Word: sovietizing
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...What may be more surreal, however, is the resurgent popularity that Stalin is enjoying at the moment in Russia. Just in time for the 130th anniversary of his birth on Dec. 21, the state-run polling agency VTsIOM released a survey showing that despite the millions of Soviet citizens who fell victim to purges, starvation and summary executions under Stalin's regime, 54% of Russians now have a high opinion of his leadership qualities. And when asked about his personal attributes, 50% of respondents said they viewed them as average or above average - up from 45% when the same survey...
Wearing a green field cap and military dog tags, 12-year-old Victor steadies a Soviet-made SAM-7 missile launcher on his tiny shoulder, squinting through the crosshairs at the children screaming dizzily on the nearby Tilt-a-Whirl ride. Even without the missile, the SAM-7 launcher is as tall as Victor and doesn't weight much less. But he's having too much fun to be burdened by the weapon's cumbersome dimensions...
...from North Korea in breach of U.N. sanctions. The captain and his crew were promptly arrested and charged with illegally transporting arms. But according to experts, they were only tiny cogs in a global network for arms trafficking that feeds off the castaway pilots and planes of the former Soviet Union. Suspected smugglers like Russian Viktor Bout have used the system to transport weapons, as have huge U.S. military contractors like Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), though not for illegal purposes. And while the flight crews like the one stopped in Thailand face the prospect of long prison terms...
...chief engineer on the flight was Mikhail Petukhov, 54, an out-of-work Belarusian with nearly two decades of experience in the Soviet air force. His wife Vera told TIME by phone from Belarus that the flight was Petukhov's first for a company whose name he never told her. Before that, he had waited more than six months for a job. "That's how it always is," she says. "Only once in a while by chance they'll get a call about some one-off job. And they take what they can get. Once he was gone for three...
...work pilots in Eastern Europe, a job is a job no matter who is paying the bill. Vladimir Migol, a retired aircraft engineer who served with Petukhov in the Soviet air force in the 1980s, says that for many pilots, flying for these shadowy companies is the only type of work they can get. "Everybody knows that these planes sometimes get busted with stuff, or they crash," says Migol. "But you still have to fly. We all have families to feed, and the chips fall where they fall...