Word: thresholds
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...morning last week, they did not shake hands at the door. It was not because there was any bad feeling between them but because Semyonov, a deputy foreign minister of the Soviet Union, subscribes to an old Russian superstition that it is bad luck to shake hands on a threshold. That is one of the many small oddities of negotiating with the Russians. Although the world's attention is periodically focused on highly publicized encounters between Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko-the next one is expected to take place in New York City...
...Peking leadership's low threshold of irritability has also caused China's once close relations with Viet Nam to deteriorate into what one analyst called "China's worst foreign policy disaster since the Cultural Revolution cut the country off from the rest of the world." Ostensibly, the quarrel focuses on two issues: China's support for Viet Nam's inimical neighbor, Cambodia, and the fate of 1.2 million ethnic Chinese in Viet Nam. Peking accuses Hanoi of subjecting them to "persecution and ostracism." While Hanoi denies the charge, 159,000 refugees have crossed the border...
Beyond ignorance, fear and greed, such actions are emblematic of the moral degradation visited upon the Soviet people by the regime, Solzhenitsyn believes. It is scarcely surprising, then, that he experienced a stab of regret when he was re leased from the camp in 1953: "Only on the threshold of the guardhouse do you begin to feel that what you are leaving be hind you is both your prison and your homeland. This was your spiritual birthplace, and a secret part of your soul will remain here forever - while your feet trudge on into the dumb and unwelcoming expanse...
...Social Democratic and Republican parties also ratified, the Communists will henceforth have a direct role in government-not with Cabinet portfolios, but as full, acknowledged partners in Andreotti's parliamentary majority. As Berlinguer put it jubilantly, Italy's big (1.7 million members) Communist Party has reached "the threshold of national leadership responsibility...
France nears the threshold of what Socialist Leader François Mitterrand calls "l'expérience socialiste"?and could cross it if the left wins this month's national elections. Italy faces the threat of the "historic compromise," which would bring Communists into government as partners of the long-ruling Christian Democrats. Socialist Mário Scares is Premier of Portugal, which until four years ago was a rightist dictatorship. Last year in Spain's first free national elections in more than four decades, the Socialist Workers Party of Felipe González emerged as the second most powerful political organization...