Soviet

MOSCOW - As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians besieged their parliament yesterday demanding that the results of a presidential election be set aside, Russian political figures cast the struggle there as one being waged between Moscow and Washington. Supporters of the opposition candidate, Viktor A. Yushchenko, swarmed through the streets of Kiev, the capital, while Yushchenko tried but failed to force parliament to declare him the winner. The government said it was recommending talks between Yushchenko and the official winner, Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovych, but no clear resolution was in sight.

SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan -- She is the proud mother of an 18- year-old groom-to-be and was prudently looking ahead to the wedding feast set for next month, after Ramadan, when she came into Shifkal Nizamov's shop in this ancient city's largest, oldest bazaar. She wanted teapots, many teapots, for serving the expected wedding guests. "The final price?" she began, fingering a blue-and-white ceramic pot. Standing next to her, a man buying a role of tape asked, "The final price?" Standing next to him the purchaser of two light bulbs manufactured in Uzbekistan: "The final price?"

TYNDA, Russia - They came from across the Soviet Union three decades ago to the frozen swamps and forests of Russia's Far East to promote socialism, defend the motherland - and build one of the largest railroad projects in history. Tens of thousands of volunteers cleared trees and slept in tents in a region where winter temperatures can reach minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They graded roads, built villages and cities, laid track, dedicating their lives to creating the 2,200-mile Baikal-Amur Railway - or BAM - one of the greatest achievements of the Soviet era. Today, railroad engines on BAM haul hoppers filled with coal and flatbed cars stacked with lumber through dense forests, over mountains nearly a mile high and across tracts of permafrost that are as big as many nations.

MOSCOW - It seemed a simple police matter, an alleged assault. But the case of Andrei N. Mironov suggests just how difficult and frustrating the search for justice in Russia can be. Mironov, a slight, graying, 50-year-old human rights activist who has taken interest in Chechnya, says he was attacked in the dingy entrance hall of his small communal apartment just over a year ago. His injuries seem to bear him out. He suffered two gashes on the back...

MOSCOW - The devil is back in Moscow, and he's got a lot of people rattled. Film director Vladimir Bortko and his crew took to Moscow streets this month to begin filming a 10-part television miniseries, an adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's celebrated Soviet-era novel, The Master and Margarita. And there was tension in the air - about doing Bulgakov's story justice. "Of course, I'm very fearful," said Anna Kovalchik, the slim Ukrainian-born actress who plays Margarita, standing in period costume between takes.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- He lingered too long for his own good, but not long enough for his beloved Nancy and the many others who loved and admired him. He was hated for precisely the same reasons he was loved. He had convictions and made those without them look weak. Ronald Wilson Reagan was a colossus of the 20th century. Edward M. Kennedy said his brother Robert "saw wrong and tried to right it." Ronald Reagan saw the evil of communism and did not try to contain or oppose it. He aimed to defeat it, and did, at least the Soviet brand.

MOSCOW - During his eight years as leader of the free world, Ronald Reagan evolved from a fierce Cold Warrior who called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" to "a man you could do business with," as former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would later describe him. He was both hated and feared by Communist hard-liners. But today, as people around the world mourn his death, Russia's overarching assessment of America's 40th president is largely one of respect and admiration. Many credit his peace-through-strength policies for hastening the downfall of the Soviet empire and curtailing the nuclear arms race.

MINSK, Belarus -- In the 10 years since Alexander Lukashenko became president of this small former Soviet republic, political opponents have disappeared, journalists have been sent into internal exile and thousands have been beaten and jailed for participating in political demonstrations. Heavy governmental regulations restrict religious expression by any group other than the Russian Orthodox Church, and the government has confiscated the buildings of a progressive, Belarussian language-only high school.

LONG, LONG ago, there was a newsroom putdown for editorials about hopelessly obscure topics: Afghanistanism. But the Soviet Union spiked that particular usage with its invasion of 1979 -- after all, what was more important in those days than the steely question of America's response to Soviet imperialism, even in the wildest tracts of Asia? The decades went by, the Soviets left and then watched their own country hit the delete key, but Afghanistan managed to stay significant and interesting enough all the while to avoid that dismissive suffix.

All week, protesters have been gathering around-the-clock in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, complaining that the Nov. 2 parliamentary elections were rigged and insisting that President Eduard Shevardnadze annul them. With their demands unmet yesterday, the crowds, which had ranged from hundreds to several thousand, grew 15,000 strong, and they marched from the Parliament building toward Shevardnadze's office, demanding his resignation. "Go away, go away," they chanted. Shevardnadze, who refused to meet them, appeared on television to warn of dire consequences.