Well, in spite of "I've been born there before I got the ef out"
You don't impress me either.
How many times have I been there? Where? What cities? What did I see?
You cannot answer these questions, yet you can say that I 'don't have a leg to stand on"
Pretty damned pompous of you. Glad to know I've communicated with the world's leading expert on Russia.
So long.
What one needs is not to visit as a tourist or a privileged foreign guest, who are largely insulated from the basic realities of everyday life, nor live a privileged life of a nomenklaturist [or that same foreign tourist, which is the same but at lower level], but to live the common drudgery of the proverbial "man on the street". Observing from the outside, while it has some advantages, is not the same as seeing from the inside. In a sense, you might be seeing it with your eyes, but I know it on my skin. Hence the difference.