Soviet Union Time of Troubles

For seven decades Revolution Day on Nov. 7 has been the Soviet holiday of holidays, celebrating the 1917 dawn of the Communist empire in a pageant of regimented unity. But the observances this week seem likely to symbolize something very different -- where they are held at all. Officials in Moscow and Leningrad have criticized the traditional military parades as anachronistic wastes of money; parliamentarians in Latvia want rites honoring "victims of Communist terror"; authorities in Lvov in the western Ukraine resolved to ignore the anniversary altogether. Even after Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ordered Moscow and other cities to hold the...