LONDON -- Forty years ago Thursday, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to go into space. Last month, the decrepit space station Mir plunged back into the atmosphere, incinerating among other things the photograph of a youthful, happy Gagarin (he died in a plane crash in 1968) that had hung on its wall for the past 15 years.
The symbolism was obvious -- but is it Russia that has fallen, never to rise again, or only the old Soviet Union?
Almost 10 years after the end of the Soviet Union and the emergence of 15 independent successor states, that is still a hard question to answer. For the Baltic republics, the end of Soviet rule was unalloyed good fortune. For places like Moldova and Tajikistan, it led to a decade of war and impoverishment. But for Russia itself, the jury is still out.