Soviet Union

Every day we are bombarded by the media with more and more news of events occurring in the Soviet Union and are told how quickly the Soviets are "democratizing." I hope that as democracy is phased in, the structure of the Soviet Union is phased out because the two cannot exist together. If you have democracy, you cannot have a Soviet empire because the two are a contradiction in terms and meaning. This is especially important in view of how many people were destroyed during and after the formation of the Soviet Union.

Margaret Thatcher will be remembered in her homeland as the conservative “Iron Lady” who transformed Britain from a strife-torn welfare state to a market-driven capitalist bastion. But for many of those who endured Soviet communist dictators and a world on the brink of nuclear peril, her shining accomplishment was being the first Western leader to see hope for a new world order. Thatcher in 1984 nudged her NATO allies to see in Mikhail S. Gorbachev, then a little-known newcomer to the Soviet Politburo, an opportunity to break out of the mind-set that the Soviet Union would never change.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), said Friday that he and several other senators and defense experts will leave Sunday for the Soviet Union for talks about arms control and other issues.

MOSCOW - On New Year's Eve, dining-room tables across Russia will be covered with a mosaic of glittering red caviar, piroshki, marinated mushrooms, beet salad and herring. Chilled vodka bottles and Champagne flutes will tower over the dishes, reflecting the TV screens where the president - this year, the returned Vladimir Putin - will make his annual toast before the Kremlin bells chime in the new year. In Russia, no other holiday is as beloved or celebrated. For me, New Year's Eve dinners are the brightest culinary memory of the hungry 1990s, when Russian stores sold mainly bread, milk, canned sprats and frozen chicken thighs imported from the U.S. and nicknamed "Bush's thighs.

In his well-written article Davies deals with a very serious subject: Our ignorance of the Soviet Union. How serious the problem really is can be seen in the title of this article written by one of our few "non-ignorant" experts. Although Davies is not describing pre-1917 Russia, nor is he referring to a province of the Soviet Union, he calls this superpower by the name "Russia" rather than its proper name of Soviet Union or U.S.S.R. Although Russian is the predominant culture and language of the Soviet Union, Russia is only one of its many provinces.

Responding to the Op-Ed article Tuesday, " America eternally 'at war,' " which noted a series of post-Cold War military failures and standoffs by the United States despite the country's profligate spending on defense and its relative lack of major enemies, reader John Arndt of Torrance wrote: "Tom Engelhardt contradicts his entire thesis in his first sentence when he complains that the U.S. has become a great power without a significant enemy....

Phil Donahue, who has been involved in two "spacebridge" broadcasts linking U.S. and U.S.S.R. audiences in the last year, now has made arrangements to tape his syndicated talk show in the Soviet Union. The shows will be taped in Moscow Jan. 22-31 for scheduled airing Feb. 9-13 in this country. They will be seen at a later date in the Soviet Union. Donahue said no restrictions have been placed on topics to be discussed or on audience selection.

Responding to the Op-Ed article Tuesday, " America eternally 'at war,' " which noted a series of post-Cold War military failures and standoffs by the United States despite the country's profligate spending on defense and its relative lack of major enemies, reader John Arndt of Torrance wrote: "Tom Engelhardt contradicts his entire thesis in his first sentence when he complains that the U.S. has become a great power without a significant enemy....

OLYMPIC URBAN LEGEND : An Olympic athlete used a specially rigged epee to fake results during a pentathlon. Today's legend reminds me of the long-running crime series, "Columbo. " The series was set up so that the beginning of each episode would show us the criminals seemingly pull off a "perfect murder" and then the rest of the show would bring in the seemingly ineffectual Lt. Columbo, who would solve the murder while we see the murderer du jour (almost always a well known actor or actress)

WASHINGTON - Fifty-two years after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, famed Cold War pilot Francis Gary Powers will be posthumously awarded the Silver Star.  The medal will be presented by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz to Powers' grandson and granddaughter at a Pentagon ceremony attended by other family members next Friday. Powers, who died in 1977 at age 47 in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles, will be recognized for his "indomitable spirit, exceptional loyalty" and "sustained courage in an exceptionally hostile environment," according to the citation.

  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?

Eva Zeisel, one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th century who created lyrical yet practical tableware and ceramics, has died. She was 105. Zeisel, whose deceptively simple designs first became popular in the 1940s and are still sold at major design outlets, died Friday in New York City, it was announced on her website . "Eva Zeisel took industrial design and made it more human and sensual. She trusts that a good curve is enough," David Reid of design studio KleinReid, which features her work, told The Times in 2005.

Loren Miller Jr. Longtime Superior Court judge Retired Superior Court Judge Loren Miller Jr., 74, the second of three generations of his family to serve on the bench in California, died Dec. 5 of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center, his family said. Miller was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1975 and elevated to the Superior Court in 1977. Until his retirement in 1997, he handled a number of assignments, including supervising judge in Pomona.

For Michele Bachmann, the hits keep coming. While on the campaign trail earlier this week, she mixed up Elvis Presley's birthday with the day he died. Now, she has apparently brought an Elvis-era menace back from the dead, citing in an interview the growing might of - the Soviet Union. According to the liberal website Think Progress, Bachmann, whose grasp of history on the trail at times has been somewhat shaky, said during a radio interview Thursday that Americans today are mindful of the threat posed by a rising U.S.S.R., which, like Elvis, left the building a long, long time ago. ( Listen below.

On Saturday, Germany will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the biggest and grimmest construction projects in history — the building of the Berlin Wall. Photographs of the wall, which overnight brutally severed streets, rail lines and families, have been on display in front of Berlin government buildings for several months. On Saturday, the memorial events will last all day and include a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the victims of the former communist East German government. The 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, in 2009, attracted a lot more attention in the U.S. It was a victory we like to claim, especially triumphalist conservatives.