IRL10

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/world/asia/01china.html?ex=1314763200&en=abf86c087b22be74&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
This is a news story from the New York Times in September of 2006 about changing text books in china. We're studying Mao's china right now in class. It's valuable because it talks about a symbol of communism's grip on china as slipping when a new text book is distributed that barely mentions Mao or socialism. This article has some hefty limitations: it was published in 2006 but in 2009 thing are still looking very communist over in china and many textbooks are undergoing severe scrutiny, the article doesn't say how widely spread this text book is, it could only be used in select schools, and the article was printed while the textbooks were being first introduced to the schools so they may have been removed since then.

IRL9

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8334009.stm
This is a news article published by the BBC in October this year. I thought it was interesting to get a modern day Russian opinion on Stalin because all the reading we've done in class makes it seem like his people hated him. I find it enriching to know he had at least a few followers. This was based off the statements of Russia's current president and may be leaned towards being more sympathetic with its neighboring capitalist neighbors.