The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!
Whenever we are headed to a full moon, I suffer from insomnia. As I tossed and turned last night, instead of counting sheep, I started thinking of all the Russians that I could name off the top of my head. Let's see, there is Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Yul Brynner, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Catherine the Great, Emperor of Russia and Anastasia. Then my thoughts turned to the movies about Russia and the Soviet Union: The Brothers Karamazov, Doctor Zhivago and thanks to TCM, Ninotchka with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas as well as another Greta Garbo film, Anna Karenina. There may be other names, books and films somewhere in the recesses of my brain, but I think I have listed enough to illustrate my point. Of the few Russian leaders, authors, dancers, actors, etc. I can name, there is one category in which I can say with absolute certainly I do not have any names: Russian ambassadors. Th...