Russia appears on the brink of retrograde changes following the bloodshed of the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia last week and a spate of terrorist attacks in which two passenger jets were blown out of the sky, killing all onboard, and a suicide bomber killed 10 people near a Moscow subway station.
Local analysts anticipate the attacks are likely to be used by President Vladimir Putin as a pretext to continue the crackdown on human rights and freedom of speech, to give greater powers to law enforcement agencies, to curb political opposition to his regime and to impose tighter state control over private businesses.
However,
