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

Thanks for your response.

A few more:

Are there still many hard core communists?

What's the crime level? Are people usually afraid to walk the streets?

Is there much police corruption?

Do you speak Japanese?

Well, in all seriousness... I won't recommend Moscow, because it's inadequately expensive. Well, it's fine once you've settled in, but when moving from outside the country I'd never recommend to live anywhere near the capital.
Adaptation-wise I'd recommend Russian Far East - Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and so on. People there are the most accustomed to foreigners. Also it's the closest to US.
Climate-wise however I'd recommend Krasnodar and Crimea - the warmest regions. Sochi are warm too, but almost as expensive as Moscow after the renovations made for the Olympics.

I'll answer in the reverse order this time:

as I see it, the main purpose of the whole NATO and US policy around Russia is to prevent such political alliances. And here good old logic works - of your adversary doesn't like you doing something, it's something worth doing. It also answers your second question.

As far as I see, the spirit that allowed us to withstand attacks two previous "greatest in the world" armies is still there. There are of course some pro-Western "liberals", but they've become so marginal that no one even sees them as a threat. As it was noted many times, the only hope to defeat Russia was always to make it collapse. Now there are no ground for such collapse.

As for NATO... I'd say, the threat is seen adequately and addressed. Here is the analysis by the Israeli expert who closely works with Russian intelligence though, from what I've seen and heard so far:
[link to www.youtube.com (secure)]
[link to www.youtube.com (secure)]

You are welcome.

Well, there are some, but their number is insignificant. Actually, if founders of this party were able to see modern Communists they would have been amazed in a bad sense. Can you for example call a Communist someone who also considers himself to be Christian? I have one fiercely Communist (in true sense) relative - a childless granny, daughter of NKVD officer. But that's the exception. One thing I can assure you is that if there's a "Red Threat", it won't come from Russia. Even China is more of potential threat here.

Varied, I'd say. There are quite dangerous places of course - Russia is a vast country after all. But there's nothing close to European quasi-Sharia zones. At least, nowhere near major cities - can't say for some distant regions of Caucasus for example.
I can attest that even 8 years ago when I was frequent in Moscow's "sleeping districts" which were previously famous as a nest for minor crimes, I was never attacked by anyone despite giving off all signals of a perfect victim (as I now understand).

There are generally two levels of police corruption to talk about. Generally people encounter low-level corruption such as road police asking for a bribe to overlook some minor infringement. As I see it, it has decreased lately. Though I usually drive carefully and have no problems with them.
The second part is the policemen covering up some truly dangerous crimes. Since I'm not involved in any criminal activity and not a policeman, it's hard for me to say for sure, but at the very least there are no such known to everyone systems. The ones brought to light were investigated throughly. There's one case of failed investigation, when Moscow region prosecutors were found to be covering up illegal gambling though...

I teach Japanese as a home tutor, so of course I can speak it. Though, my skill is quite rusty since I rarely have a chance to converse with native speakers.

I would be interested to know your take on the works of Prof Antony C Sutton.

He claimed that the Bolshevics were funded by certain Western business/banking interests with the aim of destroying Russia from within (divide and conquer), and to establish a rival in a massive profit orientated arms race.

He makes similar claimes about Nazi Germany also.

Do you believe there is any truth in this ???

I'll watch it later, thanks.

But the general notion is close to truth. While I don't believe there were serious connections during Stalin's reign, prior to that there were strong connections of some people of Communist party with the Western financial elites.
For example, Soviet People's Commissar (i.e. Minister) on International Affairs Litvinov had Englishwoman wife. After the revolution he organized the extraction of Russian Gold Reserve to the Fed. That not even counting Romanovs' gold and private property that just dissapeared somewhere.
When he was dismissed by Stalin and then sent to US as a ambassador, he was almost daily conversing with US president - as if they were old friends.
Not to mention that notorious Trotskiy came to Russia from US with American money - a huge amount of them at that - in his pocket.

The general thought by Starikov - one of Russian supporters of this theory - is that Russian revolutions and (maybe) WW1 were organized to force world's gold to the Fed. Another thought was to destroy Russia, but that's the place where they've failed, because Lenin picked the right time to cut most of the strings, and after that came Stalin that had none attached to him.

As for the Nazis, yet again Starikov considers some of it being true. Again the general thought was "divide et impera" - let Germany and Russia destroy each other and then take the spoils. It failed mostly because they had no leverages on Stalin.

Last Edited by Tamonten on 07/23/2016 08:06 AM

Will turkey Unite with Russia after military failed coup?

How is the bud in Russia? Is it easy to access like in the USA?

Are there limitations on what kind of weapons you can own for self defense?

Is there any black people???

Not likely. Our experts on Turkey and Near East in general don't believe the whole story about Turkish pilot downing our jet on his own accord. That's ridiculous.
But our political leadership may pretend to believe it. In any case, while there are many things Russia won't do, it's quite profitable for both sides to restore relations to some degree.
And if Turkey left NATO - that would be a major success of course. Not very likely though.

Don't know about access, but it's outlawed here. As all other narcotics.

There's a lot of limitations. Only non-lethal arms are somewhat free to own aside from hunting rifles and other such things. And only some distinct groups (like cossacks) are allowed to carry blades. As for the rest, only army, police and people having special license can carry pistols etc.

We have some small number of blacks - but from Africa, not American "Afro-American" kind - mostly students or their children. It's hard to describe what's the difference, but it mostly lies in attitude. Let's just say that because there was no slavery in Russia, they have no excuses to demand any compensations.
There's also many "yellows", turk- and arab-blooded people. Not that anyone cares for that or demands some special attitudes.

are you aware your people are part of the plan and not really the opposition?

No, I don't believe that. I tend only believe theories that have at least some ground. "Everything is part of the plan" is not ground, it's a delusion and paranoia.

I see....

Thanks for the reply.

Litvinov selling the Russian gold reserves is certainly an interesting aspect, as this would have created much needed (I,m assuming dollars) that would have funded the Soviet war machine. What with the Ruble being of such low value at the time, dollars would have been essential for the soviets to import much needed supplies and Western technology, Sutton touches on this also.

Starikov is someone who I am aware of also, as I came across some of his short videos when following current events in Ukraine.

In this here video he describes how the Anglo empire splits a country to create two or more countries, who are usually at loggerheads. I feel he described exactly what the British empire done here in my country when they created Northern Ireland.



This too would also lend credence to the theory that Bolshevik Russia was a Western creation in an attempt to create two or more Russia,s/anti Russia, don't you think ???

Last Edited by firinne on 07/23/2016 11:12 AM

Note that prior to WW2 all currencies were essentially gold. So it was not "selling gold for dollars", it was "buying dollars with gold".

There's also another part of the story: the whole story of buying technologies and supplies from the West wouldn't be needed at all if not for revolutions and civil war that happened after it. If either side during the civil war was victorious during half a year (which was quite possible considering the fact that railways were already present and that only small portion of population was involved at the beginning) there would have been much less destruction. But Entente did help White Guard (i.e. "Russian republicans") with supplies and reenforcement in a way that was exactly right to make the fight last.

[link to youtu.be (secure)]

Any new questions?

Meanwhile on Russian TV:


[link to www.youtube.com (secure)]

A tv series about Sophia Palaiologina, a descendant of Byzantine Emperors who were 3rd and the last Byzantine wife of Russian rulers.
Since then Palailogos' two-headed eagle became Russian coat-of-arms. Then the concept that Moscow is third Rome was born. And here son, Vasili III was the first Russian ruler named Tsar (Caesar, Emperor) of Russia...

Lately, I've been more and more impressed by varying things I see from Russian engineers, especially in the software domain (Nginx, Mercuriall, as 2 examples ). From what I understand, mathematics and science are taken very seriously in Russia. My question to you would be this... how is Math/Science/Engineering taught in Russia? Do you have any theories as to what is going on in your education programs that seems to be particularly effective compared to American education programs? Are there other cultural factors that may play into why Russians at least seem to be excelling in this area?

Well, it's slowly degrading now due to some pro-Western reforms of education system (though, with new Russian Minister of Education Vasilyeva there are prospects of reforms being reversed), but Russian educational system is based on completely different principle than Western (or rather - British, which became a standard for the whole West in 20th century).
Historically, Russian higher education was adopted from German dukedom of Prussia. That Prussian system of academical science made a priority in first teaching student a little bit (only in comparison with "full immersion" - actually, it's a huge amount of information) in every science there is. And only then, when one is actually knowledgeable in many sciences, he gets to peek one as his specialization. It's a completely elitist system, in comparison with Western one in which on gets to peek their profession early and not learn things he doesn't need - and only if he's not satisfied with the amount of knowledge he's got on initial stage, he goes to the higher levels of education.
The simplest illustration of this is the way same professions are taught in Russia and in the West. Classical Soviet system consisted in one stage made of 5 years - "a Specialist". Western system consists of two stages - "Bachelor" and "Magister", where amount of time taught is different in different countries. Important difference is that if in Western system Bachelor is taught mostly practical skills and Magister (or rather, those few who decide that Bachelor is not enough for them) are taught theoretical basis and so on. In classical Russian system two first years of higher education are dedicated mostly to theoretical basis. And, another feature due to that - Russian students don't get to choose what they are to learn: for every major there are fixed sets of courses they must attend.

In practice it means a lot of information which is moved to high school to make the flow steady. For example, some things that in the West are taught only in college, in Russia are just minor topics in 7th grade or so.
Even 12 years after graduating from high school and choosing (in contrary to all expectations) humanitarian major, I'm still able to comprehend mathematics and physics which are on college level for Westerners. Though, of course I don't remember any actual formulas already. And some other guy who have chosen physics as their specialty may still be able to recall main principles of literature and so on.
Actually, the difference is simple as it is: Western way is to integrate a person into society as an independent working member as soon as it is possible, while Russian way is to make one able to choose their way. I hardly can imagine one getting ready to become a programmer all his high school and then being able to make a U-turn after graduating and turning to Oriental history. For me it was quite easy...

This is tremendously interesting, thank you for your thoughtful response! This definitely helps explain the "why" behind some of the things that blew my mind with what some of these engineers in Russia are capable of.

The big straw for me was reading the back history behind Mercuriall. It's just a 2 guy start up, one of them is a programmer the other a mix engineer and they build the most impressive tube guitar amplifier simulations I have ever played. Consider the fact that these guys are competing with giant teams of developers in Germany (Native Instruments) and the U.S. (IKMultimedia, Positive Grid, Peavey) and yet in my opinion they are beating them. The approach they are using is genius, they trained neural nets to recreate the amplifiers by focusing purely on the non-linear aspects of the signal being modified. When I started to break down the skills involved, we're talking differential equations, artificial intelligence, physics, electrical engineering, C++ programming (most likely), graphic design, etc. None of these are trivial things which is why when I see a 2 man team pulling this off, I'm just blown away.

I guess my big take away is that it appears the Russian education system seems to generate more well-rounded and capable people. Seems quite compatible with generating lots of entrepreneurs who can pull from their variety of skill sets as well.

nonsensical thread!

Why do Russian women laugh at American men? Are we just toys to them?

I don't really get the context of the question... I.e. I don't quite understand why it was asked.
Actually, you may actually mistake flirting with laughing at you and vice versa if there are different cultures involved. What is heavy insult in one country may be just simple remark in another and so on.

Welcome back, Tamonten! Didn't see you for a long time.

Hi!
Well, as I've predicted not long before I've stopped coming here, at some point I've become fed up with explaining same things over and over to those who don't care to listen.
One of the peculiarities of Russian culture, the result of vast territory mostly - if something annoys us we just go away. Actually, it may be the most dangerous Russian psychological state - one of not caring what others think about us.

It's just that lately the level of hysteria has risen to a whole new level of absurdity and I'm somewhat curious once again. Don't know how long will it last this time though.

Understood, I remember you wrote that regarding perpetual explanation of the smae things.

I need ts say your insight and historic perspective was missed on many occassions. And, naturally I will use this opportunity and ask you what's your ippinion regarding the Skripal's incident and where do you think all of this leads?

More and more Americans are seeing their former constitutional republic dismantled, their rights taken, a huge USSR-like police/security state apparatus put in place, US sovereignty thrown to the wind by the globalist (e.g, no southern border = no country), the military used as a mercenary force of the globalists to force their agenda on other countries, the "mainstream media" turn into an integrated propaganda network, the social order undermined, culture/heritage/religion attacked, and deranged behavior normalized.

Do most or many Russians still view the US as a society and country to admire or do the see it more like I've just described?

I don't think Russians ever seen the US as a country to admire...

But, well, I'm not Tamonten so I'm interested in his answer, too.