The Russian upper crust have seen the future, and they know it works. Their limousines whisk them from Red Square to delicacy-stocked stores closed to ordinary folk, to stately country dachas. You might call it a Communist party conspiracy.
That the sweet smell of détente can leave a bitter aftertaste should not come as news, writes reporter Smith from Moscow. The Russians have been trading shrewdly with the West since before the discovery of America.
You can buy a recording of Jesus Christ Superstar on the Moscow black market this year, and anti-Stalinist books by Mandelstam and Bulgakov in limited edition. Many more copies were shipped abroad “to show the West how liberal we are,” one Soviet citizen told the author.
The Middle East after Nasser remains a place of suppressed state of war, of uncertainty and alarm. Did he leave behind an Egypt with the strength to make continued war, or the greater strength to make peace? Two experts examine the state of the country Nasser led for eighteen years, and (page 45) Nasser’s achievements.