Word: presentable
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...events continue on their present path, eventually the Communists will have all the world's land and we will have all the world's people...
...matter how self-serving and dubious, such predictions indicate a new confidence that has come with the U.S.S.R.'s recent attainment of superpower status. That accomplishment has been largely the work of Leonid Brezhnev and his comrades. When the present collective leadership took over from Khrushchev in 1964, the Soviet armed forces lagged behind the U.S. in every important category of strategic weaponry. Now they have caught up across the board and pulled ahead in some areas...
...sure, the present leaders have not found a way to keep meat in the grocery stores or underwear in the department stores. Nor have they loosened the reins of repression during the past 16 years. At the same time, however, material conditions are easier, and life has settled into a consistent, predictable norm that avoids the extremes of Khrushchev's erratic liberalization and Stalin's relentless terror. For many Soviets, that is reassuring, especially against the backdrop of their country's new prestige and power abroad...
...many Soviets are fearful that there may be harder days ahead. Reports TIME Correspondent Nelan: "Government officials admit privately that the economy is a mess, that things are unquestionably going to get worse. There is an atmosphere of apprehension. Everyone is waiting to see what will come after the present aging, ill and inflexible oligarchy passes from the scene. The hope is for more dynamism?if not after Brezhnev himself, then after an interim, transitional successor. But that is only a hope...
...odds are against such hopes being realized. One reason is that the present leadership and the leadership system as a whole work against dynamism. A management team that cannot, or will not, transfer power to a younger generation of executives except by the attrition of mortality is by definition guilty of mismanagement. The Brezhnev Politburo is like an aging board of directors that has no compulsory retirement policy, no adequate pension plan and no tradition of honoring emeritus directors. So each board member hangs on and on, becoming increasingly shortsighted as he becomes increasingly sclerotic. Such a corporation, no matter...