Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, two American hikers captured along the Iranian border with Iraqi Kurdistan in July 2009, were sentenced Sunday by Iran's Revolutionary Court to eight years in prison. The verdict drew sharp criticism from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said the United States was "deeply disappointed" in Iranian judicial authorities and that "it is time for [Bauer and Fattal] to return home and be reunited with their families." The announcement came as a surprise because senior Iranian officials had previously indicated that the pair might be pardoned during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Analysts remain hopeful that Bauer and Fattal, who have 20 days to file an appeal, could still be headed home, however. "There have been cases in the past where the courts issue a shockingly high verdict in the beginning. Then, by pardoning, they try to come across as showing leniency," said Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council. "It is possible that this is what is happening."

Parsi emphasized that the hikers' case has been mired in the diplomatic tensions between Tehran and Washington. "They are pawns in a larger game being played by Iran and the United States," he said, noting that the duo's predicament has more to do with Iran's nuclear ambitions than the dubious spying charges trumped up by Iranian authorities.

Alireza Nader, an Iran expert at the RAND Corporation agreed. Every diplomatic maneuver "should be seen through the prism of the nuclear program," he told Foreign Policy. "Iran wants to present [the two hikers] as bargaining chips."

Tehran is also under a tremendous amount of pressure as a result of international sanctions, according to Nader. "So the hikers are part of the leverage that Iran has in that game," he said.

But the jailed hikers are not just fueling animosity between countries. "They are also an internal football," said Parsi, who believes that the Iranian government is split on what to do with Bauer and Fattal. "There are elements especially in the judiciary that don't want to give them up for political reasons, but there other factions that realize that this is costing Iran more than they are gaining."

In particular, Iran's foreign ministry appears ready allow the hikers to return to the United States. Perhaps, as the New York Times has suggested, this is because it gets to deal with the international ramifications of the debacle. The judiciary, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with currying favor with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei and is therefore taking a harder line.

Despite Clinton's pledge to "continue to call and work for [the hikers'] immediate release," there is not much the U.S. can do at this point, according to analysts. Massoud Shafei, the hikers' lawyer, remains hopeful that they will be pardoned as a gesture of goodwill during Ramadan. Praying for a Ramadan gift appears to be the State Department's strategy, too.

Only six months ago in Egypt, speculating about President Mubarak's health could land you in prison. Now it is a national pastime. Ever since the 83-year-old was hospitalized in April after complaining of chest pains, the Egyptian rumor mill has been spinning double-time, churning out reports that Mubarak suffered a heart attack or stroke, slipped into a coma, endured a gallbladder cancer relapse, developed new cancer in his stomach, is "in-between" life and death, or even that he has already expired.

After months of conflicting reports on the ex-president's health, Egyptian health minister Amr Hilmy finally announced that Mubarak is in good enough condition to be transferred to Cairo from his hospital bed in the sunny resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

"Mubarak's health is in an appropriate condition to be tried in Cairo," said Hilmy, noting that Cairo's Conference Center could be the venue for the court proceedings scheduled for August 3. The aging dictator stands charged with corruption and ordering the deaths of nearly 900 protesters during Egypt's 18 day revolution in January. If convicted, he could face the death penalty, typically meted out by hanging in Egypt.

The announcement was likely an attempt to placate demonstrators, who have grown increasingly cynical about SCAF's willingness to hold the old regime accountable. But questions remain about whether or not the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is really willing to humiliate their former boss by putting him on trial. According to Reuters, "Officers privately admit the military has no appetite for trying the decorated veteran who led Egypt's air force in the 1973 war against Israel."

If public opinion in Egypt remains strongly in favor of trying Mubarak, however, analysts say the military brass will likely lose the loyalty act and protect what little legitimacy they enjoy as Egypt's interim rulers. As Shadi Hamid, director of the Brookings Doha Center, said in a Reuters interview, "They will not go down protecting Mubarak because the preservation of their own organization and the institution of the military is more important to them. If that means throwing Mubarak under the bus, then I think that is something they are willing to do."

But SCAF must weigh its reputation against other concerns -- namely rankling Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that are lobbying hard to keep Mubarak out of court, as well as the possibility that a trial could expose SCAF's own corrupt financial dealings.

According to an unnamed SCAF official quoted in Ahram Online, a state owned news source, some rich Arab countries "offered to give Egypt a lot of economic assistance, in billions of dollars, in exchange of granting Mubarak immunity from trial."

The most immediate problem posed by court proceedings, however, is that they could contravene a longstanding tradition of shielding the military from public (or parliamentary) scrutiny. As the Los Angeles Times reports, "The proceedings are certain to offer a glimpse into the financial dealings and political alliances that allowed Mubarak to control the country." With between 5 and 40 percent of Egypt's GDP under military control (no one knows the exact amount) SCAF has a great deal to lose if its finances come under the limelight.

News of Mubarak's resilience, therefore, probably isn't ringing in that much cheer at SCAF headquarters today - assuming the generals haven't lost all faith in punditry about their former skipper's health.

The trial of former interior minister Habib el-Adly, the mukhabarat (intelligence) boss for 14 years under President Mubarak, was postponed for the third time on Sunday. His trial, now scheduled for August 3, will be a combined affair with Mubarak, who also stands accused of ordering the deaths of almost 900 protesters during Egypt's 18-day revolution.

The intelligence chief was expected to stand trial for murder in May -- after being sentenced to 12 years on corruption charges -- but a Cairo judge pushed the start date back a month after angry protesters attempted to swarm the courtroom.  His trial was postponed a second time -- without explanation -- on June 24, igniting four days of protests that left more than 1,000 people injured when security forces clamped down using tear gas and rubber bullets.

Anger at El-Adly's interior ministry boiled over during this year's protests. Crowds of Molotov cocktail-toting protesters laid siege to the building in the early days of the revolution, defying ministry snipers who opened fire on them using laser sights.  

During El-Adly's tenure, the ministry detained and tortured with impunity, using its estimated 500,000-member police force to terrorize the public into submission. At the height of the protests in January, El-Adly is also thought to have withdrawn police officers from the street and turned prisoners loose in an effort to scare democracy activists back into their homes.

It comes as little surprise, therefore, that the postponement of his trial was met with a mixture of cynicism and outrage by many Egyptians. Wael Eskandar, a blogger and journalist for Ahram Online, told Foreign Policy in a phone interview that "most protesters don't believe that [the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF)] is serious about trying Adly." They are irked for the most part, he said, but "they are not expecting any real form of justice."

There is increased concern, moreover, that a Mubarak-Adly trial won't materialize in August, either. As Kristen Chick, the Cairo correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, said in an email, people are "increasingly worried and jaded that the military does not intend to prosecute Mubarak." Adding to their concern is the fact that Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, falls in August this year, making it highly unlikely that a trial will get underway. As the New York Times recently put it, during Ramadan "most Egyptians fast all day, feast much of the night, and little else gets done."

But the sleepy month of Ramadan will be less of a problem than SCAF's unwillingness to hold the old regime accountable, according to Eskandar. "The police who killed protesters are still in their places while they are waiting for trial," he said.  Meanwhile, many families who lost loved ones during the revolution have been offered bribes to drop charges against ministry officials, according to Eskandar. "When they don't accept bribes, they are threatened with [trumped-up] drug charges," he said.

Similar reports of police bribery surfaced in June, when families of victims of police brutality claimed that they were offered blood money by informants affiliated with the Imbaba police department.

Not all justice dispensed by SCAF is justice delayed, however. For many of the protesters rounded up during the revolution, retribution has been swift. Human Rights Watch reports that at least 5,600 civilians have been sentenced by military tribunals since Mubarak was unseated on February 11. One such civilian was 26-year old Maikel Nabil Sanad who was sentenced to three years after he wrote on his blog that "the army and the people were never one hand," a reference to one of the revolution's widely used refrains. Sanad did not even have the luxury of legal counsel during his sentencing, since his lawyer had been fed misinformation about when it would occur.

Inconsistency between SCAF's handling of the trials of former regime officials and those of protesters is wearing the people's trust thin, and has translated into popular unrest on more than one occasion. "While people here right now may not agree on a lot of things, nearly everyone agrees that they'd like to see Mubarak hanged," said Chick.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters today that he is considering a visit to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a move that would likely rankle the Israeli government, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization. "If the conditions allow, I'm thinking of visiting Gaza. The foreign ministry will be working on it. I wish to make such a visit, depending on the outcome," he said.

The announcement comes at a sensitive juncture in Turkish-Israeli diplomacy: The two countries are just now beginning to mend ties after Israeli commandos killed 9 Turkish activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla last year. The flotilla, which was carrying humanitarian aid and construction supplies, was attempting to contravene Israel's controversial blockade of the Gaza Strip.

After the incident, Erdogan called Israel's actions "absolutely illegal" and lambasted the Israeli government for "spilling the blood of innocent humans" and embracing "violence, and despotism." 

The Turkish prime minister's Gaza announcement comes only a day after Ozdem Sanberk, Turkey's representative on the United Nations committee of inquiry into the flotilla raid, expressed willingness to end animosity between the two countries, but demanded that Israel apologize for the death of Turkish citizens.

Israel's official line has been that its soldiers acted in self defense after encountering armed resistance from activists carrying clubs and knives.

Since the flotilla incident, Erdogan has polished his image as champion of the Palestinian cause, repeatedly lashing out against Israel in statements to the press and defending Hamas as "resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land." Last month, he called on Israel "to lift as soon as possible the inhumane and unlawful blockade" of Gaza, according to the AFP.

The trip to Gaza has yet to be scheduled, but would likely be tacked onto the end of a trip to Egypt, which recently opened the Rafah border with Gaza. It would make Erdogan the first world leader to visit Gaza in an official capacity since Hamas swept into power in 2007.

Egyptian foreign policy has experienced something of a revolution since President Hosni Mubarak's unceremonious departure on February 11 of this year -- or has it? After decades of taking its cues from Washington, Egypt's foreign-policy elite -- led until recently by Nabil El-Arabi, the newly appointed secretary-general of the Arab League -- is supposedly dispensing with old conventions and pursuing a more independent and domestically popular regional strategy.

The first indication that Egyptian revolutionary spirit had boiled over into the foreign-policy arena came in late March, when El-Arabi welcomed a Hamas delegation to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, commencing discussions about opening the Rafah border with Gaza and a potential reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah, the more moderate Palestinian party led by Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas, which has so far refused to recognize Israel's right to exist, is on the U.S. State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations and has proved a vexing problem for peace negotiators in the United States and Israel.

Nonetheless, Egypt brokered a historic unity deal between Hamas and Fatah on May 4, and by May 28, it had opened the Rafah border crossing, ostensibly easing Israel's blockade of Gaza. "We are opening a new page," said Ambassador Menha Bakhoum, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, in an interview with the New York Times. "Egypt is resuming its role that was once abdicated."

El-Arabi also put possible rapprochement with Iran -- at odds with Cairo since the 1979 Islamic Revolution -- front and center before replacing presidential hopeful Amr Moussa as secretary-general of the Arab League this June.

"Egypt has turned a page with every country in the world," said El-Arabi in an interview with the Washington Post. "They [Iran] are not an enemy. If you want me to say it -- Iran is not an enemy. We have no enemies. Anywhere."

El-Arabi proceeded to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Bali, and a delegation of 50 Egyptian intellectuals and clerics was dispatched to Tehran as a show of goodwill.

But analysts remain skeptical about the real extent of Egypt's foreign-policy shift. Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council's new Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, told FP that there has been some "change in approach, but the degree of change is less than what is being reported." In particular, Egypt's new Palestinian policy is hardly discernible from Mubarak's old policy.

"It is pretty much the same deal that former Intelligence Director Omar Suleiman proposed in October of 2009," Dunne said of the supposedly radical unity deal between Hamas and Fatah. The only difference, according to Dunne, was that Hamas rejected the deal at that time, primarily because it enjoyed stronger backing from Syria than it does now.

David Schenker, director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, had a similar view. "This is about making a perceived distance between Cairo and Washington," he said.

"The movement of Palestinians into Egypt has been minuscule by design," he continued, dismissing the idea that Egypt's other bold move, the Rafah border opening, was more than a symbolic gesture.

Both analysts agreed, moreover, that real movement toward Iranian rapprochement is extremely unlikely. In Schenker's words, "The military still has a traditional view of Iran -- that it is a subversive force in the Middle East. As long as the military is in charge, I don't see Egypt's relations [with Iran] moving forward in a meaningful way."

Saudi Arabia, which recently pledged $4 billion in aid to Egypt, is another reason that Egyptian relations with Iran probably won't warm up too quickly. According to Dunne, such aid is "probably based on an understanding that Egypt won't get too close to Iran."

And soft loans are not the only weapons in Saudi Arabia's arsenal: Hundreds of thousands of Egyptian ex-patriots work in the Persian Gulf, remitting between $7 billion and $9 billion annually to Egypt. Should an inspired Egyptian government stray too far into Iran's orbit, it is certainly possible that these laborers would be sent home to join the swollen ranks of Egypt's unemployed.

So how much different is the foreign policy of Egypt's ruling military junta from that of tried-and-trusted Hosni Mubarak? Substantively, it's not much different, though it has certainly been dressed in revolutionary garb.

Egyptian Finance Minister Samir Radwan announced Saturday that Egypt will no longer seek loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Radwan's statement came in spite of an agreement reached earlier this month for a $3 billion, 12-month loan from the IMF, headed -- as of yesterday -- by France's Christine Lagarde.

Egypt's decision follows major budgetary revisions that put the North African country's budget deficit for 2011-2012 at 8.6 percent of GDP, down from 11 percent in the initial draft.

Explanations for the shift ranged from "pressure of public opinion," according to one advisor to the finance minister, to more attractive sources of funding -- namely, "gifts" from Gulf monarchies like Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

"Egyptians are a little leery of too much intervention from the West," said Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The World Bank and IMF are widely associated with American influence in the region, and with ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak, who undertook substantial IMF-led economic reforms in the 1990s.

Egyptian distrust of international lenders may also be directly related to IMF and World Bank policy outcomes. Samer Shehata, a professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, noted in a recent Marketplace interview that "Over the last decade … the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have focused more on macroeconomic indicators than on how real people in these countries are doing."

They pushed neoliberal policies like deregulation, subsidy cuts, and privatization, according to Shehata, and promised high growth rates and robust levels of foreign direct investment. "Yet these same policies … simultaneously produced high inflation and declining real wages, and increasing levels of poverty and income inequality, according to the World Bank and IMF's own statistics."

The Gulf money comes without these types of policy prescriptions and without the political baggage associated with accepting Western aid. According to Ottaway, "Much of [the Gulf money] will come as cash injected directly into the banking system. Money with no economic conditions attached. In this way it is preferable."

But while Saudi and Qatari money comes without traditional economic constraints, it is almost certainly not without strings attached. "Gulf states like Saudi are giving money because they want to keep Egypt in their orbit," said Ottaway. "There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia doesn't want Egypt to emerge [as a regional power] like it did under Nasser."

Increased potential for graft is also a concern among analysts. Lisa Blaydes, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University and the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak's Egypt, told FP in an email that Gulf aid will probably be in the form of "soft" or cut-rate loans. "There will almost certainly be less transparency associated with a loan of this type than with IMF funding," she said.

Una Galani, writing for Reuters, had a similar take: "many questions remain over if, when, and how the bulk of the Gulf aid will be channeled."

All concerns aside, Egypt's willingness to blow off the IMF -- a traditional seal of approval looked to by other lenders -- signals a sea change in the international lending market. With wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia and, indeed, China handing out soft loans, there are many more options available to aid supplicants. In Ottaway's words, Egypt's decision is "part of a general pattern where international financial institutions have lost their monopoly."

As Greeks face the prospect of a new round of austerity measures, growing discontent has some wondering if the Arab Spring could spread to southern Europe. Already, thousands of protesters have clashed with police in Athens' Syntagma Square, calling to mind iconic images of Hosni Mubarak's unceremonious ouster.

The immediate source of Greek resentment is an emergency reform package that includes tax hikes, public sector wage cuts, and privatization of some $70 billion in state assets. The Greek government narrowly survived a confidence vote last night, but it still must pass the measures before the EU will fork over the next installment of its $155 billion bailout pledge.

But the roots of the rioting may run deeper than outrage over immediate macroeconomic policy decisions. According to John Salevurakis, associate professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo, Greece faces chronic economic problems that aren't that different from those that sparked the revolution in Egypt. General unemployment sits at 16.2 percent in Greece, according to Salevurakis, and youth unemployment is at 42 percent. "Both of these numbers are higher than those of Egypt," said Salevurakis.

"What's more, by necessity I think Egypt has a much more efficient informal sector to absorb the unemployed and generate a certain amount of social stability."

Clearly, without a brutal dictator or anywhere near the level of repression that exists in Arab societies a comparison with the Arab Spring is imperfect at best. Still, as Bruce Crumley blogged on Time.com, there are "strong shared feeling among the mobilized publics on both continents that the system fails them."

Moreover, according to Crumley, "with many European youths having little hope for getting a good, well-paid, career-promising job within what's currently a blocked economic and business set-up, a large portion of them want their country's social models to change."

When asked about the source of these economic woes, Salevurakis ultimately fingered the same boogeyman as the protesters in Syntagma Square:

At the moment, Greece is firmly under the thumb of the ECB and the IMF.  Granted, the Greeks desired EU membership and benefitted substantially from it but now they are stuck with a currency that is dramatically overvalued relative to what it should be given their national economic conditions.  Given their inability to devalue, they are slaves to IMF and ECB aid packages which of course come with austerity based strings attached.  This means that the only way to reduce debt, while any other country could print their way out, is to endure higher levels of unemployment and greater economic stagnation.

The cruel irony of all of this is that austerity will do nothing to improve the situation for Greece.  Her budget deficits will grow as unemployment rises, consumption continues to decline, and tax revenues fall.  Frankly, the time for embracing austerity as a means to address Greece's budget woes was over several years ago.

But it's not just about the economy; Salevurakis also pointed to identity politics, citing the fiercely independent spirit of most Greeks. "For this reason alone, their EU affiliation might have been a bit incongruous," he said. 

The Greek government toeing the ECB/IMF party line is so contrary to the fundamental Greek character and spirit that the domestic powers appear weak to the citizenry at every obedient turn. Greek leadership voicing these sentiments starts to appear completely traitorous and worthy of overthrow on pure nationalist grounds.

What's the worst that could happen? "Well, an Egyptian-style military coup", Salevurakis said with a mild tone of sarcasm, but he noted that a breakaway from the Eurozone is a "long shot for Greece within the current political structure".  

According to Salevurakis, there are two possibilities if the Euro were abandoned by some new revolution-inspired Greek government.  The Greeks could "embrace a complete default on Euro-denominated debt and put all of Europe (indeed the world) at risk for the resulting contagion or Greece could try to print away the debt with rapidly depreciating New Drachmes".  In either case, Salevurakis notes, "the capital flight would be almost audible as the Greek government tried to figure out how many New Drachmes were equal to every Euro in every domestic account".  

Salevurakis noted that the difference between the two potential situations would likely be a depression in the first case and near hyperinflation in the second.

Whatif young South Africans didn't know who Nelson Mandela was? Or if young Czechshadn't learned about Vaclav Havel. In Russia, today's youth find themselves inan analogous position: most young people know virtually nothing about AndreiSakharov, arguably the most prolific human rights activist and dissident of theclosing days of the Soviet Union.

Following the death of Yelena Bonner,Sakharov's wife and fellow human rights crusader, the NewYork Times reported that 44 percent of Russians ages 18 to 24hadn't heard of Sakharov, winner of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, and a mere 9percent were aware that he was a human rights activist.

Sakharov'srelative anonymity is the result of a confluence of factors. State dominationof the media and a "papering over of the Soviet past" is perhaps the mostobvious reason why young Russians haven't heard of Sakharov, says Julia Ioffe,a freelance journalist and frequent FP contributorbased in Moscow.

Economicprosperity has also played a role in pushing the human rights agenda to theperiphery. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia's GDP per capita was barelyU.S. $3,000.00 (in constant 2000 U.S. dollars); It is now nearly U.S.$16,000.00. This growth has alleviated a tremendous amount of pressure on thehuman rights front. In Ioffe's words, "When everyone has an iPhone, life isgreat."

Butthere is a more fundamental reason why Sakharov has been forgotten: shiftingpriorities among Moscow's politically conscious intelligentsia. Human rightsare no longer at the heart of dissident dialogue. "People are fightingcorruption, unfairness, and lawlessness of the police," says Ioffe. "The humanrights agenda has faded into insignificance." Thus, a new breed of dissidentactivist has grown up largely ignorant of its intellectual forbearers. Here isa look at some Russian dissidents, then and now.

THEOLD GUARD:

Yelena Bonner

Alifelong champion of human rights and the wife of Andrei Sakharov, Bonner passedaway last Saturday at the age of 88. She first became involved in politicsin 1968, when she joined a dissident movement that opposed the Soviet invasionof Czechoslovakia. She and Sakharov, whom she married in 1972, lived underconstant surveillance-and eventually exile-as Russia's "firstcouple" of dissent.

Bonneraccepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Sakharov's behalf in 1975, delivering anaddress in which she calledfor the "final victory of the principles of peace and human rights." Sakharov hadbeen denied an exit visa.

Followingher husband's death in 1989 -- two years before the collapse of the SovietUnion -- Bonner continued to campaign for human rights from her home in the UnitedStates. She was a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and in December 2010 penned afiery speech in which she declared:"Consider that I have come, again to save my homeland, although I cannotwalk."

LyudmilaAlexeyeva

A member of the Old Guard of Sovietdissidents, Alexeyeva cut her teeth campaigning in defense of Andrei Sinyavskyand Yuly Daniel, two Soviet writers who were convicted of undermining the statein a notorious show trial in 1965-1966. It was in the midst of this campaign thatRussia's human rights movement was born, Alexeyeva later reflected.

Later,while working clandestinely for the Chronicle of Current Events, Alexeyeva hideight copies of the manuscript in her bra when she was brought in forquestioning by the KGB. In 44 years of what the NewYork Times calls "provoking official Moscow," Alexeyeva has experiencednumerous detentions, including one last January at the tender age of 82.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Alexey Navalny

Calleda "one-man WikiLeaks" by the Guardian,the 34-year-old Navalny is perhaps Russia's best-known anti-corruptionactivist. In November, 2010 Navalny published a leaked Audit Chamber reportexposing Transneft, the state pipeline monopoly, for siphoning off $4 billionfrom a pipeline construction project. This was just the latest in a long stringanti-corruption efforts that are making him very unpopular among Russia's cronycapitalist elite. Navalny'slatest project, a website called RosPil, publishes government documents andallows readers to comb them for evidence of corruption.

Already, the governmenthas been forced to annul almost seven million dollars worth of contracts as aresult of RosPil findings, according to an article by Ioffe in the NewYorker. Butit looks as if anti-corruption crusading may be catching up to the lawyeringblogger. According to the Guardian,he is currently under investigation by Moscow prosecutors for "inflictingmaterial damage by means of deceit."

YevgeniaChirikova

Chirikovamight not seem like the type to take on the Kremlin, but this 33-year-old mother of two has become the posterwoman for saving the Khimki forest, apart of the "Green Belt" around Moscow that is supposed to be protected underRussian federal law.

Afterdiscovering that trees near her house had been marked for clear-cutting,Chirikova formed In Defense of Khimki, a community group devoted to saving theforest. Members of the group have faced consistent harassment -- one member was brutallybeaten and is now confined to a wheelchair -- but it has thus far succeeded inpreventing any more trees from being felled.

Shemay never have heard of Andrei Sakharov, but Chirikova epitomizes the newgeneration of Russian activists. Wealthier, more free, and motivated by concreteconcerns, young Russians like her have taken up to torch.