Word: stalinist
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Black Snow is at first glance a serious play. It's a story of censorship, blood baths, theater, repression, and manipulation. The play's premise is promising: identifying and particularizing the era of Stalinist paranoia and censorship in the trials of one man trying dangerously to write about history. And it's one that you want to see succeed, dramatizing as it does the incredible events culminating in the play as it now stands...
...circle, not a straight line. Ask a wrinkled babushka selling vodka on the street about Yeltsin's chances of success, and she will leapfrog back in memory over Mikhail Gorbachev's ill- fated perestroika to recall the doomed attempt by Nikita Khrushchev to break the stranglehold of the Stalinist past. An intellectual will delve even further into Russia's history, comparing Yeltsin's policies to the failed campaigns of reform-minded Czars like Peter the Great and Alexander...
...biting comment exchanged over the potato counter in Stalinist Moscow is not for here. But there is humor elsewhere, not in the queazy attempts at stand-up savagery, but the politics themselves. How can you poke fun at American politics when the thing itself is so damn hilarious? Why make endless quips about that nice Mr. Quayle when one look at his squidgy visage, writhing with stupidity, outdoes anything a comedian could express. All the way through the Vice-Presidential debate I was doubled up with laughter as cliche rebounded off smirk, off slick quip, off tear-jerking'''real-life...
...capital of Pristina, a dreary city of Stalinist-era high-rises scattered amid factory smokestacks and weed-infested lots, paramilitary units from Belgrade patrol the streets and carry out frequent identity checks. Hundreds of Yugoslav tanks are lined up at the large military base on the western edge of the city, a constant reminder of Serbian power. "Albanians are treated just like blacks in South Africa," says Avdush Bajgora, a 29- year-old doctor from Pristina. "It's complete apartheid...
...highly incendiary factor is Albania itself. A decade ago, at the time of the last serious uprising in Kosovo, Albania was a Stalinist dictatorship. Whatever their grievances against Belgrade, few Yugoslav Albanians believed they would fare better under Tirana. But now that Albania is beginning to emerge from communism to join the modern world, it will inevitably serve as a stronger magnet for the loyalties of Albanians in Serbia and a stimulus to their militancy...