A textbook that will be introduced this fall calls Stalin the Soviet Union's 'most effective' leader.

Brought up amid the Soviet empire's collapse, many 20-something Russians like Anastasia Chukovskaya received an education rich in varied historical viewpoints. Today's youths may not get that opportunity.

«In the 1990s, there were different views, different textbooks.… Teachers were eager to tell pupils about things that were a secret in the past», says Ivan Bolshakov, leader of the youth wing of the democratic Yabloko party. «Now, they try to accent important events that emphasize Russian statesmanship».

Ilya Yashin, the 24-year-old leader of Yabloko's youth group, announced Wednesday that he would seek to unseat Grigory Yavlinsky as the party's leader and unite liberal politicians in a new political movement.

"People are not able to choose between good democrats and bad democrats," Yashin said at a news conference.

With less than 24 hours of official campaigning left, Russian electoral officials and outside observers are gearing up for what they call the most transparent poll in the country’s history. But observers admit they can’t cover every voting booth on Sunday.

Just a few dozen specialists will monitor the election, after OSCE observers pulled out.

«We are all in all 55 persons and Russia is a big country. We’ll divide and we’ll cover some polling stations but we cannot cover very much», said Hanne Severinsen, PACE observer.

The Moscow City Duma's Youth Chamber stated its intention to improve the current housing situation in student hostels at a meeting last week. More and more students are being forced to seek alternative accommodation as student rooms go to outsiders, including drug dealers, migrant workers and prostitutes. Extreme measures, such as raiding university hostels, have been suggested to deal with the worsening situation.

A group of Russian liberals, dismayed by what they see as state-sponsored xenophobia against ethnic Georgians, are adopting Georgian-style surnames to show solidarity with the tiny Caucasus nation.

Moscow's chilly relations with Tbilisi plunged to a new low last month after Georgia briefly detained four Russian officers accused of spying. Russia hit back by cutting all sea, air, railway and postal links and ordering the deportation of hundreds of Georgians it says are illegal immigrants. One deportee died from an asthma attack at a Moscow airport this week.

«We view the actions by the Russian authorities as state fascism», Alexander Shurshev, an activist of the liberal Yabloko party in Russia's second largest city, told Reuters.

The daughter of former Prime Minster Yegor Gaidar, Maria, and a second protester rappelled off a bridge near the Kremlin on Thursday and hung a banner criticizing President Vladimir Putin's government for changes to election law.

The duo unfurled a 15-meter banner reading "Return the Elections to the People, Bastards!" and hung from the Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge for more than 30 minutes before police and emergency workers hauled them up and detained them.

Today public actions staged by Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party (NBP) no longer look like buffoonery or a cheap show, as the case was just five years ago..

The sit-in at the RF Health Ministry central office, held by NBP activists, not only became a media event but also evoked understanding in a society outraged by the termination of social security programs.

Today, political struggles have effectively ceased even in the State Duma and there is no apparent difference in party programs; what is known as parliamentary methods of action have lost its meaning. All that is left to young people in politics is to stage attention-grabbing acts: hurling tomatoes at politicians, dropping leaflets in the Bolshoi Theater, and so forth.