Mikhail

For five years, as the world convulsed with war, the unassuming Soviet couple rubbed elbows with the likes of Walt Disney and Orson Welles. They took in a private screening of "The Great Dictator," at the invitation of Charlie Chaplin. Their son's earliest memories are set in Los Angeles -- the yellow house nestled in flower beds with a view of the Griffith Observatory; the animal crackers bought with the proceeds of a sidewalk lemonade stand; the author Theodore Dreiser drinking so much vodka that he crawled under the table.

OK, we can understand the need for hockey players to get a flu shot this season. But a tetanus shot? Montreal forward Max Pacioretty, operating under the just-in-case philosophy, told reporters that he got one after Saturday's game, alleging Toronto's Mikhail Grabovski bit him on the arm during a third-period skirmish. But the NHL on Monday did not administer any supplementary discipline in the case, and the second paragraph of its official release got to the heart of the matter: "After interviewing both players involved in the incident and reviewing all of the available video and medical reports, the league could not determine conclusively that Grabovski bit Montreal Canadiens forward Max Pacioretty.

Technically, the plaques and trophies in Marv Marinovich's office belong to his son Todd, a rising star quarterback at USC. But they are a shrine to the father as well. After all, it was Marv who knew which vitamin supplements he and his wife should take to conceive a perfectly healthy child. It was Marv who applied Eastern Bloc training techniques, insisting that Todd discipline his mind and body and forgo Big Macs, sugar and hanging out at the beach. It was Marv who caught flak from in-laws critical of punishments such as forcing the 9-year-old Todd to run alongside the car from Huntington Beach to Newport Beach after the boy had not played his best in a basketball game.

NEW YORK — Try following Mikhail Baryshnikov up a flight of stairs sometime. He doesn't run or even leap. He glides, as if he is as at home in the air as he is on the ground. It's like trailing a 12-year-old boy. Or an impala. Baryshnikov knows these stairs well, taking them every day he is in New York. They belong to his baby, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, which stages productions by up-and-comers and such established artists as Peter Brook, Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. "I'm very proud of this project," he says relaxing, as much as he can relax, at a conference table.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will visit the Soviet Union in June next year for a meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, her office said Tuesday.

Once upon a time there was a brave and bald man; his name was Mikhail. He was a chauffeur of a big, rusty old Russian limousine. During his days, it was hard to drive, for there were red lights and stop signs everywhere. But Mikhail drove proudly through them all. One day in August he got busted by a big, bad bear. The bear held Mikhail captive in a faraway town. But Mikhail had a friend named Boris, who was equally brave and strong. Boris came to his rescue and in return he got to ride in Mikhail's big, old limousine.

In a year that has seen would-be action heroes Jeff Speakman and Brian Bosworth make well-orchestrated attempts to muscle their way into the action-adventure movie arena, Columbia Pictures is clearly betting that Jean-Claude Van Damme could be the next Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal--or even Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Double Impact," the $15-million action film in which Van Damme plays dual roles, opened well Aug. 9 and has grossed $15.

Barbara Wiedner, a California grandmother who warily joined a demonstration against nuclear weapons in 1981 and wound up leading an international peace group fueled by maternal grit and love, has died. The founder of Grandmothers for Peace International, Wiedner died of pancreatic cancer Sunday at home in Elk Grove, a Sacramento suburb. She was 72.

Once again, Mikhail Gorbachev dazzled America. We are fascinated with him because he represents to us what we wish our politicians were--a spontaneous, pragmatic, straight-talking, press-the-flesh leader who deals with issues. Instead, we have bred a bunch of well-paid stuffed shirts who worry more about reelection and personal gain than they do about the real problems facing this nation. MARTIN OSTRYE Arcadia

Since the ascendancy of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev to head the Soviet Union, we have heard knowledgeable people and radio and television newscasters pronounce his name in a variety of ways: GORE-bah-chof, gore-BAH-chof and gore-bah-CHOFF. Inasmuch as Mikhail Sergeyevich, at age 54, has the prospect of being around for a while, we thought that we'd try to get it right at the outset. So we asked a few experts: Which is it?

  Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, was marginalized as a political leader as Russians found it hard to forgive him for the economic deprivations that followed. Now, against the backdrop of growing protests against Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Gorbachev has emerged as a vocal critic of the government, and his popularity among the opposition is on the rise. Gorbachev, 81, spoke to The Times in Moscow this week. Do you think the past presidential election in Russia was fair?

Remember perestroika? It's back — in an exhibition of political poster art. "Deconstructing Perestroika: Soviet Ideology and its Discontents," at the Craft and Folk Art Museum through May 6, offers 24 original versions of posters neatly lined up on walls. But the hard-hitting images are unruly blasts from the Soviet past. Mostly made from 1987 to 1991, they reflect the period when Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring)

The Russian billionaire who owns the New Jersey Nets basketball team announced he would challenge Vladimir Putin for the presidency in March, a sign of how quickly the political landscape has shifted since parliamentary elections widely criticized as having been rigged. A public outcry against results of the Dec. 4 vote has presented Putin, long Russia's strongest leader, with a sudden problem: The protest by tens of thousands of people in Moscow on Saturday was the largest demonstration in the city since the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago. Although tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov has in the past been sharply critical of the Kremlin, he had faded from the scene until Monday.

PHILADELHPIA — All Danny Briere could hear were the agonizing screams. Star defenseman Chris Pronger buried his face in his hands after taking a brutal blow to the outside of the right eye, fearful of the worst for his eyesight. Hunched over, Pronger skated straight to the bench, his hands over his eyes. "I knew he was in trouble and needed help," said Briere, who skated with Pronger to the bench. Pronger, the Flyers' captain, will miss two to three weeks and spend the next few days on bed rest, putting a scare in Philadelphia's 4-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday night.

Already imprisoned for nearly eight years, the inmate who once was Russia's richest man must still see at least 1,800 more sunrises from behind his barracks window, his view of the real world beyond the camp fence with barbed wire on top. But armed with a pen and pencil, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is following in a grand, if grim, Russian literary tradition: writing about his life in a gulag-style camp he has described as "an anti-world" where "lying is...

Technically, the plaques and trophies in Marv Marinovich's office belong to his son Todd, a rising star quarterback at USC. But they are a shrine to the father as well. After all, it was Marv who knew which vitamin supplements he and his wife should take to conceive a perfectly healthy child. It was Marv who applied Eastern Bloc training techniques, insisting that Todd discipline his mind and body and forgo Big Macs, sugar and hanging out at the beach. It was Marv who caught flak from in-laws critical of punishments such as forcing the 9-year-old Todd to run alongside the car from Huntington Beach to Newport Beach after the boy had not played his best in a basketball game.

That first year in high school did not go well. The big, unruly teenager fought with his mother so often that she kicked him out of the house, depositing all his clothes in garbage bags out front. Staying with his father wasn't much better. "That lasted about a week," he recalled. "My dad ended up coming after me. I locked the door to my room and jumped out the window. " No one seemed terribly surprised. They knew that Mikhail Marinovich was the youngest son of a troubled Southern California sports family.

One of Russia's wealthiest men on Thursday abruptly quit as leader of a party casting itself as a challenger to the Kremlin's stranglehold on politics, suggesting to supporters that a feared power broker had orchestrated a takeover because the party was becoming too independent. The decision several months ago by Mikhail Prokhorov, a businessman who owns the New Jersey Nets basketball team, to try to revive the moribund Right Cause party had been controversial from the start. Prokhorov has decried the lack of alternatives to the governing party.