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.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- President Obama said Russia should move its troops back from its border with Ukraine and ease tensions by opening direct negotiations with that country's new government. The Russian troops massing near the border are doing so “under the guise of military exercises,” Obama said in a television interview that aired Friday. But those exercises “are not what Russia would normally be doing,” Obama told "CBS Evening News" anchor Scott Pelley. “And, you know, it may simply be an effort to intimidate Ukraine or it may be that they've got additional plans.” If Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to ease the situation, Obama said, Kremlin officials need “to move back those troops and to begin negotiations directly with the Ukrainian government as well as the international community.” The remarks aired as Obama made his way to Saudi Arabia on a mission to smooth relations with the longtime U.S. ally, recently dismayed by Washington's policy in Syria, Iran and Egypt.

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.

Michael McFaul was a scholar from Montana when he made his first trip to the West's Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union. Thirty years later, he was President Obama's chief Russia expert, then the United States ambassador in Moscow. He left the ambassadorship last month, after two years in the job, to return to teaching at Stanford University, his alma mater. In 1994, after a neo-fascist Russian figure denounced him, someone shot a bullet through his Palo Alto office window. Now the architect of Obama's 2009 "reset" watches from a virtual window as Russia is once again on the outs with the West.

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.

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.

Robert S. Strauss, a one-time chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a Washington insider who combined earthy Texas charm with raw political power, died Wednesday. He was 95. A spokesman for Strauss' Washington law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, confirmed his death but would release no other details. A U.S. trade representative in the Carter administration, Strauss was a poker-playing, cigar-chomping, power-lunch-eating rainmaker who was so successful at recruiting mega-clients that he stopped billing by the hour in the 1970s.

Will everyone please stop talking about a new Cold War? However badly things work out between Russia and the United States and the West, a new Cold War isn't in the cards because Russia today isn't the Soviet Union. Sure, we are in a diplomatic and geostrategic conflict with Russia, which was the heart of the old Soviet Union. Also, Russia wants much of the real estate that belonged to the Soviet Union before it collapsed. And Vladimir Putin is a former KGB colonel who now waxes nostalgic for the good old days.

Here's a chilly thought: We are seeing the dawn of a second Cold War between Russia and the West. But this one should be easier to manage than the first was. The headlines over the last week have echoed the bad old days of the 20th century: Russian troops marching into someone else's territory. Poland calling on NATO to help secure its borders. Americans and Russians trading angry charges at the United Nations. But just as in the last Cold War, remaining calm is the starting point for strategy.

The conversation was short, limited to basic words and gestures. But the two bobsledders -- one Russian, one American -- understood each other. "Was good?" Alexander Kasjanov asked, pointing toward the track at the Sanki Sliding Center. "U.S. pilot Steven Holcomb slung an arm around his competitor's shoulder as they walked back toward their sleds. As Holcomb had explained earlier: "We all get along. " "Most of the athletes at these 2014 Sochi Olympics are a generation removed from Cold War tensions that once fueled an intense rivalry between Russians and Americans.

SOCHI, Russia - The conversation was short, limited to basic words and gestures. But the two bobsledders - one Russian, one American - understood each other. "Was good?" Alexander Kasjanov asked, pointing toward the track at the Sanki Sliding Center. U.S. pilot Steven Holcomb slung an arm around his competitor's shoulder as they walked back toward their sleds. As Holcomb had explained earlier: "We all get along. " Most of the athletes at these 2014 Sochi Olympics are a generation removed from Cold War tensions that once fueled an intense rivalry between Russians and Americans.

The excellent new drama "In Bloom," Georgia's Oscar entry in the foreign-language category, has the heartbreak and hope of a country slipped inside a coming-of age-story of two 14-year-old girls. The 1990s, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, were a potent and chaotic time in Georgia, one that filmmaker Nana Ekvtimishvili remembers as shaping her attitudes about women's roles in an evolving society. She wrote her own childhood into Eka's (Lika Babluani) and Natia's (Mariam Bokeria)

Folk singer and political activist Pete Seeger , who died Tuesday at age 94, was more than a folk singer, of course. He also was a political radical, and for all the gentleness of his lyrics, he seemed to have been built around a spine of steel. Seeger was already a popular entertainer and political activist when on Aug. 18, 1955, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee , the witch-hunt tribunal that sought to ferret out information on what it deemed subversive activities.

Ukraine's civil conflict strikes many Americans as a distant and unimportant dispute, one hardly connected to their daily lives. Such a lack of interest in international affairs is understandable, perhaps, because of the focus on economic recovery since 2008, but it's badly misplaced given the stakes involved, not just in eastern and central Europe but around the world. More alarming, and far less justifiable, as a cause for such inattention is the failure of America's national political leadership.