There was a particular historical moment, round about 1995 or so, when anyone entering a well-appointed drawing room, dining room or restaurant in London was sure to encounter a beautiful Russian woman. Though the word beautiful doesnt really capture the phenomenon: The women Im remembering were extraordinarily, unbelievably stunning.
January 30, 2008
To anyone who remembers the surreal presence of the Berlin Wall, its absence now seems little short of miraculous. Walk from the Tiergarten, once in the West, across Pariser Platz, once a wasteland, and have a beer on the Unter den Linden, once in the East. Now it takes a few minutes; before November 1989, it wouldn't have been possible at all.
August 5, 2007
It was October 1987, three weeks before the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviet elite had gathered in Moscow to mark the occasion. After the customarily lengthy speech by Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the chairman asked whether anyone wanted to respond.
Unexpectedly, Boris Yeltsin, then the Moscow party boss, went up to the rostrum. He…
April 25, 2007
And now, alert readers, it is time for a test: Here are two demonstrations, representing two political movements, that took place recently in two neighboring countries. For which country should fans of "democratization" cheer loudest?
Example No. 1: This demonstration took place in Moscow last Saturday. More precisely, it took place in Pushkin Square, legendary site of Soviet-era…
April 21, 2007
If you didn't notice that last Sunday was the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Union, don't worry: Most Europeans didn't, either.
March 31, 2007
Others are saying
Any lasting solutions will have to be extremely simple, and - because of the cost implicit in reducing the use and emissions of fossil fuels - will also have to benefit those countries that impose them in other ways. Fortunately, there is such a solution, one that is grippingly unoriginal, requires no special knowledge of economics and is easy for any country to implement. It's…
February 8, 2007
On Monday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry held an international conference. Nothing unusual in that: Foreign ministries hold conferences, mostly dull, all the time. But "Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision" was different. Instead of deputy ministers and the like, the invitees included David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader; Georges Theil, a Frenchman who has called the Holocaust…
December 14, 2006
There was a photograph: a weeping Sudanese woman, standing before a freshly dug grave. There were statistics: 400,000 people dead, 2.5 million driven from their homes, "untold thousands" raped. There was an appeal: "Innocent civilians are being slaughtered in Darfur. You can end it," and a web address, http://www.dayfordarfur.org.
November 22, 2006
Quite a long time ago, having briefly joined the herd of 20-something backpackers that eternally roams Southeast Asia, I found myself in Bali. Like all of the other 20-somethings, I carefully read the Lonely Planet backpacker's guide to Indonesia and learned, among other things, that it was considered improper for women to wear shorts or trousers when entering Balinese temples.…
October 25, 2006
She wasn't charismatic, she didn't fill lecture halls and she wasn't much good at talk shows either. Nevertheless, at the time of her murder in Moscow on Saturday, Anna Politkovskaya was at the pinnacle of her influence. One of the best-known journalists in Russia and one of the best-known Russian journalists in the world, she was proof - and more is always needed - that there is…
October 10, 2006
Already, angry Palestinian militants have assaulted seven West Bank and Gaza churches, destroying two of them. In Somalia, gunmen shot dead an elderly Italian nun. Radical clerics from Qatar to Qom have called, variously, for a "day of anger" or for worshippers to "hunt down" the pope and his followers.
September 20, 2006
To my eye, they are lovely: graceful, delicate, white against green grass and a blue sky. Last summer my children and I stopped specially to watch a group of them, wheels turning in the breeze.
But to those who dislike them, the modern wind turbine is worse than ugly. It is an aesthetic blight, a source of noise pollution, a murderer of birds and bats.
April 22, 2006
At last we have a genuine bipartisan consensus. A Congress whose members cannot work together to prevent the coming Social Security crisis, to keep the nation out of debt or to fix the health-care system has finally agreed on something: Foreigners shouldn't be allowed to own or manage our critical infrastructure.
March 20, 2006
It is, I admit, an odd thing to celebrate: a long-winded and not entirely honest speech, made behind closed doors, addressed to the stony-faced leaders of a country that no longer exists.
Nevertheless, the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's famous "secret speech"- his denunciation of Stalin and Stalinism, delivered to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party on Feb.…
February 25, 2006
