Russian Federation (And other forms of Russia)

[Geilinor]

Which is why i never bothered to drink Vodka.

Russian vodka anyway. Polish stuff is where its at.

You don't drink Russian vodka because you can't read what is written on the bottle? But you drink Polish vodka becasue?..

Because it isn't in Cyrillic and maybe he knows some Polish?

[The balkens]

You don't drink Russian vodka because you can't read what is written on the bottle? But you drink Polish vodka becasue?..

Because it isn't in Cyrillic and maybe he knows some Polish?

slight polish, from what i learned (and forgotten but kept drinking anyway) from this lady that lived on the same street.

[Lytenburgh]

slight polish, from what i learned (and forgotten but kept drinking anyway) from this lady that lived on the same street.

Is this confirmation? You drink polish vodka only because you can read what is written on a botlle, but because you are "cytillic challenged" you don't drink Russian vodka?

[Uncle Vladimir]

The great Russian nation has had a troubled and violent history. However, the Russian people have proven themselves to be a strong peoples and from the ashes of the destruction of the USSR we arise once again a great nation with strong democracy, strong leaders, and wonderful women.

[Busen]

Luckily, on the second day of this patriotic fervor there was on 80 lvl pro-Russian troll, who, well, trolled entire estonian army - by waving Russian flag and singing Russian national anthem.

Maybe you should look at Chechnya where Kadyrov is establishing Sharia Laws (the Constitution of the RF has no effects there) and where Russians have a risk to display a russian flag before you start gloating about this video.

[Roski]

Luckily, on the second day of this patriotic fervor there was on 80 lvl pro-Russian troll, who, well, trolled entire estonian army - by waving Russian flag and singing Russian national anthem.

Maybe you should look at Chechnya where Kadyrov is establishing Sharia Laws (the Constitution of the RF has no effects there) and where Russians have a risk to display a russian flag before you start gloating about this video.

Displaying the russian flag and singing the national anthem is harmless.

Its when people like that pull out guns or scream "Allahu Akbar" that it becomes an issue. As far as I'm aware, there is freedom of demonstration in Estonia, and while that may have been an inappropiate time, its fine.

That is, of course, until half the nation revolts and suddenly has T-90s

[Lytenburgh]

Luckily, on the second day of this patriotic fervor there was on 80 lvl pro-Russian troll, who, well, trolled entire estonian army - by waving Russian flag and singing Russian national anthem.

Maybe you should look at Chechnya where Kadyrov is establishing Sharia Laws (the Constitution of the RF has no effects there) and where Russians have a risk to display a russian flag before you start gloating about this video.

Russians waving Russian flags in Chechnya. Also - a world record, with 100 000 Russians and Chechens creating "living" Russian and Chechen flags.

What were you saying, Buse?

[Lytenburgh]

OK, I am getting the feeling we had started off on the wrong foot so to speak. So, I will try once more.

Fine, lets try.

Here are some questions I have I would like to have answers from a native Russian.

What are the current issues that you see from your nation's perspective facing it?

The usual - inflation, economy, security. Plus the enormous anti-Russian campaign by the so-called "Free World".

Which issues concern you the most?

Economy and security. So far, the only thing that was increased in price where I live is the "Bud" beer. In one store where I usually bough "everything for Friday" it used to be 69 Rubles, now it is 75 per 0.5 litre. So, I walked around and found another store, where it costs just 61 Ruble.

The same goes pretty much with many other things and foodstufs. Instead of buying everyithing from one place, now I know several place where I buy different things, because it's cheaper.

Plus, thankfully, the cost of tickets on commuter buses didn't increased, so far.

How is the economy performing today? Has it shown promising steps from its crash in the 90s?

Uhm - yeah! Of course the current economy is performing way better than in 90s. Fabrics, for a change, are working and people are gtting paid.

What do you believe is the best way to secure cooperation between the rest of Europe and Russia? Which problems get in the way?

EU and Russia can cooperate - and that's what is important here, but which some people tend to forget. But any longterm attempts to build such "cooperation" are doomed to fail, till the EU either recognises Russia's sphere of influence and stop such intitiatives like "Eastern Partnership" OR include Russia in it.

[Lytenburgh]

The American Conservative wrote a short article referencing a recent article devoted to analysis of Putin's style of conducting the policy and about his way to power:

The Russian-American journalist Keith Gessen, who is very much not an admirer of Vladimir Putin, says that the Russian president is a nasty piece of work, but he would behave in the same way if he were a nice guy. Excerpts:

And this should give pause to anyone who believes that Putin’s behavior is aberrant—the product of a uniquely evil or crazy mind—and that he’s leading Russians in a direction opposed to what they perceive to be their true interests. Earlier this month a British legislative committee accused Britain and the Europeans of a “catastrophic misreading” of Russia, one that naively concluded Moscow was heading down the same democratic, liberalizing road as the rest of us when in fact “Russia is increasingly defining itself … as a geopolitical and ideological competitor.” This error of judgment, the report said, caused the West to go “sleepwalking” into the Ukraine crisis.

Yet even if the fondest dreams of these slumbering Western politicians had come true and they had encountered a Nice Putin—a hypothetically more friendly Russian leader—they would still have gotten him wrong. Russia will, one hopes, eventually change its leadership, but it is not going to be able to change its geographic location, or its historic associations, or its longstanding wish to keep the West—which hasn’t always crossed the border bearing flowers—at bay. And that holds many lessons for the future.

Gessen goes through the details of Russian politics in the post-communist era, and makes a convincing, easy case that after the catastrophe of the Yeltsin years, no nice, liberal Russian politicians had the remotest viability. A Putin figure was inevitable, and makes sense, given what Russia has been through. More:

The other thing I keep thinking about is Nicholas II, Russia’s last tsar. Though he has since been sainted by the Russian Orthodox church, Nicholas was no saint. He tolerated terrible cruelty in his dominions, authorized a stupid, losing war against Japan, refused to grant the people a constitution and enjoyed reading aloud from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Nonetheless, he is frequently described by historians as a gentle, polite, kind-hearted family man who doted on his wife and children and enjoyed the outdoors. He was related by blood and manners to half the royal families in Europe.

But when this charming Nicholas, by then already imprisoned with his family in Yekaterinburg, awaiting their brutal execution, read about the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, whereby the Bolsheviks surrendered Belarus, Ukraine, the Crimea, the modern-day Baltic States and part of Georgia to the Germans, he said he would rather cut off his hand than sign such a treaty. And yet Russia in 1991 lost more than the Bolsheviks had given up in 1918.

We keep hearing that with the invasion of Crimea, Russia has upset the stable post-Cold War order. But I find myself intrigued by the German political scientist Ulrich Kuhn’s argument that, far from being an aggressive power over the past 20 years, Russia has tried to defend the status quo. As the timeline of NATO expansion above might indicate, if anyone has been “re-drawing the map of Europe,” it is not, or at least primarily, the Russians.

Read the whole thing. It’s a really good piece, and the fact that it is written by Gessen, who cannot stand Putin, makes it more persuasive. We keep waiting for the liberal, democratic, Western-oriented Russian leader, like we keep waiting for the liberal, democratic, Western-oriented Arab Muslim leader. Because, we think, deep down, inside every single person in the entire world is an American, just waiting to be liberated.

No, really - Gessen's article is unusually well-written by someone who is a borderline Russophobe.

[United Marxist Nations]

With regard to the Bolsheviks, while they did technically give up that much land, they didn't exactly follow it. So not too much of a problem there.

[Costa Fierro]

What's a "green eyed taxi"?

[Lytenburgh]

What's a "green eyed taxi"?

A song. Here - Mikhail Boyaskiy's performance of it.

[Costa Fierro]

What's a "green eyed taxi"?

A song. Here - Mikhail Boyaskiy's performance of it.

What's it about?

[Lytenburgh]

A song. Here - Mikhail Boyaskiy's performance of it.

What's it about?

A green-eyed taxi.

What, you need a full translation of it's lyrics? Won't gonna happened. Learn Russian if you want.

[Costa Fierro]

What's it about?

A green-eyed taxi.

What, you need a full translation of it's lyrics? Won't gonna happened. Learn Russian if you want.

No. I'm interested to know if this has any cultural meaning to it in Russia or if it's just some well known song. No need to be so hostile.

[Lytenburgh]

A green-eyed taxi.

What, you need a full translation of it's lyrics? Won't gonna happened. Learn Russian if you want.

No. I'm interested to know if this has any cultural meaning to it in Russia or if it's just some well known song. No need to be so hostile.

It is incredibly well-known song and Boyaski's performance of it is of memetic proportions.

If you thought it was some sort of propaganda - nope.

[Costa Fierro]

It is incredibly well-known song and Boyaski's performance of it is of memetic proportions.

If you thought it was some sort of propaganda - nope.

No I didn't think it was some sort of propaganda song. I was interested because I heard the "club remix" of the song by Oleg Kvasha and was generally curious as to what "green eyed taxi" was and why it's well known.

I'm not sure why you seem surprised that people actually want to ask Russians living in Russia questions about Russian songs in a thread about Russia.

[Lytenburgh]

It is incredibly well-known song and Boyaski's performance of it is of memetic proportions.

If you thought it was some sort of propaganda - nope.

I'm not sure why you seem surprised that people actually want to ask Russians living in Russia questions about Russian songs in a thread about Russia.

Because it's, what - the first time someone did it? While most of the time Westerners here try to diss Russia and Russians?

[Roski]

I'm not sure why you seem surprised that people actually want to ask Russians living in Russia questions about Russian songs in a thread about Russia.

Because it's, what - the first time someone did it? While most of the time Westerners here try to diss Russia and Russians?

I'm interested personally in a large section of Russian culture.

[Costa Fierro]

Because it's, what - the first time someone did it? While most of the time Westerners here try to diss Russia and Russians?

I don't think people come here to diss Russians and Russia itself and I'm going to point out that you also cheery pick various articles that reinforce your idea that we're all uninterested in Russian culture and Russian history and are all Russophobes or whatever it is you claim we are.

I am genuinely interested to know the background of "Green Eyed Taxi" and why it's well known in Russia.

[Lytenburgh]

I am genuinely interested to know the background of "Green Eyed Taxi" and why it's well known in Russia.

Fine!

Зеленоглазое Такси - written and first performed in 1987. It achieve a country-wide fame in 1988 when Revord-Studio "Melodia" released it's "giant-sized" vinyl-disk where it was performed by Mikhail Boyarskiy. Immediately, the song became a hit and it is still popular. I remember it was performed live on 3 weddings that I'd attended (one of them - of my elder brother) and on my school graduation final concert. Reportedly, you can hear it in GTA4.

[Costa Fierro]

Fine!

Зеленоглазое Такси - written and first performed in 1987. It achieve a country-wide fame in 1988 when Revord-Studio "Melodia" released it's "giant-sized" vinyl-disk where it was performed by Mikhail Boyarskiy. Immediately, the song became a hit and it is still popular. I remember it was performed live on 3 weddings that I'd attended (one of them - of my elder brother) and on my school graduation final concert. Reportedly, you can hear it in GTA4.

Interesting. And yes, you can hear it on GTA IV as it's one of the Russian language songs on Vladivostok FM (which also has Ruslana from Ukraine as the DJ).

Oddly enough, that's where I first heard the song. Before that, I'd only heard of Russian songs like Katyusha and such. Oh, and T.a.T.u.

[Lytenburgh]

For all Russophobes and Doomsayers, who instead of analysing things prefer knee-jerk responses and like to repeat Media propagated buzzwords ad nauseum:

No, Obama, Russia's Economy Isn't 'in Tatters'

Western politicians and pundits should be more careful with their predictions for the Russian economy: Reports of its demise may prove to be premature.

Bashing the Russian economy has lately become a popular pastime. In his state of the nation address last month, U.S. President Barack Obama said it was "in tatters." And yesterday, Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics published an article predicting a 10 percent drop in gross domestic product this year -- more or less in line with the apocalyptic predictions that prevailed when the oil price reached its nadir late last year and the ruble was in free fall.

Aslund's forecast focuses on Russia's shrinking currency reserves, some of which have been earmarked for supporting government spending in difficult times. At $364.6 billion, they are down 26 percent from a year ago and $21.6 billion from the beginning of this year. Aslund expects $166 billion to be spent on infrastructure investments and bailing out companies, and another $100 billion to exit via capital flight and other currency outflows. As a result, given foreign debts of almost $600 billion, "Russia's reserve situation is approaching a critical limit," he says.

What this argument ignores is that Russia's foreign debts are declining along with its reserves -- that's what happens when the money is used to pay down state companies' obligations. Last year, for example, the combined foreign liabilities of the Russian government and companies dropped by $129.4 billion, compared with a $124.3 billion decline in foreign reserves. Beyond that, a large portion of Russian companies' remaining foreign debt is really part of a tax-evasion scheme: By lending themselves money from abroad, the companies transfer profits to lower-tax jurisdictions. Such loans can easily be extended if sanctions prevent the Russian side from paying.

The declining price of oil is also less of a threat than many have warned. True, the Russian government's revenues from energy exports will fall in dollar terms. But because Russia's central bank has allowed the ruble's value against the dollar to decline, the ruble value of the revenues will be higher than they otherwise would be. As a result, Russia no longer requires $100 oil to balance its budget -- and the effect of lower oil prices on the broader economy will be muted.

Economists at the respected Gaidar Institute, for example, expect the floating of the ruble to roughly halve the negative GDP impact of the decline in oil prices. They estimate that Russian GDP will shrink by a moderate 2.7 percent this year, even if Brent oil trades at $40 (it traded at $61 today). That's just a bit more optimistic than the consensus among 39 economists polled by Bloomberg between Feb. 20 and Feb. 25: On average, they see a decline of 4 percent.

Economic sanctions, which most forecasts assume will continue this year, are having less impact that many in the West would like to believe. Sergei Tsukhlo of the Gaidar Institute estimates that the sanctions have affected only 6 percent of Russian industrial enterprises. "Their effect remains quite insignificant despite all that's being said about them," he wrote, noting that trade disruptions with Ukraine have been more important.

Granted, there's no avoiding a significant drop in Russians' living standards because of accelerating inflation. The economics ministry in Moscow predicts real wages will fall by 9 percent this year -- which, Aslund wrote, means that "for the first time after 15 years in power," Russian President Vladimir Putin "will have to face a majority of the Russian people experiencing a sharply declining standard of living." So far, though, Russians have take the initial shock of devaluation and accompanying inflation largely in stride. The latest poll from the independent Levada Center, conducted between Feb. 20 and Feb. 23, actually shows an uptick in Putin's approval rating -- to 86 percent from 85 percent in January.

It's time to bury the expectation that Russia will fall apart economically under pressure from falling oil prices and economic sanctions, and that Russians, angered by a drop in their living standards, will rise up and sweep Putin out of office. Western powers face a tough choice: Settle for a lengthy siege and ratchet up the sanctions despite the progress in Ukraine, or start looking for ways to restart dialogue with Russia, a country that just won't go away.

[Costa Fierro]

Kremlin critic Boris Nemstov shot dead in Moscow.

[The balkens]

Kremlin critic Boris Nemstov shot dead in Moscow.

jesus.