The new czar? President Putin at his second inauguration, at the Kremlin in Moscow in May. Since becoming President in 1999, he has rolled back democratic reforms.

• Author: Myers, Steven Lee
• Position: International - Cover Story

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand why Russia's President Vladimir Putin says that in order to combat terrorism it's necessary to roll back democratic reforms that had swept the country after the collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union in 1991.

CRITICAL THINKING/DISCUSSION: Students should understand Putin's central thesis: Democracy leads to chaos and disrupts the unity (read: strong government authority) needed to overcome those who would seek to "disintegrate" the country.

Ask students to discuss Putin's reasoning. Why does he fear that free elections and a free press aid those who seek to destroy the country? Do a probing press and free elections threaten national unity?

Note that while it cannot be compared to Russia's "experience, many Americans are concerned that the Patriot Act, passed after 9/11, may threaten democracy by increasing government surveillance over citizens. Ask: Do terror threats require extraordinary steps to preserve safety and unity?

WRITING: Assign students to write a brief letter to an imaginary Russian teenager. The letter should focus on how Americans view free speech and free elections. How have Americans responded to the continuing danger of terrorist attacks?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* Why do American and Russian histories cause people in each culture to see democracy so differently?

* How would you answer Valentina Matviyenko's criticism of elections?

QUOTE OF NOTE: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. "--Winston Churchill. (1947)

WED WATCH: www.cia.gov. The CIA provides economic, political, and social data on Russia. Click on "The World Factbook" and go to "Russia." www.luptravel.com/worldmaps/russia.html provides many maps of Russia and its republics. Click on "Chechnya"; look to the left, in North Ossetia, to find Beslan, where rebels killed 331 at a school in September.

During most of Russia's turbulent thousand-year-plus history, the country has been ruled, not led. "There's a saying in Russia," says Oleg A. Delman, a member of the local parliament in Chuvashia, one of Russia's republics. "A country without its czar is like a village without an idiot."

So to some observers inside and outside Russia, President Vladimir Putin's announcement in September that he was overhauling the nation's political system and further curtailing democratic reforms as a response to the terrorist attack on a school in Beslan came as...