Russia or America II ?

[Dr_Woland]

Privet Olya!

I must say that my experience here (in Russia) is very similar to Disa's (welcome back, Disa, btw!).

Right now there is a really strong revival of pride in Russian language, writing, culture, music and lots more. One positive effect of the Financial Crisis was that the goods produced by Russian manufacturers can now compete on fairer terms with foreign imports, so there are a lot more domestically-produced goods in the stores. And this in turn creates more paid work for Russian people.

Of course, I am not saying that Russia should close its doors to imports - but it is not healthy when imports are the majority of the goods on sale, and that unstable situation had to end. About 3-4 years ago, if you wanted to sell some goods here in Russia, the best way was to buy some labels "made in Italy", and put them on the shoes, or clothes, you were selling. Now goods are proudly marked "made in Russia".

I think also that lots of people here got a "reality check" about the USA - they realised it's not a paradise, just another country like all the others. The Kosovo Crisis was crucial - they realised that the lovely USA was capable of bombing a European country for the flimsiest of proven reasons. Of course, no-one believes the USA would bomb Russia seriously - the stockpile of nuclear weapons is too great a risk. (The USA likes to show its power to weak little nations with no nuclear capacity. China's killed far more of its own people than Milosevic, but China has nukes, so Clinton has lunch with these tyrants, and the CIA protect them during official visits). It was seeing this kind of hypocrisy and plain IGNORANCE about world politics (bombing Montenegro, one of the USA's own allies, because they're too stupid to know where it is?) that sent a big wake-up call throughout Russia.

The Financial Crisis (Aug-Sept 1998) was another major turning-point in this readjustment of attitudes. Suddenly... all the foreigners ran away. Looked like they were only "fair-weather friends". Of course, the Germans, Turks, Finns, Brits, Irish etc soon came back, and some didn't leave - but the Americans have not come back. (Reza Rahmani here in this forum believes the Russians should invite the Americans to come and run the country - seriously!!).

Olya, ty ponimaesh', ssorit'sya ne xochu s Ameriky. Chestno, dlya sebya, nichego tam mne interesnogo net, eto strana bez kultury i vosnomnom na ochen' nizhnom urovene obrazovaniya - ya goryazde predpuchitayu zhit' zdes' v Rossii. A ya anglichanin :-) Vse rovno, esli Amerikantsi xotyat tak zhit', eto kak xotyat, v "strane svobodnyx", bez problem, ya ne mogu byt' protiv. Tol'ko shto, ya ne vizhu shto-to ot ix kultury kotoroe mne nujno v lits anglichanina - i russky stali etot ponimat' (na konets!) toje.

Ya ne govoryu, shto isolatsiya rekemmenduetsya Rossiyu - sovsem naoborot. No Rossiya posle kommunizma byla kak bednaya princessa, dochka vrednogo baryna, kotoraya mechtala o svoego Prinsa, kotory budet vechno i verno smotret za nee. Nada byla vnimatel'nee smotret', shto byvaet bol'she Prinsov chem edinstvennogo Dyadyi Sema!

Ne boyish'sya - kak ya vizhu, Rossiya ne bystro stanovitsya Amerika II :-)

Dr W.
(v Moskve)

[Jk]

That was brutal,Nonson.But i dont think that is very funny. I m living in a colony too and i can tell you that it's not such beauty experience.(economic ,political and at
least military preasure)Chances for us to win that game are about 0.1%.I'm asking myself what will be when USA lost all their "enemies"?There is no Russia to
fight,OK.China?No,it's no interesting like USSR. What is Rambo next mission?Maybe Peking?Will Mr.007
go to Cuba?(If you seen "Lethal weapon 4", bad guy is Chinese)Nope.They must find something immediately,or they
are going to lose profit on making movies.
I dont know,maybe that is punnishment for not being born in USA or GB.If people had any possibility,they would emmigrate to USA or Canada,but they had not.

To Disa:when you have such great culture(Puskin,Dostojevski,
Gogolj,Solzenicin,Cajkovski)chess history(Alekhine,Tal) then why you dont export it?Because Americans and Europe
are not interested very much.Why then you watch american's movies,listen their music,use their technology?PC
on which you write this letters is america's product. I wouldnt agree with you about USA internal problems. America's external politic is very bad for others,but inside they have more democracy and justice we will have never.

[Dr_Woland]

>> PC
on which you write this letters is america's product. <<

The original idea was American. But huge majority of PC's are now made in Asia. Many programmers working for largest companies are Indian, Russian, Chinese.

Dr W.

[Nonson]

JK, it was not meant to be funny. There's nothing amusing about colonization, whatever the form.Peace

[Disa]

Sorry for bad English again


To Oca:
"Do we know about sinus cosines, etc? You bet.! The living proof of that, is that we have been to moon and back. Have you?"

1. I don't know what is cosinEs. I know what cosinUs is.
2. We have spacestation (MIR, if you don't know it). Have you?

"No matter how much money you put into research, if you do not have a solid education base, you are not going to produce/create anything worthwhile.
Money by itself means nothing, you must have the basic core of education and critical thinking skills in order to achieve the plateau that American professionals have obtained."

1. In America, there are MANY scientists from other countries. From Russia too.
2. If you don't pay your scientists, they'll stop any research activity.

To Jk:
"America's external politic is very bad for others,but inside they have more democracy and justice we will have never."

Really? In USA, if you don't have money to pay your advocate, they'll drop you into prison.

There is old Soviet anecdote about democracy.
American ask Russian: "In America, near White House, I can cry out that Bush is stupid. Can you do the same thing in Soviet Union?"
Russian: "Yes, I can cry out on Red Square that Bush is stupid."

To Olya:
Ne obizhayus' ya na tebya, ponimayu, chto davno tut ne bila. Sudish po tomu, kak bilo ran'she.

To Dr_Woland:
WOW! Are you englishman?? Really?? You speak Russian too good for foreigner! I think that Russian language is very hard and I respect foreigners who can speak it.
Your punctuation is perfect!!! I'm shocked
A gde ti zhivesh? V kakom gorode? Skolko tebe let, esli ne secret?


Sorry if I said something unpleasant.

[Disa]

Another Russian anecdote

American school.
Teacher: Children, it's so good that Columb found America, isn't it?
Children (except one): Yeah, you're right!!!
Teacher (to that boy): Don't you think it's good?
Boy: No. I'm an indian.


People, who knows anecdotes about Russia or USA, please, tell them.

[rodneymackinnon]

Disa,
The MIR Space Station is a joke in the US. It may be our media's slant, but MIR is portrayed as a piece of junk that was very hazardous to work in. If you, or other knowledgeable non-Americans, can enlighten me, please do so; I'd love to hear a possibly more honest assessment. Thanks.