Don’t Ask a Man His Income, a Woman Her Age or a Russian Patriot about His Residence Permit in the West, Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 20 – Russians have added a new injunction to the longstanding proposition that no one should ask a man about his income or a women about her age. They say that no one should ask a Russian patriot how he acquired real estate in the West and a residence permit there to go with it.

            This is only one of the new anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova has assembled (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/47576/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       Although Russia’s communists failed to bring communism to the Soviet people, some of them have achieved that for themselves: for the last three decades, they have been living under real communism in which without doing anything, they have everything they want.

·       Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen means that one can build a godly hydrogen bomb.

·       The Duma wants hundreds of thousands of Russians to guard important buildings as they did in World War II. The Russian people want the children of the elite to fight in the current war.

·       Throwing a Russian into an icy hole as a form of baptism may be either a sacred matter if he resurfaces or a criminal one if he doesn’t.

·       Russian doctors are now cautioning people against eating eggs because such things have become delicacies.

·       The Russian state hands out sentences of ten years for murder but none at all for wanting to kill others.

·       Reviving the GULAG would be a good idea, some Russians say, because inmates would lack the strength to demonstrate.

·       Officials at Putin’s election headquarters say that Russians fighting in Ukraine can’t be returned home until victory because that would “damage their manhood.” Apparently, those sitting in Moscow haven’t similar concerns.