Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Burned-Out Bulbs in Moscow

At our spring Board Meeting in Munich in 1989, our key people reported that all signs pointed to the lid blowing off the Soviet Empire before the end of the year. The huge volume of incoming calls and their despairing tone, plus detailed reports from our growing number of stringers in the whole dispersed broadcast area made even our most hardened and jaundiced editors believe that something new was up.

One story our people reported was the appearance of a novelty among street vendors in Moscow: a market in burned-out light bulbs. Why buy burned-out bulbs? To take to the office, unscrew good bulbs to take home, and screw in the useless ones.

Read the rest of Michael Novak as he remembers 1989.

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