Russian ships no longer carry the names of heroic comrades but rather of figures from imperial history. As I write this column, the nuclear cruiser Peter the Great is sailing toward Latin America heading a flotilla of four imposing vessels. Some ships from the Venezuelan Navy will meet up with them to conduct joint maneuvers. Moscow wants to send a bill to Washington for the latter's support of Georgia, as well as for the independence of Kosovo.
Why isn't a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs born in Honduras? I mean, why is it that creative people don't emerge in the Third World, capable of developing innovative products and building companies that market those products, create jobs, generate large profits and influence decisively the fate of this planet?
Almost 20 years ago, as the Soviet Union tottered, I chatted with Boris Yeltsin and came to two odd conclusions: He liked to drink vodka in the mornings and had lost all his faith in communism. I never learned whether alcohol, contrary to what usually happens, cleared his mind, but it may have. He was more brilliant in his cups than sober. At that time, his main fear was that the KGB might kill him by paralyzing his heart with some special waves emitted by a secret weapon. I insisted on talking about...
Almost 20 years ago in Moscow, a cellmate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn told me a revealing anecdote about this extraordinary person. It happened in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II, in which the future Nobel laureate in literature had participated as a gunner. Despite his merits as a soldier and his condition as a Communist, he had been imprisoned for mocking Stalin in a personal letter sent to a friend. It was not an ideological criticism, but almost a juvenile gibe about ''The Little Father's...
What is Raúl Castro doing nowadays? It's important to keep track of him. Everybody, including Cuba's ruling nomenklatura, knows that communism is condemned to disappear from the island. It is the unfinished chapter of the Cold War, and the system, as happened everywhere, will eventually be replaced by a more rational, humane, pluralistic and efficient way to do things.
