Word: speech
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...while, no one could accuse him of failing to deliver on that promise. Reagan showed little interest in getting to know Soviet leaders. He proposed a dubious and potentially destabilizing scheme for space-based defenses. In a speech that will be remembered long after he leaves office, he stooped to rhetorical depths not seen since the onset of the cold war, decrying the U.S.S.R. as the "focus of evil in the modern world . . . an evil empire." So what was the most conservative President of the modern age doing in the Grand Kremlin Palace, amid the zinc columns and gilt bronze...
...fundamentally repelled by the character of the Soviet system: its repression, state control and expansionist tendencies. When Gorbachev came to power, U.S. officials insisted that a decrease in tensions would require a withdrawal from Afghanistan, a reduction of Soviet meddling in Africa and Central America, and at home freer speech, a more open political system and a less centralized grip on the economy...
Criticism of Stalin is not new in the Soviet Union. For the edification of the ruling class, Nikita Khrushchev denounced the late dictator's terror tactics in a secret speech to the 20th Party Congress in 1956. Intellectuals were allowed a whiff of free air in 1962 when the literary journal Novy Mir published Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novella of Stalin's prison camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. But Arbat is of a different order: it is not only indicative of Mikhail Gorbachev's leash-loosening policies but also an official seal of disapproval on the past...
Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke claims to have "won thousands of convictions for drug-related crimes" during his seven-year career as a prosecutor. But it was he who started much of the furor over legalization by calling for a national debate on the issue in an April speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. For drug dealers, says Schmoke, "going to jail is just part of the cost of doing business. It's a nuisance, not a deterrent...
...conference in 31 years gathered in Budapest's trade-union meeting hall, word went out that the official agenda, bearing the imprimatur of Party Leader Janos Kadar, had been quietly shelved. As the conference began, the key question was whether Kadar, 75, might also be shelved. In his opening speech, Kadar himself acknowledged the need to "rejuvenate" the party leadership...