Word: stalins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fair. In public parks and private living rooms, families plan futures that many believe will be better, richer, freer than ever before. To the delight of many Soviet citizens -- and the dismay of others -- their country is in the midst of its most dramatic transformation since the days of Stalin...
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...
...testifies, "I have not yet found one single student in Los Angeles, in either college or high school, who could tell me the years when World War II was fought." The Federal Government's Foundations of Literacy project recently tested 17- year-olds; samplings show that half cannot identify Stalin or Churchill...
...structure of the Soviet government without even mentioning the Communist Party. The 1924 constitution, which formally recognized the creation of the multinational Soviet Union, gave individual states the right to secede -- a fiction that remains in the current text. The 1936 revision, known as the Stalin constitution, theoretically expanded personal freedoms at a time when the dictator's Great Terror was sweeping the country. The current version was adopted in 1977. One of its key changes: the right to sue the state, which has seldom been exercised but which Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev is trying to strengthen through a reform...