The White Russians from Long Island

There were collective sighs of relief in Moscow’s banks and securities houses when Boris Yeltsin won a convincing 14% victory over communist rival Gennady Zyuganov in the presidential elections in July. But none were louder, or longer, than those of a small group of US passport holders ­ all of whom were mindful of an incident 79 years earlier when their aristocratic and capitalist grandparents were forced to flee the country after the communists bypassed elections and won the subsequent civil war.