Word: sovietizers
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...hear the government's spokesmen tell it, the vote would determine nothing less than the future of the world. EITHER UNION OR CHAOS, a Pravda headline blared. "The disappearance of the Soviet Union from the world map," a TASS commentator pointed out, would "result in the disruption of the world's political and strategic balance." Certainly true, but whatever results the referendum might accomplish, eradication of the Soviet Union is not one of them...
...hold on the chairmanship, his position will be greatly strengthened if Yeltsin becomes an elected president. The stalemate could then be prolonged. Yeltsin, however, has limited administrative and no police power and cannot enforce Russian laws on radical economic reform, for example, if they conflict with the Supreme Soviet's legislation...
Ideally, Yeltsin would like to see the Soviet President and his Cabinet cede power to the Federation Council, a policymaking body that includes the leaders of all 15 constituent republics, though some of them are boycotting it. To force out the powerholders, who uniformly despise him, Yeltsin may be thinking of something like Czechoslovakia's "velvet revolution," street demonstrations fueled by an overwhelming wave of people power. But no matter how great his popularity, even Yeltsin will be hard put to mobilize the Russian masses in large enough numbers. They are mostly anti-Gorbachev and antigovernment, but their political inertia...
...creator of perestroika and glasnost so hated in the country he freed from fear? To some extent, statistics explain why. A report by the Soviet State Planning Committee predicts that Soviet GNP will fall 11.6% in 1991; it declined 3% last year. Industrial production this year will drop more than 15%, and agricultural output 5%. One state economic planner said he feared a return to "the horrible times we lived through in the past," referring to "the famine of the 1930s, the repressions of 1937." A poll published last week by the Soviet National Public Opinion Studies Center asked, "What...
...efforts failed, and the glasnost that accompanied them set loose ethnic strife, rampant nationalism and separatist movements in the republics. In March 1990 Lithuania declared its independence, and Moscow was faced with the possible breakup of the Soviet Union. This threat changed the entire debate about the country's economic and political future, for Gorbachev was not prepared to endorse the dissolution of the Union...