Word: sovietize
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...chic person of Irina Spalko (played by Blanchett with the severe demeanor of Cyd Charisse's Ninotchka in the 1957 MGM musical Silk Stockings and the black bob Charisse sports in The Band Wagon). Rather than the simple matter of conquering the West militarily, Irina is part of a Soviet plot to cloud our minds by getting access to some secret technology that is concealed either in an Area 51 warehouse or in the remotest jungle mountains of Peru. "We will change you, Mr. Jones, all of you, from the inside," she proclaims. "We will turn you into us." Ewww...
Boris Yeltsin was a man for the unforgettable surprise. His fame rested on the panache and fortitude he showed in August 1991 when plotters attempted a coup d'état against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. They reckoned without Yeltsin, then head of the Russian Soviet Republic. Clambering on top of a tank outside the Russian White House, he defied those who wanted to return Russia to its communist traditions. Their coup might have succeeded if they had put him under preventive arrest. Instead, Yeltsin emerged as the master of the political situation. Gorbachev came back from detention in Crimea...
...quickly ushered in the market economy and privatized state enterprises. Encountering opposition, he governed by decree. When this failed to cow his adversaries, he ordered the army to shell the Supreme Soviet and arrest its leaders. A new constitution was introduced, but politics never became tranquil. Russia was swept into a maelstrom of fevered public disputes and wild capitalism...
...collectivization. Colton also spoke to acquaintances from Yeltsin's period as Communist Party boss in Sverdlovsk. He justifiably concludes that Yeltsin was already a rambunctious politician before Gorbachev promoted him to head the Moscow City Party in 1985. Yeltsin was like a bull in a china shop in the Soviet capital. As Colton points out, Gorbachev had ignored warnings that his protégé would smash all the crockery as both of them pursued reform. Plenty of Yeltsin's victims volunteered their testimony for the book. Their unanimous verdict is that he deserved the sacking he endured...
...Gorbachev still needed him in the background to frighten the communist conservatives. This gave Yeltsin the chance to develop policies hostile to the entire communist order. How Gorbachev must have regretted rejecting advice to make him Soviet ambassador to a faraway place like Mongolia...