Word: stalins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Stalin and Khrushchev would be proud of Gorbachev, who is no different in his attempts to strengthen the Soviet economy and expand Soviet influence throughout the world. He is only the first General Secretary with enough Western-style charisma to wow the world community. He has taken the initiative by pouring forth a deluge of proposals for arms reduction, making the United States appear inflexible when we don't accept them...
...televised news conference before he and his wife Raisa depart next Thursday. Gorbachev's image in the West as a humane reformer has been somewhat dimmed by the November sacking of one of his chief lieutenants, Moscow Communist Party Boss Boris Yeltsin, after a public disgrace reminiscent of the Stalin era. Since Yeltsin was an enthusiast for perestroika (restructuring of the Soviet economy), his peremptory dismissal has been interpreted as a signal that Old Guard bureaucrats are reining in the pace of Gorbachev's domestic reforms...
...Stalin's day, a disgraced party official received a show trial and a bullet in the head. In more recent times, Kremlin power brokers who fell from grace languished in obscure retirement. But last week Boris Yeltsin, who had lost his job as head of the Moscow Communist Party in spectacular fashion only seven days earlier, was appointed first deputy chairman of the State Committee for Construction, a government position that carries ministerial rank. While that represents a demotion, Kremlin watchers could not recall any previous Soviet official's being vilified and sacked from a top job, then re-emerging...
...this plenum I have heard many things, things such as I had never heard in my entire life," he said when it was his turn to speak. But Yeltsin knew better than to quarrel; instead he responded with a rambling self- criticism that echoed nothing so much as the Stalin-era show trials of the 1930s. "One of my most characteristic personal traits, ambition, has manifested itself lately," he said. "I tried to control it but, regrettably, without success. I am very guilty before the city party committee, before the Politburo and certainly before Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev...
Since then, he's used his own kind of Five-Year Plan to get the Bulldogs to where they are today (Stalin never could get his to work right...