NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Here's a shameless pun we cannot resist. Leaders in Russia appear to be hair tomorrow -- hair today -- I'm going to get it right. Let me start over. It's supposed to be hair today, gone tomorrow. Can you tell I didn't want to say it?</s>LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: That's what I was wondering about. You'll understand why we couldn't let that one go...</s>ALLEN: Or say it.</s>WATERS: ... after you watch CNN's Jonathan Mann comb through the coiffes of Kremlin leadership.</s>JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lenin said there was a pattern to history. So how about this one? Look at his head -- pretty much bald. His successor, Stalin, had a thick, coarse crop of hair, setting a history that Marx would say was destined to repeat itself. After Stalin came Khrushchev -- bald again, then Brezhnev, and the Kremlin combs were back in service. And so it has been, Russia's leaders coming and going in a dependable dialectic of the haired and hairless. Even Gorbachev, who tried to change Russia in so many ways, left only a superficial mark on the system. And when Boris Yeltsin resigned, there was a pretty bald wannabe patiently waiting his turn: Communist Gennady Zyuganov. Instead, the job went to Vladimir Putin. Politically, Putin has been something of an enigma -- all things to all people. But what about his head? Hardly bushy, but hardly bald. There may be simple message here. Vladimir Putin may be a leader who surprises people or else he may just go bald. Jonathan Mann, CNN, Moscow,
Russian History Marches On in Parade of Haired and Hairless