Word: stalinist
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Perestroika has made little headway at the KGB, but the Soviet spies are taking a stab at glasnost. Even though KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov still delivers speeches with Stalinist overtones, his year-old public relations department is busy polishing the agency's image. It has opened a museum at headquarters in Moscow's Dzerzhinsky Square, allows some officers to give interviews and recently ran a Miss KGB contest in which women in bulletproof vests competed in skills like cooking, shooting, dancing, karate and applying makeup...
...exodus. While communist leader Ramiz Alia remains the head of both state and party, he could have trouble continuing the concessions that led to free elections. Party hard- liners are in the ascendant, and last week's crackdown could even signal a return to the bad old days of Stalinist-style repression...
...Stalinism -- the other horror from our past -- the danger that it might return is real but not unavoidable. Conservatives argue that the rapid decline in the standard of living, the growing crime rate, the spread of ethnic violence and the deterioration of public morale justify Stalinist practices as a means of restoring social stability and maintaining the integrity of the country. But it will be difficult for them to turn back the clock. Too much of their program is too deeply compromised. Soviet society is fed up with ideological junk food. The one-party political system has been shattered...
...Stalinist era, Yeltsin would probably have been shot for his insubordination. Under perestroika, though, he made an astonishing political comeback, running as Moscow's at-large candidate for the newly created Congress of People's Deputies in March 1989 and winning 89% of the city's 6 million votes. From that political base, he sniped constantly at Gorbachev for his "half-measures" and indecisiveness, and called for direct presidential elections...
Even after his death in 1985, Enver Hoxha dominated the town and city squares of Albania. Statues of the dictator were everywhere, including a 30-ft. bronze monolith in the center of Tirana, the capital. But the legacy of the Stalinist strongman has come under assault in recent months, and last week Hoxha's statues were falling. Students in the capital, demanding that Enver Hoxha University be renamed, threw ropes around the monument and brought it crashing down...