Moscow

MOSCOW -- It's a struggle trying to put together a real American Thanksgiving dinner here in the snow-swept capital of the former Evil Empire.There's the stuffing, for instance: Will it be Stove Top from the box or should we grab that box of Progresso bread crumbs and go for homemade?The cranberry sauce is a dilemma as well. We could go down to the market and get a huge $3 bag of juicy, fresh cranberries, but it would be so much more convenient just to pop open that can with the reassuring generic American label.

MOSCOW -- A powerful explosion last night destroyed the headquarters of the Soviet Union's major anti-Communist opposition movement in what appeared to be the first political bombing in the capital in more than a decade.No one was injured in the blast, which occurred just after 10:20 p.m. in the old brick building occupied by Democratic Russia a few hundred yards from the Kremlin. One activist, Alexander Fonyakin, was in a back room at the time and leapt from a ground-floor window when the explosion occurred.

Samarkand, Uzbekistan THE WORLD KNOWS legendary Samarkand as the golden treasure city of the great and barbaric Tamerlane, who conquered most of the known world in the 14th century and left this incredible city of turquoise and gold.But today even mythical Samarkand is falling to the imperatives of market thinking and exchange rates, and it is finally opening to the outside world on quite different terms than five centuries ago."This is our stock exchange and its name is Turkestan," Ahsham Razukob, told me brightly on one recent visit to fabled Samarkand.

NOW, brought to you courtesy of George Bush and Ji Baker: "Mr. Strauss Goes To Moscow."After a half-century of nuclear brinkmanship and proxy wars, the two global military superpowers are entering their most critical historical moment. Whether this moment leads back to a neo-Stalinist deep freeze, to civil war, to an authoritarian state resembling Gen. Augusto Pinochet's Chile, or upward toward Adam Smith's latest triumph is far from resolved.If the former, the Soviet Union will be a stunted Third World economic body carrying the weight of a First World military machine, and clinging to a secular religion now universally discredited.

MOSCOW -- In the wake of two deadly attacks by Soviet troops in the Baltic republics, representatives of all 15 republics are scheduled to meet in Moscow today in what may be a crucial showdown with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.Anatoly Denisov, a Soviet legislator returning from a fact-finding mission to Latvia, predicted that in the aftermath of a rampage by riot troops in Riga Sunday night that left five people dead and 10 wounded, Mr. Gorbachev will try to impose direct presidential rule in the republic.

New York -- I WENT TO the Soviet Union in 1987 with a group of American women. A delegation from the Soviet Women's Committee waited to greet us at the airport, just beyond the security kiosks. A guard noticed what I had not: that the dates of birth on my passport and my visa were different. He looked from one to another and I, an American child raised on Godless Communism nightmares and Red Menace movies, wondered whether I was in deep trouble.Suddenly one of the Soviet women, the one we would come to love for her sly cynicism about the system, stepped forward with her clutch of ceremonial red carnations and barked out several sentences.

Moscow ---AT A CORNER of the big, dull GUM department store on Red Square, the scene seemed at first to be just another money-raising charity scheme.The boy standing there all bundled up against the 15-below-zero cold had a round face. He seemed to be singing something -- some chant from the newly freed Orthodox Church, I immediately thought.Then, as I came nearer, the otherworld liness of this strange little drama assailed my senses. The boy was demented. ("Crazy, crazy," Russians standing there kept saying to me, pointing to their heads.

MOSCOW -- A Thriller it was not.Two hours late, feebly waving and unsteady on his feet after a long flight from Japan, Michael Jackson landed here last night to a frenzied but pint-sized welcome.Only about 300 Russian fans, mostly teen-age girls, turned out at the airport to greet the pop superstar who, clad in a black floppy hat and sunglasses, wearily and slowly descended the steps from his personal jetliner."Now I can die happy. I saw him, I saw Michael," art school student Tatyana Glutskikh, 17, blurted out in delight.

MOSCOW -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates took the Bush administration's campaign to install a missile defense system in eastern Europe to the highest levels yesterday, meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, the plan's fiercest opponent. Gates emerged hopeful after meeting with Putin and senior Russian officials, saying the two sides had reached an agreement to set up a bilateral committee of experts to go over Russia's objections, including Putin's concern that the bases could be converted to other uses.

MOSCOW -- The Soviet government banned yesterday all political demonstrations in Moscow until mid-April to prevent backers of Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin from holding a mass rally to support him in a showdown with Communist Party conservatives this week.A government order, requested by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, prohibited the "Let Us Defend Yeltsin" rally that had been planned for central Moscow, just outside the Kremlin, on Thursday when the Russian Congress of People's Deputies begins a special session.