A rather informal meeting with the Dalai Lama took place recently at the editorial office of the newspaper Vek. His Holiness was introduced by Ivan Kivelidi, the president of Interagro Corporation and one of the few truly advanced and respectable Russian businessmen, who stressed the crucial importance of spiritual and moral matters in today's Russia. The Dalai Lama, in a friendly and loosely constructed speech, touched on the problems of the transitional period from totalitarianism to a free market.


Although the capitalist system gives an individual much more freedom and potential for self-realization, he said, it also tends to widen the gap between rich and poor, which is both immoral and impractical since it creates social unrest. Buddhists, he continued, believe in the Middle Way - a just type of human community, where equality is maintained through self-discipline, not oppression, and freedom does not suppose ruthlessness. When asked about the ethnic and nationalist conflicts currently disturbing the former Soviet Union and the world, the Dalai Lama said that he saw the planet as one living organism, where each nation, like a part of human body, has its own place and is organically attached to the others. Understanding this and given wisdom and tolerance, should find peace.


Meeting this simple and humorous yet absolutely awe-inspiring man was a great experience. There were about 20 of us in the hall, no radio or TV present. Although dozens of invitations were sent to prominent businessmen and media companies, almost no one bothered to turn up - a fact that certainly says something about the intellectual and spiritual level of our


entrepreneurs and journalists.


Bread is one of the few things that really matter For the millions of Muscovites who have never seen a dollar;


who have long forgotten the last time they were in a restaurant or took a taxi: who ask, pointing at kiwi fruits at street markets, "What is this? " - for this huge and still silent majority, bread is the core of their forced diet. A couple of weeks ago, standing in a long line at a local bakery, I witnessed a typical spontaneous political manifestation: Five or six ladies in their fifties were loudly cursing the life we live, blaming everything on Gorbachev, who cheated and betrayed the Communist Party. A year ago if anybody had defended the Commies, even in a bakery, they would have been immediately hushed and ridiculed. But now the crowd was obviously sympathetic.


Bread was still 9-13 rubles a loaf when the incident took place. The price has now increased to 22-30 rubles - making the lines shorter, but the people still more miserable. With the population on the verge of going out to beg ( from whom? ) and the ruble sinking faster than Titanic, the future of Gaidar's half-baked "shock-therapy" doesn't look doubtful - it looks doomed. As for tragic Gorby - he seems to fit the scapegoat role perfectly. Never has a fallen leader of this country been left in peace. I remember writing last winter: "Mikhail Sergeyevich should have extended his lecture tour of America forever". Now it may be too late.


Leslie Woodhead, a British film-maker and long persona non grata in the U. S. S. R. because of his "anti-Soviet" pictures, is now in Moscow making a documentary for the BBC's Arena series. With a working title of "Russian Space", it is about the rise and fall of the Soviet space research program. The film's two main characters are the late Yury Gagarin, the Soviet Union's biggest postwar hero, and Sergei Krikalyov, the country's forgotten cosmonaut who was lost in orbit during the 1991 coup and breakup of the Soviet Union.


According to Woodhead, the best footage so far has been shot at VDNKh's Cosmos Pavilion. Once the temple of the Soviet space cult, it is hardly recognizable now: Nearly all the spaceship and sputnik replicas were recently sold to the Japanese, and the hall is used as a showroom for secondhand American cars.


Alexei Grechanik, former astronaut and still the keeper of the pavilion, took the filmmakers to one of the remaining relics - the capsule of a Soyuz spaceship. When he unlocked the capsule with a secret key, they found an empty vodka bottle inside the cabin. In the meantime, the cosmic vagabond Krikalyov has been nominated as one of the Russian candidates for the U. S. space shuttle flight.