51.   In a historic move to expand the Western military alliance closer to Russia, NATO agreed Tuesday to ask three former Soviet bloc nations to join its circle.

52.   In addition to Ireland, the foundation supports projects in South Africa, the former Soviet bloc, Eastern Europe, Israel and Jordan.

53.   In a report released in September, UNICEF found that the living standards of women and girls throughout the former Soviet bloc had deteriorated.

54.   In discussing these states, Pentagon officials seek every opportunity to equate them with the former Soviet bloc.

55.   In the Soviet bloc, you had to be crazy not to be paranoid about a government whose officials published election results in advance and lied about the weather.

56.   Instead of trying to limit arms trafficking around the globe, it is now ready to make sales to former Soviet bloc countries.

57.   It barely budged in sub-Saharan Africa and actually increased in the former Soviet bloc.

58.   It has been five years since the collapse of the Soviet bloc began cutting the subsidized trade on which Cubans lived for three decades.

59.   It is the first city of the former Soviet bloc to be honored in this way.

60.   Its traditional customers, governments in the old Soviet bloc, disappeared when Communism collapsed a decade ago.