Duma

MOSCOW -- Only last month, Vil S. Mirzayanov was sitting in jail charged with betraying his country's secrets. Yesterday, he was invited to address parliament, where his comments drew a respectful hearing.It was a long way from the early hours of Oct. 22, 1992, when Dr. Mirzayanov was awakened by KGB agents pounding on his door and hustled off for questioning.He was accused of revealing state secrets for disclosing that Russia had continued chemical weapons research well after it told the world it had stopped.

Loretta Dumas-Turner, a retired U.S. Department of Labor economist and world traveler, died April 18 from complications of diabetes at Baltimore Washington Medical Center. The longtime Pasadena resident was 57. The daughter of a factory worker and homemaker, the former Loretta Marie Dumas was born and raised in Macon, Ga., where she graduated from public schools. Mrs. Dumas-Turner was a 1977 summa cum laude graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., where she earned a bachelor's degree in political science and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

MOSCOW -- One furious Duma leader after another stood up yesterday, angrily blamed Viktor S. Chernomyrdin for the corruption and economic negligence of the past six years, then led the rank and file in an overwhelming vote against his nomination as prime minister.Every Communist voted against him. So did every member of the liberal Yabloko faction. Even one member of Chernomyrdin's party opposed him. And after it was over, President Boris N. Yeltsin said he would nominate Chernomyrdin again.

The 19th-century French novelist Alexandre Dumas might be puzzled if he could somehow see the latest movie adaptation of "The Three Musketeers," but any living soul who has seen the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise will recognize that this is an overly familiar 3-D swashbuckler that's as predictable as the swords that periodically threaten to poke your eyes. Alas, Johnny Depp is not one of the musketeers, because the actors they do have don't go far enough to fill the comic vacuum.

MOSCOW -- When Boris N. Yeltsin was running Russia, he made the firing of prime ministers and Cabinet officials something of a hobby. By the time he resigned the presidency on New Year's Eve, he had created legions of political leaders, tantalizing them with power, then casting them out, impotent. Now, many of those former statesmen are again purposefully striding through the corridors of power -- in a place they once belittled or ignored. They have gotten themselves elected to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, profoundly changing the character of that still-emerging institution.

MOSCOW -- The capital has turned into a city of fast-moving rumor, ever-shifting political alliances and dark allusions to history as President Boris N. Yeltsin and the State Duma march steadily toward another confrontation today.Alexander I. Lebed, one rumor goes, will be the next prime minister. He denies it. "I will never again be appointed to any office," says the former general who was recently elected governor of Krasnoyarsk. "I am sick of the idiots who have commanded me."The Kremlin signals it is interested in reopening negotiations over a compromise with the Duma, and so much speculation arises over possible conditions that a new term emerges in the Russian language: "insidovaya informatsiya," or "inside information."

MOSCOW -- One deputy threatened to throw a punch; another stayed upstairs in his office, slowly draining a bottle of Armenian cognac. Some shouted in anger and frustration; others muttered forlornly.In the end, under cover of a ballot that looked more furtive than secret, Russia's Duma surrendered to President Boris N. Yeltsin and approved his choice for prime minister.The 450-member State Duma voted 251-25 to confirm Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko as prime minister yesterday, avoiding the dissolution of parliament and once again pulling Russia back from an increasingly familiar spot: the precipice of disaster.

MOSCOW - Russian lawmakers put off yesterday the ratification of a treaty to reduce the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, a delay signaling Moscow's disapproval of Bush administration plans to wage war in Iraq. The Kremlin has regarded passage of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which would cut arsenals to fewer than 2,200 warheads during the next decade, as a vital part of relations between Washington and Moscow. In autumn 2001, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin convinced President Bush of the need for a binding pact to cut back nuclear arms, which Bush contended could be accomplished with a handshake deal.

ALTHOUGH TODAY'S Russia is hardly a fully developed democracy, it will survive the much-expected triumph of communists and ultranationalists in Sunday's parliamentary elections. Relatively little is likely to change in Moscow: President Boris N. Yeltsin will still rule in his erratic style and the State Duma's deputies will quarrel. The reasons are manifold.No Russian political parties -- not even the communists -- have clear platforms. This means that they also do not have the kind of internal coherence or discipline that would make them totally inflexible.

MOSCOW -- Declaring political inexperience a virtue and daring parliament to contradict him, President Boris N. Yeltsin appointed 35-year-old Sergei V. Kiriyenko yesterday as prime minister of Russia.Yeltsin, who began his first week back at work after yet another illness by summoning his loyal prime minister, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, to the Kremlin and firing him, thus ended the workweek with a similarly dramatic moment.He swept into government headquarters at the Russian White House before 9 a.m., met for an hour with Kiriyenko, the acting prime minister, then told waiting reporters that he expected the State Duma to ratify his choice -- or else.

On January 15, 2008, ALBERT H. DUMAS; beloved husband of 55 years to Mary J. Dumas (nee Doerfler); loving father of Robert (Lois), Ronald (Barbara), William (Sandy), Joseph (Denise), Alan (Kathy) and cherished grandfather of nine. Retired from Westinghouse, PGK of Bishop Sebastian Council of the Knights of Columbus, passed area Gov. of Toast Masters. Member of St. Ursula's Catholic Church. Friends and family are invited to attend a Memorial Mass on Saturday, January 19, 2008, Noon, at St. Ursula's Catholic Church, 8801 Harford Rd. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to: Good Samaritan Hospital, CAPD Unit or Gilchrist Hospice Center of Towson.

MOSCOW -- There has been heckling and the occasional head-butt, hurled water bottles and indecorous insults, bloody noses and at least one concussion. Lawmaking in Russia's State Duma is not a pretty sight. Neither is the attempt to make it prettier. Once, during debate of an ethics matter, one lawmaker called a colleague "the No. 1 political prostitute" and railed against the ethics committee for "political whoredom" -- after which a fistfight broke out. The adolescent post-Soviet parliament has become somewhat more civil with age. Only one fight has erupted in the current four-year session, compared with 10 in the first Duma, eight in the second and three in the third, says Gennady Raikov, chairman of the Duma's Credentials and Ethics Commission.

Anyone who has ever watched Amy Dumas, formerly known as Lita, perform her acrobatic, high-flying moves in World Wrestling Entertainment knows that she isn't afraid to take risks. Dumas perhaps took her biggest chance yet last November when she left WWE after nearly seven years to pursue a career in the music business. The former women's wrestling champ is the lead singer of the Luchagors, an Atlanta-based punk rock band. Dumas, 31, hasn't walked away from the ring completely, however, and she will make an appearance at Sunday's Maryland Championship Wrestling show in Dundalk.

MOSCOW -- Viktor Pokhmelkin has what at times can seem like a radical idea in Russia. He believes everyone should be treated equally before the law. To that end, the independent lawmaker in the State Duma is seeking to rid the nation of one of the most widely despised symbols of Russia's government and business elite: a blue light and siren atop vehicle roofs that effectively makes road rules optional. About 7,500 lights, or migalki, are used on Russia's roads, many in the traffic-clogged capital, where getting anywhere fast is impossible without one - and at times even with one. President Vladimir V. Putin is entitled to a migalka, as are high-ranking government officials and corporate VIPs, including the chairman of the gas giant Gazprom.

MOSCOW -- An improvised memorial of roses and carnations and daisies in every color sprung up from the concrete outside the building where investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was killed by an assassin a week ago, but mourners left other things to remember her by. A few had taped ballpoint pens to the wall, a nod to the profession for which she lived -- and, all but surely, died. There were posters in black and red lettering expressing hopelessness and sorrow, resignation and rage.

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia - The ground-level storefront couldn't look more like the campaign headquarters for Yedinaya Rossiya, the pro-Kremlin ruling party in Russia that controls the federal legislature and far too many regional and city governments to count. A circular sign with the party name and logo - a bear under the white, blue and red Russian flag - hangs prominently above the entrance. Enormous color photographs adorn the facade: In one, disabled children smilingly display medals won at a swim competition abroad during a trip made possible by the party's generosity.

MOSCOW -- With one short, stilted message yesterday, President Boris N. Yeltsin nominated Yevgeny M. Primakov as prime minister and instantly changed all the political rules here.Unlikely partnerships began to form at the news that Yeltsin had abandoned his first choice, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin.The fiercest of political enemies stopped quarreling. Communists and liberal democrats competed to praise Primakov. Warnings of fascism and blood in the streets abruptly stopped, and talk turned to reconciliation and compromise.

MOSCOW -- When Pastor Vladimir Dyamko had his microphone snatched out of his hand and was forced off an auditorium stage by a Russian Orthodox priest last month, he knew his Seventh-day Adventist Church's lease was up.Officials in the small town of Gagarin in western Russia canceled the church's lease on the auditorium and told Dyamko he couldn't preach on public property until he got "permission" from the Russian Orthodox Church.Even six years after Russia's new constitution called for freedom of religion, many of Russia's far-flung provincial authorities haven't gotten the word yet.And they won't, if the Communist-dominated Russian Parliament has its way.A new federal law that is expected to pass the State Duma, lower house of Parliament, today would severely restrict the activities of "nontraditional" churches.

The Three Musketeers: A Novel Alexandre Dumas, translated from the French by Richard Pevear Viking / 704 pages / $35 We live in something of a golden age for literary translation. Though American publishers bring out only about 1,000 translated works every year, many are of stunning quality, and Richard Pevear's wonderfully vivid new version of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers surely is among them. Thanks to scholarly and artful translators such as Gregory Rabassa and Michael Henry Heim - to cite just two examples - Gabriel GarcM-ma MM-arquez and Milan Kundera are indispensable landmarks on our contemporary literary landscape.

Carroll Ballard's movies don't cast spells. They are spells. They transport audiences, body and soul, to fierce, beautiful realms: the desert island of The Black Stallion (1979), the sub-Arctic expanse of Never Cry Wolf (1983), the geese-filled Canadian skies of Fly Away Home (1996). It's critics, not studio heads, who should bear some animus toward Ballard. His films frustrate anyone trying to analyze the alchemy behind them. But it's studio heads who've made finding Ballard's marvels a problem.