Word: touristic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...elections in 1990. The bureaucracy, still predominantly hard-line communists, dragged their feet on implementing changes. While other Russian cities, including Moscow, could barter their industrial products for farm produce, St. Petersburg, with 72% of its industrial output devoted to military hardware, had nothing to trade. Observed a city tourist guide bitterly: "You can't buy a chicken with a tank...
...sense of city-wide despair is palpable even among the frowsy tourist interpreters trained to talk up the city. "This is the most humiliating time the city has ever undergone," said one. "Even during World War II it was not like this. Our country is falling apart." When would it get better? someone asked. "When people learn once more the meaning of work, we will have food again," came the answer. Others are not so sure. "The situation is extraordinarily tense," said a city council member. "The old authorities -- the communists -- realize that this may be their last chance...
...realm of the miraculous sometimes lies just across the border from the fanatical or the tacky. Miracles may turn into roadside tourist traps, Fellini scenes. A revelation may go commercial and look like a snake farm beside the highway in North Florida. The transcendent moment falls from grace and spoils on the ground like rotten fruit. So the territory of the miraculous must be approached carefully, by stages, passing from the gaudiest, shabbiest outer display toward what may, occasionally, turn out to be a deeper truth...
...gaudier miracles are entertaining. A few of them may be authentic by Vatican standards. But a miracle without purpose is mostly a trick. Far from tourist trap and snake farm, there is the Ur-miracle from which all miracles derive. It is useful, simple, transforming and persuasive. It cannot be faked. It is love...
...little sympathy out in the provinces. "Muscovites talk about a crisis because they are finally going hungry," contends Yaroslavl Deputy Pushkar. "But this is the way the rest of the country has always lived." Olga Ivanova supplements her meager monthly pension of 205 rubles ($2.28 at the current tourist rate) by selling eggs on a Yaroslavl street corner. She vaguely recalls buying smoked ham in a state-run shop six or seven years ago, but the only meat available now sells for 40 rubles (44 cents) for 2 lbs., or 20% of her income, at the free market...