Word: zil
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Eduard Amvroseyevich Shevardnadze begins his work day the moment he climbs into his black ZIL limousine for the 15-minute ride from his suburban dacha to downtown Moscow. Speeding along the boulevards of the Soviet capital, he telephones the Foreign Ministry for a summary of international news. By the time he arrives at the pinnacled Stalinist skyscraper in Smolensky Square just before 9 a.m., he has been briefed on events and can plunge immediately into the pile of diplomatic cables and documents awaiting him in his seventh-floor office...
...about a third of the 129 regional party leaders, Moscow's mayor, Lithuania's top leadership, the KGB boss in Estonia, the admiral of the Pacific fleet and the general of Soviet forces in East Germany, the party boss in Kiev, and Yevgeni Brakov, the manager of Moscow's ZIL limousine factory, who had the thankless task of taking on Yeltsin...
Gorby the sequel. One-upping his walk on the wild side of Washington's Connecticut Avenue last year, Gorbachev twice leaped from his ZIL limo: in front of Bloomingdale's, and earlier on the Great White Way in sight of the Times Square display screen alternating WELCOME GENERAL SECRETARY GORBACHEV with an ad for My Stepmother Is an Alien...
...near Moscow had prepared carefully for the big day last August. They had even built a special staircase to spare their distinguished visitor the indignity of climbing down a hill to the potato fields below the main road. Mikhail Gorbachev would have none of it. Stepping out of his ZIL limousine, he gave the staircase a dismissive wave and scrambled down the steep incline in his neatly pressed gray business suit, leaving his surprised entourage to run after him in full view of television cameras...
Gorbachev has an apartment in central Moscow, but lives most of the time in a closed and guarded area of single-family mansions on the western outskirts of the city. From there he is driven downtown daily at 9 a.m. in a four-ZIL motorcade: one car for himself; two for aides and bodyguards, and a heavily curtained vehicle bristling with antennas that is assumed to carry the coding equipment for launching nuclear weapons. His main office is on the fifth floor of the Central Committee headquarters, a quarter of a mile from the Kremlin; he also maintains an office...