Soviet cars weren't all bad: the excellence of Soviet engineering in the military field sometimes filtered through to civilian life.

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At first, Katz said, he didn't believe him, sure that the Soviet authorities would find a way to scupper the plans.

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Anzor said he grew up in Soviet times, when it was taken for granted that Muslims didn't have to follow such strict rules.

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Khrushchev concluded that because the Americans hadn't listed the missiles on their list of demands, the Soviet Union's interests would be well served by keeping them in Cuba.

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It has built one of the world's fastest-growing economies, thanks mainly to the large-scale export of oil, metals and grains, which helps to ensure that it doesn't rely too heavily for trade on Russia, its former Soviet neighbor, or on China.

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According to Piers Bizony, the rival schemes sucked resources from each other: "There was a great deal of confusion in the Soviet space effort in the late 1960s and as a result they didn't have the technology to send a man to the Moon, " he says.

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Filatov was a student in Minsk when the Soviet Union fell and recalls being stunned by the news that his country didn't exist anymore.

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But Tamerlan Tsarnaev held a passport from the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, where he was born, so his remains can't be sent to Russia, said Zaurbek Sadakhanov, a lawyer for the parents.

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Russia now has 87 billionaires, more than any nation except the U.S. Sixteen years after the Soviet collapse, Russia has handily overtaken Germany, which held the number two spot for six years but hasn't produced many new billion-dollar fortunes of late.

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