[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is what happens to a country where the best, most moral and the brightest are systematically exterminated by the state for 5 generations and the whole population is forced to live under soul-destroying Communism.

[goldstategop]

The revival of the Orthodox faith is gradually reversing the damage but you cannot fix what was laid waste in only a generation.

With all the problems Russia has, its nothing short of a miracle its functioning at all after emerging from the Soviet collapse.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Corrupt crony capitalism is familiar everywhere. But in Russia the corruption is so pervasive that even the cronies have to pay bribes, not just to the higher-ups but to the lower-downs.

In Russia, small town girls go to the big city and get ruined, but that’s what they’re trying to do. Really trying. They go to school for it.

Among that everything is PR used to promote cults.

These statements about Russia sound like they're talking about the US. We are a lot closer to a corrupt, crony-capitalist authoritarian state than some would like to believe.

[Brother Cracker]

[jmacusa]

One of the things I find amazing about the'' new'' Russia is within the Duma, the Russian Parliament almost all of it members have their own ''sports clubs''. What the ''sport consists of is thugs(in our Congress they're called ''staffers'') who go out and beat up the other guys ‘’sports club’’ thugs. Boy there's political dialog for you. Another activity the ‘’sports clubs’’ engage in is beating the crap out of foreigners. Which usually consists of anyone of dark skin like foreign exchange students, Kazakhs and pretty much anyone who doesn't look Russian.

[DesertRhino]

“What do we do about a gigantic, depraved, immoral, lunatic country armed with nuclear warheads? “

I read the article, but why did the writer drag us into it at the end?

[theBuckwheat]

Václav Havel: The Power of the Powerless (the social and spiritual consequences of socialism)

“The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth.” Havel warns that socialist regimes create and enforce their own truth to maintain power. As time goes on, this truth diverges from factual truth and it increasingly forces those who support and depend upon the power of the regime to corrupt themselves to sustain the artificial truth.

In the end, people not only lie to each other, but they start to lie to themselves.

see:
http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=clanky&val=72_aj_clanky.html&typ=HTML

[GOPJ]

All cultures are equal, right?