My Opinion of Russians

 Lately, I've been watching Russian YouTube sites (1420 is an interesting guy who does on the street Russian interviews).  So, you get a great prospective of regular Russians. 

My general views of Russians (not Putin or the Kremlin elite)?

1.  If you locked ten Russian scientists in a room.....within eight hours, they'd invent something something out of thin air, without any encouragement. 

2.  I kinda believe that 50-percent of Russians consume vodka to serious levels, and the other fifty percent of Russians never consume vodka or alcohol of any type.

3.  I believe that Russians probably read 50-percent more than the typical average American.

4.  Based on YouTube, I would remark that a quarter of Russian society dress like it's 1977.  Course, maybe it's a fashion trend, or maybe just that they all like the style/look.

5.  Per one-hundred.....there are probably more intellectuals in Russia, than in the United States.  I'm not saying it's a positive thing....just a noted thing.

6.  If I had to go to the 'Lost' TV series island and could select ten people to accompany there, I'd make sure that nine of the ten were Russians (with one Brit in the mix).  We'd face off the smoke-creature, the bad-evil folks, and probably build a boat within two weeks to leave the island.

7.  You just don't see that many 'chunky' Russians.  Maybe it's the diet....maybe the lack of fast-food....or maybe just good cleaning living.

8.  Urban Russians don't seem as ready for difficulties....as rural Russians are.  

9.  It just seems like every Russian guy has a simple 10-tool bag he carries around in his car, which seem to resolve every single repair on a car required.

10.  Maybe it's just me, but almost every Russian gal on YouTube seems like she walked off a James Bond movie set.  

The Thing About Soviet News

 Russia for the most part....has shut down all news media operations except state-run units.  So what you get is fully-filtered news.

Oddly enough, this is mostly how the Soviet Union survived all those years.

You'd have one newspaper in a major city of 500,000, with one editor responsible for ensuring only the 'right' news got printed.  

It was OK to talk about sport scores, or discussing over 60 lines about some weight-lifting competition. 

If a water-main burst and destroyed the contents of some shopping district area....you'd just write a two-line piece describing renovation being done in such-and-such district.

If some drunk Russian hit a few cars with his dump truck, then ran over a old lady and her dog (killing them both)....the editor would have sat long and hard over the story.  The end version would have been a 1-line piece saying 'some lady on J-street met an untimely end, with her poodle 'Barney'......leaving you the reader to wonder what the untimely end was about.

A cat up in a tree, and rescued by the local fire department?  This would have been a full page with four pictures.....with a broad description of the six-man crew, and six lines to describe the cat in detail.  In fact, another six lines would have been added over an imaginary grandmother who came to offer cookies and tea to the firemen after the episode.  There would have been enough details to write a one-hour TV show over....but half of it would have been bogus (filler-material).

Stories over farmers having giant pumpkins?  Great....maybe even a sixty-line story to detail that.  Stories over a farmer failing?  Nothing.  

Soviet people got used to this, and as the 1990s arrived, with commercial news available.....I think most were in a state of shock.   You got to learn about dope dealers, murders, planes falling out of the sky, corruption, and failed lives.

Going back to the old style Soviet news pattern?  They have to be sitting there and asking what really happened to trigger filtered news?