Thread: work for americans in Russia - prestigious-->humble

Strong belief in Russia being one of the poorest countries is one of traits of Russian mentality
Plus, being middle class citizen here doesn't mean you are not living in typical "хрущобы"-commieblock с зассаным подъездом.

Originally Posted by dtrq

Strong belief in Russia being one of the poorest countries is one of traits of Russian mentality
Plus, being middle class citizen here doesn't mean you are not living in typical "хрущобы"-commieblock с зассаным подъездом.

Yes, you lot need to snap out of it. I don't believe it's that poor. At least not for regular people with normal intelligence, education and willingness to work. (but my impression is, that it's bad for pensioners, and that's terrible!).

Russia is doing a lot better than many other places in Eastern and Southern Europe as well. Like Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Greece. Moldova and Latvia.

Russia has no national debt and is flowing with oil, gas and valuable minerals. People are educated. My country has no oil and gas. Look at Norway, the richest or second richest country in Europe. They have only a fraction of oil and gas compared with Russia. And they are rolling in money. Plus, unlike Western Europe, you are getting richer, not poorer.

And about these square grey apartment blocks - yes they are ugly, but all countries have them, Eastern Europe just has more. Because industralisation happened faster and later than some other places.

And the problem with them is not so much they layout but how they are treated and who lives in them.

If people pee in the stairs, and vandalise, if there is rubbish and litter around and it's run down - then it's grim and horrible.
Like the house in Lilya 4-ever , if you've seen that film - soooo depressing and horrible (but that was in the 1990s) and I think it was supposed to be a "noir" film. Also, it was filmed in Estonia, not Russia. They just pretended it was in Russia.

I was in Belarus 2 years ago and saw tons of houses like that. I am used to seeing them in Sweden, but they are always vandalised and full of grim looking people and immigrants. Depressing.

However, in Belarus, they had fixed up these houses, painted and renovated, planted bushes and flowers outside and generally made it nice with parks and playgrounds. The people who lived there looked nice and respectable. With this in mind; as long as the ceiling is high, and not a claustrophobic feel, I would think it's allright. I'm living right now in a building from the 1920s which is listed as having architectural value (surprising, it's ugly!) so everything is from the 1920s, they are not allowed to change anything. Driving me crazy and I'm moving soon.