Topic - Joseph Stalin

• Poland's 1996 Nobel poet Szymborska dies at 88

  Poland's 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, whose simple words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life, has died. She was 88.

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  GOLDBERG: Political finger-pointing

  Jesse Jackson is right. In response to the faceoff in Arizona between President Obama and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week, Mr. Jackson said, "Even George Wallace did not put his finger in Dr. King's face." It's true; he didn't. Similarly, not even Joseph Stalin wrote two autobiographies the way Mr. Obama has. And even Genghis Khan didn't have a Swiss bank account the way Mitt Romney did.

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  BOOK REVIEW: 'Eight Pieces of Empire'

  Lawrence Sheets is a foreign correspondent whose bravery exceeds one's comprehension. For two decades, he risked death covering the violent chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The multiple "wars" he covered were not set-piece battles but disorganized carnage by guerrillas and remnants of national armies that smashed cities throughout the old USSR and slaughtered uncountable thousands of people. He survived. And he has produced some of the most gripping war correspondence I have ever read.

• SANDERS: The limits of personal diplomacy

  Back in prehistory, during the Cold War, students of Kremlinology - the arcane science and art of trying to unravel what Winston Churchill called "a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma" - identified a dangerous heresy. "Mirror-imaging," it was called, defined as attributing to Moscow our own motivations, rather than understanding a Soviet communist leadership who lived in a completely different world and dreamed different dreams.

• Inside Politics

  Sen. John McCain says the world is better off now that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died, and predicted the dictator would join the likes of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin "in a warm corner in hell."

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  HUNTER: U.S. victorious in Iraq despite Obama

  On April 8, 2003, U.S. Marine Lt. Brian Chontosh charged an ambush on the way to Baghdad, wiping out a trench full of enemy soldiers. His heroics were replicated by other Americans hundreds of times in the succeeding years as the United States fought its way, by trial and error, to ultimate victory in 2008. Taking Baghdad quickly in 2003, America was hit with the double ignition of the Sunni and Shiite conflicts in 2004. Al Qaeda swarmed into Fallujah to complicate the U.S. challenge. Muqtada al-Sadr, the extremist Shiite cleric with ties to Iran, threw the Mahdi Army at every outpost of the fragile democratic government America was incubating.

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  WOLF: Capitalist lesson from first Thanksgiving

  Despite our current perilous times, Americans still have boundless reasons for giving thanks. True, our economy continues to falter, we face yet another national credit downgrade, and families suffer with high unemployment. The nation teeters precariously between free-market capitalism and European-style socialism. But fortunately, we have guidance from those brave Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower who, nearly four centuries ago, faced a choice similar to ours.

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  Ukraine at a crossroads after verdict

  The seven-year prison term handed down to Ukraine's former prime minister this month highlights the stark choice faced by President Viktor Yanukovych: Does he turn the country east or west?

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  Ukraine's Tymoshenko sentenced to 7 years in jail

  Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Tuesday was found guilty of abuse of office and sentenced to seven years in jail, in a trial widely condemned in the West as politically motivated.

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  Ex-Ukraine leader sentenced to 7 years; West condemns trial

  Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Tuesday was found guilty of abuse of office and sentenced to seven years in jail, in a trial widely condemned in the West as politically motivated.

• LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Poland was communist-occupied

  I found your Sept. 16 article about Krakow very informative and interesting ("Krakow a historic Polish city with a college-town vibe," Weekend Life). It's great to read about Krakow and Poland in your paper. However, I noticed the author referred to Poland as "the formerly communist country." Poland was never a communist country.

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  EDITORIAL: Obama's phony debt plan

  Without any trace of irony, the White House's new 10-year deficit-reduction plan is titled "Living Within Our Means and Investing in the Future." It achieves neither of these objectives, but you would never know that by looking at the deceptively rosy future it promises.

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  North Korean leader Kim leaves Russia for China

  North Korean leader Kim Jong-il left Russia aboard his armored train late Thursday, crossing into Manchuria in China's northeast a day after pushing for a return to discussions on his country's nuclear program.

• Bulgaria opening museum of socialist art

  Giant statues of Soviet dictators Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin. Paintings of enthusiastic socialist laborers. A huge red star that graced Communist Party headquarters.

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  FIELDS: The evil mind of the mass murderer

  Nothing so focuses the mind on the nature of evil like mass murder. The numbers magnify a singular horror and become collectively unfathomable. Josef Stalin, who knew something about mass murder, showed his cold-blooded ruthlessness when he called one death a tragedy, many deaths a statistic.

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