"Berlin should become a free city," Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev repeated in public and at home throughout 1961. It
was my great-grandfather's habit; once taken with an idea, he
never let it go. "Parity" was his ruling diplomatic concept. If
one side in the Cold War can do something, so can another, he
reasoned. This was the logic he employed in sending rockets to
Cuba in 1962: If America, the superpower, can have missiles in
Turkey, right on the border of the Soviet Union, he reasoned,
then surely the USSR, another superpower, must be able to do the
same. Fifty years later, Russia, though a superpower no more and
the Cold War long since dead, still adheres to this world-
dividing concept. Vladimir Putin, president-turned-prime-
minister and the main politician in charge, never fails to point
out that his country (with its geography and natural resources
just enough to make it great and powerful) should be on equal
footing with the world most-industrialized countries -- and have
the same international influ