Word: sovietize
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...Vozrozhdeniye, or Renaissance Island as it is known in English, was manned by some of the Soviet Union's top scientists until 1991 when it was shut down and abandoned. The chipped mosaics of cats and dogs in the deserted kindergarten playground, the red jungle gym and blue swings evoke the happy childhoods of the offspring of the communist Elite who once lived here. There's a vast, empty military parade ground, scores of abandoned trucks and bulldozers and barrack blocks where beds still lie made and pressed uniforms hang in closets. A few kilometers away is the laboratory...
...those living nearby, anthrax is the least of their worries. Soviet siphoning of water from the Amu Dar'ya river to irrigate vast collectivized cotton farms turned the fertile delta into desert in a few decades. The Aral Sea split into two and receded to less than half its size. Rains failed. Without the sea, temperatures became erratic. What water remained was a concentrated cocktail of salt, minerals and pesticide runoff from the cotton fields upstream. Moynaq, the nearest town, watched its livelihood drain away with the parting Aral. The former bustling port used to can 70 million tins...
...hopes to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. "I am small now," he says, squaring his tiny shoulders. "But I will be big when I shoot the Taliban who killed my aunt and uncle." By avenging their deaths, Najibullah is carrying on family custom. His father tracked down the Soviet platoon that killed relatives in the 1980s and lobbed fatal grenades at their encampment. "If I am murdered by the Taliban, then my sons will honor my name by killing the enemy," says the prepubescent Najibullah. Despite hopes for peace, some Afghan traditions may be impossible to break...
...Qaeda had its origins in the long war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. After Soviet troops invaded the country in 1979, Muslims flocked to join the local mujahedin in fighting them. In Peshawar, Pakistan, which acted as the effective headquarters of the resistance, a group whose spiritual leader was a Palestinian academic called Abdallah Azzam established a service organization to provide logistics and religious instruction to the fighters. The operation came to be known as al-Qaeda al-Sulbah?the "solid base." Much of its financing came from bin Laden, an acolyte of Azzam...
...been replaced by John W. Creighton, former CEO of Weyerhaeuser. DIED. REGINE CAVAGNOUD, 31, world Super-G champion; in Innsbruck, Austria. The French skier died of injuries suffered when she collided with German national coach Markus Anwander during a downhill practice run (see Eulogy). DIED. GRIGORY CHUKHRAI, 80, celebrated Soviet-era filmmaker; in Moscow. A WW II veteran, his major films dealt with war, including Ballad of a Soldier, which won the 1960 Cannes award for best direction. DIED. THOMAS DURANT, 73, assistant director of Massachusetts General Hospital and medical advocate for refugees; in Boston...