Questão 79 - UNIFESO 2010/1

In 1946 a young U.S. diplomat named John Fischer wrote

an earnest little book called Why They Behave like Russians.

Fischer, who’d served with the United Nations in postwar Kiev

and Moscow, was attempting to explain to a bewildered U.S.

[5]  public why their wartime ally Joseph Stalin, recipient of billions

of dollars in American Lend-Lease aid, had suddenly turned on

Washington, declaring it a deadly enemy, and seemed hellbent

on starting a Third World War.

The book is still a fascinating reading – not least because

[10]  so many of its conclusions continue to ring true today. Fischer

calls Russia’s leaders “ the scared men in the Kremlin,” deeply

insecure behind their aggressive bluster and suspicious of any

internal political threat to their power. Russia is traumatized by

catastrophic historical upheavals and far weaker than it likes to

[15]  pretend. The nation, he warns, “may blunder into war as it

strives to build up a protective belt of satellite states outside

its vulnerable borders.” Today, with tensions rising again over

two Georgian breakaway regions effectively annexed by

Russia last summer, that line rings as true as it did at the dawn

[20]  of the Cold War.

(from The World According to Russia, in NEWSWEEK, September 7, 2009)

In the passage, the phrase at the dawn (line 19) may be replaced without any loss of meaning by