Habits instilled by fear are slow to fade but can be rapidly relearned. That is one lesson Vladimir Putin is teaching us.
Roaming through Russia just after the Soviet Union dissolved, I kept in my pocket a copy of the new U.S.-Russia treaty that opened the country to free travel.
As I drove down highways until recently off-limits, my license plate identifiable as a foreign reporter's, highway police would pull me over and demand to know who had given me permission.