Word: weimar
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...history, the "wolfcriers" turn. In the most extreme cases, reactionaries have claimed that Russia is undergoing the Weimar syndrome. The Russian republic, according to this line of thinking, is a politically-inexperienced, fledgling democracy ripe for a takeover in much the same way as Weimar Germany in the 1930s...
Hitler called the democratically elected Weimar government weak, referring to its again patriarch. Paul von Hindenburg, as "the old gentleman." Last week, Zhirinovsky said the Russian government is "in its final agony," suggesting that President Boris Yeltsin is sick and due for retirement...
Europeans, who are reminded daily by events in former Yugoslavia just how porous borders can be, were more inclined to see the parallels between Russia and Weimar Germany: vast economic dislocations, hyperinflation, national humiliation and a disaffected officer class. Of course, there are notable differences too. For all its economic troubles, Russia does not suffer the massive unemployment that plagued Germany just after World War I. And rather than being slapped with steep reparations, Russia is receiving aid from abroad...
Their hero is Wilhelm, a hapless clerk whose trousers have a way of falling to his ankles just when they shouldn't. Their Devil is Pegleg, a swallow- tailed lowlife who learned his wiles behind the footlights of some sleazy Weimar cabaret, a la Joel Grey. They are surrounded by weirdos who make the Addams Family look like the Waltons. Among them: Wilhelm's inamorata, the robotically hysterical Kathchen; her fright-wigged father Bertram; an overbearing uncle who, in a hilarious non sequitur, tells the story of how Hemingway sold the movie rights to The Snows of Kilimanjaro...
...wisecrack that made the rounds in the 1980s characterized the Soviet Union as "Upper Volta with missiles." Now, as then, the economy is not that bad off. But Boris Yeltsin's Russia last week seemed closer to being a Weimar Republic with missiles. Images of violent communist-fascist mobs dedicated to strangling Russian democracy in its cradle no doubt helped galvanize international support for Yeltsin, a figure whose impulses are sometimes seen as suspect. The ambiguity of the crisis was reinforced by the televised spectacle of tank commanders loyal to Yeltsin shelling the Parliament Building...