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Yes, it was my New Year resolution to have my picture taken on Red Square, and I did. In the process, I visited the main republic of the former Soviet Union (USSR), Russia, and its most prosperous satellite, Czechoslovakia.

On my way back home, I had one interrogation in mind: What was all the hoopla about?

Why did we so many times, in the 50s and 60s (before the Détente period), graze a nuclear disaster?

In my childhood, I had the vision that beyond the Iron Curtain, in communist lands, there lived only bread-starved, blood-thirsty, collectivist monsters. I read of a world of terror and famine, horrific and Kafkaesque.

I went there, I climbed back into the past, I saw none of that. Russia led a fight against oppression and abject poverty. It won it. In the process, the people were stripped of their freedoms to the benefit of the majority.

The Stalinian crimes, purges and genocides are inexcusable, but John Reed, an American journalist, now buried in the national pantheon at the Kremlin, almost justifies them in his book Ten Days that Changed the World. The young proletariat democracy was under constant assault from the powers of the West. It had to defend itself from internal enemies, the dissidents. There comes the different propaganda.

Today, Russia has won the war against the sub-human conditions of its people of tsar time. It lost its drive to export its revolution. It is on its way to economic power. Its people are educated above average, and its women wear short skirts above? average. So it is in the Czech Republic.

At discos in Moscow, Prague and Saint Petersburg, they play the same tunes as in New York and Paris. What else? Oh! What were we fighting about? I can?t seem to remember. Problem solved, I guess.

I visited Moscow, the capital of the Evil Empire. I wandered around two of the most stunning cities in the world: Saint Petersburg and Prague.

I took my lessons of art, geography, politics, religion, and history. I feel smarter, closer to the soul of the people who welcome me. Like Sacha Distel, I met Natasha. I feel elated. I reached satiety. Mission accompli. I don?t need to go back, save to strengthen some friendships I knotted.

My trip back to the U.S also took me 17 ½ hours. Waiting at Heathrow Airport in London, I (again) forgot to adjust my watch to the time difference, with Prague this time. I almost missed my flight. I was lucky.

I am now home, sweet home, in Hackensack. It is so sweet to be home. Once again, I understand that Caribbean-born, American national, I am in fact Citizen of the World. Peace be with the World, my country!

Until the next adventures, it was The Traveller.

Please, visit http://www.jeanlouie.com/

(The Traveller, Friday, June 27, 2003)