Paul Goble
Staunton, July 15 – One of the reasons that there are so few complaints about import substitution, Russians joke bitterly, is that it increases the prices criminals can charge the population for what they supply. They’re better off and so they have no reason to complain, even if ordinary people do.
That is one of the anecdotes in Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova’s latest collection (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/43462/-). Among the best of the rest which shed light on what is really going on inside the Russian Federation are the following:
· Russia’s dredging company has only one-sixth the capacity of a single Belgian one. As a result, Russia can’t get to the bottom of its rivers and its river fleet can’t move now that Western firms can’t come to Moscow’s rescue.
· Whenever there is a crisis, Russians are asked to give up their rights and freedoms to fight it; but when the crisis is over, they aren’t ever given any of those rights and freedoms back.
· Russian courts go after the small fry as far as corruption is concerned, but the amount some of the most junior people are stealing only makes one wonder how much those above them are taking in.
· When people in the West see that others are doing better than they, they try to improve themselves. With Russians, it is just the reverse. When others are doing better, Russians try to bring them down to Russian standards by ruining their lives.
· The acronym “PPZh” has acquired a new meaning: It now refers to what Russians are calling the latest wave of emigration – “while Putin is alive.”
· Russians have never trusted the authorities; and they have never been wrong in not doing so.
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