Fyodor's Russia: the shortages and bread lines are gone, but Russians like Fyodor Sozontov, 18, have new concerns--like war, corruption, and a growing rich-poor divide.

• Author: Myers, Steven Lee

BACKGROUND

Russia, the Largest republic in the former Soviet Union, remains the world's Largest country and one of its most powerful. Today, many in the West are wary of Russia's apparent slide back toward authoritarian rule. "Fyodor's Russia" provides a glimpse of Life in Russia today through the eyes of a St. Petersburg teenager.

CRITICAL THINKING

* Direct attention to the fact that some of post-Communist democratic freedoms have been withdrawn or curtailed. Ask students why they think so many young people don't embrace democracy and 36 percent say they would prefer authoritarian rule.

* Tell students that there is no history of democracy in Russia. Further, many people saw their living standards fall and guaranteed employment disappear after the fall of Communism. The end of the Communist Party's authoritarian rule was one factor that allowed the increase in corruption the article describes.

WRITING PROMPT

* Assign students to write a five paragraph essay in which they explain how their views of democracy and government are similar to or different from those of Fyodor Sozontov.

* Students should give specific examples to bolster their views.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* Ask students for a few examples of how corruption hurts a society. (It raises costs for everyone. It weakens faith in government and other institutions. It rewards criminals.]

* If you were a young Russian male, would you pay a bribe to escape the military draft?

The diagnoses from the hospital, many of them years old, were Fyodor Sozontov's backup plan. They proved, he said, that something was wrong with him. He read them out slowly, the medical conditions too difficult for him to pronounce: osteochondrosis, arachnoiditis, and cerebral angiodystonia.

The draft board was skeptical. During his first visit, obligatory for all young Russian men in high school, the officers declared him fit for military service. "But that was kind of a surface examination," Fyodor says. "They practically did not look into anything."

Fyodor, who lives in St. Petersburg, turned 18 in October. He is a soft-spoken teenager who spent last summer engaged in a rite of passage for young men in Russia: dodging the draft.

MALLS & MTV

His attempt to get out of military service has affected almost everything about his life, his attitude toward authority, his hopes for his own future and that of Russia. "They say you serve your Motherland--you defend it," he says. "Well, it is a difficult question. You have to live here a while to understand it."

Fyodor was born a citizen of a country--the Soviet Union--that ceased to exist in 1991. Russia, the largest of the 15 republics that emerged from the Soviet rubble, offers him opportunities that young people of an earlier era could never have dreamed of. Instead of chronic shortages and lines for bread and meat, they can shop in gleaming supermarkets. They can buy...