<HTML>In a message dated 1/31/2003 6:36:59 AM Pacific Standard Time, chrisd@russiajournal.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">In the 80s, Depeche Mode was king. On Martin Gore's birthday, which by coincidence is also Victory Day, they all used to gather around the statue of Karl Marx across from the Bolshoi (nice statue) with their Gore haircuts. Western reporting on Russia and the USSR is/was crap. Positively delusional. I recall one articlle in the WP of the "so much has changed in Russia!" genre that used as its example teenagers making out in front of a statue of Lenin, apparently under the impression that teenagers in the Soviet Union did not make out. You can get away with writing literally anuything about the Soviet Union. I recollect one guy, who is WRITING A BOOK on Russia, claim that during communism it was illegal to own dogs and cats. Seriously. </BLOCKQUOTE> Random topical anecdotes ABBA. Can anyone forget ABBA? No pets? What a crock! In the late 80's I spent a semester in Leningrad / St.Pete (Visa says Leningrad) There were a whole lot of dogs in the neighborhood near our dorm and dog-walking was quite the styling activity. As for the bars, during the days of the Soyuz, (that's spouse's shorthand) Russians didn't drink in bars, they drank at each other's houses anyway. Spouse, while a big fan of Gorbachev, thinks highly of stability during Brezhnev era, and this despite the fact that local cops in Ufa really would hack bluejeans off people's legs. To be fair to stereotypes: --even in the height of the Gorbachev era, we were conscious occasionally of being deliberately tailed. Perhaps the funniest part of that: Only a couple of our group smoked, but often our tails did. Sometimes we would yank their chain by inserting the MInistry of Health anti-smoking warnng into our conversations, VERY loudly. --Spouse tells really hair-raising story about his appendectomy--without anesthetic. DoreneC</HTML>