Bright red banners wavered in the soft spring air. A tremendous color portrait of Stalin in his marshal's sand-hued greatcoat smiled benignly from the ornate facade of the Historical Museum. Old women scrubbed shop windows, old men hosed the streets, anxious housewives queued up for special holiday goodies and 10,000 Red Army men gathered one evening before the Bolshoi Theater to practice mass singing. Moscow was ready for May Day; people said that there might be an oldtime monster parade across Red Square, the first since 1941.
But the only parade was American. Promptly at noon 40 full-dressed members of...
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