Just this once, Samoa is making Dec. 30 disappear.

It's the key step in the Pacific island nation's plan to move from the eastern to the western side of the International Date Line and mesh its work week with two of its primary trading partners, New Zealand and Australia. The New Zealand territory of Tokelau is making the switch as well.

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"In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we're losing out on two working days a week," Stuff.co.nz quoted Samoan Prime Minister Tuila'epa Sailele as saying. "While it's Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand, and when we're at church Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane."

Samoa will go directly from 11:59 p.m. Thursday, through midnight to 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

"It hasn't been controversial," the editor of the Samoa Observer, Mata'afa Lesa, told me today. (Yes, definitely still today.) "People are realizing when they sleep tomorrow night, they'll wake up on Saturday."

Hotel guests won't have to pay for an extra night, but employers will be required to pay workers for Friday. "For the business community, it's very difficult," Lesa said, "They'll be paying for a day that doesn't exist."

As for folks born on Dec. 30 ... well, this year they're in the same boat as Feb. 29 birthday babies.

American Samoa, 100 miles to the east, will not be making the switch. All this means that Samoa and Tokelau will be among the first places in the world to see each day's sunrise. (Stuff.co.nz says the "first light honors" will belong to Fakaofo in Tokelau, although Kiribati and Antarctica also have claims on the title.) Meanwhile, American Samoa will become known as the last place to see each day's sunset. And if you want to celebrate your birthday or anniversary (or New Year's Eve, for that matter) two days in a row, you can just make the hourlong flight from Samoa to American Samoa.

This isn't the first step taken by the Samoan government to bring itself more in line with its bigger Pacific neighbors. Two years ago, drivers were ordered to switch from right-side to left-side driving — to reduce the cost of converting cars brought in from Australia and New Zealand.

It's also not the first time Samoa has switched sides on the calendar: Back in 1892, Samoans gained an extra day when they went from the west side of the imaginary Date Line to the east side. The king made the switch to please U.S. traders — and to celebrate, he gave his subjects a double dose of the Fourth of July that year.

Update for 10:45 p.m. ET: Some of the comments suggest there's been a bit of confusion over how many Fridays will be dropped from the calendar because of Samoa's shift from one side of the International Date Line to the other. It's just one. I've rewritten the headline to make that clearer.

More calendar considerations:

• Is it time to overhaul the calendar?
• Scramble the calendar for palindromes
• Britain may consider time zone switch

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Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

Fast-moving mudflows streaming from the mouth of a volcano killed four villagers in eastern Indonesia, officials said Wednesday. 

About 1,000 other people have fled their homes.

Mount Gamalama, located in the Molucca Islands, sprang back to life this month with a powerful, non-fatal eruption.

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Government spokesman Yusuf Sunnya said Wednesday that days of heavy rains triggered flows of cold lava, rocks and other debris that slammed into villages Tuesday night.

•  STORY: Mount Gamalama erupts, thousands flee

He said four people were killed and more than a dozen others were hospitalized with injuries ranging from broken bones to head wounds.

The Jakarta Post described the deadly incident as a "cold lava flood."

Provincial spokesman Andi Arief said the cold lava slides destroyed several houses in the villages.

"Initial data cited that three people died, while many other residents (were) evacuated to a school building and the former North Maluku governor's office," Andi said in a statement.

Indonesia is a vast archipelago with millions of people living on mountains or near fertile flood plains. Seasonal downpours here often cause landslides.

The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

By Ayman Mohyeldin, NBC News
CAIRO -- The trial of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, the former minister of interior and six senior security officials resumed in a Cairo court on Wednesday after nearly a three-month recess.

Egyptian TV showed 83-year-old Mubarak, covered by a green blanket and lying on a hospital gurney as he was brought from a helicopter and taken to an ambulance for the short ride to the courthouse.

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The men are all facing murder charges for ordering security forces to kill demonstrators while trying to suppress an 18-day popular uprising against the 30-year rule of Mubarak that began on Jan 25, 2011.

The trial was in recess for close to three months because a separate petition had been filed to replace the presiding judge. That petition was not granted and the same judge will continue to preside over the trial.

On Wednesday, defense attorneys asked the judge to call senior members of the intelligence services and other branches of Egypt's Armed Forces who were serving during the revolution and since then to testify.

The defense is arguing the security forces were acting within the law to contain the uprising but were never given specific orders to "kill" demonstrators.

So far, the most critical testimony of the trial has come from Field Marshall Mohammed Hussien Tantawi, the Commander of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the ruling military council. His testimony has been sealed for security reasons. The defense has also requested the judge hear the testimony of SCAF second-in-command Field Marshall Sami Annan, Chief-of-Staff of the Armed Forces.

The defense believes the two men and other senior officials will testify that they were never given orders by the former president to kill protestors.

The trial has been adjourned until Monday, Jan. 2.

Journalist are allowed to attend the trial under very strict rules as to what they can publish. Egyptian State TV, which was originally allowed to broadcast the trial, has since been barred from broadcasting the trial live.

Revolutionary groups have had a long-standing demand that Mubarak and his aides stand trial for the killing of protestors. The delay in the start of trial and it's lack of transparency has led many to criticize the SCAF that it was never serious about bringing the former president to justice.

Campaigners expressed alarm Wednesday after Arab League observers in Syria said they saw "nothing frightening" during a visit to Homs, the city activists say is the epicenter of nine months of deadly clashes with government forces.

"Some places looked a bit of a mess but there was nothing frightening," Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, the chief of the monitoring contingent, told Reuters by telephone from Damascus.

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"The situation seemed reassuring so far," he added after his team's short visit to the city of one million people, Syria's third largest.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday that security forces fired tear gas at tens of thousands of protesters in Homs, and that 40 people were killed in the city on Monday and Tuesday alone.

A video clip posted on the Internet on Tuesday appeared to show the monitors touring the Baba Amr district of the city as angry residents shouted at them and tugged on one monitor's jacket, pleading them to enter their neighborhoods as gunfire erupted in the background.

The Arab League obervers are checking whether Syria is keeping its promise to withdraw troops from cities and halt the violence that has threatened to spiral into civil war.

Foreign journalists and other observers are banned from Syria, making it difficult to verify claims by activists or the government.

However, the United Nations estimates 5,000 people have been killed in Syria since the nine-month crackdown on opposition protests began.

Meanwhile, live footage carried on al-Jazeera television on Wednesday also showed gunfire and black smoke rising above Syria's central city of Hama as dozens of men marched through the streets chanting" "Where are the Arab monitors?"

Cloak of respectability?
Given the brief and limited nature of the monitors' tour on Tuesday, the comments by the chief monitor could heighten the concern of opposition activists that the observer mission could be used as a cloak of respectability by Damascus, issuing assessments whitewashing President Bashar Assad's record. 

It also highlights concern over the choice of a Sudanese general to head the mission.

Dabi has held senior Sudanese military and government posts, including in the Darfur region, where the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says the army carried out war crimes and the United Nations says 300,000 people may have died. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, who studies Sudan and has written strong criticisms of its government, told Reuters the choice of a Sudanese general was a sign the Arab League might not want its monitors to produce findings that would force it to take stronger action.

"There is a broader question of why you would pick someone to lead this investigation ... when he is part of an army that is guilty of precisely the sort of crimes that are being investigated in Syria," Reeves said.

"I think a Sudanese general would be one of the least likely people in the world to acknowledge these findings even if they are right there before him... It doesn't make any sense unless you want to shape the finding. They want it shaped in ways that will minimize the obligation to do more than they already have."

'Shouting into a void'
A Baba Amr resident and activist, who gave his name as Omar, expressed frustration at the Arab League visit. "I felt they didn't really acknowledge what they'd seen -- maybe they had orders not to show sympathy," he said.

"But they didn't seem enthusiastic about hearing people tell their stories, we felt like we were shouting into a void."

"We placed our hopes in the entire Arab League," said Omar. "But these monitors don't seem to understand how the regime works, they don't seem interested in the suffering and death people have faced."

Amnesty International said Sudan's military intelligence, at the time Dabi led it, "was responsible for the arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearance, and torture or other ill-treatment of numerous people in Sudan."

Jehanne Henry, Sudan researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said that as head of Sudan's military intelligence in the 1990s, Dabi "certainly would have been in a position to know what the security services were doing at that time."

"He obviously does not fit the profile as a human rights monitor," she added.

"We have no confidence at all in the Arab League mission," Dr Mousab Azzawi told msnbc.com on Tuesday. "The very people investigating Syria are wanted for war crimes by the ICC -- it is some of bad joke."

The Arab League says Dabi brings vital military and diplomatic expertise to its unprecedented mission to verify that Assad is complying with a deal to end Syria's crackdown on protesters.

For its part, Khartoum says the accusations against Sudan's president are baseless and politically motivated, and puts the Darfur death toll at 10,000.

Reuters and msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

SEOUL, South Korea — As one journalist put it, it said how much we all knew about North Korea that for the better part of Wednesday morning, most of the world remained in the dark about just when — if at all  — the state funeral for the country's late leader Kim Jong Il had begun. 

But finally around 2 p.m in Seoul, a feed of the funeral proceedings began transmitting. We watched online, impressed by the staging and the direction. 

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Thousands of people in olive drab stood under snowfall in front of the Kumsusan Memorial Palace — where Kim Jong Il’s body had been lying in state and where that of his father Kim Il Sung is also housed — as a procession of vehicles drove past, including the hearse led by Kim Jong Il's son and successor, Kim Jong Un.

Under a dramatic soundtrack and the emotion-laden voice of a North Korean broadcaster, the continuous wailing of mourners could be heard. Cameras pushed into close-ups of rows and rows of men and women in military uniform sobbing. 

• PhotoBlog: North Korean heir leads procession

As the procession wound its way through Pyongyang and the snowfall grew heavier, footage of civilians began to appear.  Dressed in thick winter coats, they craned their necks and covered their mouths as they wept.  Those in the front — closest to the cameras —jumped up and down with great emotion.  Occasionally, a row of soldiers appeared expressionless and stoic.

As the video was broadcast — and despite the "live" banner on some cable stations, it was still unclear whether the footage was being transmitted live or had been recorded earlier until one news agency confirmed it was indeed the former.

The mood in Seoul was decidedly different.

'Like father, like son'
Among a small community of North Koreans who fled their homeland years ago, there was scorn for the man they once called their "Dear Leader" and a touch of hope that his death may usher in long-awaited change.

"Kim Jong Il made three million people starve to death," said Kim Jung-geum, a reporter and radio announcer with Free North Korea Radio.  She escaped from the North eight years ago and has been living in Seoul for the past six years.

• Will younger Kim's aunt, uncle be puppet masters?

"Initially I thought, wow, now we can go home. But the feeling didn’t last even a day," said Kim Sung-min, founder of the station —which broadcasts a one-hour shortwave radio program back into the North every day.  

"It is the third generation leadership," said Kim, who defected from North Korea 11 years ago. "Like father, like son.  There is no hope. There is zero per cent chance of change as Kim Jong Un inheried Kim Jong Il's system."

His colleague was willing to be a bit more optimistic.  "The dictatorship is over," said Kim Jung-geum quietly.  "A new era will begin with 2012.  I expect that."

Both of them, however, did agree on one thing.  They remembered when North Korean founder Kim Il Sung died.

"I was so sad that I skipped two meals," recalled Kim Sung-min, who was serving in the North Korean military in a northern province at the time.  "It was as if the sun had fallen to earth."

• Archival video: Kim Il Sung dies

"I cried for Kim Il Sung," said Kim Jung-geum, who was a propaganda teacher at the time.  "We had a food ration system.  People had salaries then.  So I genuinely grieved for his death."

Among South Koreans there was largely indifference.

A trio of college students said they were initially worried about the possible ramifications of Kim Jong Il’s death.  "But now I feel a lot better," said Lee Kyung-min, more keen on visiting a nearby museum than thinking about regional security. None of them were interested in the funeral proceedings.

"It was big news," said Cho Nam-hyun, a reporter for Dong-A Ilbo. "But personally, I think of it just as a head of state who died."

• Were circumstances of Kim Jong Il's death fabricated?

The indifference doesn't come as a surprise to analysts in South Korea. 

"We've been living under the gun for the past 60 years," said Dr. Hahm Chaibong, president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.  "You can’t count the number of crises that we've had over the years.  Be it assassinations, commando raids, downing of airplanes, terrorist bombings, and of course more recently nuclear experiments and shelling of islands."

Hahm also offered a final somber thought.

"By and large everyone has learned a lesson as far as to what to expect," he said.  "Everybody knows that there isn’t all that much to expect in terms of radical change….  If North Korea is going to change, it's not going to because of something we do in the outside world.  They will be the ones who will be undertaking changes because they think it's necessary and because they decide it's time they do it."

Follow NBC News' Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) on Twitter.

• SLIDESHOW: The life of Kim Jong Il
• SLIDESHOW: Reaction to death of Kim Jong Il
• SLIDESHOW: Journey into North Korea
• Browse more of msnbc.com's North Korea coverage

Updated at 8:08 a.m. ET 

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- Wailing and clutching at their hearts, tens of thousands of North Koreans lined the snowy streets of Pyongyang on Wednesday as the hearse carrying late leader Kim Jong Il's wound its way through the capital for a final farewell.

Son and successor Kim Jong Un led the procession, which is part of a two-day state funeral. Top military and party officials, including uncle Jang Song Thaek, were also part of the lead group.

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Sobs and wails filled the air along the memorial route, which state media said was about 25 miles long.

At the end of the procession, Kim Jong Un walked along with the limousine with his hand cocked in a salute. He stood head-bowed with top officials as rifles fired 21 times, then saluted again as goose-stepping soldiers carrying flags and rifles marched by.

The funeral procession, which began and ended at Kumsusan Memorial Palace, passed by huge crowds of mourners, most of them standing in the snow with their heads bare. Many screamed, stamped their feet, flailed their arms and wept as soldiers struggled to keep them from spilling onto the road.

• As North Korea mourns, its neighbor shrugs

The mourners included many members of the country's 1.2 million-strong armed forces.

Kim's two other sons, Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Chol, were not spotted.

Kim Jong Il, who led the nation with an iron fist following his father Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, died of a heart attack Dec. 17 at age 69, according to state media.

• PhotoBlog: North Korean heir leads procession

Heavy snow was falling in Pyongyang, which state media characterized in the early days of mourning as proof that the skies were "grieving" for Kim as well. 

"How can the sky not cry?" a weeping soldier standing in the snow said to state TV. "The people ... are all crying tears of blood."

A national memorial service is due to take place at noon Thursday, state media said.

Updated at 7:03 a.m. ET: Speaking from Seoul, NBC News' Adrienne Mong tells TODAY that as video footage of procession was only available via state media, it is not possible to know how much of the grieving was "staged."

Updated at 6:28 a.m. ET: An essay in Workers' Party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun, which was carried in English by the Korean Central News Agency, says Kim Jong Un will take "warm care of the people left by Kim Jong Il."

Updated at 4:22 a.m. ET: Angus Walker, Beijing correspondent for Britain's ITV, examines why North Koreans haven't chosen this moment to overthrow the Kim dynasty. "The regime knows its power relies on the power of propaganda," he writes. "In North Korea he was the only hero, the only film and TV star, the only person pictured in the papers. North Koreans were told he was the most famous person on earth, in a world without Hollywood or the Internet many believe it, he was a religion, a cult, a god and a king combined."

Updated at 4:15 a.m. ET: Britain's former ambassador to North Korea tells the BBC the future of the country's regime is "unsustainable".

Updated at 4:02 a.m. ET: Sky News' foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall questions how much of the emotion is real. "If the camera is on you ... you know what is expected," he says.

Updated at 3:02 a.m. ET: North Korea state TV broadcast of funeral procession ends.

Updated at 2:59 a.m. ET: Gunfire during ceremony "still doesn't mask the sound of wailing," NBC News' Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) reports.

Updated at 2:50 a.m. ET: BNO News' Michael van Poppel (@mpoppel) cites North Korea state media as saying mourners shouting: "Fatherly general, don't go, please! Never, never! Come back please!"

• Will younger Kim's aunt, uncle be puppet masters?

Updated at 2:26 a.m. ET: Chico Harlan (@chicoharlan), the Washington Post's East Asia correspondent, tweets: "N. Korea is so close to comedy but obviously a tragedy. Seeing this guy, no matter the stagecraft, made me sad." Click here to see the photo.

Updated at 2:16 a.m. ET: BBC News' Lucy Williamson points out that many "senior military and party officials ... may well now be jostling for influence in the new regime.

"Some say North Korea's reluctance to open up the funeral ceremony to foreign delegations may signal that those hierarchies have not yet been fully agreed," she adds.

• Politics trump hunger in North Korea

Updated at 2:12 a.m. ET:  "After motorcade passed, some North Koreans seem to be leaving quickly," BNO News' Michael van Poppel (@mpoppel) tweets.

Updated at 1:38 a.m. ET: "I think a lot of that is fake crying," Los Angeles Times' Beijing bureau chief Barbara Demick tells Britain's Sky News. "There is a lot of pressure to out do your neighbor in showing your grief." Demick is also author of "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea."

Updated at 1:22 a.m. ET: Citing U.N. data, Reuters notes that the average North Korean now dies three-and-a-half years earlier than they did when "Eternal President" Kim Il Sung died in 1994.

• Archival video: Kim Il Sung dies

North Korea is one of the most closed and poorest societies on earth, ranking 194 out of 227 countries in terms of per capita wealth, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Updated at 1:15 a.m. ET: NBC News' Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) tweets that a "soundtrack of wailing" and "emotive announcer" feature as part of North Korean state TV's coverage. 

• Were circumstances of Kim Jong Il's death fabricated?

Updated at 1:08 a.m ET: North Korea carried out a meticulously choreographed funeral for late leader Kim Jong Il on Wednesday and affirmed that the country was now in the "warm care" of his young son, extending the Kim family's hold on power to a third generation.

Footage broadcast on North Korea's state television showed Kim's youngest son and successor Kim Jong Un walking next to his father's hearse.

Foreign dignitaries in the city had been asked to gather at a sports stadium shortly before noon to be taken to see the hearse pass at the start of the funeral procession through Pyongyang, according to a diplomat who asked that her name not be used due to the sensitivity of the details.

• SLIDESHOW: The life of Kim Jong Il
• SLIDESHOW: Reaction to death of Kim Jong Il
• SLIDESHOW: Journey into North Korea
• Browse more of msnbc.com's North Korea coverage

The Associated Press, Reuters, msnbc.com staff and NBC News contributed to this report.

 

LONDON -- A young man was stabbed to death on one of London's busiest shopping streets as thousands took part in post-Christmas sales on Monday.

The victim, 18, died near the Foot Locker sports shop at the junction of Oxford Street and Stratford Place at about 1.45 p.m. GMT (8.45 a.m. ET) close to Bond Street Tube station, reported BBC News.

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Pictures on Twitter showed medics trying to save the man, who the newspaper said staggered from the store before collapsing on the pavement.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said 10 people had been arrested but was unable to confirm if the victim had been involved in a dispute over a pair of shoes.

"It is too early to tell for certain," he said. "As you can imagine, there are literally dozens of witnesses in what would have been an extremely crowded street and it is going to take time to sort out what exactly happened."

A section of Oxford Street from Bond Street Tube station towards Selfridges department store was closed while investigations continued.

Several shops in the area have been forced to shut early because they were inside the police cordon.

An employee at the nearby Disney Store told BBC News the company's outlet was "unlikely to open again today."

msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

                                         

MOSCOW -- Saturday's protest was doubly impressive in that so many could have made excuses not to show. It was snowing, it was bone-chillingly cold, and it was the beginning of the Russian holiday season. Anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 people, by my guess, filled up Avenue Prof. (Andrei) Sakharov (the USSR's once infamous dissident) in Moscow and it must have signaled to the Kremlin "observers," hiding behind tinted glass in four-wheel drive vehicles beyond the police barriers, that the unprecedented protest two weeks earlier had been no fluke.

But where does it go from here? Will this protest movement -- marked so far by restraint, humor and non-violence -- turn a Russian winter into a "Russian Spring"?

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There are already ominous signs.

Alexei Navalny, a passionate orator who until recently was known only to social networkers as an anti-corruption blogger, is quickly emerging as the new face of the anti-Vladimir Putin opposition. He roused the crowd on Saturday, declaring that if the movement weren't peaceful it could easily have taken over the Kremlin with the Russian crowd at hand. But, he warned, that could change if Putin connived to steal the NEXT presidential election, in March. "If these crooks and thieves go on cheating us, if they continue telling lies and stealing from us, we will take what belongs to us with our own hands.''

This wasn't just crowd-pleasing rhetoric coming from an aspiring leader. Many protesters, like 30-year-old Vasily Gnuchev, a normally quiet, self-employed architect, see red when faced with the possibility, even likelihood, that Prime Minster Vladimir Putin will not only win the presidency but rule for yet another two six-year terms.

"It's absolutely unacceptable that the man who's in power [already] for 12 years will be here for 12 years more!," Vasily spurted out in a rented apartment in dire need of repairs, literally red with anger. "We don't want another revolution, or bloodshed, but if Putin is going to win then there may be a "Russian Spring -- not an Arab Spring but a Russian one."

Putin, after the initial shock of barely scraping by in the parliamentary elections of Dec. 4, said nothing about the protests for a week,  then treated them with contempt. He finally realized he had to engage, and (through the usual conduit of Russian President cum Putin spokesman Dmitri Medvedev) announced on Thursday a set of positive political reforms, none of which would take effect until the next cycle, in six years.

Which makes Vasily see red ... again. ''We don't have six years to wait. And we know what will come of it in six years. It will be blah- blah-blah and nothing else!'

Some of my Russian analyst friends in Moscow are quick to point out that Russia is not the Middle East. That the Arab Spring happened to dictatorships based on violence and repression. And that Russia -- with all of its abuses -- is still an open society with a market economy and that the "Freedom Genie" can never be put back into the bottle.

Fyodor Lukyanov is one of President Medvedev's advisers on human rights who took the courageous step this week of calling for the annulment and repeat of the Dec. 4  parliamentary elections. He believes the only way Putin can win back his popularity is by running a squeaky clean and transparent campaign for president.

"Putin may go to a second round -- that's OK,  he can still beat any of the contenders in the second round,'' says Lukyanov. ''And he will have his legitimacy back -- maybe not in the amount he had 10 years ago, but a big part of the population believes that Putin is much better than anybody else.''

For many protesters, the animosity goes way beyond Putin the candidate. Vasily's father, Fyodor, now 50, says he watched in shock as the Soviet Union fell 20 years ago, then in horror as Russia passed, rudderless, through a decade of economic collapse and war. And then came Putin. Stability. Prosperity. "All over the country there was a scream of joy when we got rid of this alcoholic, Yeltsin. We finally saw a man who was sane, who was physically fit, and he wasn't reading from his notes," recalled the older Gnuchev.

His son Vasily says he was too young to remember the bad old days of democratic Russia. But he prospered under Putin, and always felt free. And that's the real problem. The Putin regime's reportedly widespread electoral fraud pulled the rug from under a whole generation who believed in their leader, who believed in Putinism. "Now we see that everything is a lie," Vasily explained. "The Kremlin just stole our votes  -- it's just incompatible with the picture of the world we grew up in."

It's that humiliation -- indeed, violation -- mixed with anger that seems to drive many Russian, middle-class protesters into the streets -- even when the elements are conspiring against them -- and will keep the pressure on Putin, with promises of more protests to come. But what if this "people power" movement really blossoms, only to be thwarted yet again, not in a free and fair election come March, but by another brazen, Putin-led ploy to retain power?

Lukyanov admits he's "cautiously pessimistic." "Unfortunately," he told me, "Russian and Soviet and pre-Soviet history shows us that those in power are capable of making almost any mistakes and stupidities."

On the one hand,  "Russian people" determined to take back the country they feel they've lost, and on the other,  "Russian power" equally determined to hold onto it. What's next? "It's absolutely impossible to predict the course of events in 2012," offered Lukyanov.

Whatever happens, those two driving forces of 2012 look to be on a collision course.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London who has covered the Soviet Union and Russia since the 1980s.

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