U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concludes her 11-day Africa trip with a visit to the tiny nation of Cape Verde. Emphasizing good governance, Clinton visited seven nations during the longest foreign trip of her tenure.

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou raises the death toll estimate from flooding and mudslides caused by Typhoon Morakot from 100 to 500.

Violence flares in Russia’s Caucasus region as four policemen are killed by separatists in Chechnya’s capital of Grozny. The attack comes a day after four policemen and seven women are killed by Islamic separatists at a bath house in neighboring Dagestan.

All schools in Mumbai, India close for a week as the number of H1N1 cases rise.

Former president and senior Iranian cleric, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani calls for the release of jailed post-election protesters. At his first Friday sermon since the presidential vote, Rafsanjani requests the end of media restraints and makes an appeal for a broadcast debate about the disputed vote.

Chechnya’s president Ramzan Kadyrov denies responsibility in the murder of Russian human-rights activist Natalia Estemirova. Estemirova was kidnapped outside of her home in the Chechen capital, Grozny, and her body was found on Wednesday in the neighboring region of Ingushetia. Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial human rights group for which she had documented hundreds of cases of abuse in Chechnya, accused the president of her murder.

Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is acquitted of the hijacking charges that have legally kept him from running for public office. Sharif was convicted in 2000 of hijacking after attempting to prevent the landing of an aircraft in Pakistan carrying former president Pervez Musharraf, who was head of the military at the time. Sharif went into exhile in Saudi Arabia after being deposed in a coup in 1999.

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir chooses not to attend the Smart Partnership Dialogue conference in Kampala, Uganda, after he was warned of the arrest warrant for seven charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity ordered by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in March. The African Union, which includes Uganda, decided earlier this month not to cooperate with al-Bashir’s arrest warrant.

Seventeen people are killed in Maoist attacks on polling centers during today’s general elections in India.

At least sixteen Iraqi soldiers are killed in a suicide bombing on an airbase in Anbar province.

President Obama heads to Mexico to meet with his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderón ahead of this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.

Anna Politkovskaya appearing in the WIDE ANGLE documentary The Russian Newspaper Murders two years before her own murder.

Politkovskaya was murdered two years ago at age 48 in a contract-style killing in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, the birthday of then-President Vladimir Putin. Having won international acclaim for her reports exposing the brutality of Russian and Chechen troops in Chechnya, her murder immediately threw suspicion on the Russian and Chechen security forces. On the anniversary of Politkovskaya’s death last week, commemorative posts flooded the Russian blogosphere.

Three men are facing trial for connection with her killing: two Chechen brothers, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, charged with surveillance of Politkovskaya, and a Russian police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, charged with providing technical support. All three deny the accusations. So far, Russian authorities have failed to identify the mastermind of the murder, and the suspected gunman, a third Makhumdov brother, remains at large.

Colleagues from Politkovskaya’s newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, lobbied to have the case opened to the public and the media. But authorities decided instead on a military trial, claiming that much of the material involved is classified.

Moskalenko, who is representing Politkovskaya’s son and daughter, is a prominent human rights attorney whose clients have included Kremlin critics such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon jailed by Putin in 2003; opposition leader and former chess champion Garry Kasparov; and Alexander Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer who was murdered two years ago after ingesting a highly toxic radioactive substance. In an interview yesterday with the television station FRANCE 24, Moskalenko reacted to her suspicious run-in with mercury: “The exact nature of the act is not clear. Was the intention to provoke or to harm us, to poison me? Those who did this clearly intended to keep me unaware of the presence of the substance. But we’re still waiting for final results from police and forensic investigations.”

The Moscow judge at yesterday’s hearing refused a request that the session be delayed because of Moskalenko’s sudden illness, and pretrial hearings began without her. The next court date is set for November 17, with jury selection scheduled for the following day.

Prior to her murder, Anna Politkovskaya appeared in WIDE ANGLE’s 2004 film The Russian Newspaper Murders boldly testifying about the risks journalists face in modern-day Russia.

LESSON PLANS:

Accountability for Human Rights Violations

This lesson plan provides an opportunity to explore human rights violations and international courts of law. Students focus primarily on the case study of Slobodan Miloseviç’s regime.

Are All Children at the Same Starting Gate?

In this lesson, students learn about the differences in education systems in developing and developed nations, explore the factors that impede schooling, examine efforts to ensure universal access to education, and undertake a project that supports these efforts.

China’s Rule of Law: Changing with the Times?

Students identify and analyze the positive and negative effects of China’s changing legal system and build on their findings to design a program to promote a just and efficient legal system in China.

The Effects of Globalization

Use this lesson to explore the theme of global economics. Students investigate the impact of the World Trade Organization in developing countries.

Exploring Freedom of Expression

In order to understand what freedom of expression is, students first need to be able to define expression and recognize its various forms.

Gang Violence from L.A. to El Salvador

In this lesson, students will look at the harsh realities of gang life, the impact of gang life on Salvadoran society, and what is and isn’t being done to resolve the issue.

The Growth of Business and the Rise of Conservative Islam in Turkey

In this lesson, students explore the changes taking place in Turkish society and the Turkish economy.

Human Rights Basics

This lesson is designed to help children conduct a human rights discussion and understand the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Rwanda: A Nation Recovering and Rebuilding

Students will learn about the history of Rwanda and the genocide that killed 800,000 men, women, and children.

Something’s Fishy in Scotland

Explore the plight of fishing families in Scotland by researching the impact of the European Union’s fishing policies on the social, personal, environmental, economic and political realities of a small community.

Suppression or Liberation: Islam, Hijab and Modern Society

Students will explore basic beliefs and practices of Islam and examine the different views of women’s modesty and hijab among Muslims and in modern society.

Violence as a Means of Resistance

With this case study, students will explore the question of whether violence is an acceptable means of resistance to oppression or whether diplomacy and political solutions must be pursued instead.

The Russian army’s official death toll since 1999 is 3,000, and the Chechen rebels’ violent tactics have taken the lives of both Russians and Chechens who cooperate with them. The rebels’ deadliest weapons are mines, which run the risk of killing innocent civilian bystanders.

With this case study, students will explore the question of whether violence is an acceptable means of resistance to oppression or whether diplomacy and political solutions must be pursued instead. They will examine these perspectives:

• It is acceptable for those struggling for independence or freedom from occupation to use violent means.
• It is not acceptable for those struggling for independence or freedom from occupation to use violent means.

Using the Academic Controversy model, students will develop skills in: creating and presenting arguments; researching; collaboration and communication; conflict resolution and consensus-building. Students will be evaluated on participation, use of student organizers, and a culminating project, which will demonstrate their understanding of the content and their mastery of the Academic Controversy process.

Grade Level: 9-12

Time Allotment

Longer Version: This lesson can span from one to two weeks. Ideally, two to three days of introduction to Academic Controversy, student research, and position-development should be allowed; one to two days for engaging in the Academic Controversy itself (presentation of positions, open discussion, reversal of positions); and two days for the synthesis of the positions and the preparation of a joint report. If the teacher chooses to extend the lesson by assigning additional case studies to individual students or small groups of students, the lesson could last for a couple of weeks.

Compressed Version: This lesson could also be completed in two to three days. This would include one day for introduction to Academic Controversy, student research, position-development (with one to two homework assignments to supplement class time); one day for the structured controversy; and one day for the synthesis of the positions and the preparation of a joint report.

Learning Objectives:

Students Will

Investigate the history of the war in Chechnya, the impact of the Russian occupation on the lives of Chechens, and the consequences of the violence employed by both the Russian forces and the Chechen separatist rebels.

Explore the issue of violence vs. non-violence as a means of resistance to oppression and as a way to achieve independence.

Consider the alternatives to violence and what the pros and cons of such non-violent means might be.

Understand the following terms and concepts: separatists, guerrillas, occupation, civilians, independence

Develop research, presentation, writing and conflict resolution skills that can be applied to numerous other content areas and case studies.

Academic Standards:

Historical Understanding Standard 1
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/
Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=3&StandardID=1
Understands and knows how to analyze chronological relationships and patterns Benchmark: Understands historical continuity and change related to a particular development or theme.

World History Standard 44
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/
Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=6&StandardID=44
Understands the search for community, stability, and peace in an interdependent world Benchmarks: Understands the role of political ideology, religion, and ethnicity in shaping modern governments; Understands the role of ethnicity, cultural identity, and religious beliefs in shaping economic and political conflicts across the globe.

Civics Standard 22
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/
Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=14&StandardID=22
Understands how the world is organized politically into nation-states, how nation-states interact with one another, and issues surrounding U.S. foreign policy. Benchmarks: Understands the purposes and functions of major governmental international organizations and major nongovernmental international organizations; Knows some important bilateral and multilateral agreements to which the United States is signatory.

Language Arts Standard 4
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/
Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=7&StandardID=4
Gathers and uses information for research purposes. Benchmarks: Uses appropriate research methodology; Uses a variety of print and electronic sources to gather information for research topics; Synthesizes information from multiple research studies to draw conclusions that go beyond those found in any of the individual studies; Writes research papers.

Chechen Children’s Drawings
http://www.idee.org/chchilddraw.htm
Very powerful pictures drawn by Chechen children depicting their daily realities in a war-torn society.

“Abuse and Lawlessness Continue in Chechnya.” Human Rights Watch News
http://hrw.org/press/2002/02/russia0228.htm
An overview of the 51-page Human Rights Watch report entitled “Swept Under: Torture, Forced Disappearances, and Extrajudicial Killings During Sweep Operations in Chechnya.” This site also provides links to a photo gallery and video clip dealing with the stories of those who have “disappeared.”

General Background Resources:

“A Chechnya Primer,” TIME.com
http://www.time.com/time/daily/special/
russia/chechnya.html
A good background piece on Chechnya: its ethnic makeup, the importance of Chechnya to Russia, and Chechnya’s prospects in its battle with Russia.

“The Most Durable Power,” Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/
Visit the “Quotes” area of this Stanford University site to access a brief excerpt of Dr. King’s sermon about the pursuit of justice through non-violent means.

Quote from the Autobiography of Malcolm X
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmalcolmX.htm
In this famous quote — located under “(8) On his return from Mecca, Malcolm X explained his new views on racism and violence (March, 1964)” — the civil rights leader expresses his philosophy of fighting racism by any means necessary.

Materials

Teachers will need the following to prepare and implement this lesson: Internet access; a world map in the classroom; an understanding of the Academic Controversy process; copies of Student Handouts. If students do not have Internet access in the classroom, teachers will need to photocopy and prepare Resource Packets for students using materials from the Resources above. Teachers should select materials that are most appropriate for their students’ reading level, and the packets should include a variety of different resources – for example, articles and essays, maps, graphs and other visuals, and primary documents. For the Resource Packets, teachers will want to include a number of selections from the “Case-Specific,” and “General Background” sections of the Resources.

Students will need the following to complete this lesson: Resource Packets provided by their teachers; paper and pens; an understanding of the Academic Controversy process; copies of Student Handouts. Internet access in the classroom is a helpful resource, and if it’s available, the teacher can assign more “investigative” research tasks.

by David Remnick

Reprinted from the September 2004 issue of THE NEW YORKER

In Russia, the tragic sense is not limited to Chekhovian intellectuals or tyranny’s victims. Even the privileged few, insulated by high office and a pride of bodyguards, know the truth when they care to look out a Kremlin window. In the post-Soviet period, Russian fatalism was captured best by a former prime minister and natural-gas magnate, Viktor Chernomyrdin, when he remarked, after yet another disaster of state, “We wanted it to go better, but it turned out as always.”

The hope that the collapse of Communism would lead to the evolution of a liberal, democratic order in the East remains a working proposition in Poland, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere in the region. But in Russia it has, in many respects, turned out as always. Some of the crises were predictable from the outset of the post-Communist era. It will take many years for the national economy to recover from seven decades of Communism, not to mention centuries of feudal autocracy; it may take another generation for the national psyche to heal. But only those with the most well-honed tragic sense could have imagined that in 2004 Russia would be ruled by a President whose language and instincts were shaped by his career as an officer of the K.G.B., and that the country’s most urgent threat would come from ruthless Chechen terrorists who increasingly modelled their tactics and ideology on the jihadists of the Middle East and South Asia.

The slaughter in the town of Beslan earlier this month [September 3, 2004] of hundreds of schoolchildren and their parents was a crime for which there is no defense. The act of shooting children in the back as they try to flee is no more comprehensible than the act of steering commercial airliners into office buildings. As many Russians acknowledge, however, there is a past, an original sin, behind the new crisis.

Among the results of the fall of Communism was the dissolution of the “internal empire,” the fifteen republics of the old Soviet Union. And because Russia itself was made up of eighty-nine regions, some with a complicated history, Russia’s borders, too, came into question. In the euphoria of the period, President Boris Yeltsin encouraged the various regions to assume as much sovereignty “as you can swallow.” After decades of Soviet centralism, he was thinking of a reform of degrees. But Chechnya, which had bridled under Moscow’s rule since the nineteenth century and suffered mass deportations and killings under Stalin, declared outright independence.

In Russia, the tragic sense is not limited to Chekhovian intellectuals or tyranny’s victims. Even the privileged few, insulated by high office and a pride of bodyguards, know the truth when they care to look out a Kremlin window. In the post-Soviet period, Russian fatalism was captured best by a former prime minister and natural-gas magnate, Viktor Chernomyrdin, when he remarked, after yet another disaster of state, “We wanted it to go better, but it turned out as always.

Two women seeking comfort from each other after the siege of School No. 1

The hope that the collapse of Communism would lead to the evolution of a liberal, democratic order in the East remains a working proposition in Poland, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere in the region. But in Russia it has, in many respects, turned out as always. Some of the crises were predictable from the outset of the post-Communist era. It will take many years for the national economy to recover from seven decades of Communism, not to mention centuries of feudal autocracy; it may take another generation for the national psyche to heal. But only those with the most well-honed tragic sense could have imagined that in 2004 Russia would be ruled by a President whose language and instincts were shaped by his career as an officer of the K.G.B., and that the country’s most urgent threat would come from ruthless Chechen terrorists who increasingly modelled their tactics and ideology on the jihadists of the Middle East and South Asia.

In 1994, Yeltsin invaded, encouraged by a circle of advisers who promised a “small and victorious war.” It was neither. The Russians shelled Grozny. They rampaged through villages with tanks intended to make war on nato. More than eighty thousand Chechens, almost all of them civilians, died. Tens of thousands were left homeless or fled to other parts of Russia. Grozny was reduced to rubble, and the republic to a state of lawless ruin much like Afghanistan after its war with the Soviet Union.

And out of a terrible war came terror. Shamil Basayev, the Chechen commander who likely ordered all the massacres of the past month [September 20, 2004 -- October 20, 2004]—the murders in Beslan, the bombing of two airliners in flight, the bombing outside a Moscow subway station—came to Moscow as a young man, studied land management, and tried to sell computers for a living. In August, 1991, he was among the thousands of volunteers who helped defend the Russian White House, and Yeltsin, against the coup plotters. Then he returned to Chechnya, where he joined the military wing of the independence movement. In 1995, with Grozny destroyed, Basayev and around a hundred of his men took more than a thousand hostages, including women and children, in the town of Budyonnovsk—an event that augured the rise of a new kind of insurgency.

Chechnya today is as close to a Hobbesian state as exists on earth. Grozny is a moonscape of gas fires, open sewers, and bombed-out buildings. There is almost no legitimate economy: at least seventy-five percent of the Chechen workforce is unemployed. Criminal gangs dominate the social order. Politicians are assassinated; journalists and aid workers are abducted, even executed. The Russian Army troops who remain are corrupt, lawless, given to raping, kidnapping, and executing civilians. Whatever funds Moscow sends for rebuilding invariably end up stolen.

In recent years, especially since September 11, 2001, Putin has tried hard to paint Basayev as the equivalent of Osama bin Laden, and his men as linked closely with Al Qaeda. This is a complicated equation. Reports of Chechen rebels training with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan remain murky. There is no doubt, however, that Basayev and his followers in Chechnya have been deeply influenced by the tactics, ideology, and language of jihadists abroad. Basayev, who has a bushy beard and a clean-shaven pate, dispatches video and audio manifestos, affecting a bin Laden-like image as a holy warrior. He has taken on field commanders and advisers from Saudi Arabia. And he has cultivated a group of so-called “black widows,” women willing to sacrifice themselves as hostage-takers, assassins, and suicide bombers.

Last week, in the wake of the massacre in Beslan, Putin gathered a group of Western reporters and scholars at his house outside Moscow and repudiated the idea of a negotiated settlement with the likes of Basayev. “Why don’t you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House, engage in talks, ask him what he wants, and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?” he said. “You find it possible to set some limits on your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?”

Putin is an increasingly autocratic leader. He has neutered state-controlled television, compromised the rise of an independent judiciary, and impeded independent political movements and parties. L’état, c’est Putin. And yet he has no choice but to go after Basayev. The demands of the Chechen jihadists now extend beyond Chechen independence. As Basayev made plain with his incursion into the neighboring republic of Dagestan five years ago, he is interested in pure vengeance and in extending his reach throughout the northern Caucasus.

Tank outside the school Credit: Ren Film

In the longer term, finding real negotiating partners will be harder than finding Basayev. “The Russian leadership constantly reiterates that it is fighting not Chechen separatists but international terrorists, and this has finally become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Andrei Piontkovsky, one of the leading political analysts in Moscow, has written. “Thanks to the methods with which we have waged this war, we have turned practically the whole population of Chechnya into enemies.”

The note Putin struck most distinctly at the meeting with reporters and scholars was one of paranoia, fear that outside forces—the enemies he knew as a K.G.B. officer—were somehow undermining him. Those who mean to “tear off a big chunk of our country,” he said, are being backed by those who “think that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear powers of the world, is still a threat, and this threat has to be eliminated.”

And so the Russian people, who live in dread of further violence, find themselves at the mercy of well-trained terrorists in the south and a paranoid President in the Kremlin who refuses the burdens of democratic accountability and the need to reshape a policy that is good for little but more bloodshed. It requires no tragic sense to suppose that things are likely to turn out as always before they turn out otherwise.

David Remnick was the Moscow correspondent for THE WASHINGTON POST in the late ’80s during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book LENIN’S TOMB, and has been editor of THE NEW YORKER magazine since 1998

The standoff came to a tragic end in a chaotic firefight in which several hundred children and adults were killed. In the premiere episode of its fourth season, WIDE ANGLE brings firsthand testimony and unprecedented video shot by terrorists inside the school, to examine the events that unfolded, the Russian government’s failed efforts to manage the crisis, and the legacy of the incident — for surviving hostages, bereaved families and Russia’s future stability.

Read this week’s briefing to learn about the historical roots of the Chechen conflict that led to the siege of Beslan and growing unrest in the region. Learn about the historic roots of conflict among the breakaway republics in the Photo Essay. Find out about the semi-autonomous republics of the North Caucasus in the Interactive Map. Read a firsthand account by Kevin Sim of his experience in Beslan in the Filmmaker Notes.

CIA: The World Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html
The CIA World Fact Book entry on Russia gives viewers a brief summary of the history of this world power, and also provides a breakdown of all the various republics and other subdivisions of this giant country.

North Caucasus: At a Glance
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3632274.stm
This BBC News site provides a brief look into the history of each of the most important areas within the North Caucasus.

Timeline: Russia
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1113655.stm
This BBC chronology provides a summary of key events in Russian history.

Chechnya-Based Terrorists
http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/chechens.html
This Web site, operated by the Council on Foreign Relations, attempts to shed light on some of the more complicated questions regarding the link between Chechen nationalists and terrorism.

The Chechen Conflict
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/europe/2000/chechnya/default.stm
This BBC NEWS site provides extensive information on the evolution of the Chechen conflict with Russia.

CHECHNYA FREE.RU
http://www.chechnyafree.ru/index.php?section=historyeng&lng;=eng
This site provides an excellent collection of resources about Chechnya, including information on Chechen religion, language, and history.

U.S. Department of State
http://www.state.gov/p/eur/ci/rs/
The U.S. State’s Department’s country information page includes a profile of Russia, listings of Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members, as well as other miscellaneous facts.

The Republic of Abkhazia
http://www.abkhazia.org/
This Web site provides information on a wide variety of topics relating to the Republic of Abkhazia, including everything from travel tips to governmental policies.

History of Georgia
http://www.historyofnations.net/asia/georgia.html
This History of Nations site provides a relatively detailed investigation into the history of this conflict-plagued nation.

History of Russia
http://www.historyofnations.net/europe/russia.html
The History of Nations site for Russia delves into the historical background of this superpower.

The Development of Chechen Terrorism
http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/87/347/10444_chechen.html
This article from PRAVDA.RU takes a closer look at the emergence of terrorism as a means employed by Chechen nationalists to fight Russia.

A Gruesome Tour Inside School No. 1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64003-2004Sep5.html
This WASHINGTON POST article provides readers with an insiders glimpse into the aftermath of the siege of School No. 1.

When Hell Came Calling at Beslan’s School No 1
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1297633,00.html
This GUARDIAN article summarizes the details of the siege at Beslan’s School No. 1, and also provides a brief timeline of the history of the conflict between Russia and Chechnya, plus links to a variety of other online resources.

BILL MOYERS: Peter Baker, Susan Glasser, thank you very much for joining us on Wide Angle. You arrived at Beslan on the very first day. On the day this event happened. How did you get there?

PETER BAKER: Well as soon as the reports came in that a school had been taken hostage in southern Russia, we recognized that it was going to be an extraordinary incident that needed to be witnessed first hand. And so I rushed to the airport in Moscow. And it was a roundabout way there because they had closed the airport near Beslan. So we flew into another city, took a long drive through the mountains, and arrived there that first night.

And what we found was an extraordinary scene, an entire town in effect taken hostage. Everybody knew somebody in there. There were 1,200 hostages from a town of 30,000 people. If your own children weren’t in there, your sister’s were or your brother’s were.

And they were all swarming around the school, late at night. They hung out all night there and at the House of Culture nearby. It was extraordinarily gripping.

BILL MOYERS: Where were you?

SUSAN GLASSER: I was in Moscow monitoring all these events, watching as it played out on Russian television, talking to Peter. The communications were very limited. This was perhaps the most chaotic – crisis – of our time in Russia. And basically he had no communications. He was just, you know, sort of there with the people of Beslan. And -

BILL MOYERS: Did he have a cell phone?

SUSAN GLASSER: Yeah, talking on the cell phone. And sometimes the satellite phone even that we had used in war zones. Right -

PETER BAKER: Right.

SUSAN GLASSER: – was what you ended up using to tell me some of the things so that I could get them back and put them on the Washington Post website. Put them in the newspaper.

BILL MOYERS: Was Russian television covering this?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well Russian television was covering this. But in many ways we found this to be a story about the outcome of what President Putin had done with Russian television over the previous four years.

BILL MOYERS: How so?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well in the culminating scenes that we just saw in this film so powerful – these were not played live on Russian television, because there was really no instructions, no orders from the center about what line to take. In fact, as the horrible battle took place and the children were being rescued from the school, hundreds of them were dying, CNN and BBC were live broadcasting these events around the world. And Russian television was all but silent. In fact, on the two main state-run television channels there was a Brazilian soap opera that was playing. And -

BILL MOYERS: As this battle was taking place?

SUSAN GLASSER: Absolutely. Absolutely. A Brazilian soap opera. Because there was no marching orders from the Kremlin. And we had spent at this point nearly four years in Russia covering the Kremlin’s consolidation of control over media outlets.

BILL MOYERS: And it is a state-controlled media?

SUSAN GLASSER: Essentially when you come to television, all three major national networks are under the control of the Kremlin.

Anchor: Bill Moyers

BILL MOYERS: Why did the government not want this event to be covered?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well I think it was such an atmosphere of chaos and horror playing out. It was more that there were no instructions prepared, that this is a very methodical way in which they regulate television. As we were doing the reporting for our book, many participants recounted to us how they would have meetings every Friday at the Kremlin with the major television directors. And they would sit them down and they would have a list of topics of news stories for the coming week and the Kremlin’s recommendations for what to do.

And when it came to the war in Chechnya, often the line would be there on the written handout to the television directors recommendation, do not cover. And so I think that’s the context in which this horrible event in Beslan took place.

BILL MOYERS: It’s as if on 9/11 CNN, ABC, BBC were told by the governments don’t show what’s happening.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well that’s right. Many people in Russia compared the Beslan tragedy to their own 9/11. And yet they had to turn to foreign media, to Western media to see this crisis play out live.

BILL MOYERS: The film that we saw [was] quite dramatic as to what was actually happening there. But no context of where it came from and what happened after. Put those events in context for us.

PETER BAKER: Well this is a culmination of ten years of active warfare in Chechnya in the southern part of Russia, and hundreds of years of ethnic hatred and animosity and imperialism and separatism.

BILL MOYERS: Animosity against the Russians? Against Moscow?

PETER BAKER: It’s a whole mix of things. There’s a whole cauldron of ethnic groups in the southern part of Russia. Some of which were happy to be part of the Moscow empire. And some of which, in particular the Chechens were not.

And what was going on here was an extension of a war that had begun under Yeltsin and was restarted under President Putin in 1999 in which for years unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence escalated each and every time until you got to the point where even school children were considered to be a target of these separatist rebels or terrorists as the Russians would call them and as most people would call them.

So there were no lines anymore. Even in the weeks before Beslan was taken, two Russian airplanes had been taken hostage by Chechen women, suicide bombers who set off explosives, and brought both of them down within three minutes of each other. The first time since 9/11 of course [that] you had seen a multiple airplane, you know, terrorist event. There was also a bombing in a subway station in Moscow. That sort of terrorism -

BILL MOYERS: – that happened the day before the Beslan hostage taking.

SUSAN GLASSER: That’s right.

PETER BAKER: The Metro bombing happened the day before Beslan -

BILL MOYERS: Suicide bombing?

PETER BAKER: – suicide bombing. About ten people killed. The airplanes had gone down a week before. Russia has lived with more terrorism in the last few years than even Israel, if you count just the death toll.

BILL MOYERS: So Beslan didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was part of a train of violence, of terrorism.

SUSAN GLASSER: Absolutely. And what I recall so vividly was that as this played out, I think many Russians knew instinctively and intuitively that it was going to end very badly. And I remember sending e-mails. People around the world, of course, were horrified and transfixed by this event. And I got many e-mails, notes from people. “What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen?” and just had this powerful sense that, you know, this is Russia, it’s not going to end well.

And people were shocked and amazed that this was so clearly what we felt within minutes of the school being seized. And yet -

BILL MOYERS: Why did you feel that – why did you have this anticipation of dread?

SUSAN GLASSER: Because there was a historical precedent for this. We immediately thought – in fact that morning, we were still in our apartment when we found out about the seizure of the school – and what we thought of immediately was Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader who ended up taking credit for this Beslan seizure. And we thought back to the seizure of the hospital in Budyonnovsk. Nearly ten years before. And -

BILL MOYERS: He was the one who led that incident.

SUSAN GLASSER: Exactly. And he took nearly 1,000 hospital patients, doctors, civilians hostage. And more than a 100 died as well in that event.

BILL MOYERS: Putin has compared him to Osama Bin Laden. Do you think that’s an apt comparison?

SUSAN GLASSER: In the context of Chechnya, I do actually think that’s an apt comparison. He is the leader of the jihad that exists in connection with Chechnya. I think though that he is a uniquely Russian figure. Right -

PETER BAKER: Uh-huh.

SUSAN GLASSER: – as far as a rebel leader. He started out, not at all as a religious figure. Not at all as a Muslim activist who was driven to fight the Russians out of religious reasons. But very much – as with the cause that he’s now identified with, he started out as a nationalist, throwing off Russian occupation in effect. And he’s evolved over time as has his cause to become much more religiously tinged.

BILL MOYERS: Putin attempted soon after Beslan to link it to Al Qaeda and to the international war on terrorism. But you refute that in your book.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well I think there has been no real evidence so far to bolster the claims that they made in the immediate aftermath of Beslan. And, in fact, I think it was the very same day of the battle that Russian television showed footage of a lineup of dead bodies outside of the school.

And they said these were the dead terrorists. And that they were almost all Arabs. And they said that there were not a single Chechen among the terrorists who had seized the school. And made it seem as if there was no connection whatsoever to the war that was less than an hour’s drive away. But that it somehow was an Al Qaeda operation. And I don’t think that there’s any evidence at all that’s emerged.

BILL MOYERS: So the Moscow government wanted the country and the world to believe that this was a jihad against by the extremist Muslims. Not an act of resistance against Moscow by rebellious Chechens, right?

SUSAN GLASSER: Absolutely. Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: And what did Putin say?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well Putin, initially, as he has been in many of the crises of his presidency was initially very silent as this played out. He was on vacation in Sochi when this wave of terrorism hit late August, beginning of September, very quiet time. He did this time – he flew back to Moscow to be in the Kremlin as it played out. But he made no statements until the middle of the night after the climatic battle. And he flew from Moscow in his private plane to Vladikavkaz. And he walked through and visited in the hospitals, some of the victims who were still stunned. But he didn’t really stay to talk to them. He said nothing then until later in that day that was Saturday I guess. Right? It was Saturday. And he came on television with a national speech.

And he said in essence, something very interesting and revealing about Vladimir Putin. He said, “We were too weak. And the weak get beaten.” And so the message here was we have somehow been too accommodating of the Chechens. And there will be no quarter given. No negotiations held. And, you know, that that was the lesson that he drew in his immediate horror and anger over Beslan.

BILL MOYERS: Weren’t the hostage takers demanding that the Russians pull their troops out of Chechnya? Was that their demand?

PETER BAKER: That was part of their demand, yes. The demands were sort of incoherent quite honesty. Certainly not demands that they expected to be fulfilled. Russia has 80,000 troops in Chechnya. They weren’t going to be pulled out overnight. And so this was not something that was realistic. And they knew that. It was not really the goal quite honesty to win demands. It was the goal to create a scene of carnage and destruction and terror. That’s what they did.

BILL MOYERS: – they came to kill?

PETER BAKER: They came to kill.

BILL MOYERS: You’re convinced of that? That -

PETER BAKER: I am.

BILL MOYERS: – this was – this was their purpose?

PETER BAKER: Yes. Yes. They had no out. They had no plan for anything other than this. They came with so many explosives, so many weapons, so much armament. There was no other purpose in what they did.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well also they’re very experienced in understanding how the Russians would respond. This goes back to your question, why did we feel – why did everybody we know have this sense of terrible foreboding for the fate of the school children? It’s because of not only this wave of terrorism that Russians unfortunately have had more than a decade’s worth of experience with. But also because of how the Russians have responded. Think back to the theatre siege in 2002 when the Russians launched a storming of the theatre and 129 of the hostages died – most of them as a result of the effects of the knockout gas used by the Russian special forces to free the hostages.

BILL MOYERS: You described hostage takers putting a gun to the head of a father and killing him right in front of his two children. You describe the execution of two dozen hostages at once in an upstairs room. You describe the blowing up of kids, the murdering of pregnant women. Why would these guys turn to such a blood bath of innocent people?

PETER BAKER: Well it’s the unanswerable question. It’s so hard for, I think, any of us to put ourselves into their place and to understand the psychology that goes into this. What they told their victims, what they told their hostages was you’re responsible. This is because of what you’ve done to us.

BILL MOYERS: You the Russians -

PETER BAKER: You the Russian people have done to us, the Chechen people. You came to our towns. You dropped your bombs. You killed my wife. You killed my children. You killed my husband. There were two women in there who wore the hijab. And they were wrapped with suicide belts and they carried guns, two women, shahidka, that’s what Russians call them, martyrs. And these suicide bombing women have become a trend in Russia these days because in theory at least most of them have lost loved ones to the war and have nothing left to live for. So the desperation, the bitterness, the resentment, the pathological hatred that has developed in Chechnya and that region is -

BILL MOYERS: Toward the Russians?

PETER BAKER: – toward the Russians and toward the world to some degree, toward the outer world that has abandoned them. All of this has left a very volatile and bloody region where anything is possible.

BILL MOYERS: 31 of the 32 hostage takers were killed right?

PETER BAKER: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Did the survivors hear anything about jihad? About Allah? About this being a war of Islam versus – ?

PETER BAKER: There’s some of that. Yes. They did have some of that rhetoric. But it’s more complicated than that. Remember some of the children in there, and the teachers and the parents were of course Muslim themselves. The region in which this happened, North Ossetia, is majority Christian, but a significant minority Muslim. And it’s not as simple to say it’s Islam versus Christian or something like that. Islam has fueled an already existing hatred in this system in the region. It has helped power, if you will, the termination of what began as a nationalist movement. But I don’t think it’s at the root of it.

BILL MOYERS: Now I was surprised when I read your book that you dwell mostly on their claim of being resisters to Moscow, angry about the Russian occupation of the republic of Chechnya. That’s what comes through very loud and clear in your reporting.

PETER BAKER: Shamil Basayav was an admirer of Che Guevara at the beginning of the movement. He was the Marxist leader. He was not exactly an Islamic figure, Shamil Basayav, the Chechen commander, when he began his career of resisting Moscow. So he developed into somebody who used the symbols and ideology and language of jihad. But that’s not where it began.

BILL MOYERS: That does sound like Osama Bin Laden in the sense of the evolutionary -

PETER BAKER: Sure.

BILL MOYERS: – ideology that he embraced.

PETER BAKER: Sure.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well also I think you should look at what happened over the course, it’s now been ten years of war in Chechnya. And I think the increasing marginalization of the Chechen fighters left them with almost no where else to turn. Initially their cause may have had some support in the West. But as more extremist figures came to the fore, and there was no middle to speak of. And Putin has very successfully in certain respects put increasing pressure on Western Europe to adopt his view of the situation, increasing pressure on the United States – not to criticize him on Chechnya. He used September 11th I think very effectively to say to President Bush and to the Western world, “see I’ve been trying to tell you this for years, we are already a front in the international war of terror; perhaps now you will understand what I was saying.”

BILL MOYERS: So he immediately linked Beslan to the international war on terror?

SUSAN GLASSER: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: In order to divert attention from the fact that it was Chechen resistance to Moscow?

SUSAN GLASSER: Yeah and this has been a continual theme throughout the last, you know, five or six years since the current round of conflict in Chechnya began. The Russians have consistently tried to stress the international nature of the war that’s happening inside their own territory.

PETER BAKER: And yet it’s important to remember the difference is that the terrorists – from the Chechen side today have generally not targeted foreigners, not targeted Western institutions. They’ve never gone after Western embassies or Western targets in Moscow for instance.

When they did choose the theatre to take over in 2002, they chose one showing a very Russian musical. Called Nord-Ost. It was the very first Russian musical ever made. They had scouted out another theatre showing 42nd Street, an American musical that had been imported, and chose not to because, in fact, their war is not against the West, unlike say Osama Bin Laden. Their war is against Russia. It’s against Moscow. It’s against Putin. That may change. But for now it’s a very important point.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well that’s right. Bin Laden you know, his role is to encourage the fight against the far enemy, which is what the United States is. And he’s tried to encourage national liberation movements, whether it’s his affiliates in Southeast Asia, for example, in the Philippines, or in Pakistan, the Kashmirs, whatever, to focus on Western targets, to focus on the United States as the symbol of the far enemy. And that’s been his argument consistently within the ranks, the broader ranks of the global Islamic movement.

BILL MOYERS: So was there any connection in your mind as journalists. Was there any connection between what happened in Beslan and the larger global, international “war on terrorism”?

PETER BAKER: In the general sense, the Arabs have participated in the Chechen cause. In the general sense that Osama Bin Laden adopts Chechnya as one of his – part of his mantra, there is sort of a nebulous connection. In the sense that Osama Bin Laden is calling the shots, in the sense that he has anything to do with this directly, in the sense that any of his people are waging this war as part of their broader struggle, no. I don’t think that’s the thing.

SUSAN GLASSER: Remember that Budyonnovsk, that seizure of the hospital by Shamil Basayav and his men occurred a decade earlier, before Bin Laden had even become a terrorist of global reach.

BILL MOYERS: Is Basayav still at large?

SUSAN GLASSER: Yep.

BILL MOYERS: Like Bin Laden?

SUSAN GLASSER: Absolutely. And he’s believed to be inside Chechnya.

BILL MOYERS: Today?

SUSAN GLASSER: Yeah. Although Russians control the territory, he’s believed to be pretty much operating relatively freely in his own native village.

BILL MOYERS: You write very explicitly that what happened in Beslan was a horrendous and unanticipated consequence of Project Putin. Tell us what Project Putin is.

PETER BAKER: Well Project Putin was the campaign by the old Yeltsin crowd to install a loyal successor. Somebody they thought would take over the Kremlin and make sure that they, the Yeltsin crowd, was able to leave power without retaliation. Putin was a midlevel KGB officer who had risen into the bureaucratic ranks. And they thought he was going to be their person. When they made him Prime Minister he had two percent popularity rating in the country. Within a span of a few months through the use of state television, through the use of the power of the state, they created an image of a very strong and powerful leader. But the trick was, they thought the project was in their hands. And in fact the project turned out actually to be in Putin’s hands. And in the end he marginalized the old Yeltsin crowd and began bringing in some of his own compatriots from the old KGB.

BILL MOYERS: So why was Beslan a consequence of what he was doing?

PETER BAKER: Well Beslan is a consequence of a society in which debate has been stifled. Political opposition has been neutered. The free flow of information has been cancelled in effect.

The Kremlin controls all television. The Kremlin has emasculated Parliament. The very first thing that Putin did after Beslan was to cancel the election of governors. That was his response to terrorism.

BILL MOYERS: And announce that he would appoint the governors himself?

PETER BAKER: He would appoint them himself.

BILL MOYERS: In other words he again assumed the powers of a dictator?

PETER BAKER: Well he assumed power of an autocrat. He believes in what he calls the vertical of power, meaning a single chain of command that leads up to him.

BILL MOYERS: So he used Beslan as a justification -

PETER BAKER: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: – for retreating from democracy?

PETER BAKER: They had this plan in place for many months, ready to go. And then the minute Beslan happened, that’s when they came forward with it. And they -

BILL MOYERS: You mean as -

PETER BAKER: – used it -

BILL MOYERS: – if you had the plans to invade Iraq and suddenly after 9/11 you had a justification? I don’t mean to imply -

PETER BAKER: Well it was certainly something they had in mind for a long time. And Beslan gave them the pretext to do it. And it’s also a consequence of what Putin has done in terms of Chechnya. It’s a war that he has waged with pitiless remorse, with no remorse, with pitiless approach that has radicalized a young generation of Chechens, and has not been the subject of popular discussion within the country.

Without a genuinely free media, without a genuinely free political system, the Russians who were against the war in Chechnya have had no ability to exercise influence to find a way to pressure government to put an end to it. And so what you have is a spiraling out of control conflict that will continue to escalate I think even now.

BILL MOYERS: This is so important that I want to make sure we get it. You write in here and you’re suggesting now that while Beslan was completely unanticipated – although something like this might have been expect after ten years of war – you’re saying that Putin seized the unexpected horror and tragedy to really reverse course on democratic reforms. And, in effect,he executed a sweeping power grab after Beslan, using Beslan as the reason, right?

SUSAN GLASSER: Absolutely. As I mentioned, his very first speech in the immediate shaky, upset, horrible hours after the Beslan tragedy played out, was to say that the lesson from Beslan was the weak get beaten. And we were too weak. And then that’s followed by another speech a few days later in which he says, “Okay, now I had time to think about this. And what I’m going to do is cancel elections in all 89 regions of Russia for governor. And the pretext is, the reason that he’s stated was Russia’s territorial integrity is under threat and, therefore, I need to assume these powers.

BILL MOYERS: It’s as if President Bush had declared after 9/11 there will be no more elections in the 50 states. And I’m -

PETER BAKER: Can you imagine? Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: He couldn’t have done it constitutionally. But Putin got away with it.

SUSAN GLASSER: Right

PETER BAKER: Right, that’s right. And Russians are very suspicious as a result of this. One thing to remember, when Putin came to power there had been a series of bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow and in southern Russia. And Putin blamed them on Chechnya and Chechens. And used that as again a justification for his war down there. Many Russians to this day still suspect that their own government had something to do with it, and it had something to do with accumulating power. Now maybe this is all conspiratorial. But it does talk about the mindset among average Russians today of suspicion toward their own government.

BILL MOYERS: And yet as I read the book, read the press recently. I mean it seems to me that Putin does have some psychological hold on the Russian people that they are tolerating this. Many of them are even saying the stronger he is, the better off the situation. How do you explain that? What can you tell us about the psychology of Russia today? Of the people today?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well that’s right. That’s one of the great mysteries right now. I mean clearly Putin is genuinely popular. In many ways he’s genuinely popular as the anti-Yeltsin. He’s young. He’s sober in both the literal sense and in the image that he projects to people.

BILL MOYERS: People forget Yeltsin was an alcoholic and drunk.

SUSAN GLASSER: That’s exactly right. And Russians don’t forget that. It’s very important to them. You ask a 70 year old woman why does she like Putin. The first adjective that she will use is sober. He’s relatively young. He’s relatively articulate. He is a product of the KGB, which to our sort of Western approach might seem to be a negative. But what we found through years of interviewing people in Russia about this very question, was that for many people service in the KGB was associated with membership in some sort of elite fraternity. It was almost like the Harvard of the Soviet Union. And there was a sense that continues to this day that somehow the KGB was one of the least corrupted institutions of a fully corrupted Soviet society. That this represented some of the better educated, better prepared people. So that actually has counted for a plus for Putin as he has made his political career.

BILL MOYERS: It’s really a paradox for an American to try to wrestle with this who hasn’t been there. That here’s a strong man who emerged out of the Kremlin. And yet the stronger he gets, the more the people applaud. When we hear all this talk about democratic reforms.

PETER BAKER: Well that’s important to remember the context of the 1990s. After the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 they weren’t ready to suddenly create a whole new state out of whole cloth. It took a long time to get off their feet. They consider the 1990s to be a period of chaos, economic dislocation and collapse, and people losing their life savings, and not knowing how to handle a new society. And in that context emerges Putin who says, “Don’t worry. I will stop the disillusion of the state. I will stop the disorder. I will bring a sense of order, basically, back to Russia.

BILL MOYERS: I will speak for the silent majority.

PETER BAKER: Speak for the silent majority. And so they view him as rescuing them from a period of turmoil that they weren’t ready for.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, and even the word democracy really was discredited in a way that is hard again for an outsider to understand, that it’s taken on a very negative connotation. Putin’s chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin used to tell his colleagues behind closed doors in meetings at the Kremlin, “Russians are not ready for democracy.” And this was very much, I think, the idea of Putin and the men who surrounded him, that Western style liberal democracy represented actually a break with 1,000 years of Russian history. And that it was something that Russians neither wanted nor were prepared for. And they certainly weren’t going to force feed them on it.

BILL MOYERS: During the four years you were there, you must have covered Putin quite a bit. I mean he was emerging with all the power and the focus was on him. What did you learn about his psychology? What kind of guy is he?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, he’s a very tightly wound character. He’s very cold and distant in most public settings. Even when you meet with him in a small group, which both Peter and I did several times, he seems like he’s memorized the briefing book. He’s very good at spouting back long, long – literally paragraphs filled with facts and numbers and detailed bits of information in response to questions. A group interview with Putin could last four hours. It could last into the middle of night. I mean there were shades of Castro at times, in terms of the filibustering quality. But there was always an edge and an undercurrent in some of these sessions with Putin. And the thing that really seems to be his blind spot is Chechnya, interestingly enough. This is the one thing that ever caused him to go out of character in interview with us.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, he would get visibly angry when questioned or challenged on the conduct of the war in Chechnya. And I experienced that first hand the first time that I met with President Putin, which was his first interview with American correspondents, which was back in the spring, the early summer of 2001, right after his first summit meeting with President Bush, in which Bush famously declared that he had looked into Putin’s eyes. Well, right after that, Putin met with American correspondents at the Kremlin. And we went around the table, and I realized that no one had yet asked about Chechnya. So it was going to be up to me to sort of carry that burden. And I asked him a question. And he got very exasperated. And he said, “I’ve told you,” meaning, you, the reporters, “again and again and you just won’t listen.” And, over the years, we would see him get even angrier and more defensive. He once, actually very famously, threatened a forced circumcision on a French reporter at a press conference in Brussels. And the translator was so stunned that the translator actually did not translate that word. And so he’s on the stage with very European dignitaries, and they had no idea, until much later, of what Putin had even said. But he uses a very crude attack, basically, on a French reporter who asked him about -

BILL MOYERS: About Chechnya?

SUSAN GLASSER: About Chechnya. And human rights violations.

BILL MOYERS: Reminds me of Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, when reporters would press him.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, he was a famously crude character, right, in some ways, President Johnson. And we don’t really know about Putin’s everyday language. Except for his famous remark early on, in his presidency, right, where he vowed to wipe the Chechen rebels out in the outhouse. And this was just coming to the attention of the world.

BILL MOYERS: How do you explain this behavior? I mean did he think Chechnya was really going bad? He didn’t have an answer for the questions? Or did he just want to keep it off the table all together? Why would he react so when people would ask about Chechnya?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, I think because he understands that Chechnya is inextricably linked to his own presidency, that this is his legacy that this is the thing that the name Putin cannot be untangled with. He’s invested in the nation of Chechnya that they’ve built up. He’s invested in the idea that his critics have it all wrong when it comes to Chechnya and that he is saving Russia in his view of things.

BILL MOYERS: How do you explain the phenomenon that a few days, I believe it was a few days after Beslan, he organized a pep rally for himself, a big pep rally in Red Square. And used the occasion, again, to announce another roll back from democracy. What was going on there?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, I think this is a good example, again, of what we talked about, sort of the unintended consequences of Putin’s Russia in four years of Putin’s rule was really the effort to get rid of – or to squelch – even the nascent efforts at civil society, building a Western style civil society in Russia. And, for example, this rally, after Beslan. what happened was a very popular radio station in Moscow had the idea, as this horrible crisis was playing out that they wanted to do something, that they wanted to give Muscovites a chance to come out and show their solidarity with the victims. And in much the same way you might see people in the street of Rome who held a candlelight vigil for the school children of Beslan. I think they had tens of thousands of people come out into the streets. So I think that was their idea, which was simply to have the people of Moscow show their support.

But, what happened was, as this horrible battle took place, and we saw the carnage, in southern Russia, someone from the Kremlin called the radio producer and said, “We want to work with you on this rally.” And he knew what would happen. He knew that this would then become a prop in the authority’s campaign, that it would be stage managed. And there was pretty much nothing they could do, and they had no choice really but to allow the Kremlin to take it over.

And that’s exactly what happened, down to the preprinted signs that they handed out to the children who’d been bussed there by their local authorities. And they handed them preprinted signs that said, “President Putin, we are with you.”

BILL MOYERS: So, clearly, the Kremlin, Putin, were using Beslan to rally support for himself, that had nothing to do with Beslan.

PETER BAKER: Well, also, of course, to make sure that the public image and view of Beslan was that President Putin and the Kremlin responded forcefully and that they responded appropriately. Remember in different hands an incident like Beslan could be turned against the authorities. Large rally of people not controlled by the government might find a voice that the Kremlin didn’t like, to blame the authorities for what had happened. In fact, that’s what happened in Beslan. The parents and the citizens of Beslan to this day, are very angry at the government. They blame the government almost as much as they blame the terrorists. And so Putin and the Kremlin didn’t want to -

BILL MOYERS: They blame the government almost as much as they blame the terrorists?

PETER BAKER: Sure. Sure. There’s a trial going on right now of the one Chechen they caught, the one terrorist they caught, Nurpashi Kulayev, who you show in this film. And they started the trial and people shouted at him everyday, “Death isn’t good enough for you. Give him to us, we’ll tear him apart.” And it has now evolved to the point where, actually, some of the parents of some of the dead children are getting up and saying, “We will plead for clemency for you, just tell us the truth of what happened.” Because his version is different than what the government has said. He has said a number of things that don’t correspond to the government’s version of events. He says there were more terrorists, some of whom escaped. The government doesn’t say that.

He gives a different explanation for how the first explosion happened. He says a Russian sniper shot one of the Chechens who was standing near one of the bombs and when his foot came off the pedal, it exploded. The government says it was an accident. And the parents are desperate for the truth. And they know they’re not going to get it from their government. And they’re willing -

BILL MOYERS: Did the government lie a lot as Beslan was happening?

PETER BAKER: Sure.

SUSAN GLASSER: Repeatedly, in the film, you see Lev Dzugayev, who was the spokesman for the president of North Ossetia, coming out and telling the world that there were 354 hostages inside the building. And everyone in Beslan knew that wasn’t true. And they knew, this was a very small town, that there were well over 1,000 women, children, teachers inside that school. And, yet, they continued to assert that there were only a few hundred people. It was a very deliberate cover-up.

And so, in fact, when Peter was talking, right now, about that sort of consequences, what happened afterwards, and how the Kremlin tried to make sure that Putin came out of this with his reputation intact, a very interesting thing happened, which was that. on state television, faced with this sort of overwhelming evidence of this very inept lie that they had persisted on in the middle of this crisis, the idea that there were only 300 hostages when, in fact, there were 1,200. What happened was, finally, the Sunday after the event, the newscaster for state television comes on the air, and he says, “OK, in times of crisis the authorities must tell the truth. And there was a failure to do that in this case. And basically we think it’s appalling that the authorities lied. And they shouldn’t have done that. And everyone knows that there were 1,200 hostages.” And then they put on Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin’s political consultant, comes on the television show. And he says, “Yes, President Putin was very angry about that. He was furious that they could have misrepresented things, and misled the people.” And I thought, wow, this is such an incredibly obvious, but very skilled attempt, to manage the outcome of the crisis that the Kremlin clearly was genuinely worried about what perception people would have. And they were genuinely worried that people would blame the Kremlin.

PETER BAKER: In fact, a few days afterwards, Putin met with some Western journalists and scholars, who were already scheduled to come visit. He spent hours out of the dacha railing about how Chechnya was the fault of his predecessor, Yeltsin. “He made mistakes I never would have made.” Never mind that, of course, he started the second war himself. And the fault of the West. He was very angry about the West -

BILL MOYERS: He thought that Chechnya was the fault of the West?

PETER BAKER: Well, he got angry at the West for saying that they needed to negotiate a political solution to Chechnya. He says, “Well, you wouldn’t negotiate with Osama Bin Laden, why should we negotiate here? And this is just like the Cold War,” he said. “You’re trying to bring Russia down with this sort of thing.” And again, as an attempt there to redirect anger toward the outside world, and toward the Yeltsin era government, and away from any accountability he himself, or his Kremlin, might have.

BILL MOYERS: How do the Russian people get any credible information, any credible news, given the heavy hand of the state?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, I think the Kremlin has been fairly sophisticated in understanding where Russians really do get their information from. In other words, they haven’t blanket taken over all media. They haven’t attempted to re-impose the Soviet style censorship. What they’ve done is they’ve reasserted Kremlin control over the three national television networks because that’s where Russians, by far get their news. So there are Internet news sites. There are newspapers for the Moscow elite that are quite free ranging and very critical in their coverage of Putin and the Kremlin and politics and corruption and all these matters. But most people just simply don’t get them. Russia is an extremely far flung country, 140 million people spread across 11 time zones. And what that means is that television is the only glue that binds. And, so, if you control television, the thinking goes, it doesn’t really matter if a handful, a few hundred thousand elite people in Moscow know a different story.

BILL MOYERS: You mentioned a corrupt society a moment ago, blanket generalization about a corruption, pervasive corruption there. Is it fair to say that there’s a sickness in Russia today?

PETER BAKER: Well, it is a corrupt society, and it is sick in that way. Let’s talk about Beslan for instance. The hostage takers told their victims, “We wouldn’t have been here if your own police would stop taking bribes to let us pass checkpoints.” The week before, when these two airplanes were taken hostage, and blown out of the sky, one of the suicide bombers, one of the women got on the plane by paying a $34 bribe to get on when she didn’t have a ticket for the plane.

So corruption is at all levels and is endemic, specifically to the problem of terrorism in Russia. And nobody’s been fired from the top levels of Russian government for this. Nobody’s been held accountable for this. The court systems is controlled by the government when – there’s a challenge. And you see corruption at every level. Whether we’re just driving down the street, you’re stopped by traffic police who demands bribes. Whether it be registering various documents you have to register, bribes are demanded, all the way up to the top. The seizure of this oil company recently is perceived by many to be outright theft of a very valuable asset by insiders with connections to the Kremlin. So even Putin will say it’s a very corrupt society. And it’s a problem that hasn’t been solved. But he doesn’t seem either able to or willing to do what might be necessary to tackle it.

BILL MOYERS: What has happened to what we heard about for so long, you know, loosely called democratic reforms? Are they still happening?

SUSAN GLASSER: No. Not only has the passage of democratic reforms no longer really taking place at all, but now Putin has moved into a new stage of actively rolling them back. And I think that that’s really the difference here. It would be a mistake to over romanticize what happened in the 1990s.

To call Yeltsin’s Russia some sort of Jeffersonian democracy, clearly is wrong headed and was not the case. Real democracy had not yet taken hold in Russian society. But now even the trajectory toward democracy has been halted. The experiment is over, if you will. And now, instead of talking about what’s next on the reform agenda, I think there’s a real sense of what’s next on the undoing of reforms agenda.

BILL MOYERS: Has Chechnya become Putin’s Vietnam or Iraq?

PETER BAKER: Yes. Vietnam is probably the best comparison. Although, even there, Vietnam, the American experience of course was limited to a handful of years. Russia’s experience in Chechnya goes back centuries. And it is, in fact, part of Russia. So it’s even more of a cancer in the middle of Russian society even, perhaps, than Vietnam was. At this point, hundreds of thousands of people in Chechnya have been killed, disappeared, wounded or left homeless.

And this is again also not only radicalized a young generation of Chechen men, it’s also radicalized, or at least traumatized a young generation of Russian men who have been conscripted into the army to serve there and have seen such terrible tragedies committed by the Chechen, but by their own side. So it eats away at Russian society.

BILL MOYERS: How would you sum up, almost a year later, the effect of Beslan on Russia?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, I think it was a moment, at the very least, of stark clarity about the nature of what Russia under President Putin, had become. That it was a moment of understanding, very clearly, if at least for a moment, that this was a place where the extremes ruled the question of Chechnya. And no accommodation was possible or would be possible in the foreseeable future. That you had this sense of a terrible tragedy unfolding, and that not being the end of the story, but simply a really horrible and powerful glimpse of where things stood at this time, that more such tragedies would be possible. And that there was no way that these two sides could get together.

BILL MOYERS: Do find what the hostage takers said credible about their fighting for the independence of Chechnya against Russian domination? Do you find that believable?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, I think terrorism is such a horrible tactic. And the idea of taking small children, even babies, hostage is so anathema to us, that it’s hard for me, personally, to connect that to a political goal. And so, in that sense what were those individual men, who died in that school, what were they really there for? I have no idea. And I’m not sure that we can credibly know why they were there.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think the 32 hostage takers understood that they were likely to die when they went in there?

SUSAN GLASSER: Yeah. Peter said, in his reporting, and I think that this was born out, that they came there prepared to die. Knowing the history of these things, knowing how many weapons and explosives they came laden with, I think that they had to expect that they were going die. There’s some anecdotal evidence, although I’m not sure really where it’s been born out, that some of the men may have been shocked when they got there and found that they had taken a school full of children hostage. And perhaps some of the terrorists balked at that idea. And may have been shot by their own leader, a guy that our reporting described as the colonel to his men. So it’s possible that even some of the terrorists were troubled by what they ended up doing. But that doesn’t excuse what they did, which was, really anathema and almost, to me, unconnected to any political questions

BILL MOYERS: America’s paid attention briefly. We were focused on the election back here when this happened. And we paid attention briefly because it was carried on the cable networks and the evening news. But we missed a lot after the fact. After Beslan happened, we went back to the election. What do you think we Americans are missing now about what’s happening in Russia?

PETER BAKER: Well, I think we’re spending so much time thinking about Iraq and the Middle East. And obviously, justifiably so, that we talk about promotion of democracy around the world, the one place where it’s gone backwards in the last five years is Russia. And I think that that’s a cautionary tale when we talk about trying to help other countries find a democratic path because that’s, of course, what we tried to do in 1991. And it can go easily off the rails. As Susan said, it never quite got on the rails to begin with, I suppose you could say but certainly heading in a different direction now. And I think that Russia is a society that wants to find its own way. And that it’s still a giant and important country in the world today. and we ignore it at our peril.

BILL MOYERS: Why do you call the subtitle of your book, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and the End of Revolution? What do you mean the end of revolution?

PETER BAKER: Well, when Putin came into power, he, of course, was the anti-Yeltsin. He was going to end the Yeltsin revolution. And, in fact, Putin’s own political consultant told us Putin doesn’t want any more revolutions, he wants to end revolution. And so this is the reaction to the tumult and the changes of the 1990s, and the late 1980s that had begun under Gorbachev, and continued under Yeltsin.

BILL MOYERS: Well, I would say the end of democratic revolution?

PETER BAKER: Well we asked him about this. I said, “Well, what about this democracy roll back?” He says, “Well, if you mean my democracy, the disillusion of the state, we don’t want such democracy.” We didn’t define it that way, he defined it that way. And, in his mind, and in many Russians’ minds, democracy is defined as the disillusion of the state, as chaos, as disorder. And so, in fact, when he begins to take back some of these powers for himself, he has some popular support. A new poll shows that 82 percent of Russians who support the imposition of censorship again. So this is -

BILL MOYERS: Why?

PETER BAKER: Because it’s perceived as a way of ending the corruption and the tumult of the 1990s.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, that’s right. I mean look at their version of history, versus the one that we have, in our American narrative of what happened in the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall fell, followed by, two years later, the collapse of the Soviet Union. Freedom came, rang out. Boris Yeltsin came in, there was some troubles along the way, some drunken antics, some economic crises, but, all in all, the march of freedom went on. And now there’s capitalism and the golden arches on Red Square. And I think that that’s sort of where many Americans left the story. But what we found, as correspondents living in Moscow for the last four years, is that Russians themselves have a very different version of the story.

And President Putin has very skillfully both played on and captured this different version. And his view of reality, he said recently, to great controversy, that, “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” completely ignoring, of course, the Holocaust, World War II, the Great Terror back in the Soviet Union. And I think that this is a very revealing statement, right? That this is what Putin is there to do, is to put a halt to the catastrophe that was the collapse of the Soviet Union.

BILL MOYERS: And, by your own account, he’s firmly in control doing that, and the more control he exercises, the more popular he seems to become.

PETER BAKER: Well, he is firmly in control on the one hand, and he’s not on the other. Beslan is an example of how he’s not. You know, that you can have order in society, and you can take over media and parliament and cancel elections. And, in fact, you’re still never going to be able to control society the way perhaps he might want to. He’s not re-creating the Soviet Union. This is not a top to bottom, cradle to grave, totalitarian society. And he’s simply using some of the techniques of his training and his past as a KGB officer to restore some of the authority that he thought was lost during the 1991collapse.

BILL MOYERS: Your book begins and ends with Beslan. So I want to end our conversation with Beslan. You saw horrific things that day, in those 52 hours. What’s been the effect on the two of you?

PETER BAKER: We covered the war in Afghanistan, and we covered the war in Iraq. Nothing I saw in either of those places came anywhere close to what I saw in Beslan. I watched as fathers ran into the hail of bullets to rescue their children. And men who didn’t have any children there, to try to find some children that they could save at great peril to themselves. I walked through the morgue afterwards and saw dozens of charred and beaten and bloodied bodies of children. And it’s a horror that will never go away, for me and a reminder of what we would never want to have happen anywhere again.

BILL MOYERS: You tell a remarkable story of a 14-year-old who absolutely slips out of the school, away from the hostages, only to realize he’s left his younger sister there. And he slips back in the school looking for his younger sister.

PETER BAKER: There are moments of great heroism on the part of some of the Russians who were there that day and powerful stories and amid all of the tragedy and all of the government deceit I think we shouldn’t forget those acts of bravery and generosity and selflessness on the part of many people, including the school principle who did everything she could to try to save her own children, saved the hundreds of children that she thought of as hers. And it’s a very powerful human story and I think the film captures that.

BILL MOYERS: This is the woman who had been there 52 years?

PETER BAKER: Fifty. Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Started at a very low level at the school. And -

PETER BAKER: Absolutely. She went there as a student and became, ultimately, the principle a half century later. And one of the sad things about her story is that she tried so hard to save these children, and, in the end, many in the town blamed her for not saving them.

SUSAN GLASSER: Yeah. She was accused of not protecting the children.

BILL MOYERS: When President Putin sent the Russian troops into Chechnya in 1999, he said it would be over in, what, two weeks. You know, he looked at it as sort of brief excursion and a return. Since then, it’s been six, seven years. A war of great cruelty, right?

PETER BAKER: A war of great cruelty, a scorched earth war in every sense of the word. Putin isn’t the first one to misjudge this, of course. It goes back to Peter the Great. But, in this case Peter the Great never had bombers who could inflict the sort of damage that was done on Chechnya under Putin.

BILL MOYERS: On civilians too.

PETER BAKER: And civilians. They drop more ordinance on Grozny, the capital of Chechnya than has been dropped on any city in Europe since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Chechens killed, wounded, left homeless. The city of Grozny, to this day, is basically an apocalyptic scene of broken buildings, and shells of old apartments. And people living without electricity or water and scrounging to get by. And it’s hard to overstate just how devastating this war has been.

BILL MOYERS: I saw a photograph of refugees that reminded me of the refugees in the 1930s in Europe at the time of the Soviet and German war.

PETER BAKER: Absolutely. I spent a lot of time in the refugee camps next door in Ingushetia. These are people who lived there for, in many cases, five, six years. They had had children there and gotten married there. They continue their lives there as they lived in a tent with a single bare bulb and one serving of meat a month because they had no other life, and they had no other choice.

BILL MOYERS: Susan, you spent, what, a year in a high school? What were you doing?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, I was very curious about this question, what’s next? What’s the next generation? Are we really justified in thinking that all it takes is time to wipe away the legacy of the communist past? And what I found in a high school history class in Moscow, was that it’s a lot more complicated. And it’s probably going to take a lot longer than people had expected back in 1991. I think the idea was, well, in one or two generations, a new rise of capitalist Western-oriented Russians will take the place of their Soviet parents. Instead, what I found, was kids who, when asked by the teacher to vote on the very first day of class about the Bolshevik Revolution, the majority of them said that they would actually have been on the side of the Bolsheviks back in 1917. The most articulate girl in class, she turned, and she said, “Yes, Lenin was right after all.” And, yet, these were also cell phone addicts, who all wanted to go to business school. They were reading Cosmo during the breaks. They had the boom box in the classroom. And so I think they were very much children of Putin’s era. Their parents had taught them to romanticize the Soviet Union as a time when Russia was great unlike the indignities of the 1990s.

BILL MOYERS: Is there any discussion among the kids of democracy? What do they mean by democracy?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, absolutely. This was a constant question that they had. And they came down very much, I think, where President Putin did, which was if, by democracy, you mean what happened in the 1990s, then we don’t want it. And, yes, there were excesses in our Soviet past. But, all things considered, wasn’t it necessary?

BILL MOYERS: You went to Russia with President Bush on his last trip didn’t you?

PETER BAKER: Yes. In May.

BILL MOYERS: Is he pressing his friend Putin to push for further reform? Or is he acquiescing in Putin’s retreat from democracy?

PETER BAKER: Well, Bush is pressing now. He, of course, had originally seen President Putin as a soulmate, if you will. He said, “I looked into his eyes and got a sense of his soul,” back in 2001. And I think he understands now that Putin is not quite the person he thought he was at first.

But for President Bush, it’s a delicate balance. He wants to push a little bit, but he doesn’t want to push too hard, somebody who’s been a friend to him, and he’s used as an ally. And you have to remember, of course, for Bush, there’s an awful lot on his plate. Right now he’s got Iraq, he’s got the Middle East, he’s got Afghanistan, he’s got the war on terror. And so a conflict with Russia, an open and contentious debate with Russia about its own internal democracy may be one more thing that he doesn’t want on his plate right now.

BILL MOYERS: If as you said, Peter, Chechnya is Russia’s Vietnam, why is there no great outcry in Russia as there was in this country over Vietnam in the 1960s?

PETER BAKER: Well, there is a popular discontent about it. Russians who supported it in 1999 by far do not today, particularly the mothers and fathers of young men who’ve been sent off there. But there’s very little space in the political system to express that sort of outrage.

BILL MOYERS: Media wouldn’t report it if with there was?

PETER BAKER: Media wouldn’t report it if there was. There are no political parties anymore in the parliament who oppose the war. Street rallies are just not a part of the Russian tradition and certainly are not encouraged. And so while I think Russians are ready for the war to end, they haven’t been able to influence a political dialogue in that regard.

BILL MOYERS: So, is Chechnya not just Vietnam but is it Northern Ireland to Britain? Are they there without a solution for a long time to come?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, certainly that’s the analogy that the Kremlin itself has made repeatedly over the past few years is try to prepare the Russian people for the idea that this is Northern Ireland or the Basques in Spain or some sort of intractable insurgency that they don’t even expect to get a handle on for decades to come. And the only leader of the Chechens perhaps who could have even come to the table with the Russians, the de facto President of Independent Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, was killed recently by the Russians. And I think with his death when even the faintest glimmer of hope of a negotiating partner with the Russians at this point, there doesn’t even exist a viable Chechen leader of the political wing of the resistance who the Russians could even meet with.

BILL MOYERS: So, there could be another Beslan?

PETER BAKER: Absolutely.

SUSAN GLASSER: Yeah.

PETER BAKER: I would expect it.

BILL MOYERS: Peter Baker, Susan Glasser, authors of Kremlin Rising, thank you for being on Wide Angle.

PETER BAKER: Thank you for having us.

SUSAN GLASSER: Thank you very much

Human Rights Watch: Chechnya
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/russia/chechnya/
Watch video interviews with relatives of the “disappeared” in Chechnya and view a gallery of Chechen children’s drawings about their war experiences.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?home_index.html
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting is an independent educational organization in London that tracks events in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Afghanistan and the Balkans. Read an interview with former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov or sign up for the weekly Caucasus Reporting Service for coverage and analysis of events in the region.

Memorial
http://www.memo.ru/eng/memhrc/index.shtml
Memorial, a Russian human rights organization, provides an overview of conditions for Chechen refugees and within the breakaway republic itself, plus online accounts of zachistki — security-sweeps by Russian forces.

The Moscow Times
http://www.moscowtimes.ru
This Moscow-based English-language daily gained much attention for its reporting of Russia’s first war in Chechnya in 1994-1996 and continues to provide regular updates on the region.

Prague Watchdog: Crisis in Chechnya
http://www.watchdog.cz/
Get an in-depth account of the war through weekly and monthly reports from this Czech human rights organization.

Introduce Students to Academic Controversy

1. Have students brainstorm a list of the kinds of communication and collaboration skills necessary for this type of project – e.g. active and respectful listening, “I” messages, no shouting (see the Tips section). Ask the class to identify characteristics of healthy communication and collaboration, and perhaps use a word such as “communicate” as a guide in the brainstorming (E.g. C – collaborate, O – one-on-one, M – mindful, etc.). Keep track of the students’ responses on chart paper and display in the classroom for the remainder of the lesson. Distribute Student Handouts A and B, ask the class to read them silently, and then ask a couple of students to identify what was listed in the handouts that the class hadn’t come up with yet in the brainstorming activity.

2. Ask students to describe a typical debate. How is it structured? What is the end goal? Discuss with students the difference between the Academic Controversy model, with an emphasis on a “win-win” resolution, and the traditional debate model, which results in one side winning and the other side losing. Emphasize that the desired outcome of this lesson is the synthesis of the best reasoning from both positions, and the creation of a new position that all involved can articulate, defend and live with.

3. Distribute Student Handouts 1 and 2, the Academic Controversy Steps and Checklist and the Rules for Academic Controversy. Allow a few minutes for students to read the handouts, encouraging them to underline main ideas. Then call on two to three students to summarize the main ideas represented these handouts. For example, in Step 3, “Engage in Open Discussion,” of Handout 1, students might identify “continuing to advocate for their positions and refute the evidence and the reasoning of the other side” as a main idea. In Student Handout 2, the Rules, students might underline the phrase “even if I don’t agree” under rule number 4, to emphasize that the idea of listening to other people’s ideas is not contingent on agreeing with them. Have another student write the main ideas the class comes up with on chart paper and display in the classroom for the remainder of the lesson.

4. Ask the students the following questions: “Why are we using this process? How can this benefit us? What purpose is there to switching sides? Why is it important to be able to create a new position?” This will help students think about the value of the process. Ask a student to write the responses on chart paper to display in the classroom.

Warm-Up Activity: “Trying on” Academic Controversy (approx. 25 min)

1. Select a student to model the Academic Controversy process with you. Select another student to time the controversy and a third student to track the strategies the class identifies after each step. Explain that after each step in the structured controversy (draw their attention to Student Handout 1), you’re going to stop and ask the class what they noticed. What strategies or approaches worked best in presenting each position? What strategies or approaches worked best for the reversal of perspectives? And what strategies or approaches worked best for the synthesis of the strongest elements from both perspectives? (Have these questions written out on chart paper beforehand and post them during this exercise). A student will keep track of these answers on chart paper.

Assign the student you are modeling with the following position: Schools should have a dress code for students.

Assign yourself the following position: Schools should not have a dress code for students.

Remind the class that you are only modeling how to engage in a structured Academic Controversy, and you are not going to be including the first step (creating the best case for a position). Explain that you are also spending less time on each section than they will when they practice Academic Controversy next or when they do the actual Chechnya Academic Controversy in the next few days.

Have the timer give you each two minutes to present your positions. Then pause and ask the class what strategies or approaches worked best in the presentations of each position – what worked best in persuading them one way or another? Students will brainstorm and have the note-taker write the responses on the chart paper.

Have the timer give you two minutes to engage in open discussion. At this point, you and your partner continue to support your positions; you also have the opportunity to respectfully refute your opponent’s points and ask for clarification. Then you will reverse positions. Remind students that the task is not to find the loopholes in their opponents’ arguments, but rather to identify and argue those points that are the strongest and most persuasive as if they were their own.

Have the timer give you each two minutes to argue for the opposite position. Then pause and ask the class what strategies or approaches worked best for the reversal of perspectives – what are good ways to argue the other person’s position, especially when you were refuting that position just moments ago? Students will brainstorm and have the note-taker write the responses on the chart paper.

Have the timer give you and your partner three minutes to synthesize. Remind the class that at this point, you and your partner need to take the most persuasive arguments from both sides and create a new powerful position. Ask the note-taker to write down the key decisions or points that both sides agree on in order to come to consensus. Then pause and ask the class what strategies or approaches worked best for the synthesis of the strongest elements from both perspectives – what are good ways to resolve this conflict and create a new position that both sides can live with? Students will brainstorm and have the note-taker write the responses on the chart paper.

At this point the notes from the class’ reflections on each step of the Academic Controversy will be displayed in front of the class. Ask students the same questions you asked them earlier. This time their answers will be informed by the modeling exercise. “Why are we using this process? How can this benefit us? What purpose is there to switching sides? Why is it important to be able to create a new position?”

2. Hand out copies of the rest of the Student Handouts (Student Handouts 3-7). You will need to provide several copies of Handouts 5, 6, and 7 to each student because their note-taking will require more than one sheet. Review Student Handout 1, the Academic Controversy Checklist, which will help students stay organized as they proceed. Student Handout 3, the Rubric for Assessing Performance in Academic Controversy, will help students understand how they will be evaluated throughout the process and should make explicit what is considered superior, good, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory effort and performance. Student Handout 4, the Rubric for Assessing Performance In Academic Controversy: Written Report and Oral Presentation, will help students understand how they will be evaluated on their written report and oral presentation (if applicable) and should make explicit what is expected of them. Student Handout 5, the Research Note-Taking Form, should be used by students for note-taking and comments during their research position development. Student Handout 6, the Presenting Positions: Note-Taking Form, should be used by students for taking notes on the key points and their comments while listening to the opposite side’s position. Student Handout 7, the Reaching Consensus: Synthesis/Resolution Form, should be used by groups of students to identify and articulate all the key elements of their new position, one that melds together the best elements of both Position A and B.

Explain to students that they will be responsible for using these handouts at each step throughout the lesson, and that they will need to hand Student Handouts 5, 6, and 7 in with their joint report at the end of the lesson for credit. Tell them they will get some practice using the handouts during the practice exercise they are about to do.

3. Organize the class into pairs by having the class count off in twos. Each student finds a partner – every 1 should partner with a 2.

Assign all the “Ones” the following position: There should be year-round school.

Assign all the “Twos” the following position: There should not be year-round school.

4. Remind students that they need to employ active listening for this activity, which means that they cannot talk or ask questions while the other person is speaking, and they should take notes on what the other person says. Explain to them that each person in Group 1 will have two minutes to present his/her position, while those in Group 2 take notes using Student Handout 6. Then those in Group 2 will get 2 minutes to present their position, while those in Group 1 take notes using Student Handout 6. Tell the class that you will time these presentations, and that you will shout “Time” when two minutes are up.

5. When both sides have presented their positions, give the partners three minutes to engage in open discussion. Remind students that at this point they should continue to advocate for their positions, while trying to refute the reasoning of the other side.

6. Those in Group 1 and those in Group 2 now reverse perspectives, adopting the view they were just trying to refute. Students in each group will have two minutes to present the best case for what was the opposing perspective. Remind students that this is the most difficult step in Academic Controversy, and that they really need to work at stepping out of their own shoes and stepping into the shoes of their partners, arguing for the reverse perspective.

7. Give students five minutes to work with their partner to synthesize their two perspectives, drawing on the best reasoning from both positions and melding them into a new position. Both students in the pair are responsible for tracking this conversation and the key elements of their new position using Student Handout 7. Students turn these in.

8. Evaluate students for this first day’s work based on their participation in this exercise, and based on Student Handouts 5, 6, and 7 that they hand in. This is a good opportunity for informal assessment to learn which students may need some additional help.

Day 2-3

Warm-Up and Introduction to Content

1. Ask students to respond to the following question, and list their responses on the board: What historical struggle for equal rights in the United States involved people who believed in non-violence and others who believed in “whatever means necessary”? You could provide them with a few prompts that might help them understand those elements of the Civil Rights era that will resurface in the case study of Chechnya. For example, you might ask:

• What were African Americans fighting against during the Civil Rights era?
• What was the political and social environment in which they lived?
• Who were the two major leaders associated with this movement?
• What were they reasons for their belief in non-violence or violence, if necessary?

Allow some time for discussion and for students to reflect on this example.

2. Introduce the case study – the war in Chechnya between Russian forces and Chechen separatists and the question of whether the use of violence by the separatists is acceptable as a means to achieve independence and freedom from occupation. Ask a student to point out Russia on a map in the front of the classroom and then to locate Chechnya (you may have to supplement this exercise by handing out copies of an additional map). Then ask the student to identify three to four of its neighboring countries.

3. Hand out the following article from the Resource list: “Chechen women seek Bush’s ear on untold bloodshed,” by Elaine Monaghan. Reuters, April 29, 2002. This is an excellent introductory article and good overview of the current state of affairs in the war in Chechnya. It provides statistics on the death tolls on both sides, the refugee crisis and the disappearances.

Ask students to read it, and then to briefly summarize the case in two-three sentences. Then call on one or two students to read their summaries out loud.

4. Identify the controversy that the class will be engaging in for the next few days: “Violent resistance: Is it acceptable for those struggling for independence or freedom from occupation to use violent means?”

• Position A: It is acceptable for those struggling for independence or freedom from occupation to use violent means.
• Position B: It is not acceptable for those struggling for independence or freedom from occupation to use violent means.

Form Groups and Research Positions

1. Divide the class into groups of four. Explain that these will be the groups that students will remain in throughout the rest of the lesson. Students’ performance will be evaluated based on individual effort, participation, and contribution to the group. Assign a pair from each group to each position.

Remind students that each team will be thoroughly researching their position in order to create the best case for their position. After they have become knowledgeable about their position, they will need to organize and frame logical, compelling and well-reasoned arguments to use in the structured controversy.

2. Ask students to brainstorm a list of questions they will need to answer in order to develop the strongest argument for their particular position. Track these on chart paper. Then, if any questions have been missed, the teacher can provide the following list to further focus students in their research:

• As you conduct your research, define the following terms and concepts (write the definitions on Student Handout 5): separatists, guerrillas, occupation, civilians, independence
• What has been the impact of the war in Chechnya and the Russian occupation on the lives of civilians in Chechnya?
• What have been the consequences of the violent methods employed by the Russian forces? What have been the consequences of the violent methods employed by the Chechen separatist rebels?
• In Chechnya, are there non-violent alternatives for resisting the Russian occupation? If so, what are they? What are the pros and cons of violent vs. non-violent means?
• When is or isn’t violence acceptable as a means of resisting oppression and achieving independence?

3. Hand out the Resource Packets (see Resources/Materials section). Briefly introduce the resources pieces included.

4. Students will need substantial quiet time to read individually, using Student Handout 5 as a guide and to take notes, before joining their partners to develop their case. You may want to structure a reading and then joint-work time, or you may want to leave the structuring of their time up to the students in each pair.

5. Assign the following homework assignment the night before the structured controversy takes place: Ask students to review the notes they took while conducting their research, and to identify those elements that might be most persuasive in making a case for their position. They should highlight or “star” those sections of their notes that are most compelling and come ready to share them with their partners the next day.

Day 4-5

Warm up and Re-group

1. Ask one or two students to briefly describe in their own words why this issue is a controversy. What are the opposing viewpoints regarding the use of violence by those struggling for freedom from occupation?

2. Have students re-group with their partners. Give the pairs 10-15 minutes to share the sections they highlighted for homework, and to strategize about how to make the strongest, most logical case for their position.

Present the best case for their positions

1. Remind students about the rules for Academic Controversy (refer them to Student Handout 2). Have a student read them aloud or paraphrase them.

2. Explain to students that you will be timing each pair’s presentation, and that the pair that is not presenting should be actively listening and taking notes using Student Handout 6. The listening pair should also be analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments.

3. Allow each pair four to eight minutes, depending on your time budget, to present the best case possible. It is often helpful to alert students when there are two minutes left.

Engage in open discussion

1. Allow five minutes for open conversation between the two pairs.

2. At this point, each pair continues to support their position, and students have the opportunity to refute their opponent’s points and to strengthen their own. This is a time for discussion, and also provides time for individuals to ask clarifying questions of the other pair.

Reverse perspectives

1. Pairs now switch sides, adopting and arguing the point of view they earlier tried to refute. This is the most difficult step for students. It is hard to suddenly switch hats and to now have to powerfully and persuasively argue your opponent’s position. It might be helpful to remind students here about the ultimate goal and expected outcome of Academic Controversy: a new position that both pairs can live with, a real win-win situation that leaves no one the loser.

2. Allow each pair four to five minutes to prepare their new position, encouraging them to carefully review the notes they took during their opponents’ presentation. Remind students that the task here is not to find the loopholes in their opponents’ positions, but rather to identify and argue those points that are the strongest and most persuasive as if they were their own.

3. Allow each pair three to four minutes to represent the best reasoning of the opposite perspective.

Day 5-6

Re-Group and Synthesize

1. Restate what the two positions have been for this Academic Controversy:

• Position A: It is acceptable for those struggling for independence or freedom from occupation to use violent means.
• Position B: It is not acceptable for those struggling for independence or freedom from occupation to use violent means.

Ask a representative from the Position A pair to summarize for the other three people in their group what the three to five most compelling, well-reasoned arguments they have made are. Ask a representative from the Position B pair to do the same thing.

2. Now opposing pairs need to come together to jointly select and agree on the best reasoning from both Position A and Position B. Ask the pair supporting Position B whether the arguments just presented by the pair supporting position A are the most compelling and well-reasoned. Ask the same of the Position A pair. What other key points were made that are missing from the list? Are any arguments not well reasoned (with supporting evidence) and persuasive?

3. Have each group of four use Student Handout 7 to identify and articulate all the key elements of their new position, one that incorporates the best elements of both Position A and B. Refer students to the goal of the exercise as explained on Handout 7: a solution that represents a synthesis of the reasoning behind both positions. Walk through how to use Handout 7, highlighting where students note the key points from both arguments and where they record their ideas for solutions.

The new position is more than just a compromise. It should represent new thinking and possibilities, and it should not force either side to “give up” too much. The new position may be something that might not be entirely possible without new international efforts, laws, or sensitivities. This is a chance for students to “think outside the box” – to imagine brand new ways of resolving the given conflict.

For this particular Academic Controversy, new positions might include:

• Violent means are acceptable if employed by oppressed groups who have suffered many losses of innocent life among their own.
• Violent means are acceptable as long as the targets are military ones and not civilians.
• Those who lack independence and freedom must get the assistance from the international community so they can avoid using violent means.

Creating a joint report

1. Each group of four will create a report that briefly describes the presentation and main arguments of the two positions; identifies and explores the key elements of and rationale for the new position; and provides a creative and persuasive case for the new position.

2. Refer students to Student Handout 4, Rubric for Assessing Performance In Academic Controversy: Written Report. Ask students to read through the rubric. Then, walk the class through one or two of the columns of the rubric, highlighting the differences between scores (one-four points) and emphasizing the criteria you will consider when you evaluate their work. Allow time for students to ask any questions they may have regarding the rubric. Through this exercise, students should gain a clear sense of what is expected of them as they embark on the preparation of the joint report. This is also a good time for the teacher to discuss deadlines (e.g. outline of report due Monday, bibliography of resources due Tuesday, etc.).

3. For the final joint report, each group of four will prepare a written report that includes a thesis statement that clearly advocates for a new position, a rationale for that new position, and a conclusion that includes next steps for the United States and the international community to take. Students might divvy up writing responsibilities after brainstorming together, or the group might outline the paper together and then divide up writing responsibilities among individuals or pairs.

4. Then, if time permits, each group can choose one of the following creative options as an additional joint-product to hand in.

• An illustrated timeline of events in Chechnya since 1994. Students might include statistics that illustrate the experiences of civilians.
• A mural or collage (including text and visuals) chronicling the experiences of Chechens under Russian occupation. Students could include the actions and experiences of the rebels.
• The enactment of a scene (either performed live in the classroom or videotaped) – either fictional or an historical re-enactment.
• The development of a fictional personal narrative (e.g. a Chechen rebel and his or her rationale for using violent means to achieve independence).
• The development of a resolution to the United Nations regarding steps the international community should take to ensure a peaceful resolution to the on-going war in Chechnya.

Extension Activities

The ideas below offer opportunities to explore the issue of violence as a means for resistance to oppression and/or occupation.

Consider the following case studies: Palestinian struggles for statehood and the use of suicide bombers as a means of resistance (http://www.esrmetro.org/currentpalestine.html); the South African anti-apartheid struggle; Gandhi’s non-violent resistance in India and South Africa; Martin Luther King’s vs. Malcolm X’s strategies in the U.S. civil rights movement.