Word: commissar
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Chiang Ch'ing herself was accused on wall posters of trying to murder Mao. Some said she had "nagged" him to death; others claimed she "ignored the doctor's advice and wanted to move [Mao] from his sickbed, trying in vain to kill him." The deputy political commissar of Canton also denounced "the self-styled student of our leader"-a reference to the fact that Chiang Ch'ing's wreath at Mao's funeral had been signed "your student and comrade-in-arms." One wall poster in Shanghai bluntly accused Mao's widow...
Third in the line was Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, about 65, Vice Premier of the state council, political commissar of the People's Liberation Army and the man said to be acting secretary-general of the Communist Party. There is quickness and intelligence in his eyes and a darting intensity that suggests a gift for calculation. Chang has a reputation among Westerners he has met for being opinionated and untactful while displaying an intellectually sharp cutting edge...
Even without the weekly batch of transients, the Russian presence in Luxembourg is about as subtle as an elephant at a garden party. Ambassador Yevgeni Kosarev, a dour commissar-type who bores his fellow diplomats at cocktail parties by talking endlessly about grain crops, supervises an embassy of 36 Soviet officials-roughly one for every 10,000 Luxembourgers...
...make matters even worse for the Russians, a cost-conscious Moscow apparatchik decided that, though the Soviets would donate the statue-a duplicate already stands in a Vientiane park -the Laotians would have to transport it through the countryside to Luang Prabang. Miffed by such commissar chintziness, the Laotians have not bothered to move Luang Prabang's bronze statue out of storage in Vientiane...
...their own economies, so far with meager success. The trademarks of Communist economies remain indelible: low productivity, shortages of goods, lengthy queues in stores, years-long waits for apartments. In order to spur initiative, most Communist countries also have huge and growing differences in real income (and perquisites) between commissar and collective farmer. Nikita Khrushchev once replied to a charge that the Soviet Union was going capitalist: "Call it what you will, incentives are the only way to make people work harder...