I know very little about judo. Actually, I know nothing about it at all. Yet I like the image of two people wearing cool outfits accentuated by stylish belts, circling the mat with stony faces, waiting for the right moment to jump at each other like two splendid bobcats. It is undoubtedly the sport of the bold. And of the smart. And, in my opinion, of the noble.

This is why I rejoiced when I learned that the new Russian president, Vladimir Putin, holds black belt in judo. A black belt -- wow! In the late 1970s, when we were youngsters, that was a real mark of distinction in the Russian underground culture. Fat, floppy, slow-moving Soviet leaders were giving each other silly awards like the Order of Lenin or the Order of the Red Banner Order or the Order of the Friendship of Peoples. Real men were getting black belts.

At that time, martial arts originating in East Asia were barely tolerated by authorities. Soviet watchdogs correctly presumed that alien martial arts were almost as dangerous as books by George Orwell or American chewing gum. After all, the Soviet Union did have its own version of judo -- a thing called sambo; it sounded foreign, but it wasn’t. “Sambo” was an abbreviation, typical of the official slang of patriotic posters and Pravda editorials. It stood for something like “self-defense without weapons.”