Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Readings include several collections of essays on film theory from the French and Soviet traditions, and a large volume called A Short History of the Movies, featuring sections on film figures from Buster Keaton to David Lynch...
Initially, he focused his philanthropic speculation on Central and Eastern Europe. A survivor of the Holocaust and communism, he spread hundreds of millions of dollars to support democracy in countries struggling to break from the old Soviet orbit. In the waning years of the cold war, he bought photocopiers for his native Hungary so the communists couldn't monopolize information. Later, with Russia adrift, he spent $100 million to help Soviet science, and scientists, survive the transition. In Yugoslavia he was outraged by what he perceived to be the pusillanimity of the West, so he doled out $50 million...
...turning his attention to the U.S., his adopted country. The reason? The good guys won abroad; there's work to do at home. The collapse of the Soviet Empire, he says with typical forthrightness, "was a historical opportunity, and I rose to the occasion, so there was no time for any other activity. When things calmed down, I had the opportunity to start thinking about what could be done here...
After leaving Soviet-controlled Hungary for London in 1947, Soros fell under the spell of a college professor, the philosopher Karl Popper. It was Popper who coined the term open society--meaning one in which argument and debate are encouraged, the opposite of a dictatorship, which claims an ultimate truth but derives it only through force. Soros' approach to investing, indeed his whole life, is informed by Popper's work...
...European nations in the critical struggle for their democratic transformation if they are left in the "wilderness" outside NATO. They are ripe for possible intimidation and exploitation. Realistically, it is too early to bet on Russia's success in creating democratic institutions that will guarantee a break with the Soviet past. There is still too much of a mentality that craves a controlling God-like figure, as opposed to individual freedom and free enterprise, the basis of a democracy. nato is much more than a military alliance that reacts to threats. It is an active, positive force that allows nations...