Moscow Plans Its Next Show Trial

In an explosive court case, Russia will re-examine its ban on the communists

Any country that is serious about democracy will think twice about banning a political organization, even one so steeped in misdeeds and corruption as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The new Constitutional Court in Moscow has decided to do its rethinking by combining two cases -- a challenge from former communists to President Boris Yeltsin's decree outlawing the party and a plea from the government to declare the former Soviet Communist Party unconstitutional.

Yeltsin's legal team, led by Sergei Shakhrai, a member of Parliament, will , argue that the communist apparatus of the Soviet Union and Russia were "not...

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