4 JUNE 1988, Page 5

SOUL-MATES

THIS week in Moscow Mr Ronald Reagan said — with the appearance of one who has made an extraordinary discovery — that the American and Russian people were the same: they were both peoples with souls. The truth is still more extraordinary: the Americans and the Russians have not just grown together; they have swapped politic- al cultures.

While Mr Boris Yeltsin rolls into a British television studio and denounces the second most powerful man in the Soviet Union, Mr Igor Ligachev, no member of the Republican Party now dares to criticise Mr Reagan. Mr Reagan's circle has taken on all the appearance of an Imperial Russian Court, and like all the Czars, the head of state is seen by his people as not bad, but badly advised. And in Miss Joan Quigley, the San Franciscan star-gazer, the court of Czar Ronald even has its own Rasputin, with Mrs Nancy Reagan playing the part of Czar Nicholas II's credulous wife, Alexandra.