Let me tell you a story told by James Billington, Librarian of Congress and a student of Russian history. Billington happened to be in Moscow in August of 1991. It was a tense and dangerous time, with the old Soviet regime giving way to a new social order. Boris Yeltzin and a small group of defenders occupied the Russian White House and successfully managed to face off an enormous number of tanks and troops poised to attack, and to restore the old guard in the Soviet Union.

Surprisingly, a key role in this successful resistance was played, said Billington, by the babushkas, the "old women in the church." These bandana-wearing old grandmothers, who had kep…