Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...presidency of Belarus by pledging that his first official act, if elected, would be to throw the Prime Minister in jail. Then he promised to ban private property, purge the government and squelch free enterprise. Finally, in a televised debate, he named Felix Dzerzhinsky, the ghoulish founder of the Soviet secret police, one of his most admired heroes...
...this Kansas-size country sandwiched between Poland and Russia. Key to his victory was a program of reform that would have been unthinkable three years ago, when Belarus was sprinting off in the direction of independence. Instead of turning his back on Moscow, as most in the former Soviet Union did in 1991, Lukashenko proposed that salvation lay in closer links with Russia...
...republics that used to make up the U.S.S.R. Since the giddy days of 1991, when the republics scattered like schoolchildren at recess, independent life in what Russians call the "near abroad" has proved tougher than anticipated. Euphoria has slowly been replaced by disgust at the hardships of post-Soviet life: ethnic strife, political instability and government corruption. In the face of these problems, incompetent nationalist leaders, while touting the trappings of independence, have failed to deliver on essentials, such as economic prosperity and domestic tranquillity. The West, to which many of these new nations optimistically looked for salvation, has been...
...complicated questions," asked Belarussians whether they could possibly imagine being worse off than they are today. When crowds answered him with the inevitable no, the flamboyant populist declared, "Without Russia's help, we don't have a way out of the current crisis. Ruptured economic relations between the former Soviet republics must be restored...
Even though Stalin regarded Kim as a puppet, it was often the Korean who pulled the Soviet leader's strings. According to Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War, published last year by Stanford University Press with American, Russian and Chinese contributors, Kim made numerous trips to Moscow to convince Stalin that the South Koreans were ready to join his revolutionary forces. He also reinforced his Soviet patron's belief that the U.S. would never intervene in a Korean conflict. If the Americans would not help the Nationalist Chinese against Mao's forces, he argued, why would they come...