Posted on 03/30/2013 9:44:12 AM PDT by marshmallow
A lot of that you have said is true but I keep standing my point. Putin’s Russia offers much more opportunities and it is clearly visible. People developing ways to prosper below radar of corrupt government officials and as their number is growing they have chance to become an active majority to change situation for better. It wasn’t a case under Yeltsin when people were starving. They wanted no freedom or liberties selling their votes for food and vodka.
The improvements that you think are “visible” are the result of a new generation that grew up free from communist indoctrination in the intervening 22 years, and of high oil prices.
Putinism prevents a far wider and deeper progress from occurring.
I also wanted to add: there is a difference between exposing the dangers of liberalism in the West and making useless caricatures. In Russian-language blogosphere you often see caricatures. Children adopted from poorly run orphanages by well-meaning American couples are invariably described as brutalized and brainwashed, based on a few tragic instances of adoptions going wrong. In another example, if you read the descriptions of what Halloween or Valentine’s Day are, you’d think that the American nation devotes itself to enthusiastic Satan worship and sex orgies. It is plain old Soviet anti-Americanism in a modified dressing.
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