Soviet Union

Nikolai Baibakov, Russia's last commissar, died last week at 98, and Yakup Satar, the last WWI veteran of the Ottoman Empire, died at 110.

If the phrase "Soviet commissar" has a vaguely old-fashioned ring -- like "icebox," "suffragette," or "antimacassar" -- then "Ottoman foot-soldier" has a near-ancient one. The two deaths this week consign both categories to history, and give an occasion for reflection on the passing of two eras.

An anniversary for nostalgic Cold Warriors

This year marks the 40th anniversary of The Great Terror, poet and historian Robert Conquest's chronicle of Stalin's purges.  In addition to being a great read as history, it contains one of the author's few limericks clean enough to publish in a family magazine:

There was a great Marxist named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
The great Marxist Stalin did ten in.