Russia: A Longing for Truth

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The thaw (the real one, that is) was at its height in Moscow last week. Ice floes were in full flight down the river. At last the Kremlin's onion domes were bare of snow. In Sokolniki Park, small boys whooped after model planes and grownups silently drank up the sun. It was the time when, Chekhov wrote, "spring is ready to enter the soul.''

Ten snows have melted since Joseph Stalin's death in March 1953. In the political and social thaw that has followed the tyrant's end, regimentation persists but the cruder...