In Slate, Anne Applebaum addresses one of the most important issues of our day: Why are there so many gorgeous female tennis players from the former Soviet Union?

To put it bluntly, in the Soviet Union there was no market for female beauty. No fashion magazines featured beautiful women, since there weren’t any fashion magazines. No TV series depended upon beautiful women for high ratings, since there weren’t any ratings. There weren’t many men rich enough to seek out beautiful women and marry them…..

But freedom (well, kind of) has changed everything!

In the past, you had to play chess or be a champion gymnast to come to international attention if you were born in the Eastern bloc—chess and competitive sports figuring among the few party-approved export industries. Nowadays, stars in fields previously unsanctioned by the party—crime novelists, conceptual artists, computer whizzes—from Russia, Hungary, or Uzbekistan have a shot at fame and fortune, too….

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall indeed.

Maria Sharapova: Proof that capitalism works.