Yalta's ghosts.(THE WORLD)(President's diplomacy)

A FIRST-RATE intelligence, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, can hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still function. President Bush's trip to Russia was a first-rate intellectual and diplomatic exercise. He engaged Russia, while being frank about the past, and present.

Bush went to Moscow to join the Russians in commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. He wanted to celebrate their military achievement and honor their huge losses; he wanted to cement a de facto alliance in at least certain aspects of the War on Terror (the Russians think the Chechens are bad; Saddam and the mullahs, not so bad, especially when they're paying cash). Bush also wanted to keep fresh what he believes to be a personal rapport with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Bush feels he is somehow on the same wavelength with the dour ex-KGB apparatchik. Let us hope so.

At the same time, Bush sandwiched the Russians between trips to Riga and Tbilisi, where he showed the Latvians and the Georgians that he approved their devotion to democracy (in the case of Georgia, a recent product of the 2003 Rose Revolution). This was an unsubtle signal to Putin, who has steered the post-Soviet state in an increasingly authoritarian direction, fortifying the power of the executive, co-opting Communist and extreme nationalist themes, and encouraging a muzzy nostalgia for the glory days of the CCCP. One example may suffice for all: Putin's favorite pop musician, Oleg Gazmanov, writes ballads hailing Stalin, Lenin, and the great liberal poet Pushkin, as if they were all the same sort of person. "All the ...