A Trip To Russia

QUINNSCOMMENTARY · Post by **QUINNSCOMMENTARY** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:05 pm

I recently spent sixteen days in Russia from St Petersburg to Moscow. I don't want to take up time here, but if you would like to see a summary in picture and prose, make a short visit to my website.

Everyone should spend some time in Russia, you will appreciate what you have wherever you live.

Trip To Russia

Odie · Post by **Odie** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 7:38 pm

Quinn, awesome story! I had no idea it was that expensive there!

yes, the girls are pretty!

thanks for sharing, loved the Cape Cod story! Went there on my first honeymoon.........there really is nothing to do there!:-5

Nomad · Post by **Nomad** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 8:23 pm

Reading The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is another way to get some horrific insight into Russias past.

Interesting tidbit here.

The world's most famous gulag survivor apologizes for Putin

Wed, 07/25/2007 - 4:29pm

MIKHAIL KLIMENTIEV/AFP/Getty Images

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a gulag survivor and the author of The Gulag Archipelago, the world's most famous literary denunciation of Soviet labor camps. The Gulag Archipelago is the reason Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union and was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature.

So I was surprised to read, in a recent interview with Germany's Der Spiegel, Solzhenitsyn's apologetics for Vladimir Putin, the man who is taking Russia back to the heyday of Soviet censorship (pdf). Why would Solzhenitsyn, an inspiration for dissidents everywhere and a past critic of Putin, do anything but bash the Russian president over his repressive policies and worsening human rights record?

It seems that even for Solzhenitsyn, who accepted a State Award from Putin in June, dictatorship is preferable to anarchy. When Putin came to power in 2000, Russians expected two things from their new leader: that he safeguard Russia's territorial integrity, and that he reverse their country's slide into chaos. Disintegration and internal implosion were seen as the unfortunate consequences of the Yeltsin era, with its wild economic liberalizations and breakneck federalist reform.

And so, Solzhenitsyn is merely echoing many of his compatriots when he tells Der Spiegel:

Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible -- a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments."

Solzhenitsyn's interview makes for a great ironic contrast with Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general who has harsh words for Vlad in today's Seven Questions. When did the freedom fighter become the apologist for dictatorship, while the spy became the dissident?

QUINNSCOMMENTARY · Post by **QUINNSCOMMENTARY** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:36 am

Scrat;986305 wrote: Linky no worky.

Really it does, I just tested it from my original post.

QUINNSCOMMENTARY · Post by **QUINNSCOMMENTARY** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:38 am

Odie;985970 wrote: Quinn, awesome story! I had no idea it was that expensive there!

yes, the girls are pretty!

thanks for sharing, loved the Cape Cod story! Went there on my first honeymoon.........there really is nothing to do there!:-5

Depends on what you call nothing to do on Cape Cod, I spend half my life there and would spend the other half as well if I could.

Odie · Post by **Odie** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:38 am

worked for me!:o

QUINNSCOMMENTARY · Post by **QUINNSCOMMENTARY** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:42 am

Nomad;985997 wrote: Reading The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is another way to get some horrific insight into Russias past.

Interesting tidbit here.

The world's most famous gulag survivor apologizes for Putin

Wed, 07/25/2007 - 4:29pm

MIKHAIL KLIMENTIEV/AFP/Getty Images

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a gulag survivor and the author of The Gulag Archipelago, the world's most famous literary denunciation of Soviet labor camps. The Gulag Archipelago is the reason Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union and was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature.

So I was surprised to read, in a recent interview with Germany's Der Spiegel, Solzhenitsyn's apologetics for Vladimir Putin, the man who is taking Russia back to the heyday of Soviet censorship (pdf). Why would Solzhenitsyn, an inspiration for dissidents everywhere and a past critic of Putin, do anything but bash the Russian president over his repressive policies and worsening human rights record?

It seems that even for Solzhenitsyn, who accepted a State Award from Putin in June, dictatorship is preferable to anarchy. When Putin came to power in 2000, Russians expected two things from their new leader: that he safeguard Russia's territorial integrity, and that he reverse their country's slide into chaos. Disintegration and internal implosion were seen as the unfortunate consequences of the Yeltsin era, with its wild economic liberalizations and breakneck federalist reform.

And so, Solzhenitsyn is merely echoing many of his compatriots when he tells Der Spiegel:

Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible -- a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments."

Solzhenitsyn's interview makes for a great ironic contrast with Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general who has harsh words for Vlad in today's Seven Questions. When did the freedom fighter become the apologist for dictatorship, while the spy became the dissident?

For many Russians Putin is the guy, they hate Gorbechev and Yeltsin. They have pride in their country and stability is more important to them than the West's version of freedom. Never mind there is little substance to what they cherish, that is not the point.

QUINNSCOMMENTARY · Post by **QUINNSCOMMENTARY** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 3:53 pm

Scrat;986524 wrote: Okay, got it to come up. You didn't see a lot of the country, what canal were you on?

I hate those fricking guided tours, I always avoid them. Of course I have the language capability to do it too and when I dress like a Russian you'd never pick me out in a crowd.

You didn't see the Avtozavodskaya neighborhood, the old Stalin era apt blocks that from the outside look terrible but inside (where the people put their money) are palaces in their own right.

You didn't see the Domodedovo neighborhood, the Ramstore mall the Autodealers building, the new church by the river, the packed McDonalds by the metro station. You didn't see the apple orchard, the cigarette factory.

Tsaritsino park? Khimki? Ismailovo market? not even Gorki park? Toured the Metro?

I hope you didn't pay too much for it. You saw very little.

Sixteen days is a limited time, but I think we did see enough to get a flavor of the people, especially visting a half dozen towns and villages between St. Petersburg and Moscow. We had discussion on politics, on WWII with several veterans, with a Cosmonaut, went to a Rotary Club meeting in Moscow, the Circus, the Ballet, the National Dance Company, toured Moscow for a long time, walked around several areas on our own, tried to communicate and buy Vodka and chocolate, saw dozens of catherdrals, musems and the like. I'm no expert on Russia, but I did get a sense they have a serious inferiority comlex and really no need for it. Plus they need a great deal of money to upgrade a lot of stuff. We did ride the subway, the stations were beautiful, the car we rode on a junk heap and that's what I mean by form or substance.

Forget how many rivers we were on, the Volga was one and we were in lakes so big you thought you were on the ocean. 18 locks both up an down.

QUINNSCOMMENTARY · Post by **QUINNSCOMMENTARY** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 6:24 pm

Scrat;986884 wrote: Yeah it was one of the B series from the 70s. Bad suspension and almost non existant noise insulation, lousy seating. They are getting new ones all the time but they have to keep the old junk coaches on just to keep up. At peak rushhour there are trains arriving at the central stations every 90 seconds, and they rarely have breakdowns or derailments.

It turns out they are having more trouble with the new stuff than the old and are kind of regretting the modernization, the old stuff may have been crude but they never broke down.

Some of those stations are really beautiful, Victory Park is my favorite, beautiful brown and cream colored marble. Kiev station and red square just to name a few.

I never got the impression Russians have an inferiority complex, perhaps some individuals but most I meet are curious and very self confident. I have met tourists that behave badly, loud, arrogant and abnoxious. The worst case was an Irishman throwing beer bottles at St Basils cathedral in Red Square. It did not turn out well for him. Your average tour group has a lot of bad attitudes as I have followed enough of them. Rude arrogant attitudes.

Can't say I experienced any arrogance in the tour group, the one Russian guide had a bit of an attitude and was quite political and seemed rather defensive. When we were in Star City they were telling us how all the things were so great, best this, best that, but the place was literally falling apart. It was almost embarassing, it was as if they had no idea what such a place looked like in the US.

QUINNSCOMMENTARY · Post by **QUINNSCOMMENTARY** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:07 pm

Scrat;988690 wrote: I've seen it from both sides, some quite laughable some very offensive. I have seen that complete lack of care for the upkeep of things all over. Some apartment complexes when you enter are dark and run down, forboding to say the least but the apartments themselves are immaculate inside. The people don't live in the elevator or stairwells.

My friend in Belgorod has a 3 bedroom home he all but built himself, he has never once mown his lawn, painted the picket fence let alone paint the exterior of the old portion to match what he has added on. Last time I was there I saw 2 pheasants fighting in the tall grass of his yard.

I have worked in the metro yards many times, old buildings clutter junked coaches down at one end rusting. It looks like a poorly organized junkyard but one thing I quickly learned was everything we needed worked, the work got done in a timely manner and the place actually functioned well.

Ever see a Russian airbase? They look like warzones, cracked runways wild animals living along the airstrip in the old junked aircraft pushed off to the side, really if you think about it how would it look during a war? Russian aircraft are capable of injesting all manner of debris on takeoff and soldiering on whereas an F-16 injests a sparrow its going to need an overhaul.

Russians seem to have a different set of priorities when it comes to aesthetics than we do in the west. I have seen it all over eastern europe. The cleanest city I have seen over there is probably Minsk, the dirtiest is not Moscow believe in or not, I'd say its Kiev. In Moscow the garbage gets picked up.

No doubt you have been in Russia many times, how is that?

I thought Moscow was quite clean, certainly better than NYC and I saw only one bum laying on the sidewalk and that was off the main path. I just found what I did see in both cities and along the way down the rivers a bit drepessing.

haggismuncher · Post by **haggismuncher** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 9:25 am

Basil · Post by **Basil** » Thu May 07, 2009 6:29 am

thanks for sharing, I feel next my vacations should be spent in Russia...

:-6

usernew · Post by **usernew** » Sat May 30, 2009 1:43 am

I never been go to Russia.

Now after read your post definitely my next trip go to Russia. Thanks for sharing.