Maybe it's because I've watched the "Wizard of Oz" too many times, but I can't write the word "tigers" without also whispering under my breath "lions and bears, oh my". As luck would have it, this is B week in my little guy's class and they will be having a day about bears. And no nation is more closely identified with bears than the country of his birth, Russia.

A Russian circus wouldn't be a Russian circus without a bear act. You'll find bears on some of the regional emblems around the country, and bears in children's cartoons and folktales, like this version of "Masha And The Bear" that I found on a Russian handicrafts site. Russia's big long range Tu-95MS bombers are colloquially called Bears, and so is its national rugby team.

But it was a different kind of sporting event that probably made the bear synonymous with Russia in the mind of the Western world: the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. The mascot of those summer games was a cuddly little brown bear known as Misha. The 1980 Olympics turned into a mess after the United States and several dozen other countries stayed away to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but Misha held his ground--and his currency as a brand icon.

Like the tigers of the Amur River basin highlighted in the Russian Life magazine article, bears have not fared well under perestroika. National Geographic ran a feature in 2006 about what poaching had done to the bears of the Kamchatka peninsula. They have also not fared well under global warming: In April, The New York Times had a story noting that Russia had authorized a polar bear hunt because the melting of their normal habitats had driven them south into areas inhabited by people. Trophy hunters deserve a share of the blame as well.

I was thinking mostly of Misha when I created a little brown bear to leave with my little guy after trip one in May 2005. Our "Mischa" is now worn in spots, particularly the paw that held the audio clip featuring me and my older son saying "We love you." But he'll be a guest of honor at a teddy bear picnic at school this week, and he'll have a tale of Russia to tell.