Gorbachev Bagged.

Former leader of the former Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev has landed a deal to endorse French luggage bags. What makes this footnote interesting is this anodyne assessment of Mr. Gorbachev's career by the BBC:

Mr Gorbachev's far-reaching reforms of the Soviet system accelerated the collapse of communism in the 1980s.

Far reaching reforms indeed. It's pity that the Beeb feels it unnecessary to point out that the collapse of Communism and the disintegration of the USSR are exactly the opposite of what Mr. Gorbachev intended when he launched Glasnost.

A tiny detail, but a telling one.

Sergei Korolyov; the Other Von Braun

The BBC has a fascinating profile of Sergei Korolyov, the Soviet Werner Von Braun. Both were the architects of the modern space age, but where Von Braun was feted as major figure on the national and international scene, Korolyov spent eight years in a Stalinist labour camp in the '30s and '40s and the deepest obscurity that the Communists kept him in afterwards, despite his success in putting the first satellite and man into orbit, was nearly as bad.

I remember reading a book about Korolyov back in the late '60s based on leaked information and it was astonishing when I taught university in the '80s that even seasoned space engineers would greet my bringing up his name with blank looks.

Beware the gratitude of princes.. and totalitarians.