Real Russian Patriots Learning Chinese So They Can Stay in Russia, Other Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 28 – Russians have long believed that the foreign language their co-nationals study indicates where they would like to live. Those who study English want to go to England or the US, those who study German, Germany; but those who study Chinese are the real patriots because they have decided to remain in Russia even when the Chinese come.

            That is just one of the anecdotes now circulating in Moscow that Russian journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova has assembled and published (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45469/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       One Russian insists that it isn’t true that the Russian economy is declining. He says he bought a Hyundai for 1.1 million rubles five years ago, put 80,000 km on it, but has been able to sell it for 1.5 million. In what other country would that be possible, he asks.

·       The Russian Duma has banned sex change operations, reducing still further one kind of international trade.

·       Erich Maria Remarque observed that Hitler too though he was “the apostle of peace and that others had imposed war on him – and he got 50 million Germans to agree – a remarkable precursor of Russia today.

·       Baty Khan observed that things are good where we have not yet come, but we will get there.

·       Turbo-patriotism is when you had America for a rising dollar and suspect it when the dollar is falling. Whatever a turbo-patriot says, he ends by talking about the collapse of the dollar and America.

·       One mustn’t ask how much is two times two because the answer varies depending on what those above you want.

·       Putin says that Russia isn’t becoming dependent on China, but he also declared that Russia would land on the moon in 2019, that Russia would be in the top five economies in the world, and that he wouldn’t attack Ukraine, earlier claims that raise questions about his latest one.

·       The latest news about Russian democracy: Ramzan Kadyrov’s daughter at a meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov spoke about the contributions of the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundaiton which is headed by Ramzan Kadyrov’s mother Aimani Kadyrova.

·       Russian historians can easily do what God can’t: they can change the past.