Lacking Real Achievements, Moscow has Transformed Russia into a Country of Models and the Subjunctive Mood, Its People Lament

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 11 -- Because the Russian government can’t show any real achievements, it loves to present models of what it is going to do and describes in the subjunctive mood the nature of its plans. But a country of models and the subjunctive mood is a country without much hope, Russians say.

            That is just one of the anecdotes capturing the Russian mood today that has been assembled by Moscow journalist Natalya Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/43620/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       Russians were told capitalism was a system in which the hungry shouldn’t be given a fish but a fishing rod. In fact, it turned out that in the capitalism they got, no one gives anyone a fishing rod but sells it on said hiscredit – and then the Russians can’t fish because the pond and all the fish in it are owned by those to whom they also owe money for the fishing rod.

·       Why are Canadian teachers paid as much in a month as Russian ones are in a year when there is no evidence that the former have falsified elections?

·       Nearly six months after the start of the special military operation, Moscow has finally announced that it has seized mineral deposits there worth at lest 12.4 billion US dollars. It would have done so earlier but then it would have looked like the Russians were some kind of Nazis.

·       The new commander of the Black Sea Fleet appointed after the burning of the Saki airfield in Crimea, according to some, has set as his first priority expanding the fight against smoking in military facilities.

·       Evidence that in Ukraine Putin has bitten off more than he can chew: Now, even FSB officers promised salaries six to eight times what they are receiving are refusing to go to the occupied territories.

·       Tomsk residents have started a progressive tradition: they are repairing their own roads and driveways so that their government won’t have any trouble paying for the repair of roads and driveways in the LDNR that Moscow has made Tomsk responsible for.

·       Told by Kirov governor that the country is mired in poverty and alcoholism, Putin angrily asked how could this have happened and then who is the enemy within responsible?