Let's Make a Deal

Red Square and downtown Beijing are for rent -- if the price is right

TRADITIONALLY, THE MAY DAY PORTRAITS STARING blankly across Moscow's Red Square were those of the founders of communism -- Marx, Engels and Lenin--and * the current crop of Politburo heavies. Banners bore slogans like GLORY TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION and GLORY TO LABOR. Sic transit glory. This year Moscow has not only dumped the trappings of socialism but hopes to replace them with outright commercialism.

Moscow's city government is offering American capitalists an advertising tabula rasa: Red Square on May Day, the occasion formerly dedicated to the workers of the world. Fortune 500 corporations have received a...

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