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gomer
WayToRussified
Joined: 30 Mar 2007
Posts: 445
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yorbcbud
Lounge Wizard
Joined: 17 Feb 2006
Posts: 4903
Location: Сорренто, Британская Колумбия, Канада
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 Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:23 pm Post subject: |
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Maybe he should push for more vodka consumption. Then even the marginal girls would be beautiful. Sure works with beer.  |
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StephenB.
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Joined: 18 Aug 2007
Posts: 807
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| Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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Why doesn't Russia have the year of 2008 dedicated to Conception. LOL..Why is there a low birth rate problem in Russia? Is it cost of living? Too many abortions?  |
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darthvader
WayToRussified
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Posts: 427
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StephenB.
VIP
Joined: 18 Aug 2007
Posts: 807
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| Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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Darth, thanks for the link..it was informative. |
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overseas_expat
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Joined: 11 Jan 2005
Posts: 741
Location: Moscow
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 12:55 am Post subject: |
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I just read that link and saw my own posts and a sea of emotion rose up inside of me.
I would write out a blog but why, it's pointless? Blogs are are a bore.
4 years in Russia and I'm nearly done. I can't get out of this country fast enough or soon enough. As I've said to friends, this has got to be the most dysfunctional place on earth.
The biggest country in the world--and their number 1 import is food.
Huge numbers of incredibly beautiful women--yet they refuse to have babies for their men and their country is in a demographic crisis. One of the least densly populated places on earth. A rich history of some of the most brilliant minds in literature--and yet their literary intelligensia has been gunned down regularly for centuries.
In the Moscow Times a journalist wrote an article about the Russians describing their outlook as something like 'happiness is the absence of misery.' In Russia there is no tomorrow. There is a paycheck today, there is food today, there is an apartment today, all is well--today. Tomorrow may never come. No point in planning for it.
Russians do not have baby showers and they do not name their babies when they are born, it may be weeks or months before baby has a name. Why? Because historically the infant survival rate is so incredibly low that buying gifts and giving the baby a name is setting yourself up for diappointment and heartbreak. There is no tomorrow. Baby well may not live long enough to inhabit a crib or need a name.
There are few fathers in this country. Women are less than second class citizens (despite their good looks). They refuse to have babies, i.e. create families, because they know their man is going to cheat on them and probably leave them. They know that if they have children, by and by, they will likely be left to raise children alone. Children grow up with no father, the fathers have left for younger prettier women who flaunt their sexuality with abandon. The young son who grew up with no father doesn't know how to treat and provide for a family because he has no role model so he grows up to be the same kind of infidel.
Some paraphrased memorable quotes from people (foreigners) I've know here "When you shoot and exile all the intelligent well educated people and leave yourself with nothing but peasants, this is what you get." "Russian women are the Morgan horses of the female world."
And unexpectedly, from this week's New York fashion show about the
models--for all those men who find Russian girls such lithe gamins--".....many of these girls were brought up in the postcommunist years on an extremely bad diet. From childhood, they've not been properly nourished. That may make them very appealing to designers, but they don't start off with a healthy body."
A completely disheveled and dysfunctional culture without reprieve. All their resources, human and earthly, utterly wasted. Their intelligensia in persecution. Their culture a shambles.
I came here with expectation and joy and reverance. I will leave with disgust and complete disrespect. 21st century Russians have learned almost nothing from the lessons of the last thousand years. |
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Daria
Lounge Wizard
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 1146
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:10 am Post subject: |
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| overseas_expat wrote: | | .........I came here with expectation and joy and reverance. I will leave with disgust and complete disrespect. 21st century Russians have learned almost nothing from the lessons of the last thousand years. |
Oh well, Expat, what can I say......  You were sent there to work, I guess, not to change Russia. Hopefully, you will get home soon and become happy again. Sounds like you need some loving. If "disgust " and " disrespect" are the two things you feel about Russia, so what? Move on, maybe write a book about it.  |
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StephenB.
VIP
Joined: 18 Aug 2007
Posts: 807
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:18 am Post subject: |
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Overseas expat...I'm interested in knowing why you spent time in Russia, was it for work? Family? Do most Russian women think that their husband will leave them? What is the church doing to help these people? It appears that maybe they have no hope or spiritual guidance. That could be due to all the priests, nuns, monks, monasteries and churches being torn down during the Revolution. I know that there is a revival of fixing up monasteries and some abandon churches. I know that in the West many women would like big families especially Americans, however, they can't afford them. My parents had five children and my mother said, she would have had three more, however, they couldn't afford it. I wonder if American or Canadian women feel that their husband's will cheat too? It's a shame to think that you fall in love and have to worry about if your husband is going to cheat...
Where did you live in Russia? How did the men treat you? Just curious... |
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Daria
Lounge Wizard
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 1146
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:40 am Post subject: |
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| overseas_expat wrote: | | The biggest country in the world--and their number 1 import is food.. |
Actually, it's machinery & equipment, then food and agricultural raw materials.
| overseas_expat wrote: | | One of the least densly populated places on earth... |
Russia is number 23 on that list.
| overseas_expat wrote: |
Russians do not have baby showers and they do not name their babies when they are born, it may be weeks or months before baby has a name.
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That's right, Russians don't have baby showers. Big deal. The name thing is absurd. Babies are named just like everywhere else, after birth....not in a month. Where is that info coming from?
| overseas_expat wrote: |
"Russian women are the Morgan horses of the female world." ... |
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surfguy
Lounge Wizard
Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 6979
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:18 am Post subject: |
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| Well I have heard the same views as what Expat is expressing and i've heard them from russians. I guess life is what we make of...and some places offer more opportunities than others. I know a couple of russian women who are hoping to return to Russia because the United States just wasn't the land of opportunity that they thought it was. Life is a struggle everywhere I guess. Well that is if you allow it to be. I think russia suffers from deprivation and now all are greedy...have to be I guess...because if tomorrow is bleak then the only way is to have money and to leave. So it will be interesting to see what unfolds...And not just in Russia but here too |
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overseas_expat
VIP
Joined: 11 Jan 2005
Posts: 741
Location: Moscow
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 8:57 am Post subject: |
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I have no intention of debating facts and statistics and citing sources of information I've been consuming for years. If I had written a book it would have been properly footnoted and referenced and you would have seen where I got some of the information I used, including personal experience. This is an internet forum, not an academic seminar. I'm not spending hours and days digging up references to make you happy.
But thanks for your incisive comment quoted above. Very eloquent. |
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darthvader
WayToRussified
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Posts: 427
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 11:12 am Post subject: |
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| Overseas_Expat, very interesting, sad and well-written long post of yours. |
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gomer
WayToRussified
Joined: 30 Mar 2007
Posts: 445
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:41 pm Post subject: |
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| If this lack of births is not reversed, there won't be anyone left in Russia except the Military guarding the border and the politicians. The rich will have left long ago and taken their money with them. The poor will have died. The middle class will be trying to leave by any means possible. So who's left to run the country? |
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nikir
Frequent Guest
Joined: 17 Mar 2010
Posts: 54
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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Expat, four years is a very long time to spend on foreign soil without respite.
Whist agreeing with most of your observations, I can't help but think that you are someone who at this point in time, has had enough, and nearing the end of your tenure is looking for greener grass. I hope that it is greener for you, don't forget though that the aforementioned grass will have also changed in four years.
Personally I could not do that time in Russia, in one go, for all the reasons that you have stated. I have been five times in the last ten years or so and my visits have been for around three months at a time and I have seen an ongoing improvement each time. Both in personal aspirations and living standards. Mind you I have not spent a great deal of time in Moscow, too busy and too plastic for me.
I hope that you retain some good memories of your time in Russia. |
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raggedclaw
Frequent Guest
Joined: 22 Jul 2005
Posts: 18
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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Expat -- I'm fairly new here, and I don't know you or your history. Still, you sound a lot like me forty years ago.
Kicking around the world for the government, I seemed to always see the place I was leaving as terrible and the place I was heading as my salvation. Over the years and with each new location, those views mellowed a bit, but persisted.
Now, looking back, they were all great places to be at the time I was there.
I suspect -- and certainly hope -- that you'll look back later and see Russia and your time here as a rewarding experience for yourself and those around you. |
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