belonged to a family who owned, basically, everything in Russia. Rasputin, a Siberian peasant, was a televangelist. TV had not been invented, however, so he had to swindle people one at a time. The one he picked was Alexandra, wife of the last Russian czar. It’s a shame that Alexandra didn’t live long enough to talk to Nancy Reagan about horoscopes. Some of the czar’s advisors decided Rasputin had to go. Young Prince Felix Yussupov volunteered to do the honors. Felix liked to cross-dress. He took a chef, a chauffeur, a valet, a housekeeper, and a groom with him when he went to college. He didn’t sound too tightly wrapped. I kept waiting for the tour guide to tell me that Felix killed Rasputin to impress Jodie Foster. The prince lured Rasputin to the Yussupov Palace and fed him on cyanide- enhanced cakes and wine. These had no effect. So Felix shot Rasputin in the heart. The charlatan seemed to expire, but an hour later, when Felix returned to get the body, Rasputin reached up and grabbed him by the throat. Yussupov managed to free himself, and Rasputin ran into the garden, where one of the coconspirators shot him three more times. The prostrate Rasputin was put in a car trunk and dropped through the ice into a tributary of the Neva. Even then he didn’t die. His body was found downriver, clutching the pilings of a bridge. Rasputin was the Richard Nixon of Russian politics. Don’t tell me our countries haven’t got a lot in common. In comparing free-market and collectivist systems, the temptation is to prove too much. Socialism is not the simple cause of Russian bungling any more than laissez-faire is the simple cause of Albanian larceny. Economics is too complicated for that. Economics is probably too complicated, period, for somebody who was beginning to think of Russians as a Yankee lost tribe. Maybe I hadn’t been getting enough sleep. It was the summer solstice—the White Nights—and daylight lasted until 3 A . M . Even then, night came only to street level. Above, the sky was still glowing. During the White Nights, everybody walks around the city from supper until breakfast in a genial haze. There are concerts and dances, and busloads of army cadets bring their dates to Palace Square and whistle and yell to see the sun up at midnight. All the people in the streets are solicitous and cheerful. Which is quite a change, because another thing that’s American about this country are the
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