Russian Presswatch/Lessons in Liberty
Young, Cathy
Lessons in Liberty by Cathy Young ne year after a gang of hardliners Novodvorskaya, the impetuous leader of things were "good"; 63 percent, "fair"; 0 botched their coup and the Soviet the...
...The Algonquin has a literary reputation—better say, a literary past...
...personal situation, 13 percent said that percent...
...Not quite the picture of passive, zation (bidding for a donut shop in Gudkov, a 50-year-old locksmith: "What fatalistic Russians we keep hearing Moscow starts at 1.2 million rubles, or we have is freedom...
...I said, as if to humor her, "Let's go out for a drink...
...the past, we used to live in fear, afraid to reforms, both the positives (at 30 persay a word and getting kopecks for our cent) and the negatives (at 43 percent) n the August 18 Independent Gazette, work...
...Today, it's shout whatever you were higher, with 27 percent undecided...
...Lessons in Liberty by Cathy Young ne year after a gang of hardliners Novodvorskaya, the impetuous leader of things were "good...
...so do some of the lampshades...
...Valeria hensive poll, though conducted back in 15 percent opposed...
...The Algonquin Round Table met there, and the New Yorker used to be located in a building that had a rear exit across the street...
...James Thurber wrote that Harold Ross's famous and busy friends of the Algonquin Round Table and its fringes took his fond enterprise lightly...
...A cartoon in the generally for instance...
...I'd even remembered her hairdryer...
...Dark wood trim makes the high-ceilinged room cozy...
...what public that it was all in vain...
...I am terrible at presents, especially birthday presents...
...They look as if they should be threadbare, but they aren't...
...The bright shining mark in the credit column was the year I took her for an evening drink at the Algonquin...
...True, we're as poor as we Respondents were also asked about pro-capitalist Izvestia shows two bloated always were...
...A few of them helped now and then, with left hand, and tongue in cheek...
...Moscow newspapers advertise auc- of a great state...
...The hairdryer was to show the maid, if she was curious, that we were really married...
...Less cheerful as "damaging to Russia's interests" and scramble along the floor to get at these was V. Slavina, a 36-year-old clerk: "In 58 percent were undecided...
...chocolates, and a bottle of champagne...
...My wife was tired from work...
...Some of the chairs have fringe...
...The country' s condition was plasm, the jailed plotters busy them- of Lenin and Gorbachev, hasn't mel- viewed as more dire: 33 percent rated it selves composing verses, memoirs, and lowed out: she finds the new regime cor- as near-critical, 60 percent as critical or op-ed commentary, and are often quoted rupt, mendacious, and guilty of "the over- catastrophic, and only 3 percent as norin the still-kicking Pravda...
...The reason I picked the Algonquin for my venue is that it's one of the few hotels in New York, or anywhere, with a lounge attractive enough to have served as bait...
...She agreed...
...it is merely a precondition for a dence on the bosses...
...When I reminded Ross of this line years later, all he said was, "God knows I had both kinds...
...But that summer, when we their attitudes toward the Yeltsin governbiznesmeni toasting each other as they sit learned about [the coup], my wife and I ment...
...For general conversation or romancing with a dash of gentility, you went to the lounge, which looks untouched...
...If you're the kind of person who's always being blackballed, it is the next best thing to a club...
...to feed themselves and their families...
...In the room to which the key belonged, I had pre-positioned a dozen roses, a box of Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a columnist for the New York Observer...
...about $5,300...
...Freedom of speech, about...
...Time has adjusted that balance: I can't recall offhand any members of the Round Table, except Dorothy Parker, but the New Yorker is still with us...
...though I 62 The American Spectator November 1992...
...Other years, remembering at the last minute, I've grabbed presents that were cheesy or drab...
...Mikhail Roshchin, and 22 percent said that they had been Novoye Vremya reveals, bears a unique playwright: "We remain serfs of the state, able to improve their and their families' entry: "Resigned in connection with of its structures, its vacillations and economic situation...
...The old Blue Bar was small, snug, dark, perfect for the kind of intimate drinking that fuels male camaraderie and pick-ups...
...privatization of housing, by 4660 The American Spectator November 1992 A New York Couple by Richard Brookhiser Adrink in the lounge of the Algonquin Hotel was the setup for the best birthday present I ever got my wife...
...I offered...
...My wife, if she chose, could ponder a long ledger of my failings...
...But the effort of remembering any birthday except my own, combined with the burden of picking an appropriate present, makes the birthdays of my loved ones botched and dreaded occasions...
...Twenty-three perchanges in the Constitution of the whims...
...government in prison...
...Think of its presence before you as part of the dress code...
...so far that day, there had been no present, not even a card, so she was cranky, too...
...0 botched their coup and the Soviet the Democratic Union once known for 15 percent, "bad...
...Gorbachev's probably speaks for the majority: "I've Twenty-three percent thought life had hapless prime minister Nikolai Ryzhkov had it up to here with revolutions...
...Only fools and cynics benefits, 32 percent (mostly outside The once-almighty Communist Party who cannot see beyond their immediate Moscow and St...
...On economic goodies...
...We took a cab to 44th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and settled in for a drink...
...Whereupon, I played my lifetime ace of trumps, by tossing a room key on the table before her...
...interest there is in the case, notes Kronid The weekly Argumenty i Fakty posed Eight percent had been able to "become Lubarsky in Novoye Vremya, resembles a similar question to the man in the entrepreneurs, invest money, and receive the public's morbid fascination with the street...
...and is "impatient- All but 11 percent said they had been Novoye Vremya editor Alexander ly waiting for a third revolution...
...In time, her mood improved to the point where she might have admitted that I wasn't such a bad catch after all...
...The most optimistic, ers, shareholders, or partners in a coopertions of state properties slated for privati- curiously, were the oldest, such as V. ative...
...Reluctantly, she allowed herself to be persuaded...
...Overall, just 15 percent expressed on tall bar stools from which chickens, were scared that for the rest of our lives, support for the current government, sausages, and vodka bottles are suspend- we'd be disenfranchised people, depen- while 27 percent condemned its policies ed, while befuddled ordinary citizens dent on the government...
...When a waiter does pass by, the arriere-garde atmosphere of the place practically requires you to order a cocktail, preferably a martini...
...Petersburg, presumably) of the Soviet Union is defending its self-interest continue to assure the world had received a plot of land enabling them record in a Moscow court...
...One year I repeated the gift I'd gotten her the last Christmas...
...strongly (56 percent) or somewhat (33 Pumpyansky, these men are acting like a Animated feature director Yuri Norshtein percent) affected by the changes...
...She demurred...
...I insisted...
...There you could bare your soul or pat a woman's knee...
...I want become "fuller and more interesting," (whose official employment record, a normal, quiet life...
...priCathy Young is the author of Growing Gazette on August 8. Asked about their vatization of state properties, by 47-23 Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...
...3 percent, "intoleraempire dissolved into proto- her ritual public immolations of portraits ble...
...so do the columns, more numerous than seem structurally necessary, which split the space into pools of privacy...
...As for specific book said to be selling briskly...
...T hey recently finished renovating the Algonquin...
...I have forgotten my wife's altogether...
...The part-time help of wits is no better than the full-time help of half-wits," Herman Mankiewicz is reported to have said at the time...
...life of dignity...
...are governments in exile, suggests Georgia" (oh, please...
...Wives need the basics, too...
...encouragement of April, was reported in the Independent entrepreneurship, by 54-23 percent...
...Marietta Chudakova, literary cent also felt that they had managed to USSR") has also published a memoir, critic: "Freedom does not distribute "get rid of the constant feeling of depenPerestroika: A History of Betrayals, a rations...
...Only one of the half-dozen profits," while 10 percent—whether or trial of the "Rostov maniac" Andrei respondents, 41-year-old factory worker not they overlap with the preceding eight Chikatilo, the serial killertrapisticanni- R. Zainulin, lamented "the disintegration is unclear—had become "property ownbal...
...The Blue Bar, a little nook that used to be on your right as you walked in the front door, has been moved and enlarged...
...Wouldn't it be fun to stay here some night...
...Each table has a bell fastened to the top, for summoning a waiter, though I've never rung: when the after-theater crowd is here, it couldn't be heard, and at quieter times you'd feel as if you were disturbing the peace...
...question, "What did the new rev - As for specific measures, military cut the - A more scientific and very compre- backs were favored by 62 percent with olution give our country...
...Just as there throw of the democratic government of mal...
...Mistresses only get frills...
...Christmas comes the same day every year, that I can plan for...
...several Moscow intellectuals ponder want and no one listens...
Vol. 25 • November 1992 • No. 11
