In the electioneering mood of France at the turn of the year, the good advice is not, as in a whodunit, cherchez la femme but cherchez l'argent.

Dual power, Lenin wrote, cannot last long. But just how long?

The balance of power in international relations shifts slowly.

"How could anyone possibly say that the October Revolution was in vain?" the poet Tvardovsky angrily told Solzhenitsyn in what now seems another age.

History, whatever Hegel or Marx may have said about tragedy and farce, can also repeat itself as a tragicomedy.

Paris

Those on the left who cherished the illusion that Poland would somehow vanish from the news and that Solidarity would disappear from our political consciousness have been disappointed.

Friday, February 15. It's getting dark. My wife, Jeanne, and I land at Okiecie, the Warsaw airport. The temperature is 19 degrees below freezing.

Prices were raised sharply in Poland on January 30, by an estimated 40 percent, and hell did not break loose.