Russia will not abide by its World Trade Organization commitments with the U.S. unless Washington scraps a trade law that dates back to the Cold War, the foreign minister said Wednesday.

The U.S. risks losing out on a potential doubling of exports to Russia unless Congress repeals a Cold War-era law upheld to retaliate a Communist Soviet Union.

The World Trade Organization's tentative capitulation of Russia's membership might leave a U.S. incompetent to take advantage of a 22 percent rebate in tariffs that European and Asian nations will enjoy.

Boris Pasternak (1890 - 1960), a Russian poet, writer, and unquestionably a genius, was subjected in the last years of his life to harsh persecution by the Soviet regime. The ostensible reason for that was publication in the West of Doctor Zhivago , a superb novel that was banned in his native country but deferentially acclaimed throughout the world, bringing its author the highest reward, the Nobel Prize for Literature. Doctor Zhivago was first published in Milan, Italy, in November 1957. It was put out by a publishing house founded by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli just a couple of years previously.