Word: sobchak
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...states had already lifted their own price controls. That had led to an influx of entrepreneurial food buyers from those republics who took advantage of the cheaper prices to buy up Russian goods. At the same time, food supplies to the city from collective farms diminished after Mayor Anatoli Sobchak swept to power in elections in 1990. The bureaucracy, still predominantly hard-line communists, dragged their feet on implementing changes. While other Russian cities, including Moscow, could barter their industrial products for farm produce, St. Petersburg, with 72% of its industrial output devoted to military hardware, had nothing to trade...
...came the answer. Others are not so sure. "The situation is extraordinarily tense," said a city council member. "The old authorities -- the communists -- realize that this may be their last chance to regain power. We are hungrier than any other big Russian city." He and other officials who support Sobchak said they fear a possible local coup attempt against the reform-minded mayor, whom hard-liners have been trying to force out for weeks. The period of greatest vulnerability for such an act, say several city officials, will be between Jan. 10 and the end of February, when food shortages...
...military-industrial complex, Chubais argues that the abundance of enterprises producing high-tech equipment such as satellites and communications systems gives the city an edge in attracting foreign capital. But Western firms may be reluctant to make investments in a republic as unstable as Russia. If so, Sobchak's St. Petersburg could be rocked by massive unemployment as Moscow trims orders for military hardware...
...persuasive speaker who counts John F. Kennedy and Charles de Gaulle among his role models, Sobchak, 53, is one of the most influential politicians in Russia, behind only Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Yet conservative and liberal opponents alike accuse him of resorting to authoritarianism in running the affairs of St. Petersburg. "God never gave Anatoly Sobchak the talent to work with other people," wrote one critic. Sobchak, a former law professor, dismisses the accusations as the grumblings of "incompetents" on the unwieldy, 382-member city council. Thanks to his national status, Sobchak says...
...goes well with Sobchak's economic reform plans, Chubais predicts a rise in the standard of living in the city by the end of 1992. The question is whether St. Petersburg residents will have the patience to wait that long. Leonid Keselman, a sociologist who specializes in public opinion surveys, believes they will. "The people of this city have suffered for a long time without hope," he says. "Now they have something real to hope for." If Keselman is right, it may be only a matter of time before Peter the Great's old capital reclaims its place among...