Word: things
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...alternative is not that perestroika might suddenly be pronounced a success -- even the irrepressible Boris Yeltsin should avoid holding his breath -- but that the reforms will continue. For both the Soviets and those destined to coexist with them, that is the important thing. Each new manifestation of democracy, each new opportunity for individual enterprise, each new opening for free thought and expression helps ease the repressive relationship between the Soviet state and its population. That, in turn, should make the new U.S.S.R. a far less threatening world citizen. Last week's election was another act in a lengthy drama that...
Like Dr. Johnson's remark about dogs who walk upright and women who preach, the amazing thing about perestroika is not that the Soviets are doing it well but that they are doing it at all. "We so quickly and lightly overlook the remarkable existence of perestroika and focus on the obstacles," says Robert Legvold, director of Columbia University's Averell Harriman Institute, "that we underestimate the significance of the fact that it has begun at all." Whatever happens, and whatever course it finally takes, the Gorbachev revolution has already become one of the greatest dramas and most momentous events...
...thing that can be said with certainty about perestroika is that it has exposed how difficult rebuilding the Soviet economy will be. The obstacles are greater, the situation more dire and the fixes more fundamental than even Gorbachev suspected four years ago. "Frankly speaking, comrades, we have underestimated the extent and gravity of the deformations," he told a Party Conference last year. Nikolai Shmelev, one of the country's radical economic gadflies, has put it more vividly: "We are now like a seriously ill man who, after a long time in bed, takes his first step with the greatest degree...
...reforms. He did, with a vengeance. Despite 71 years without practice, Soviets plunged into the fray of open democracy. "We intellectuals always saw % ourselves as the symbol of democracy but thought the people weren't ready for it," says Andrei Voznesensky, a noted Soviet poet. "The joyful thing about all this is that in many ways we have been proved wrong...
...examining Soviet psychiatry in a book titled Punitive Medicine, contends that the changes are strictly cosmetic. Even though the special psychiatric hospitals are nominally controlled by the civilian Ministry of Health, he notes, the guards are still military personnel and the doctors commissioned officers. Says Podrabinek: "The only thing that has changed is the label." He claims that new language in the regulations has actually given the government even greater latitude to misuse psychiatry. Under the old rules, "mentally ill" people could be forcibly hospitalized if they were judged to pose a physical threat to themselves or society. That remains...