Dictatorships

Student activist Iryna Toustsik recalls with pride how a little bit of playacting that lampooned President Alexander G. Lukashenko briefly landed her in jail. Protesters dressed up as doctors and patients, with the patients wearing imitations of the Belarusian president's prominent mustache -- and alluding to suspicions that authorities were responsible for the disappearances or deaths of several opposition figures. "We had this skit where I was Dr.

Alvaro Cunhal, who led Portugal's Communist Party for half a century and became a national hero after the overthrow of the country's dictatorship, died Monday, the party said. He was 91. The party announcement did not indicate where Cunhal died or the cause of death. The government declared a national day of mourning Wednesday, the day of Cunhal's funeral in Lisbon.

The last public statue of Josef Stalin in Moscow stands forlornly in a postmodern graveyard of Communist-era monuments here, missing part of his nose. But more than 500 miles away, in the city once known as Stalingrad, the infamous Soviet leader is getting more respect. Authorities in Volgograd are planning to unveil a statue of Stalin next week as Russia celebrates the 60th anniversary of its victory over Nazi Germany.

In an amateurish way, I am a Russophile. It was reading "War and Peace" as a schoolboy that convinced me I should study history at university. My favorite film of all time is still the Soviet-era adaptation of Tolstoy's masterpiece. Throughout my 20s, I was a Dostoevsky devotee. Even today I can think of few pleasures to match reading the short stories of Chekhov. And then there is the music.

Frustrated by a lack of economic progress under the democratic regimes that rule them, a majority of Latin Americans would support an authoritarian government if it bettered their lives, according to a United Nations report released Wednesday.

Sharing a platform with rebel leaders, Haiti's interim prime minister Saturday praised the gunmen who began the uprising that chased President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power and even paid tribute to an assassinated gangster. About 3,000 people cheered and clapped at Prime Minister Gerard Latortue's first rally in his hometown, Gonaives, where Haiti's independence was declared 200 years ago and where its recent rebellion began.

ARGENTINA President Nestor Kirchner proposed a bill under which Argentina will compensate children who were detained, stolen or born in captivity and then adopted during a 1976-83 dictatorship. Some of those children are learning their real identities in their 20s. The children will receive up to $75,000 each if Congress passes Kirchner's bill.

The leftist mayor of Colombia's capital city, who met recently with Fidel Castro in Havana, said Wednesday that the Cuban president appeared "very sick" during their talks. Mayor Luis Eduardo Garzon, a former communist labor leader, also said he found living conditions and observance of human rights in Cuba to be disappointing, and indirectly criticized Castro for stifling rival points of view.

The clergy-led revolution that sent the shah of Iran fleeing into exile will mark its 25th anniversary next month. The hard-line mullahs who succeeded the shah and who jail pro-democracy activists, shut newspapers that they consider liberal and try to steal parliamentary elections should remember that the shah's reign lasted a bit less than 26 years. Revolution may not be in the air, but there is no doubting that many Iranians despise the hard-line clerics as much as their parents did the shah.

President Bush announced a crackdown on unauthorized travel to Cuba on Friday as he unveiled several new initiatives that he said were designed to hasten the demise of Fidel Castro's regime. But critics, including some Republican lawmakers, argued that Bush's latest efforts to destabilize Castro's government could prove counterproductive and worsen humanitarian conditions on the island.