What do you like about Russia (history and present)?

Domen said:
We are bashing Russia and Russian members in most threads (recently ones about Ukraine), so I decided to start a totally different thread. I like for example Russian military drill, military marches, songs (culture in general, in fact), history (except for periods when they harmed other nations) and language.

I also like the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia (4 gold medals - it is priceless to hear our anthem on Russian soil 4 times in a row! :D).
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My degree is in this subject, so there is a great deal I like about Russia.

I love the music, from their folk songs to their classical anthems, military marches to their sad hymns.

I love the language.

I love the people, and their philosophy on life. For the most part, lol. But most of all I adore their passion. In the Anglo-Saxon world we have come to regard passion and the stiff upper lip as polar opposites, but the Russians have found a way to combine the two into one reckoning force.

I love the geography of the country. Deserts and mountains in the south, the taiga forests in the north, great steppes, giant rivers, freezing lakes.

I love snow.

I love how Russians think about Russia, and other Russians.

For the most part, the food.

And, of course, the writers. I pretty hated poetry before I discovered Blok and Pushkin, and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are amazing fun to read.

Things I do not like:

The Orthodox Church, and the utter madness that surrounds it. And I thought Protestant superstitions were bad, sheesh.

The "do it once and its done forever" attitude which is rather prevalent.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the return of misogyny and racism, the twin devils of chauvinism.

Borshch.
 
^Since there was no misogyny or racism in Sovietia at all. Uncle Joseph just sent millions to Siberia due to more realistic politics. :facetundra:

I think Russia is far better off today than in the soviet era.
 
As ever, though, racism goes hand in hand with general depression. It's easy to believe that the immigrants are taking all the jobs when in fact there are simply no jobs.
 
Tycho Brahe said:
I like that Putin is turning Russia back into the enemy of the free world and democracy, the strong military power that bullys smaller countries next to it.

It's so nice to have a clear and simple enemy image. Ah, like the good old days.
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Oh just stop. The cold war has been over for over two decades now. Haven't you heard?!
 
Nature.
Food.
Language - and bulk of literature, film, music and art.
And importantly, the people. Generally. As long as they aren't discussing politics and/or history.

Kyriakos said:
^Since there was no misogyny or racism in Sovietia at all. Uncle Joseph just sent millions to Siberia due to more realistic politics. :facetundra:
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Never thought I'll have to defend Stalin... but I don't think racism was ever one of his motivators.
 
I like Russians are different. Thats enough for me. Different way of looking at things can add new dimendion to life. I admire the struggle Russia had to go through history. Its simply mind blowing. I have met some excelent Russians and some quite bad ones too. My hopes are that one day when this western civilization will exhaust itself something new will come to the fore - possibly from Russia.....
 
Russia is the future, it will save Europe.
 
Kyriakos said:
^Since there was no misogyny or racism in Sovietia at all.
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No, there wasn't. Racism is not casual interaction, it is a social structure. Any casual racism was denied that structure by the specifically anti-racist attitudes of the Soviet government. Sure, you can dig up perhaps a quote or something said by a person about a particular ethnicity, and that might prove that this person was racist or prejudiced, but that's where it ended.

If anything, Soviet society was explicitly anti-racist, as it struggled to help the less-developed peoples of the USSR, and the world, to rise to their level. Non-Russians had many more opportunities than Russians (an extensive system of Affirmative Action existed, as well as extensive investment in the economies and infrastructure of Union Republics), including sovereignty over their own republics - RSFSR had no republic Soviet, as all the other SSRs did, or control over uniquely Russian culture, as it was felt that Russian culture had been imperial for too long, such that any promotion of it would necessarily hinder the cultural development of the other peoples of the USSR by forcing it upon them.
 
Their naukograds.
 
Cheezy the Wiz said:
No, there wasn't. Racism is not casual interaction, it is a social structure. Any casual racism was denied that structure by the specifically anti-racist attitudes of the Soviet government. Sure, you can dig up perhaps a quote or something said by a person about a particular ethnicity, and that might prove that this person was racist or prejudiced, but that's where it ended.

If anything, Soviet society was explicitly anti-racist, as it struggled to help the less-developed peoples of the USSR, and the world, to rise to their level. Non-Russians had many more opportunities than Russians (an extensive system of Affirmative Action existed, as well as extensive investment in the economies and infrastructure of Union Republics), including sovereignty over their own republics - RSFSR had no republic Soviet, as all the other SSRs did, or control over uniquely Russian culture, as it was felt that Russian culture had been imperial for too long, such that any promotion of it would necessarily hinder the cultural development of the other peoples of the USSR by forcing it upon them.
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I'm curious as to what you mean by 'society was anti-racist'. 'The government acted to make people less racist' is not the same thing. Is there any reliable evidence for the prevalence of hate crimes, for example?
 
By "racism" he means structural racism.
 
I imagine that the Jews and Ukrainians would contest that the Soviet government viewed all races equally, at least in the early days.
 
Flying Pig said:
I'm curious as to what you mean by 'society was anti-racist'. 'The government acted to make people less racist' is not the same thing. Is there any reliable evidence for the prevalence of hate crimes, for example?
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Hate crime was just that: a crime. Racism was understood to be unacceptable, and people who engaged in it were not respecting the "druzhba narodov," or "friendship of peoples."

Read the testimonies of Africans, African-Americans, and Indians who went to the USSR to study or live. They all speak of a welcoming society and people who did not judge them for their race. And as I said, there were no structural or social inhibitions to any race (or sex) which desired to advance himself or herself; in education, or the arts, or military, or in politics. Hell, only one of the Soviet premiers was even Russian! Well 1.5, but you see my point.

SS-18 ICBM said:
By "racism" he means structural racism.
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Yes I am, hence why I referred to structural versus casual racism. An individual might be racist, but that was really the end of it. Which, while offensive, really reduces it more to the level of "oh I met an unpleasant person today" as opposed to "man, I really feel like I'm inferior to people of other races."

luiz said:
A lot of people were freakin' deported just because of their ethnicity. How's that not structural racism?
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Because that's not what racism is.

By the way, nearly all of the people who were deported because of ethnic reasons retained their full Soviet citizenship and all rights therein. The lost not an ounce of opportunity in Soviet society for being, say, Estonian, or Chechen, or Korean.

Flying Pig said:
I imagine that the Jews and Ukrainians would contest that the Soviet government viewed all races equally, at least in the early days.
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And why is that?
 
Uh, they were uprooted and sent to middle-of-nowhere Siberia. I doubt they had much use of theoretical equal citizenship... Most of the Crimea and other borderlands had colonists sent from the inland, so that they would be more loyal or the rest of that nice stuff.
 
Cheezy the Wiz said:
Not really. Most went to Central Asia, or to other parts of European Russia.

Do you think rights disappear when one lives on the periphery? Can one not appeal to a court, or vote in an election, or publish a book, or own a house, because one doesn't live in downtown Moscow?
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You are talking about the difference of living in a city in the civilized world, and living in some endless plain in Kazakhstan in the early 20th century, or god knows where else. It is not like we are discussing forced movements of population in a smallish country, or even a regular sized euro country. I am sure almost no one had much to live for after being taken in the trains from Sevastopol, Odessa or other euro cities, and planted in some wilderness further away from any sea than most people are from different continents :)
 
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