Word: stalins
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...debates a few months ago over the relative influence of world leaders--Lenin over Stalin, Reagan over Kennedy, Ho Chi Minh over Che Guevara--involved a lot of learned discourses conducted as if we were sipping sherry in a faculty lounge. But the shift from Lenin to Lennon was wrenching. Indeed, the fights we had over artists and entertainers involved a lot of passionate diatribes conducted as if we were swigging tequila at all-night bull sessions in a sophomore dorm. In order to rationalize the process (somewhat), we divided the world of arts into 20 categories, ranging from writer...
...Defeats in 1940 had weakened it further, as had the liquidation of its international investments to fund its early war efforts. During 1942, the prestige Britain had won as Hitler's only enemy allowed Churchill to sustain parity of leadership in the anti-Nazi alliance with Roosevelt and Stalin...
...that the new Czar would rule seven years. They assured anyone interested in listening that Gorbachev was "foretold in the Bible," that he was an apocalyptic figure: he had a mark on his forehead. Everyone had searched for signs in previous leaders as well, but Lenin's speech defect, Stalin's mustache, Brezhnev's eyebrows and Khrushchev's vast baldness were utterly human manifestations. The unusual birthmark on the new General Secretary's forehead, combined with his inexplicably radical actions, gave him a mystical aura. Writing about Gorbachev--who he was, where he came from, what he was after...
This was glasnost, 200 proof. The head of the communist world had bumped into the answer to Stalin's question: How many divisions has the Pope? And the Pope was engaging in spiritual geopolitics at summit level: he wanted human rights for the faithful in Russia. Karol Wojtyla's training was extensive, dating back to discreet studies for the priesthood under Nazi occupation in Poland. After that, parish work and academic studies under communist rule, leading in 1963 to the episcopacy in Cracow. Pity poor Gorbachev. Seventy-two years of formal national commitment to atheism, backed by the Gulag...
...Lenin dies; Trotsky and Stalin vie for power...