Reply to Books on Russians

Forum Index » Entertainment and Pop Culture

Reply to "Books on Russians"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I already said that Russia may be nice to visit, especially with US income, and Moscow and St Petersburg have a decent standard of living. Speaking of Russia as a whole and as a place to live, it is not a nice place with ever-decreasing opportunities and ever-increasing corruption and government overreach. I can have love for Russia as a Russian, but I have no love for the totalitarian state and the way people are treated when they come into contact with the government corruption. It is easy to think well of Russia when none of the horrors affect you (e.g dark realtors, burial mafia, lack of cancer treatment access, no money for medicine, all good jobs taken up by the clannish connections, gay beatings, rural nurses making 165 dollars a month, regional hospitals and schools closing in the name of efficiency). And we are not comparing Russia and the world (all governments to go around). We are discussing Russia as a lesser, more backwards European country. Russia is European and needs to be compared only to Europe. It pales in comparison even to Poland, the former Soviet bloc country.[/quote]

We'll have to agree to disagree on this.  You don't know what horrors have affected me so let's not go there. Certainly enough people are having a tough time in Russia, but enough people are having a tough time everywhere. I choose to see humanity everywhere and so far, I've been able to do that.  Perfection is not required for love.[/quote]
Again you are having a hard time with comparison. This is not Russia vs. anywhere in the world, but Russia vs Europe because my original premise is that Russians are European in many ways, just poorer, more superstitious, more corrupt, more intolerant, more violent than other Europeans (not the world, we are not talking about anywhere else).[/quote]

You'd have to get more granular with Europe because I can think of some places in Eastern Europe that are just as corrupt, intolerant or violent.  Of course, Russia is a huge country and as such, will have areas that are less or more violent, or less or more intolerant. Incidentally, I think you're missing the mark on tolerance - compared to many European countries, Russia is more diverse both ethnically and religiously.   Certainly, ethnic minorities in Russia fared much better than ethnic Russians in post-USSR republics! It's much nicer to be a Kazakh in Moscow than a Russian in Astana, believe me.

But no matter.  Russia can be all these things, and she's still OK with me.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics