I'm Russian – ask me a question. Be it about Russia or a personal one.

What's up bear fucker.

I'm answering questions in order, just made it to this question.

As for wallpapers, I don't know which ones you are talking about. Maybe they are just old-fashioned for the Westerners.

As for the jets and such... Yeah.
"If you don't feed your army, you will feed someone's else."
But as for the suffering economy... most of harm is caused to it by the low oil prices, not by the so-called "sanctions".

Crappy wall paper

[link to farm6.staticflickr.com (secure)]

Sanctions yes, but oil is a different matter.

How many Su-35's are they turning out? Seems to be fear in the west if you make alot of them...do you have the money?

Well... There's a number of misconceptions here, I don't even know where to start.
Actually, I think I should find a time to write some common sense overview of the whole Jewish matter...

As for the answer for now:
1. Putin is definitely not anti-semitic. Also he's not a Jew and not a Jewish puppet. Just to be sure, because I've seen such opinions too.
2. Modern Russia doesn't consider Israel to be our enemy. Nor to be our ally.
3. Russia is helping Iran to get defensive weapons, not the offensive ones.
4. Russia invested a whole lot of its influence to make Iranian deal come true. We just don't need another hot spot by our borders. Especially - not radioactive one.

As for my personal opinion, Russian international policy in the region has "making Israel and Iran friends again" one of its goals. It may seem quite unrealistic, but that's what my gut tells me.

Well, in this case it's clearly a poor work of those who were gluing this wallpaper to the wall.
I can vouch this degree of ruin is not really widespread. Though wallpaper may also come into such state after some neighbors from the floor above have forgotten to turn the tap off for some time - or if firemen were extinguishing fire or something.
I can think of a number of reasons actually.

As for my house, I have bamboo wallpaper in my room and painted walls at the rest of the house except for bathroom.

Well, wiki states that there are 46 by now, but I think that the real figure is a bit higher.

I think that S-500 introduction is more important at the moment. And new radar systems which are capable of catching "invisible" jets.

But she's right. Deal with it.

I found a very old atlas in my father's house (he died last year) from before WW2. I couldn't find a printing date, but there are maps from 1910. There was no Ukraine but a Palestine and Germany and Russia were neighbours. Interesting.

Too bad the book is nearly falling apart.

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Good thread, bump to read more later.

Pozdrav Tamonten!

One thing I always wanted to know about Russians is their attitude when dealing with smaller nations in civil sphere not politics. I mean we never were under Soviet influence in Yugoslavia/less interaction, so I want know more about working men or middle class Russians, when they are large/strong community in neighboring countries. What's the attitude?

I'll give you an example..when Serbs(and I love them to death but its true), immigrated to neighboring states in Yugo, they played superiority game..didnt learn our language we had to speak theirs in our homes, that's one example but it was commie times, so nothing made sense back then.

So how is it in let's say Lithuania or any Balt state for that matter? I know Balts give your minority a hard time but where does it come from-the hate? What is the reputation of Russian minority there and more important what is their attitude towards Lithuanian state or its people? Do they recognize it as their country? Did they learned the language? We got Serbs living in Slovenia for 40 years and they don't know a word of Slovene.

thats some bs right there

im slavic and bosnian and in my opinion the czechs are the most progressive slavs when it comes to those and many other matters.

What do russians think of cubans ?

I heard someone say that russians don't like anyone

Mislim, da vem, zakaj Srbi ne ucijo slovenskega jezika
Kako Slovenci vedo, srbsko (in veste, da so hrvaski in italijanski jezik), zakaj bi srbi leni, da se naucijo slovenscine

Hope google translate did a good job :)

I don't know how many Slovenians speak Serbian but it must be large percent. IMHO as polite as Slovenians are they feel talking to those people in their language

.

This is so stupid a question for so many reasons...

1. If Putin did things in secret, they would be secret and how would he know about these things...duh!!

2. Your ex-pat story is ultra cool and loaded with shit to the max.

Google made a poor job as always:) but I agree with the bold part completely. We never cared about foreigners speak our language beside being impressed. I see it in my work every day, Americans try to speak a sentence or two in Slovenian and us replying in English. It negates their try instantly.

hello o.p

i live in london and have russian neighbours,the type that leave theire house in 3 vehicle convoys of mercedes G wagons (for some reason they get away with blacked out front and rear windows :/)
ive never spoken to them although when i saw 2 guys wearing nice suits stood by the drive gates i waved and said hi but was given a cold stare and a grunt so my question is do all russians see brits as insignificant unless it comes to laundering theire illicit money?

Well, I was able to decipher it, but...
Huh, I live like 5 minutes of lazy walk from the military counterintelligence institution, huh. If someone was after me, they have all the opportunities.

Not so sure about Palestine, but I have this map hanging over my head (together with Russian Imperial banner) as a reminder: [link to klou.tt]
Most of Poland was Russian while only Russian neighbors at the West were Germany and Austro-Hungary.

It's a rather complex question actually. Mostly because if I try to answer briefly I'll make my people look bad, but if I answer to the full extent I will seem as one going over the board.

Short answer is - yes, Russians behaved (and still behave) much like you described. But that's just the part of the truth.
The other side of the coin is:
1. For the majority of minor ethnicities living in SU (there are close to 100 still left in Russia even after losing 1/3 of territory after SU collapse) writing systems and a proper systematization of languages were made by Russian (be it Imperial or Soviet) scholars.
2. During first 20 or so years of Soviet part of our history government had so-called "nativization" as a part of its official policy - Russian-speaking people of freshly formed "ethnic republics" were forced to learn local languages and use them.
3. Russian language is de facto "lingua franco" of the lands that one belonged to the Russian Empire and Soviet Union: even if Russians were actually able to learn every language of every ethnicity forming this region, it's still more effective for natives to learn Russian.
4. Both in Soviet Union and now there are regions that have their own languages as state languages of their republics within Federation. Fore example, Crimea decided to keep Ukrainian as one of its languages and adding Crimean Tatar language to the list - a thing which was unthinkable during Ukrainian period of its history. Now Crimean Tatars can demand and actually get civil services on their native language.

Actually, a complex language policy along with many other things are a characteristic of Empire. It's not a simple thing to develop system that is both stable enough and not too suppressing. And, from my knowledge, even if SU was worse in that than the Russian Empire, even SU was better than most of Western countries are managing.

It's just your personal opinion.
If you ask me, I'd rather make those regulations even more strict.
We have too many people dying of drug addiction. Especially since US entered Afghanistan and drug production there skyrocketed.

Last Edited by Tamonten on 04/26/2016 05:06 PM

This one: [link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]
[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]
[link to freebeacon.com]

I don't think that being Russians has something with it.
People with the manners you described may be Russians, Arabs, Brits or Americans - since they don't really interact with the outside world they could be Marthians for all you care.

Actually I bet that Russians do like anyone else more than your average Westerner. At least we don't try to force everyone into our paradigm anymore.
Russians may seem to be unfriendly, but that's an illusion mostly.
[link to sayonaki-tatsu.livejournal.com]

As for Cuba... Well, there's nostalgic friendly attitude. And among those who are more aware of international matters a measure of guilt for abandoning all the allies during 90s...

Okay. How do you feel about Prussia?

They were just copying y'all, weren't they?

Harte

Hehe, I'm no Russian, but if a US American would ask me what I think about Putin I would get fear in my eyes too. Guess why.

As you describe them - I saw alike people, but from Kosovo - I wonder if you would say hello to the Cosa Nostra.

Not really.
Actually it was Russia copying many Prussian ideas such as military uniform and regulations.
As well as Prussia had a good chance to become a part of Russian Empire at some point. Part of it even was - during 7 years war in later Elizabeth I of Russia times East Prussia was already a part of Russia, and only Empress's sudden death and a short-termed reign of her nephew Peter III (half a year or so) prevented all of it from becoming Russian domain.

But, huh. In Russian "Russia" and "Prussia" doesn't even sound close enough to each other.