Word: thawed
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...RUSSIA HOUSE by John le Carre (Knopf; $19.95). A document discounting Soviet missile capabilities is smuggled to the West. Never mind glasnost, perestroika and the cold war thaw. Are these grubby notebooks full of facts and figures true? The quest for the answer produces the author's most hair- raising thriller since The Spy Who Came In from the Cold...
...most serious difficulties for the U.S. are likely to arise in Japan and Korea. If the Sino-Soviet thaw endures, Moscow and Beijing will promote closer North-South relations on the Korean peninsula with an eye toward reducing the 40,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. That's good, but not if it leads to intimidation of the South's burgeoning democracy. Japan, unsure about its new global political role, will almost certainly be next to receive the full brunt of the Gorbachev charm offensive. That's bad only if it dilutes the Washington-Tokyo relationship and forces...
Fortunately, nature itself, in fits and starts, seemed to be coming to the rescue. Four days of rain and snowstorms last week helped break up the floating oil and cleanse a number of shores. Moreover, the coming of the long / spring and summer thaw is sure to create a rush of rivulets and waterfalls that will help wash off the shoreline. Observed John Robinson, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: "In the end, nature has to do this...
Poet Bulat Okudzhava, one of a handful of artists whose works captured the spirit of the first post-Stalinist era of reform, wonders about the aftereffects of the long period of stagnation. "The 'thaw' generation is tired and burned out," he says. "But the next generation is simply not prepared to carry on the reforms." Filmmaker Elem Klimov, the head of the Cinema Workers' Union, admits that the transition has been difficult, like "struggling to break down a wall, only to confront yourself on the other side." Says he: "For so long we have said, 'Give us our freedom...
Having justified itself for two decades and more as a medium of political expression -- obliquely during the Brezhnev years, sometimes rantingly during the current thaw -- the Soviet stage sees itself as needing to rediscover its true concern, the human soul. Audiences apparently agree. While theatergoers continue to clap for lines of topical invective, they seem to respond most strongly to intimate glimpses of lost love, betrayal by friends and alcoholic desperation, whether in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the Moscow Art Theater or in quasi-documentary scripts about prostitutes and gravediggers performed by the city's most impressive acting troupe...