It’s getting close to 6:30 PM in Moscow, and no doubt some seriously entertaining festivities are already well underway as Russia concludes quite a memorable year. But will the Russians ring in 2008 with the same energy and apprehension as 1965? I found this entertaining tidbit from the TIME magazine archive which shows a rather remarkable government-planned New Year’s Eve celebration from more than 40 years ago at the height of the Cold War: Nothing, in Soviet doctrine, is much more reactionary than Christmas, combining as it does “bourgeois” religion with capitalist commercialism. But the New Year is something else again. For years, the Communists have emphasized this ideologically safer holiday while downgrading or disguising Christmas (which in the Russian calendar falls on Jan. 7). With beaming approval from the Kremlin, Moscow last week was feverishly preparing for the biggest, brassiest and most bountiful New Year’s blowout in Communist history.