Merry Christmas, Alan Johnston

In a great year for me, by far the best news of all came July 4th when my former Tashkent roommate, BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, was released unharmed from captivity in Gaza. Alan, who is 45, had been hostage for almost four months. He credits Hamas, otherwise branded a terrorist organization, for his release.

I saw Alan a couple of months ago over a meal in London, and he looked and sounded great. I was reminded of this when his voice came on NPR this morning in an interview about his new book, Kidnapped: And other Dispatches. It appears not to be available as yet in the U.S., but I did find it on Amazon.co.uk. It's sure to be a wonderful read.

Merry Christmas, Alan.

What if Russia's Communists Had Won in the 1990s?

I'm re-reading David Hoffman's "The Oligarchs," which is a riveting reminder of how, a little over a decade ago, the West was in a lather over the possibility that Russia's Communist Party could upend Boris Yeltsin. And if it did, privatization would be reversed, democracy would go out the window, and Russia would become more nationalist.

There must be a huge qualitative difference with how events in Russia have turned out, but I'm strained to define it.

This is important not as an ideological point, but in terms of the compromises made along the way to Vladimir Putin's rise to power in 1999.

When I've been to Moscow the last several months tracking the trajectory of events -- how we got from the Soviet collapse to Putinism -- experts there are fairly well agreed that the seeds were planted years ago.

Some say Russia lost its way back in 1993, when Yeltsin used tanks and Alpha troops to crush a revolt by hard-line rightists. Others say it was 1996, when the nation's independent journalists and billionaire oligarchs joined forces with articles, news broadcasts and cash that secured Yeltsin's re-election.

Whichever event was pivotal, here's their point: With these acts, Russia's ostensible democrats lost the moral high ground, showing their willingness to use any means to keep power, and thus legitimizing the same methods by others.

There are numerous examples of countries balking at the result of democracy: Algeria in 1992, when the military government canceled elections as it became clear that Islamists were going to win big; and Palestine two years ago, when the West rejected the triumph of Hamas.

The question being: Is the taint on democracy worth an intervention that may or may not alter the eventual outcome?

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