Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
This whole comment was ace. Really interesting observations and so well put.
I guess everyone has a schizophrenic view of their own country; a kind of love-hate. But Russians seem to lean more towards the hate side.

Those Russians I met in Israel were just dissing the USSR (new Russia) absolutely non-stop. They didn't really have any specific complaints that I remember (or maybe I just didn't understand it). But they were just convinced that everything was crap, and anywhere was better. But they also seemed a bit lost and stuck to themselves despite others trying to socialise with them. Claimed "nobody understood them". I'll never forget these two good looking Russian guys who sat out all evening, night after night and played Russian famous melodies on the guitar and harmonica. Very dramatic and poetic. Still, they wanted to go to the US.

Remember reading about the Mc Donald's that opened in Moscow in the 80s, and how people queued all day to visit. Even that young I thought "how pathetic". They have so much, and they queue for hours for a lousy cheeseburger from a country that would quite happily blow them to smitherins with a nuke.

So in the 90s I started wondering if I had actually seen the real USSR when I visited there. My dad travelled regularly to the USSR and many other places in Eastern Europe. His standing comment was always that it was absolutely fine, apart from in Russia lots of people lived in terrible housing. So I don't think I saw any fake facades but of course I can't know for sure. And I judged Russia, just like the USA - from films.
Plus, the last time I was there, the kids we met were totally materialistic - in awe of our stuff and incredibly disappointed that we didn't have jeans, jean shirts etc with us (due to school policy). There was 0 ideology for sure. Not surprising the whole country just fell apart a few years later. It seemed that mentally they were no Soviet anymore.

And as for you Deborski, I actually think you have something in common with the experience the Russians have been through. I mean the stuff that's happening to your country. Once an inspiration for many, and liberating many from oppression.. Full of opportunities, and now -- all the things that you are describing. Not satisfied with doing it at home but wanting to spread the junk across the world. And people being too blind to see it or do anything about it. Right now I'm dealing with some really nice American ladies through work, maybe not politically aware, but just nice and decent. It's just terrible to think that people like them are taken for a ride like that both in terms of the foreign policy and what happens internally in their country.

Here in England we still see the results of "the grass is greener" syndrome. Eastern Europeans with good university degrees cram into dinky little flats so they can do nasty jobs at Starbucks and the like, or clean for people. And it's not because there aren't jobs where they come from. At least one participant in this forum strikes me as a the absolutely stereotypical Russia-hating, America-worshipping Eastern European who'd probably be an Ayn Rand & von Mises fan if he was a bit more intellectual.
I ran into a lot of those self-hating Russians you describe when I was living there. I wrote about a little of it in my blog. I remember people saying, frequently, that Russians are the poorest people in the world and I would try to tell them that it isn't true, that I'd traveled to 3rd world countries (like Syria) where people lived in far worse conditions, but they would always reply that Russians are not a third world country, they are better educated and thus they deserve better. There was a really strong victim mentality, as if everyone had no responsibility for what was happening and no one could do anything about it.

I think that same mentality is now thriving in America. We all criticize the government and the majority of us oppose the wars we are involved in, and yet we feel powerless to change anything. We vote, but our votes mean nothing when special interests with vast sums of money can buy our representatives.

I remember that McDonald's you refer to. I stood in line two hours one winter and froze my feet numb in the cold. The line at McDonald's was longer than the line to Lenin's mausoleum. It was a major tourist attraction, like Disneyland. People came from all around the Soviet Union to see it. To be fair, it was the largest McDonald's in the world, and the Russians deserve credit for that. But I know exactly what you mean about thinking it was a sad statement about society.

But so much has changed. Russians have turned their economy around and these days it seems that there are more patriotic Russians than self-hating Russians. They no longer idolize America, in fact they can see all of our flaws plain as day. Russia reminds me of the US in the 1980's. Booming economy, rampant materialism. The wealthy taking advantage of the poor, planting the seeds for a future which unfortunately, in 20 years or so, will look like what we are seeing now in the US unless Russia manages to chart a different course. The US now is mired in end-stage capitalism, where corruption has taken over and the citizens feel powerless to stop it. Decay, it seems, always comes from the inside.

I remember people being afraid of "the Russians" during the Cold War. When the USSR collapsed, I hoped it would usher in a new world where we would become allies with Russia, but instead it seemed that the old stereotypes persisted and after that brief glimmer of hope known as перестройка, it seemed as though we just fell back into our old distance and suspicion. America always seems to create "enemies" in order to keep the public in fear so that they will support the obscene level of military spending and support our global aggression policies. Our so-called leaders take advantage of our patriotism and tell us, over and over, that we are "the greatest country in the world" and that "if the US doesn't do something to stop these evil regimes, who will?" And people buy it hook, line and sinker.

It seems like all of human history plays out this way though. Not only America. All through human history, people have gone to war based on lies. Humans glorify war. They worship soldiers. Soldiers are like sacred cows and war is always justified. People don't like to think that maybe their kids went off and died for less than altruistic reasons. If you say something negative about combat veterans - and not just in America, but any country really - you are filth. You are worse than filth. They sacrificed their lives for the "homeland" you see. And in the past there were wars where we could say that people died fighting for their homeland. World War two, for example. The Soviets were literally fighting for their homeland. But these days, wars seem to be fought for nothing more than profit. Yet our leaders continue to tell us we have some kind of higher purpose, that America is bringing freedom to all these poor people, blah, blah, blah. And people believe that. Even when they are confronted with evidence that our wars were not justified, that we are committing war crimes, they still can't bring themselves to condemn what we do. Americans, by and large, still believe we are "the good guys."

But a lot of people are waking up. How that will change things, or if it will change things, I don't know. But I keep hoping. As the Russians say, надежда умирает последней.