In Other Words  How'd We Do Covering the Revolution?  Looking
back with a generous dose of humility.  Yevgeny Bushmin seemed
to embody all the promise of Russian democracy on a cold
December day in 1995 as he campaigned for reelection to the
lower house of parliament. When we met, Bushmin was 37 years
old, had made it as a young businessman in the last years of the
Soviet Union, had become the first chairman of the fledgling
stock exchange in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, and now in a
suit, black cloth coat, white scarf, and fur hat, was seeking a
second term from District 122.  He had a reformist record in the
Duma, but could see the tide was running the other way. In
Nizhny, called Gorky in Soviet times and best known as the
internal exile of Nobel-winning dissident Andrei Sakharov, the
huge military-industrial complex stood idle, the workers
uncertain about their future. People were hurting so badly the
word "democracy" itself had come to be associated with hardship.
At 9:15 a.m., we arrived at the gate of