Union Of Soviet

Since taking office, President Bush has spoken of the need for a national missile defense - a system to protect the United States against limited missile threats by knocking missiles out of the sky. Full testing or deployment of such a system is prohibited by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed by President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev in 1972. The administration proposes resolving that conflict by withdrawing from the treaty. It's a change that - with varying degrees of fervor - most U.S. allies and Russia oppose.

MAGNITOGORSK, U.S.S.R. -- This steel city in the Ural Mountains is the stuff of Soviet legend, built by Stalinist shock troops in the 1930s, supplier of much of the muscle to defeat Hitler in World War II and long a potent symbol of the industrial might of the U.S.S.R." 'Legendary Magnitka,' they called it," said Georgy M. Tikhonov 42, editor of the local newspaper. "It was waved like a flag, like a banner of socialism."It is a Spartan city of 447,000 people deep in the Russia heartland, 1,000 miles from intellectualizing Moscow, untouched by the independence talk of faraway Lithuanians and Georgians.

SARATOV, Russia -- Two million Russian-Germans, prisoners of time and history, are struggling to wrest a future for themselves in this newly emerging country.They are emblematic of the scores of nationalities nervously trying to define and protect themselves as the old Soviet shackles fall off, only to be replaced in many cases by fear, jealousy and ethnic animosity.Throughout the fallen empire, people once ordered to march forward as "Soviets" are now stepping apart, proudly calling themselves Tatars, Chechens, Cossacks, Meskhetians, Tuvinians and Buryats.

The East German government's official name for it was the "anti-fascist protective rampart." Construction began in August 1961. It ran 30 miles, twisting and turning from north to south, quarantining the eastern / Soviet sector from the rest of Berlin. In some points 13 feet tall, it was flanked by a "death strip" as much as 200 yards wide over which guards maintained constant armed surveillance. Here and there was a second, lower wall. Fully developed, it had 297 watchtowers. When demolition began in 1989, it had stood firm for twice as long as Adolf Hitler had ruled Germany.

When Sergei Zverev was born in the city of Kharkov in eastern Ukraine in 1949, Josef Stalin was the terrifying leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the communist threat had frozen the free world into a defensive stance that would last for 40 more years.Now the Cold War is over, the menace of communist domination is a bad memory, and Mr. Zverev and his wife Rimma are seeking to make a living in their new country, the United States, and in their new city, Baltimore.Mr. Zverev is a resource anxious to be tapped, a nuclear physicist with a doctorate in experimental physics who is searching for a teaching job in his specialties of applied mathematics, dosimetry (the study of X-rays and radiation)

2nd AmendmentEditor: For all students of the Constitution, here is the Second Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to bear Arms shall not be infringed."It says nothing of sporting, hunting, collecting, or ''personal protection.'' It gives no definition for the terms used. However, the sentence clearly states the purpose. Since the U.S. had no standing army, each ''free State'' would need a ''well regulated Militia.''The point is, the Constitution is only as perfect as we are. We should always keep in mind the time in which it was written and, most importantly, the purpose of each section.

Quick: Name a country where thousands of people have been killed over the last few months in relentless klan and ethnic strife; where armed bands of young thugs roam freely; where hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, many across an international border; where some refugees, stranded in the mountains, are dying of exposure and starvation.No, not Bosnia. And not Somalia. The answer is Tajikistan, and the reason you didn't know is that we, the media, haven't told you much about it. We haven't told you because we don't think you're much interested in it. And the reason you're not so interested is that the Cold War is over, the Soviet menace is dissipated, and Russia and the other former Soviet republics have become a tangled, tiresome story that's hard to follow.

MOSCOW -- The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Byelarus declared yesterday that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and proclaimed a new Commonwealth of Independent States open to all states of the former union.In a series of statements issued after a two-day meeting at a Byelarussian government retreat, the leaders of the three Slavic republics declared void all efforts to create a new union on the ruins of the old one. But they called for the creation of new "coordinating bodies" for defense, foreign affairs and the economy that would have their seat in Minsk, the capital of Byelarus, and decided to maintain the ruble as their common currency.

Unbreakable union of free republics,United for the ages by Great Russia!Hail the great, mighty Soviet UnionCreated by the peoples' will!Glory to the fatherland, our free fatherland!Friendship of the peoples is a reliable bulwark!The Party of Lenin, strength of the people,Is leading us to the triumph of Communism!-- National anthem of the Soviet Union (1917-1991 R.I.P.)After 74 years, the grand strains of the Soviet national anthem resound only with irony. The unbreakable union has broken up. The Party of Lenin is banned.