Russia Dying Out Because Moscow Pays Ten Times as Much for Those who Die for It than for Those who are Born, Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 3 – Russians now say they know why the birthrate is going down and the death rate up: Moscow is paying women who have a child only about ten percent of what it pays the families of those who die in combat. Because that is the case, they say, “no one should be surprised that Russia is dying out so rapidly.”

            That is just one of the anecdotes Moscow journalist Natalya Pushkaryova offers in her latest collection (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/43575/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       Russians now live in a country where terrorists become academics; KGB officers, patriarchs; ignoramuses, teachers; snitches, heroes; guards, governors; the insane, rulers; and anti-fascists, criminals.

·       They also live in a country where those who carry citations of Tolstoy or Jesus Christ into the streets can be declared extremists, but a madman who calls for destroying the entire world with nuclear weapons is a respected and highly paid Duma deputy.

·       The Central Bank says the Russian economy will decline significantly in the third and fourth quarters but the good news is that the billionaires around Putin won’t suffer at all.

·       Home builders in the regions and republics are expecting a banner year, given how much money the relatives of soldiers who have died in Ukraine are receiving.

·       Russians are compelled to believe that their lives are better than those of their counterparts in Western countries. If they didn’t, other Russians observe, they would find it impossible to continue to live.

·       Now even Putin has said that it’s not now 1937 “whatever anyone says. It’s 2022.

·       After a Russian woman was given a new apartment following an incident it which she threw an old shoe at the local governor, there has been a run on commission shops as other Russians try to purchase old shoes to do the same thing.