Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
Well, it's a large place, far away from you, and you weren't even born when it existed. So no worries. You could understand modern day Russia and other ex USSR republics better from knowing that though. PS - I edit the article and added more info!
Also, it's kind of nice to show off my knowledge about this!
Finally some use for otherwise useless info.
Anything else you want to know?
I had to learn TONS about the USSR in school. What city makes tractors, cars, cotton, lamps or grew different crops..... What different dams, railroads, canals etc were built, why and by whom. How was the USSR governed, etc. Oh, and "what's the difference between a kolkhoz and a sovkhoz?". Missing that, cost me a grade. I still don't know it.
Then just as I left school, the USSR was history!
Then I went to uni and one of the subjects I took was Political science. The hot topic du jour was all the new ex USSR countries. Re-learn everything, including cities which I previously memorized, but now had new names!
I wrote a rather long paper (assigned topic) about harassment and mistreatment of women in Uzbekistan after Uzbek independence. It was very odd to AGAIN come across the same stuff, but now from the perspective of it being a new country and totally different conditions.
Central Asia was suddenly dirt poor, and extreme islam flourished.
The glimpses you got regarding the ethnical situation in the USSR was always mulitultural, happy-clappy bliss with folk costumes, cute songs and primitive people enlightened and educated. The reality might not have been quite that romantic though, and in reality there were probably lots of conflicts brewing under the lid. As the USSR dissolved and broke up, all of this came to the surface, with countries like Saudi Arabia and the US and probably others adding fuel to the flames via "humanitarian" and religious organisations.

And if this was confusing for ME, imagine for the people living through it, for real, while criminality, corruption and shortages were making every day a struggle.
Respect to those who came through all that with their heads still held high!
Plus I will have to study the history of the USSR anyway. I've already started studying the history of the Russian Empire so I have to finish that too. US history and the history of India were tons easier. Russian history is massive!
I'm learning where the major lakes, rivers, and mountains are and I learned why the Dnieper river was so important to Kievan-Rus and how that changed to the Volga after the Middle Ages. I also learned about the nuclear test sites in NE Kazakhstan and on Novaya Zemlya and a lot about the Baikonur, Plesetsk, and the new Vostochny cosmodromes. I even learned how to read Russian street maps but that still leaves tons of questions like where important historical places are, the dams, airports, and some history for each of the major cities. I know a little of the histories for Nizhny Novgorod, Saint Peterburg, Omsk, Sevastopol, Simferopol, and Moscow but again, that leaves a lot more.
So yeah, anything you can tell me about Russia and the USSR will be very helpful and very very appreciated.
Btw, I can't even imagine what it was like in Russia from 1991-1999 but I read that it was a total nightmare.

Quote Originally Posted by hddscan View Post
It's politics, I don't know what you'd expect from a public speech.
But anyway if you want to see the real masterpiece of political lies, you might wanna read Jen Psaki quotes.

Actually the reasons behind that are mostly economical, I think, energy sector sanctions would be very painful for Russian economy, so Russia is holding its horses, for now.

Russia was not in a position to do anything about it, that time Russia was a broke state with no power to make any big political decisions.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking about how messed up everything was when the break-up happened so yeah, it would be difficult for President Putin to explain why it happened.
Jen Psaki? LOL! She's too stupid to even be funny and she's not a very good liar. But neither are Obama, Kerry, Nuland, Biden, or McCain. They all tell so many lies that they probably can't even manage them all even with a PC. But hey, a lot of the lies are too obvious to even hide.
Anyway, I wish Russia could move in with it's army and help the Donbass. Poroshenko's pure evil and that "anti-terrorist" thing needs to be stopped! It's destroying peoples lives and killing innocent citizens, even kids. It's military political oppression.