Stop press! Just before the deadline I had the honor of attending a Very Special Event -- Queen Elizabeth's reception for Russian guests at the British Embassy.


In my conscious lifetime I can recall three visits to Moscow by foreigners that have meant a lot for the people and became facts of social life, not only political protocol. They were: Fidel Castro in the early Sixties, Richard Nixon in the early Seventies, and Her Majesty right now. Each visitation has had a different flavor.


In the case of Fidel, it was an outburst of communist solidarity, revolutionary romanticism and the sweet imperial feeling that the Soviet Union -- the new leader of the world -- was taking the Western hemisphere. It was fantastic: If the streets of Moscow ever looked a little like carnival in Rio, it was then.


With R.M. Nixon, the scenario was completely different: the Cold War was in full swing; America was the enemy (along with China); detente was like a dim light far ahead; and the visit was, above all, weird, surreal and surrounded by funny rumors -- like that the motorcade would not run along Leninsky Prospect as usual, but would take a secret route so that the people wouldn't be able to greet the U.S. president in the street. Really, waving a small American flag in a public place could get a person as far as a psychiatric clinic in those days.


Now we live in different times in a (slightly) different country. I think that prevailing feelings regarding the queen's visit center around a sense of history, plus sheer sentimentality and admiration. Russia is one of those countries where people would appreciate the thesis that politicians come and go, no matter how powerful they are, but a Royal Dynasty endures forever (or near that).


I wouldn't overestimate the pro-monarchy movements in Russian society, but, considering the ties between the Windsors and the Romanovs, there is a certain warm sensation of a family reunion about Queen Elizabeth's visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg.


Meanwhile, back at the embassy ... The royal couple, who arrived at the reception after seeing "Giselle"at the Bolshoi -- apparently not a brilliant production, but hopefully the Mariinsky ballet in Petersburg will be better -- met their guests, about 200 of them, at the top of a grand staircase leading to the reception halls. She looked very good -- in fact, better than on most pictures and TV. I mumbled something like "honored to meet Your Majesty" and "honored to meet your Highness," and shook hands with the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.


The reception was nice and quiet. Almost everyone invited belonged to the political elite. I enjoyed talking with Irina Hakamada, Grigory Yavlinsky, Vladimir Lukin, French Ambassador Monsieur Morel and Her Majesty's secretary, Mr. Fellows. I was told that Zhirinovsky hadn't been invited. There was no trace of the patriotic and Communist opposition either.


One person (or rather, a couple) that I expected to see, but didn't was M.S. Gorbachev. He probably wasn't in town. A.I. Solzhenitsyn wasn't there either, unlike Yelena Bonner, who was apparently enjoying herself. The cocktails were over by midnight. Well, it was unforgettable. Thank you for the invitation, Your Majesty.


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And now, after the party, a "back-in-the-real-world" comment.


A couple of weeks ago there was an astounding investigation in "Argumenty i Facty" regarding the construction of billion-rouble mega-villas by some top government officials, including Mr. Shumeiko (no surprise) and Mr. Shokhin (pity about him).


There are two possible ways in which the superdachas are financed: They're either built on taxpayers' money (which is criminal) or on the bosses' own savings (which also is criminal, since their wages are so modest as to take several centuries to save for building something of that scale).


A dislosure like this in the West would mean the unavoidable resignation of all those involved. Well, here in Russia the investigation passed practically unnoticed, not only by the common people, for whom big-time corruption is business as usual, but also for all kinds of controlling authorities, who theoretically should care even if they don't want to.


I've been complaining about the lack of freedom of press when it comes to serious matters. Here we have a case of even greater hopelessness: When revelations are made known, they change nothing.