Wednesday, December 28, 2005
The Best Of Pravda
This paper is amazing -- right above the story on Monday's gassing in St. Peteresburg we find:
I don't know what's worse, the tabloid nature of the headline, or the fact that any regular viewer of the SciFi Channel has known about this for several years -- It's hardly news.
Only Russians would delight in bureacracy - sometimes I think it is the one thing definitionally Russian, so pervasive that it makes corruption necessary:
Finally and amazingly, Pravda gets it right once in a while, well almost.
I don't know what's worse, the tabloid nature of the headline, or the fact that any regular viewer of the SciFi Channel has known about this for several years -- It's hardly news.
Only Russians would delight in bureacracy - sometimes I think it is the one thing definitionally Russian, so pervasive that it makes corruption necessary:
Finally and amazingly, Pravda gets it right once in a while, well almost.
Can you tell me why we are still so keen to prove to the whole world that a Russian cucumber is thicker and longer than a French gherkin? Do we have a special "Russian standard" that makes Russians stand out in the crowd? Where is it coming from? Is it the poverty and inability to stand up for our rights in the guise of pride and bravado? Who are we to the authorities? Cheap labor, a bunch of voters who will get another round of promises and cajolery a month before another election.I'm with him right up to that last sentence -- it's a little too reminescent of the bad old days of communism for complete comfort. He is right that there is a exploitive nature to life in Russia right now, but there has to be a better way to overcome it than resort to the language of the worse old days.
We should be really proud of our "unique inimitable Russian way" only when our children are able to get good education, when we see our children become decent husbands and wives, when our soldiers stop asking passers-by for cigarettes or change, and when millions of our homeless children stop filling orphanages and reform schools. We should feel really proud of being Russian when half the Russian population stops playing hangover blues each Monday morning, and when our workers and employees learn how to unite and stand up for their rights. [emphasis added]
