In Moscow, the retreat from communism is marked by the supreme irony centering on Lubyanka Square. When the Soviet regime was overthrown in 1991, the first statue to come down was that of Felix Dzerzhinsky. He was the great father of the KGB, the patron of executions in the thousands in the prison at one end of the square, and of millions sent off to the Gulag. The mayor of Moscow proposed the restoration of that statue, the equivalent of raising a statue to Himmler in Berlin. But the reaction has taken an exuberant political turn: A member of parliament proposes erecting a statue in that square to Czar Nicholas II, a kind of symbolic apology for the Bolshevik sin of executing the czar, his wife and his children. That should make for a great national debate.
The domestic news features, of course, a great national debate on Iraq, which, however, reflects less than a great national division, since the supporters of Mr. Bush are heavily preponderant. The interesting skirmishes are in the outback. In California, challenger Bill Simon mistakenly alleged that a photograph of Gov. Gray Davis accepting a check from a political support group was snapped in the governor's office. In fact, it was taken in a private house.
Gov. Davis, who spent $20 million this summer portraying Simon as a crook, ran into the problem that the civil conviction of Simon was overturned by the courts. Now, Davis affects a bride's dismay over her honor impugned. Barrels of money to Gov. Davis aren't blanched by virtue of having been conveyed off-premises, but institutional catechisms are deferred to -- it's OK to eat meat, but not on Fridays.
The candidate running against Max Baucus for the Senate seat in Montana pulled out of the race the same day because, he said, his reputation was now ruined by a Democratic ad suggesting he was gay, far from the truth, but mortally effective. We didn't intend any such imputation, the Democratic spokesman insisted. But after the ads came out, the challenger's negative ratings more than doubled. In Montana, it is not yet safe to be gay and run for higher office.
Thus are the rules defined, or lived by, in California and Montana, and the contradictions faced on which presence should preside over the square in Moscow, and whether secure property rights and the rule of law should yield in Brazil and Venezuela. In America we struggle along, weaving our way about the paradoxes of time and place, contributing our own.