Word: sovietized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...government is slashing spending at most of its ministries. The Energy Ministry's budget is down by 33%, and that of the Transport Ministry by 30%. But there is one hugely expensive project on which President Dmitri Medvedev has vowed to actually increase spending: transforming Russia's creaking Soviet-era defense industry into a modern technological power, and turning the 1.1-million-man Russian army into a leaner but more effective fighting force...
That's an understatement. Russia's military is still largely a remnant of the Soviet days, when the Red Army's millions were spread across a vast swath of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. When the Soviet empire began collapsing in 1989, Russia lost the bulk of its foot soldiers, as well as several key defense-related industries, ranging from shipbuilding in Ukraine to nuclear enrichment in Kazakhstan, according to an analysis of Russia's military in February by Stratfor, a U.S. company. The upheaval also forced many of Russia's finest engineers to quit for better-paid jobs abroad...
...this frightening distortion, in which not just two but perhaps 20 nations face one another at the opposite ends of nuclear weapons, waiting on a hair-trigger to launch an atomic conflagration. An Iranian nuclear weapon would be the gravest threat to world peace since the fall of the Soviet Union and would raise the specter of a real nuclear conflict for the first time since the 1980s. Allowing a nation that actively funds and supports terrorist groups active in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories to develop nuclear weapons is simply unthinkable and does not coordinate in the slightest...
...come as a surprise to many Americans that fitness and weight-lifting are fast-growing crazes in Kabul and a popular cult figure is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor's likeness can be found at makeshift gyms throughout the city, which use cinder blocks and old Soviet tank parts for equipment. To many young Afghans, Schwarzenegger embodies the virtues of discipline, goal-setting and accomplishment. Afghans prefer the U.S. to the Taliban, but they have suffered too long from 40% unemployment and a reconstruction that never arrived. Ralph Lopez, CAMBRIDGE, MASS...
Take one of the greatest moments in modern American sports history, the "Miracle on Ice," when the U.S. ice-hockey team unexpectedly defeated the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics. Add in an avuncular presidential candidate - Ronald Reagan - who would come to tap the victory's almost mythical national significance to sell the idea of a new American dawn. Turn it all into a movie. Who would you cast? Arnold Vosloo as Reagan and Presley Chweneyagae as U.S. hockey team captain Mike Eruzione, right...