"What has happened to your 'socialist' France? Is it going the way of all social-democratic flesh?"

Four days that fascinated the Soviet people.

The plans painstakingly prepared by the master builders of Maastricht now lie torn to ribbons. The once mighty mark is showing signs of wear under the strain of German reunification.

He came, he threatened, but he didn't conquer. The French Riviera will not be the first important region in Europe to be ruled by neofascists.

From February 6 through February 10, more than 1,700 delegates to the French Communist Party's twenty-fifth congress met in the roofed-over sports stadium at Saint-Ouen, a suburb of Paris.

The rulers of the capitalist world who came to Paris for the bicentennial celebrations last month were in a smug mood.

The sorcerer's apprentices could not even stage a coup.

Voici le temps des assassins, the bilingual Algerians could exclaim, echoing Rimbaud, when nearly a year ago, their intellectuals began to be slaughtered by Islamic fundamentalists.

With Zbigniew Bujak, Bogdan Lis, Adam Michnik and their comrades out of jail, there is reason to rejoice.

This is the rather flattering self-portrait of a populist leader who has already traveled quite far: Boris Yeltsin, once a protégé of Mikhail Gorbachev, is now his main, and very re