Word: stalins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...glass Palace of Congresses behind the walls of the Kremlin. For the 5,000 delegates chosen to attend, it is a chance to watch Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev make history. Says one Washington-based Soviet diplomat: "This is the most important event in our history since the death of Stalin. People's expectations have been aroused...
...year-old Yevtushenko, whose poems about the Stalin era, anti-Semitism, and other topics made him a popular hero in the 1960s, is accorded special license and privileges by the Soviet authorities, including the freedom to travel to the United States...
...Stalin tells us that one death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths a statistic. He should have added that seven TV personalities makes a mini-series...
...Yevtushenko also condemned favors bestowed on the party elite. "Any form of closed food and commodity distribution is morally impermissible," he said, "including the special ration cards to visit souvenir booths that are in the pockets of all the delegates to this congress, myself included." He also indirectly denounced Stalin's reign of terror throughout the 1930s. "We do not have the right to remain silent about the fact that many middle- class farmers were trampled upon . . . that there was a merciless extermination of Bolshevik guards, the best commanders in the army and industrial officials...
...time the speech was reported in the weekly newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta, Yevtushenko had fallen victim to the very timidity he had criticized. The journal deleted his references to Stalin's murderous rule and party favoritism. Yevtushenko professed himself unconcerned by the heavy-handed editing. Said he: "My words were addressed to writers, not the party. I just wanted them to speak their minds...