When I was a teenager and in my early twenties, I always discussed with my most trusted friends what it might be like to live in a free world. We were locked behind the Iron Curtain and none of us believed we would live to see the fall of the communist dictatorship. My father used to say: "Every dictatorship will fall one day because it is inhuman, it is not natural. But communism is here for a long haul. We are not going to see it in our life times." Thank God, we were all wrong.
One was the archetypal military strongman, intent on maintaining the social order and saving his country from "catastrophe." The other was a charismatic shipyard electrician and trade union leader who was just as determined to lead his countrymen to freedom.
When we requested an interview with members of the Communist Youth League, I expected an army of suits with well-rehearsed answers. Instead, we met three students casually dressed in jeans, just 18 to 23 years old.
An unopposed former Communist leader was elected Nepal's new prime minister Saturday, ending nearly three weeks of political uncertainty.
At least 16 police officers, including five women, died in a shootout that erupted after suspected Maoists ambushed them Thursday in central India, a state official said.
Nepal's Maoist government took the president to task Monday for ordering the country's army chief of staff to stay in office after they had fired him, calling the decision "unconstitutional."
Nepal's government ordered the country's army chief of staff fired Sunday, touching off street protests and a split in Nepal's Maoist-dominated ruling coalition.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Tibetan people's peaceful uprising against Communist China's repression in Tibet.
A Maoist group has claimed responsibility for the killing of a Hindu leader, whose death sparked a wave of Hindu-Christian riots in southern India.
A man who led a decade-long bloody insurgency was sworn in Monday as Nepal's new prime minister.
When I was a teenager and in my early twenties, I always discussed with my most trusted friends what it might be like to live in a free world. We were locked behind the Iron Curtain and none of us believed we would live to see the fall of the communist dictatorship. My father used to say: "Every dictatorship will fall one day because it is inhuman, it is not natural. But communism is here for a long haul. We are not going to see it in our life times." Thank God, we were all wrong.
One was the archetypal military strongman, intent on maintaining the social order and saving his country from "catastrophe." The other was a charismatic shipyard electrician and trade union leader who was just as determined to lead his countrymen to freedom.
When we requested an interview with members of the Communist Youth League, I expected an army of suits with well-rehearsed answers. Instead, we met three students casually dressed in jeans, just 18 to 23 years old.
An unopposed former Communist leader was elected Nepal's new prime minister Saturday, ending nearly three weeks of political uncertainty.
At least 16 police officers, including five women, died in a shootout that erupted after suspected Maoists ambushed them Thursday in central India, a state official said.
Nepal's Maoist government took the president to task Monday for ordering the country's army chief of staff to stay in office after they had fired him, calling the decision "unconstitutional."
Nepal's government ordered the country's army chief of staff fired Sunday, touching off street protests and a split in Nepal's Maoist-dominated ruling coalition.
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Tibetan people's peaceful uprising against Communist China's repression in Tibet.
A Maoist group has claimed responsibility for the killing of a Hindu leader, whose death sparked a wave of Hindu-Christian riots in southern India.
A man who led a decade-long bloody insurgency was sworn in Monday as Nepal's new prime minister.
The leader of Nepal's former communist rebels was named as the country's new prime minister Friday.
Nepal's first-ever President Ram Baran Yadav took the oath of office Wednesday, two days after his election.
Candidates from the country's three main political parties have filed to run for the post of Nepal's first president, who will be chosen by Nepalese lawmakers on Saturday, the constituent assembly secretariat announced Thursday.
Nepal's octogenarian Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala resigned Thursday, ending two months of political deadlock following elections for a constituent assembly in April.
I thought I was prepared for North Korea. After all, I'd spent more than half my life studying, traveling to and living in the former Soviet Union as well as other Communist and post-Communist countries.
State Department officials have met with Maoist rebels in Nepal, marking a dramatic policy shift for the United States which has long called the rebels terrorists.
Analysis: When Dmitri Medvedev became President, it did not bring an end to Vladimir Putin's dominance in Russia
Polls opened in Nepal Thursday in an election marred by an outburst of bloodshed that has left eight people dead and stoked fears of more violence on voting day.
Two Communist Party workers and a candidate for a small leftist political party were killed less than a month before a historic vote in Nepal, police said Wednesday.
Nepal's Maoists pulled out of the country's coalition government Tuesday after their demands to abolish the monarchy and declare the nation a republic went unheeded.
Galina Dzhugashvili, a granddaughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin who challenged widely accepted accounts of her father's internment at a Nazi prison camp, has died in Moscow, a hospital official said Tuesday. She was 69.
Unlike almost everyone else in the CNN "Eye on Russia" team, I had never been to Russia before.
Former Maoist rebels will join an interim government under an agreement reached with Nepal's governing coalition after weeks of negotiations, according to a source close to the government.
Hundreds of Maoist rebels clashed with an ethnic political group double their size in southern Nepal on Wednesday, police said.
Nepal's government and Maoist rebels have signed a peace accord, ending 10 years of fighting and beginning what is hoped to be an era of peaceful politics in the Himalayan kingdom.
This year, 2006, marks two significant anniversaries in the history of the former Soviet Union, anniversaries that in a sense bookend the disintegration of the once-formidable communist superpower.
Nepalese authorities have announced another daytime curfew in the capital, one day after Maoist rebels attacked government buildings in the eastern part of the country.
Heavy rain and a strong police presence doused a protest Saturday by about 200,000 marchers who headed toward the palace in another show of opposition to the absolute rule of Nepal's King Gyanendra, who vowed to return political power "to the people" the day before.
Activists are vowing to go ahead with plans for massive street protests in Kathmandu Thursday, despite an 18-hour government curfew that came into effect at 2 a.m. (8:15 p.m. Wednesday GMT) and a threat to shoot violators.
Nepal security police have opened fire on protesters in the Nepalese capital -- injuring dozens -- on the sixth day of demonstrations calling on the country's king to step down from power.
Alexander Yakovlev, one of the architects of the perestroika reform program instituted in the waning years of the Soviet Union, died Tuesday at age 81, a longtime friend said.
Maoist rebels have killed three police officers and abducted 20 others in the town of Diktel in eastern Nepal, police said.
A fierce battle between government forces and Maoist rebels in eastern Nepal has left at least 59 people dead.
Thirty-seven Maoist rebels have been killed as security forces repelled a series of major attacks in Nepal's southern district, a Royal Nepal Army official said Tuesday.
CNN's Ryan Chilcote spoke to former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev about his thoughts and reflections on the death of the Pope John Paul II. The following is a transcript of the interview:
Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Sunday that Pope John Paul II's "devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us."
A day after his release from a 59-day house arrest, former Nepalese prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala on Saturday dismissed speculations that his Nepali Congress party would join the Maoist rebels in opposing monarchy.
Maoist rebels in the Himalayan nation of Nepal killed 23 security personnel in their deadliest attack in recent days, officials have said.
Maoists rebels have lifted a blockade that cut Nepal's capital Kathmandu off from the rest of the country for a week.
China has hailed its late former leader Deng Xiaoping on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Hundreds of Maoist rebels attacked a remote district headquarters in northwestern Nepal early Sunday, killing at least one soldier, according to police.
Two bombs have exploded in Nepal's capital Kathmandu as an unprecedented rebel blockade of the city enters its third day.
Nepal's capital Kathmandu has only a few days worth of fresh produce and cooking fuel, officials say, as a rebel blockade enters its third day.
Kathmandu has been cut off from the rest of the country for the second day of an indefinite blockade of the Nepalese capital by Maoists rebels.
One man, alone and unarmed, boldly shuffles to confront a column of tanks, climbs atop one, then berates its occupants. For many, this image defined the tumultuous 1989 clash between Chinese armed forces and anti-government protesters.
At least 190 fighters have been killed in a fierce overnight clash between Maoist rebels and Nepal's army.
Security forces in Nepal shot to death seven Maoist rebels Friday in the central district of Dhading, some 20 miles west of the capital, government sources said.
The mayor of Birgunj in southern Nepal was shot and killed by suspected Maoist rebels.
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