Word: western
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When he arrived in Moscow last August, a Western diplomat had to choose which of two cars to buy. In the end he picked the one he liked less and that cost more. His reason: "The owner threw in one of the American maps with...
Until last week the most reliable guide to the huge, concentrically built Soviet capital was widely known as "the CIA map." Lent to American diplomats on posting to Moscow, the high-quality maps were coveted. Western tourists traveling in groups had little trouble getting around to the major sights, but individuals or long-term visitors were at the mercy of the Soviet belief that "if you don't know where you are, you don't belong there...
...price of that failure is immense. Nicaragua is a wreck, inhabited by despair. A report secretly commissioned by the Sandinistas confirms the country's plight: with an annual per capita income of $300, Nicaragua is possibly the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Unemployment may reach 30% this year. Those who have skills to sell and some place to go get out: more than 10,000 have joined the contra counterrevolution, and at least 250,000 out of the population of 3.5 million have fled, many...
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn arrived in Cavendish with his wife Natalya and four sons in 1976, some 2 1/2 years after he had been charged with treason and forcibly exiled from the Soviet Union. Settling in at a 50-acre mountain retreat, purchased with royalties from Western publications of his works, the author of such books as Cancer Ward and The First Circle gradually disappeared from headlines and public view. Admiring pilgrims hoping for a glimpse of the 1970 Nobel laureate -- as well as suspected KGB snoops -- were discouraged by the natives and by an impressive security system ringing the enclosure...
...There is technical progress, but this is not the same thing as the progress of humanity as such. In every civilization this process is very complex. In Western civilizations -- which used to be called Western-Christian but now might better be called Western-Pagan -- along with the development of intellectual life and science, there has been a loss of the serious moral basis of society. During these 300 years of Western civilization, there has been a sweeping away of duties and an expansion of rights. But we have two lungs. You can't breathe with just one lung...