Word: beslan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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OUTWARDLY, RUSSIA HAS not changed since the barrage of terrorist attacks that culminated in the school massacre in Beslan on Sept. 3. There are lots of police on Moscow's streets, but that's always the case. Many are traffic cops, shaking down drivers for minor or imaginary offenses. Commuters still pack the subways, even though they have been targeted by two bomb attacks in the past seven months. In Beslan, where parents are still searching for remains and burying their dead children, school resumed last week for the living...
...same, but inside I feel pure terror," says Svetlana, a Moscow homemaker with three children who declines to give her full name. "I don't let my kids go to school alone anymore. I feel I have to take them." Like many who watched events unfold in Beslan, Svetlana has a changed perception of reality. "I was in the metro yesterday, and an Orthodox nun came through the carriage collecting money for a church. She was dressed in black, and she was carrying a box. I was scared." For a moment, Svetlana wondered whether the nun was a shakhidka...
Even Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has cultivated an image of unyielding toughness, seems shaken. Beslan provided devastating proof that the core of his macho approach to politics--his promise to rub out secessionists--was nothing but empty words. And so he reached for a safety blanket of his own last week, announcing a series of moves aimed at consolidating political power in the Kremlin. Under Putin's plan, the 89 regional governors will henceforth be appointed, not elected. Russia's parliament, the Duma, will be elected only from party lists, not from constituencies. As most parties represented...
Putin may be tightening the screws now because he fears that his support could fade if there are more terrorist attacks and oil prices collapse. Despite widespread doubts about the government's handling of the Beslan crisis, polls continue to give Putin a wide margin over any potential opponent. "All political leaders lie," says Lidiya Grigorievna, a retired schoolteacher, as she waits at the new security check-in a Moscow art museum. "But will they give us anyone better than Putin...
Sooner or later terrorist minds will find a way to infiltrate our security measures, just as they have done in Madrid, Beslan, Saudi Arabia, and many other places. The terrorist that is killed or captured is almost instantaneously replaced by tens of young men and women eager to continue the job, proving that the spirit of terror lives on after terrorists...