NADEZHDA STALIN, the granddaughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, died of cancer yesterday. She was 57.

`Sometimes it seems to me the entire intelligence business is just one gigantic practical joke'

REPORTS FROM THE FRONTIERS OF HISTORY

Reports from Moscow suggest that Lenin's pickled corpse may be leaving Red Square at last. His ideals, and his apostles, also seem to have gone for good. But were the obituaries premature? By Robin Blackburn (below) and Robert Service (centre) apitalism. By Charles Shaar Murray Fiction's wayward wizard takes on global capitalism. By Charles Shaar MurrayThe Passing of an Illusion: the idea of communism in the twentieth century by Francois Furet University of Chicago Press, pounds 25, 702pp

Black Cat White Cat

FREUD AND THE BOLSHEVIKS: PSYCHOANALYSIS IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION BY MARTIN A MILLER, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, pounds 20

ONE OF the most compelling aspects of the last years of the Soviet Union was the erosion of authority and credibility of the Communist Party, a process initiated and fostered by the party itself. Some 18 months after Gorbachev's accession to the leadership, his ideological adviser, Alexander Yakovlev, was given the Politburo's assent to switch off the red light in intellectual and cultural life, and to leave it on amber, rather than green. Henceforth, it should be writers and their editors who would, for the most part, decide what to publish.

Poland wants to extradite a Holocaust survivor, now living in Oxford, for the alleged murder of a wartime hero.

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VALENTIN BEREZHKOV was a Russian diplomat who translated for Joseph Stalin and other Soviet officials during crucial Second World War conferences. Once freed from the constraints of Soviet historiography, he earned a good living recounting his experiences of the man he considered a great leader.

SHOSTAKOVICH VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 1/ SYMPHONY NO. 10 ROSTROPOVICH/ VENGEROV/LSO BARBICAN, LONDON

Archangel by Robert Harris Hutchinson, pounds 16.99, 421pp

FOR YEARS after the end of the Second World War Victory Day was honoured every 9 May in the Soviet Union. The Soviet victory was slowly transformed into one of the two chief founding myths of the Communist regime, Lenin's historic triumph in 1917, Stalin's in 1945. Even when Stalin was dead and then denounced the myth survived. The victory of 1945 became the victory of the progressive Communist peoples over fascism and imperialism. Schoolchildren were for years taught that "the Soviet nation saved man-kind from annihilation and enslavement". Thanks to Soviet efforts, ran the textbook, the USSR "preserved world civilisation".

THE MAN leading the assault on Boris Yeltsin in parliament is Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of Russia's rapidly reviving Communist Party.