As the foreign leaders and their ministers took their seats in the Kremlin's white-columned Hall of St. George last week, they could see the long roster of names engraved in Cyrillic script on marble tablets along the chamber's walls. The list is an honor roll of czarist military regiments, officers and soldiers who displayed extraordinary bravery in defending the motherland, or rodina, as Russians say with almost mystical fervor. The dignitaries were there to represent the nations most closely allied to the Soviet Union: its six satellites...
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