Word: controller
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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There were scattered but serious anti-Russian riots by the Uzbeks of Tashkent in 1966 and 1969 and the Tadzhiks of Dushanbe in 1978. In those cases, the Soviet army garrisons outside those cities were put on alert and used for crowd control. A U.S. Government Kremlinologist has hypothesized that if it were not for the presence of Moscow's military and security forces, as many as seven of the 15 Soviet republics would exercise their constitutional right to secede from the U.S.S.R...
...model democracy. It is headed by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., which is composed of 1,500 members and which elects a select body of 39 representatives known as the Presidium. In fact, political power rests with a gigantic, self-protecting and self-selecting bureaucracy that is effectively controlled by a small and cautious elite. The constitution adopted in 1977 -the fourth in the history of the U.S.S.R.-was the first to assert the primacy of the Communist Party in Soviet government and life. The country's only legal party is identified as the "nucleus" of the system...
...Soviets accuse the U.S. of insensitivity to their legitimate security interests, and they claim that those interests are endangered by the new mood of militancy in the U.S. "Your desire to control the oil-producing areas of the world is driving a frantic effort to enlist other countries in this region to that goal," says Bykov. "What is so often forgotten in the U.S. is that for us, that area is on our doorstep. The situation is similar to what might arise south of the Rio Grande; America would certainly be sensitive to instability on its borders...
...since Beria to sit on the Politburo. He is a party man, not an agency professional. His most notable previous post: Soviet Ambassador in Budapest, where he helped put down the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Among Andropov's most important functions is to keep the KGB under firm party control so that the secret police can never again wield the power it possessed under Stalin, when it arrested, tortured and killed thousands of loyal party officials...
True, Soviet agriculture is plagued by climatic problems beyond the control of any government. Though the lush fields of the Ukraine produce grain in abundance, much of the country's arable land lies in far northern latitudes, where enormous swings in seasonal temperatures and erratic rainfall can lead to variations of as much as 40% in annual harvest yields. The geographical and climatic problems are compounded by the system's self-inflicted wounds of rule by decree...