Communism's lethal afterlife. (Insider Report).

While the apparent fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 is ritually celebrated as the triumph of the West, "I find very little to celebrate," observes Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky in an essay published in the Autumn 2002 Salisbury Review. Bukovsky spent 12 years in the gulag--including a stint in the psihuska, a psychiatric re-education hospital. In 1991, Bukovsky gained access to key Soviet archives dealing with Communist support for international terrorism and subversion, storing thousands of documents digitally using a computer with a hand-held scanner. Two years later, those archives were sealed again for at least another 30 years.

"The last Presidential [elections] in Russia show what kind of democracy [that] country had established for itself when the voters had a surprising choice between a communist leader and a colonel of the KGB," writes Bukovsky. "Indeed, the KGB has won. After ten years of half-hearted attempts at reform the power was handed back to them once again, and they were very quick to establish their authority throughout the country.... This is a very bad moment for the West to suddenly warm towards Russia, yet that is exactly what we are seeing. Putin was received by President Bush who said he looked into his soul. In my many encounters with KGB officers soul is the one thing I failed to spot."

Bukovsky also points out a crucial fact missed by most commentators, namely that KGB-dominated Russia is an unsuitable partner in the "war on terrorism."