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- <text id=91TT0775>
- <title>
- Apr. 08, 1991: Maxwell's Hall Of Shame
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Apr. 08, 1991 The Simple Life
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- GRAPEVINE, Page 21
- Maxwell's Hall of Shame
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By David Ellis/Reported by Sidney Urquhart
- </p>
- <p> Robert Maxwell sailed into the turbulent New York City
- newspaper world with his eleventh-hour purchase of the ailing
- Daily News. But News editors beware! The British media magnate
- has shown some rather peculiar proclivities as a publisher. His
- Pergamon Press, soon to be sold to a Dutch firm, produced a
- World Leaders series that seemed to specialize in official or
- groveling accounts of dictators. All have since been discredited
- and relegated to history's scrap heap. Among the titles:
- </p>
- <p> Nicolae Ceausescu: Builder of Modern Romania and
- International Statesman, 1983. In an introduction, Maxwell
- grilled the strongman (who was executed in the 1989 uprising):
- "What has, in your opinion, made you so popular with the
- Romanians?"
- </p>
- <p> Erich Honecker: From My Life, 1981. His vital role in the
- construction of the Berlin Wall is proudly recounted by the
- ousted East German party leader, who was whisked off to the
- Soviet Union last month to receive "medical treatment"--and
- to evade a life sentence for allegedly ordering border guards
- to shoot East Germans trying to escape his regime.
- </p>
- <p> Janos Kadar: Selected Speeches and Interviews, 1985. A
- mind-numbing collection from Hungary's collaborationist leader,
- who was removed as party leader in 1988.
- </p>
- <p> Wojciech Jaruzelski: Prime Minister of Poland, 1985. A
- laudatory portrait of the father of martial law, who so
- impressed Maxwell during a 1985 meeting in Warsaw that the
- publisher declared in a radio interview that the Solidarity
- problem was "solved."
- </p>
- <p> Todor Zhivkov: Statesman and Builder of New Bulgaria,
- 1982. One year after this admiring biography was published,
- Zhivkov, now under house arrest for corruption and stealing
- state funds, awarded Maxwell the Order of Stara Planina for "the
- strengthening of peace between peoples."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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