Soviets: A World Inspects the New Guard

Does Mikhail Gorbachev promise a revolution for the Kremlin, or just more of the same for a much longer time?

Familiarity is said to breed either contempt or children, but it is not supposed to enhance a mystery. The West has grown familiar with Soviet transferals of power in the past 28 months: Brezhnev became Andropov became Chernenko. Last week the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, strode under Western eyes in the now easily recognizable setting of a Moscow funeral for a head of state: Soviet citizens lined up and bundled up in what seems an eternal freeze; Chopin thudding in the background; gray-coated soldiers marching stiff legged like a row of A's; a body laid out like a doll atop...

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