Yesterday my adviser, Dr. Raleigh, and most of the other Russian-ists were out of town at a conference, so I volunteered to supervise his two undergraduate classes. It didn't require much time, but one of them was especially impressive.
A freshman seminar on Russian history and politics was to hold a debate on the pros and cons of the Putin presidency, which de jure ends on May 7. It was very impressive to find a group of twenty 17-18-19 year-olds who had read and begun to form opinions about issues as diverse as economics, civil liberties, and press freedom. I also found it heartening that they were able to draw comparisons with issues and events from the US and the world I honestly didn't expect them to know or care about.
They were probably 10 or 12 years old when Bush "looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul" and found a man he "could do business with," but that was one among the many events they evoked (this one, of course, contra-Putin).
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