Thread: Почему Вы хотите жить в России?

It is not about "country is run by idiots" like you said. It is about behaviour of ordinary people and their moral standarts.

Note, Hanna, this says the person living in "cultural capital" of Russia. Try to imagine, what do people in less lofty places feel. So much hatred, so little respect, and constant readiness to attack. Animals behave more politely.
Russia may be anyhow rich and successful in geopolitical affairs, but our people will never benefit of it. It is "by design".

Originally Posted by maxmixiv

Note, Hanna, this says the person living in "cultural capital" of Russia. Try to imagine, what do people in less lofty places feel. So much hatred, so little respect, and constant readiness to attack. Animals behave more politely.
Russia may be anyhow rich and successful in geopolitical affairs, but our people will never benefit of it. It is "by design".

Do you think people in Russia are worse than people in Ukraine and Belarus? I was in both countries, several months in Belarus and a couple of weeks and a bit, in Ukraine. I thought people were extremely kind and helpful.

In Ukraine, there were plenty of yobs and drunks about, but nobody seemed dangerous. People in general were extremely kind, I thought. Several people helped me.

In Belarus, there was almost no anti-social behaviour, it felt very safe. Extremely bureacratic country though, and that caused me some problems. However regular people helped me even though my Russian is very bad. Nobody tried to take advantage. From what I could see, people treated each other with respect.
I saw one drunk person my entire time there. He had fainted at a tram stop. The police were downright NICE to him. I heard them ask him if he was ok, needed medical care or whatever, and helped him on his feet. It really raised my opinion of Belarus. I was thinking of seeing police in several Western European countries kicking drunk people, hitting them and shouting at them. Several bystanders tried to help the man too.
I have read that in Russia, drunk people can get beaten up by police.

The only people who were unhelpful were 1) some government officials in Belarus and 2) the staff at the Russian embassy (they refused to accept my visa application for Russia, for a silly, imho invalid reason). Everyone else were either nice, or indifferent. For me, I was surprised at how nice people in these two countries were. And I thought Russia was the same.

I'd say that many people were a lot nicer to a stranger than they would have been, in a similar situation in London, Paris or Berlin.

I think that to some degree, the way that you speak to a person will dictate how they respond.
And I have been taught to treat everybody with the same respect, regardless of whether they are drunks on the ground, sweeping the floor, or they own the place. It's quite rare that people are deliberately rude to someone who treats them with respect.