Being a budget traveller, I would never have been served by Sonia and Adrienne. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading the twins’ charming and heartwarming recollections of their working days in the VIP lounge at Heathrow airport (“How the other half fly”, Travel, Life & Arts, February 8).
I was especially intrigued by the episode with Mikhail Gorbachev, with the former Soviet leader hugging and swinging Sonia. Gorbachev had by then lost power, the Soviet Union was no longer. At the time, many of us in the west adopted a stance of jubilation, not to say triumphalism at the sight of communism falling apart before our eyes.
But looking back, I wonder whether the things we see today in Russia could have evolved differently. Could the west have taken better care of the “losers” who had witnessed the sudden collapse of their world, built up over four decades? Might the west have offered the heirs to the Soviet Union a little extra support to put them on the right track towards liberal democracy?
Masaki Takeda
Kanagawa, Japan
