Word: unionizers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ceremony, executives of a consortium of six U.S. firms -- including Chevron, Eastman Kodak and Johnson & Johnson -- signed an agreement for as many as 25 joint ventures involving about $10 billion over the next 20 years. Although the agreement specified ways that profits could be taken out of the Soviet Union in hard currency and not just held in worthless rubles, joint ventures still face enormous difficulties. Ford Motor Co. pulled out of the consortium because, a spokesman said, it was unable to persuade "the Soviets to adopt new and innovative financial arrangements...
...were branded as lunatics because they defied the government. They were hospitalized for years under prison-like conditions and put on powerful drugs that turned them into zombies. Particularly unruly patients were sometimes wrapped in wet canvas and nearly suffocated. As word of such abuses spread outside the Soviet Union, the country's psychiatrists became outcasts in the international medical community...
Despite all the ferment, there is some reason to question whether fundamental change has taken place. The psychiatric leadership is still old line. The All-Union Scientific Center for Mental Health is headed by Dr. Marat Vartanyan, a longtime protege of Snezhnevsky's. And Moscow's Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry, which has been responsible for many of the forced hospitalizations, remains under the command of Dr. Georgi Morozov, as it has for decades. Critics doubt there can be any real reform until those two leaders and others trained by Snezhnevsky are replaced...
Despite their reluctance to comment, the U.S. psychiatrists who traveled to Moscow last month seemed far from reassured by their tour. Some of the visitors said Soviet psychiatrists still appeared to use drugs of dubious medical value. Many Western experts will no doubt oppose readmitting the Soviet Union to the W.P.A. until Moscow shakes up the psychiatric leadership and unequivocally renounces past practices. Though grounds for skepticism remain, there are signs that the current Soviet reform wave will lead to more humane and enlightened forms of psychiatric care...
Vladimir Yakovlev, 30, a former journalist, has cashed in on the co-op movement by starting a company to collect and sell information about such ventures. Yakovlev launched the firm, called Fakt, two years ago and already has more than 30 offices in the Soviet Union. Yakovlev, who last fall visited the U.S. for the first time to learn more about foreign trade, pays himself 1,500 rubles a month ($2,400), five times as much as he made as a journalist. His most enviable perk is a company car and driver. "I spend a lot of money every month...