Word: stalinizing
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...last President to leave a cache of candid correspondence was Harry Truman, who wrote more than 1,200 letters just to his wife. Not only do they reveal his delightful personal style, they provide convincing insights on matters ranging from his dealings with Stalin to his decision to drop the atom bomb. There is even a book filled with letters that Truman wrote in moments of pique, then wisely filed away unmailed. His diaries, though intermittent, are no less revealing. In June 1945, as General Douglas MacArthur was closing in on the islands near Japan, Truman's entries foreshadow...
Aksyonov knew from clouds. His father, a Communist Party official, and his mother, a distinguished historian, spent nearly two decades in labor camps and Siberian exile during the Stalin years. He was raised in provincial Kazan by an aunt, completed medical school in Leningrad and became a popular though officially censured novelist. The Burn, his fictional account of Stalin-era Siberia, was published abroad in 1980. For that offense he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship while traveling in the U.S. and found himself stranded there...
...Stalin and his successors, though, who deserve credit for expanding the ancient national pastime from a merely local amusement to a truly global game. The historic postwar expansion brought coveted big league franchises to such deserving cities as Warsaw, Budapest, Havana, Prague and now even Kabul, where an all-rookie team of Afghan players altered traditional notions of defense by employing the first heat-seeking laptas during regular-season play. Much like the introduction of the corked bat and the designated hitter in the U.S., the Afghan innovation has clearly irritated a few hidebound older fans back in Moscow...
Such worries about Gorbachev's ultimate goals involve another Leninist byword: peredyshka (breathing space). Both Lenin and Stalin were adept at justifying tactical retreats and temporary accommodations when these suited Soviet aims, only to return to the global struggle when conditions ripened. "The No. 1 question," says James Schlesinger, "is whether Gorbachev's new thinking is intended simply to achieve a respite, a pause, so that the Soviets can repair their economy; then in ten or 15 years go back to the ideological conflict...
...Soviets have previously made similar accommodating noises that turned out to produce breathing spaces of a dismayingly short duration. Lenin used the concept of "coexistence" to justify taking Russia out of World War I. Stalin subscribed to the doctrine of "collective security" against Hitler in the 1930s and then secretly negotiated a pact with the Nazi dictator...