Russia Not a Separate Civilization as Putin Says but Instead a Separate Branch of Human Evolution, Some Russians Now Joke

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 5 – Vladimir Putin has insisted so vehemently that Russia forms  a separate civilization that some Russians have concluded he is wrong and that in fact their country contains a separate branch of human evolution, according to an anecdote some Russians are sharing and one that shows how what leaders say and what people hear may be very different.

            Others gathered by Moscow resident Tatyana Pushkaryova for Publizist.ru also show how Russian officials say one thing but the Russian people interpret it on the basis of their own experience with Russian realities and Russian officials (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/41880/-):

·       The Russian interior ministry says that one in every five of those who commit a crime do so when they are drunk. That means that the real enemies of society that the government should be fighting against are those who are sober, a group that is three times as large.

·       The rate at which Russians are being classified as foreign agents means that they will soon constitute a majority of those who live in Russia. Of course, they will be rued by true patriots from their mansions in London and Paris.

·       A month before the riots in Kazakhstan, polls showed that Nursultan Nazarbayev was supported by 95 to 97 percent of the population. But when the riots began, no one came out in his support. Has Putin thought about that as far as he and Russia are concerned?

·       When the rich are robbed, that’s a crime. When the poor are robbed, that’s the economic policy of Putin’s Russia. But of course, those who complain are charged with a crime.

·       It’s wrong to say that the Kremlin lives in a parallel universe. In fact, it is perpendicular to the one everyone else populates.

·       Russians hate migrants not the capitalists who bring them in. Immigrants hate Russians rather than their own rulers who can’t provide them with jobs. Everyone is outraged by the Chinese who buy up Russian forests but not by those who sell it to them. These combinations are why Moscow has to spend so much on propaganda.

·       In response to his ultimatum, Putin expects Biden to write out his response in his own hand, in large Cyrillic letters because Putin can’t read any other kind.