Word: unionizers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Five of the six men who have led the Soviet Union have clung to power until their deaths. But the one exception -- Nikita Khrushchev, the earthy reformer of a generation ago -- stands as a cautionary reminder of the perils of perestroika. The combination of glasnost and demokratizatsiya runs the risk of giving conservatives the chance to point to a breakdown in social order. This is a major consideration in one of the most order-obsessed regimes on earth. Gorbachev's situation, like the fate of his reforms, will thus remain precarious...
...reforms of Khrushchev and Kosygin were squelched, but the ideas they planted blossomed a quarter-century later in a new generation of leadership. As Gorbachev told Henry Kissinger when he visited Moscow earlier this year, "At any rate, things will never be the same again in the Soviet Union." Notes Kissinger: "This would be a modest result for so Herculean a task." Yes, but once again the contradiction is also true: the fact that the Soviet Union has been so deeply altered that it will never again be exactly the same is of monumental historic significance...
Translated to a personal level, this means that day-to-day life in the Soviet Union is as difficult as ever. Not only are big consumer items like refrigerators and washing machines in short supply -- the average wait to buy the cheapest Soviet car is seven years -- but staples of everyday life are also scarce. Long lines snake into the street for such ordinary items as sausage, rice, coffee and candy...
...down the republic's KGB chief. The city party leader in Leningrad, running against an unknown 28-year-old shipyard engineer, received only 15% of the vote. In fact, the five top Communists in the Leningrad power structure tumbled to defeat. Valeri Terekhov, a member of Leningrad's Democratic Union, an opposition group, noted, "Gorbachev opened a volcano, and I don't think he realized the lava was so deep...
Between gasps, however, some caution is in order. The Soviet Union still has a one-party system. After broaching the subject of whether other parties should be permitted, Yeltsin was subjected to an official inquiry by the Central Committee, which is still under way. Gorbachev, who says that pluralism can be accommodated within the Communist Party, calls the idea of having other parties "all rubbish...