An interesting point by Juri Maloverjan of BBC's Moscow bureau. He has been going around Russia (proper - not just Moscow and St. Petersburg) filing reports on preparations for the presidential elections, and has noticed a pattern.
Most of the people willing to go on record said largely the same thing: their lives personally are hard and unfair, but the situation in general has improved so much in Putin's time that they are definitely going to vote for Putin. Or, you know, Medvedev. Whatever.
The value of good PR?
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
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"... their lives personally are hard and unfair, but the situation in general has improved...
Echoes of two old Russian (attrib.) folk sayings I've read:
-"The situation is catastrophic but not hopeless"
-"Seven years on the road to nowhere"
...and of Tolstoy's observation that "a Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known."
-War and Peace, bk. 9, ch. 10.
Love the past, hate the present, and now, embrace the future...
Reminds me of the Russian proverb I heard Boris Berezovsky say that goes something like: Today is worse than yesterday, but better than tomorrow.
"Don't you forget what's divine in the Russian soul --and that's resignation."
-Joseph Conrad, quoted by Victor Haldin, in Under Western Eyes, pt. 1, ch. 1 (1911).
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