Some -- OK, me too -- are prone to describe this or that Russian airplane as a copycat of a similar Western model. The IL-62, for one, with its foursome of aft-mounted power plants, is a doppelganger of the old Vickers VC-10. But this is only somewhat fair. The three-engine Tu-154 looks to be a 727 knockoff, as nicely displayed here. Then again, the 727 was itself styled on the De Havilland Trident. From the mid-1950s through about 1970 it was hard to tell who mimicked whom. The jetliner biz was a busy and rapidly developing one: Britain's Comet, Trident, and BAC One-Eleven; France's Caravelle; America's Boeings, Douglases and Convairs.

Guilty as charged though when it comes to Tupolev's Tu-144, aka "Concordski." The -144 beat out the Anglo/French Concorde by two months, and its development is a tale of serious Cold War espionage, complete with Concorde specs smuggled into Russia by train, carefully concealed in toothpaste tubes. Faster and bigger than Concorde, yet lighter and even less efficient, the -144 debuted on the always glamorous Moscow-Alma Ata pairing. Though quickly withdrawn from passenger service, it flew research missions into the 1990s.

Russia also lays claim to the first mass-produced regional jet. Powered by three tiny turbofans, the Yakovlev Yak-40 was 30 years ahead of its time, taking to the air in 1968. With seating for about 30, the mini-liner became a mainstay of intercity short haul, with more than 1,000 built.

Conversely, the engineers at Antonov brought us two of aviation's biggest aircraft: the An-124, roughly the size of a 747, and the six-engine behemoth An-225. Although only two examples of the latter were constructed -- commonly spotted with the Russian space shuttle, Buran, perched on top -- it's easily the largest airplane ever made, with a maximum takeoff weight of 1,332,000 pounds and a 290-foot wingspan.

Aside from limited numbers sold to China, Africa and the Middle East, the Reds never found many buyers beyond the Iron Curtain. Upon dissolution of the USSR, what few foreign customers there were, mostly in Eastern Europe, began the grinding process of swapping out Cold War pumpkins for Boeings and Airbuses. Take a ride on the national carriers of Poland, Hungary or the Czech Republic today and you'll find yourself on a 737 or an A320. Fifteen years ago it was different (and I imagine the turnover must have been as painful and expensive as when, in those same years, I began converting my vinyl albums into compact discs).

A few distant holdouts remain. Castro's airline, Cubana, and the enigmatic Air Koryo of North Korea, to name a pair. Within the prior Soviet republics, however, many hundreds of Tupolevs, Ilyushins, Antonovs and Yaks continue to fly.

And why not? Taxiing at Mexico City one morning, we passed a Cubana IL-62, and our captain remarked: "Look at that old thing!" I jotted down the registration and checked it against my books. The Cubana jet was vintage 1990. That's 22 years younger than the freighter jet in which we sat. The mere exotica of the Soviet designs -- the multitudinous cockpit windows, the downward anhedral -- seems to say old. In truth, many models were kept in production for several decades. Tu-154s were rolling from the factory until 1996. Old blueprints; new metal.