situation more dire and the fixes more fundamental than even Gorbachev suspected four years ago. "Frankly speaking, comrades, we have underestimated the extent and gravity of the deformations," he told a Party Conference last year. Nikolai Shmelev, one of the country's radical economic gadflies, has put it more vividly: "We are now like a seriously ill man who, after a long time in bed, takes his first step with the greatest degree of difficulty and finds to his horror that he has almost forgotten how to walk...
...election was an extension of the openness and public airing * spawned by Gorbachev's glasnost crusade. Of the reform trinity, glasnost has wrought the most tangible changes, especially for the Soviet intellectual community, Gorbachev's most solid base of support. Nowadays the only heresy is orthodoxy. Says economist Shmelev: "Four years ago, people felt themselves living behind barbed wire. Now we have a degree of freedom for intellectuals and for ordinary people that would have been unimaginable before...
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