Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...currency almost daily as Yeltsin reaches for ever more apocalyptic "red scare" metaphors. When the President says, "I cannot let the forces of the past come to power; I will resist their comeback in every way," his aides nod in agreement. "I know what it would mean for your Western view of democracy," says Georgi Satarov, a top Yeltsin aide. "But if there were a chance that Hitler would come to power in America by winning an election, wouldn't you be wondering if it wasn't right to stop that...
...with damp eyes and a Soviet-flag pin stuck in his lapel reverently described Zyuganov as ''one of the best leaders our party has ever had." At a May Day rally in Moscow, the heads of various nationalist movements praised Zyuganov as someone who shares their anti-Western, often anti-Semitic beliefs. In St. Petersburg, a man introduced himself as a member of Monarchists for Zyuganov, a contradiction so absurd even the usually dour candidate had to laugh...
Yeltsin's moves toward the Communists' positions have gone far beyond his economic "course corrections." He jettisoned his Foreign Minister, Andrei Kozyrev, and abused him, in the same terms used by the opposition, as being too pro-Western. Yeltsin has also usurped a fair amount of nationalist, great-power rhetoric, and he has signed a treaty with Belarus that permits people to believe he favors re-creating the old Soviet empire (a Communist priority). Suddenly too the old World War II Red Army "victory banner" has been ordered flown alongside Russia's new white-blue-and-red tricolor on occasions...
...culture. It experimented briefly with limited parliamentary democracy before the 1917 revolution. The present era of quasi-democratization was inaugurated by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 with elections for a new Congress of the People's Deputies. But these two periods offer a flimsy tradition on which to build stable, Western-style institutions of government...
...soon proved the equals of the apparatchiks they replaced in enriching themselves at public expense. Very quickly, the word democrat became synonymous with incompetent and corrupt. Ask anyone on the streets of Moscow what they think of Russian democracy today and the most likely answer will be "What democracy?" Western diplomats may resort to sophistry in explaining how Yeltsin remains the country's best democratic hope, but few Russians have any illusions now about Yeltsin, who is known, not quite accurately, as their first "popularly elected" President. To them he seems to have reverted to his former role...