Putin is Practicing in Russia How to Freeze Rest of Europe, Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 8 – Last year, the Kremlin said Europe would freeze after Moscow cut off the gas. But that didn’t happen. Obviously, Putin needed to prepare more and so he has, Russians say. Today, he is practicing in the nearby Moscow region and elsewhere in Russia as well how best and most quickly to freeze the rest of Europe.

            This is just one of the anecdotes Russians are telling each other about conditions in their country that Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova has included in her latest collection (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/47492/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       When the ruble falls from 90 to 70 rubles per dollar, Russians know to call that a weakening of the ruble; but when the dollar falls from 90 to 89.99 rubles, they must label that the collapse of the American currency.

·       Russian scientists have discovered that if you turn off the heating, no one will remember about the increased price of eggs.

·       Hot radiators are a vile bourgeois stereotype imposed on Russia by the decaying West, something fundamentally alien to our bright patriotic traditions.

·       The worst thing about the television series, “The Boy’s Word,” is that when it was filmed, this movie about the late 1980s did not require any computer special effects or the construction of sets. What you can see every day on the Moscow streets now was enough.

·       In Yaroslavl, the program, “Frost is no hindrance to fun,” was cancelled because of the abnormally cold weather.

·       Residents of the Moscow region, now without heat or light, are begging Putin to at least turn on their television sets so that they can see how gay Europe is freezing to death.