Word: stavropol
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...some ways Gorbachev owes his rise to hometown connections. The future Soviet leader was born in 1931 in the fertile Stavropol region of southern Russia, where Yuri Andropov also was born and where Mikhail Suslov, the country's leading ideologist until his death in January 1982, had worked for several years. Gorbachev's first job was driving a tractor. In 1950 he made a significant leap forward by gaining entrance to Moscow State University. Admission is notoriously hard to win; unless a student is exceptionally talented, he needs family influence to enter. The farm boy apparently got his boost from...
...Mikhail Gorbachev, 52, represents a new breed of better-educated Soviet technocrat. The son of peasants from the rich farming region of Stavropol in southwest Russia, Gorbachev holds a law degree from Moscow State University and another degree in agronomy from the Stavropol Agricultural Institute. His knowledge of farming, the weak link in Soviet economic planning, won him a place in the Secretariat and catapulted him into the Politburo's inner circle at the tender age of 49. Continuing failures on the farm have cut short the careers of past agricultural experts, but Gorbachev appears to be flourishing even though...
...Soviet Screwtape writes about listless and corrupt clergy in minute details that could only have been gleaned from a broad network of informants. The aging Archbishop of Stavropol (who died shortly after the report was written) receives special mention because his sermons are "quite brief and not very impressive." In prose more typical of anticlerical Russian folk tales, there are accounts of priests "possessed by profane passions," or who use foul language and drink excessively...
...public service, Pravda editors often look into reader complaints. "I have long dreamed of buying a samovar," wrote one frustrated consumer from Stavropol. "How often have I searched in stores with, alas, no results." A resident of Zaporozhye wrote that her stores carried a model for 25 rubles, but added: "It looks like a galvanized bucket with a spigot." Pravda approached the proper ministry for an explanation and printed its response: 28 models were available, and "much is being done to improve their external appearance," said a spokesman, adding that samovars had not been overlooked in the latest Five-Year...
...Union passed an important milepost on its slow and bumpy journey into the automotive age. The new auto, a four-passenger sedan, is based on the Fiat-124. Its Russian name is Zhiguli, after the rolling hills across the Volga from Togliatti, the city whose name was changed from Stavropol in honor of the late Italian Communist leader...