Word: stalinization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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After the Bolshevik Revolution, the mansion served as a shelter for the homeless until 1934 when Stalin turned it over to the recently formed Union of Soviet Writers (USW). The Oak Hall became the most coveted, élitist and inexpensive restaurant in the country. Stalin himself visited on occasion, but it was a regular haunt for Lavrenti Beria, his secret police henchman notoriously given to perfidy, cruelty and lust...
...many of whom are now itching for a war with Iran. Norman Podhoretz, the neocon paterfamilias, has written a trifle called World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism and loves to posit Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden-a far more dangerous character-as the heirs to Hitler and Stalin. "They follow the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism," he writes. This is incendiary foolishness. Terrorists have the ability to wreak terrible damage intermittently, but they don't represent an existential threat to the U.S. Ahmadinejad commands no legions-not even the Hizballah forces in Lebanon that attacked Israel...
...proved to have hostile intent, and it is making trouble for the U.S. in Iraq, supplying weapons to our enemies. These are all problems to be addressed soberly and perhaps even, eventually, with multilateral force. But the neoconservative campaign to transform Ahmadinejad into Hitler or Stalin, to pretend that he has the ability to destroy the world, to make a hoo-ha over letting the little man speak, is a cynical attempt to plump for war. Ahmadinejad may be ridiculous, but Podhoretz-who recently spent 45 minutes with Bush arguing for more war-isn't very funny...
...city's Usher Hall the conductor Gustavo Dudamel is having difficulty with the strings. It is the final rehearsal of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, and Dudamel wants the violins to be more biting and caustic. Any successful performance of Shostakovich's 10th must reflect its historical context: Stalin's purges; some 20 million dead; a composer who lived in constant fear of the knock on the door. "Muchachos," Dudamel says, searching for the right expression. "Pop pop pop!" he says, mimicking the sound of a firing squad...
...elaborate charade of feigned friendship between Putin and President George W. Bush, begun several years ago when Bush testified to the alleged spiritual depth of his Russian counterpart's soul, hasn't helped. The fact that similarly staged "friendships"--between F.D.R. and "Uncle Joe" Stalin, Nixon and Brezhnev, Clinton and Yeltsin--ended in mutual disappointment did not prevent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from boasting not long ago that U.S.-Russian relations were now the best in history. Surely it would be preferable to achieve a genuine, sustainable improvement before staging public theatrics designed to create the illusion that...