Learning Activity: Examining the legacy of Boris Yeltsin

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(CNN Student News) -- Students will examine the legacy of Boris Yeltsin from multiple perspectives.

Procedure

Have students define the word "legacy." Explain that public figures often have mixed legacies, depending on the perspectives from which they are being judged.

Refer students to CNN Student News and to related online and textbook materials to learn more about the achievements of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Use the following questions to help guide students' research:

Who was Boris Yeltsin?

What was the Cold War?

What were Yeltsin's achievements or accomplishments during and after the Cold War?

Which of Yeltsin's accomplishments do you think were the most significant? State your rationale.

After students have shared their findings, challenge them to examine Yeltsin's achievements from multiple perspectives. Have students consider how different generations within Russia might judge Yeltsin's role in the demise of the Soviet Union and as Russian president. Ask: How might the perspectives of the international community compare with those of people who lived in Russian under Yeltsin's leadership? What factors do you think might contribute to how Boris Yeltsin is remembered? What do you think will be Yeltsin's legacy? State your rationale.

Correlated Standards

Historical Thinking Standards

STANDARD 3: The student engages in historical analysis and interpretation: Therefore, the student is able to

• Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas, values, personalities, behaviors, and institutions by identifying likenesses and differences.

• Consider multiple perspectives of various peoples in the past by demonstrating their differing motives, beliefs, interests, hopes, and fears.

• Analyze cause-and-effect relationships bearing in mind multiple causation including (a) the importance of the individual in history; (b) the influence of ideas, human interests, and beliefs; and (c) the role of chance, the accidental and the irrational.

• Compare competing historical narratives.

• Hold interpretations of history as tentative, subject to changes as new information is uncovered, new voices heard, and new interpretations broached.

• Evaluate major debates among historians concerning alternative interpretations of the past.

• Hypothesize the influence of the past, including both the limitations and opportunities made possible by past decisions.

World History

Era 9: The 20th Century Since 1945: Promises and Paradoxes

STANDARD 2: The search for community, stability, and peace in an interdependent world.

Standard 2C: The student understands how liberal democracy, market economies, and human rights movements have reshaped political and social life.

Explain why the Soviet and other communist governments collapsed and the Soviet Union splintered into numerous states in the 1980s and early 1990s.

U.S. History

Era 10 : Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

STANDARD 1: Recent developments in foreign policy and domestic politics.

Standard 1C: The student understands major foreign policy initiatives.

Explain the reasons for the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the USSR.

The National Standards for History (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/standards/) are published by the National Center for History in the Schools (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/).

Keywords

Boris Yeltsin, legacy, Cold War, Russia, Soviet Union

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