Word: ligachev
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...Down with Gorbachev!" some 10,000 protesters shouted within earshot of the Kremlin. "Down with the KGB!" The demonstrators had gathered to support criminal investigators Telman Gdlyan and Nikolai Ivanov. The two became popular heroes last year after publicly accusing Politburo conservative Yegor Ligachev of corruption; both were elected to parliament last spring. But now they are accused of illegally detaining witnesses and forcing confessions in a six-year probe of a multimillion-ruble scandal involving racketeering and influence peddling in Uzbekistan, which nailed the son-in-law of the late Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev, among others...
...might use his new powers to declare a state of emergency in the republic as a way to regain control. But Gorbachev appears to be committed to finding a political solution to the crisis. "There would not be negotiations but a repectful dialogue," he said. Even Politburo conservative Yegor Ligachev firmly ruled out military intervention, noting that "tanks cannot help in this business...
Perhaps this is an idea whose time has come. The intellectual attic is stuffed now. Urgent, exotic pieces of lumber (like Nagorno-Karabakh and Baku and Soweto and Tadzhikistan and Violeta Chamorro and Yegor Ligachev and Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Sisulu and Umberto Eco, on and on) are gathering in the mind from all over the world. They are tumbling out the windows...
Given the rapid pace of change, Ligachev's small victory last week may prove to be his last stand. Gorbachev has called another plenum for next week to discuss how to conduct party elections. The General Secretary is determined to push ahead with a complete renewal of local party organization before early summer to prevent hard-line holdovers from stacking the delegations to the policy-setting congress. As he noted in his concluding remarks to the plenum, "It is inadmissible to tarry now. It is necessary to take the lead in stormy and complicated processes...
Naturally, many Communist nobles are loath to surrender their deserts. Conservative Politburo member Yegor Ligachev once drew hoots of derision when he responded to complaints of inequality by saying, "The party worker has ! only one privilege: to be in front, to struggle for the party's policies." Junior Politburo member Yevgeni Primakov got a bigger sneer when he argued in the Congress of People's Deputies that the rewards of being a party peer were in some ways a burden. During the hot summers, he complained, the chauffeur- driven black cars turned into sweatboxes...