A distant glow in the west

THE huge social and cultural gulf between Russia and America is shrinking, but not by much. More Russians are visiting America, and vice versa. The American embassy in Moscow issued almost 100,000 visas last year, 20 times as many as a decade earlier. But fewer than 4% of all Russians have ever been abroad, according to a survey by the Russian Market Research Company, a private polling firm. Russian men listed America top of the places they want to visit. Russian women preferred France.