What is Russia for you? Ally, enemy or just neighbor?

[general-denikin.livejournal.com]

Update. This poll is broken. Take the poll at my new entry in this community


    Dear members of great TALK_POLITICS community. As you know Mother Russia regained her lost political clout and now every country has to reckon with her. This was mostly due dominant leadership of prime-president Putin over second hand president Medvedev. Until recently it looked like russian people is satisfied with their life and never again going to make any uprisings or revolutions. But everybody was wrong.
        After obviously fraudulent elections in december 2011 thousands of russians participated in action of protest against Putin's government. Political lull was over. But how this turmoil did affect attitude ordinary russians to their american peers??
Honestly, attitude is pretty bizarre. Here in LiveJournal everybody easily could communicate with any foreigners thanks to google translate. But it's very unusual when 2 biggest parts of LJ communicate with each other. Why?
        You remember, of course, well-known maxim Russia is the riddle into mystery. It happened again. But I don't want to get you into details until some Day F. Because I came up with some idea to conduct couple short polls both for russians bloggers and for american's with purpose to find out what those peoples think about each other. Most questions I asked are the same for both sides and I'll have good opportunity to compare answers.
         Actually I'm pretty much aware of opinion of russian side, but I'm curious what you americans and other westerners think about regular Russian guys. I know some of you contacted or at least read comments of russian bloggers. Do you like their point of view regarding American politics or yourself? Can you be swayed to vote for more tough candidates after you read russian bloggers point of view?
         Do you believe russian bloggers support anti-american stance of future president Putin or you just don't care and not afraid what Putin doing? I'm pretty much interested and appreciate if you cross-post this and bring your friends to participate in poll.

Comments

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Russia, for me, is the crazy uncle who has a heart of gold, but drinks too much.

[general-denikin.livejournal.com]

Funny

[asket-klim.livejournal.com]

Thats right! 100%

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

(http://s265.photobucket.com/albums/ii239/policraticus/?action=view&current=consonarcrazyivan.jpg)

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Я люблю России.

I haven't had any contact with Russian bloggers, but I did with some Russian university students when I myself was at university. I think Russians and Americans have far more in common than we ordinarily might think, and I see Russia and her people going through the same struggles, political and otherwise, that Americans went through when our republic was young. If you think about it, the Russian Federation is now as old as the United States was in 1797 (counting from the creation of the Articles of Confederation) and at that point it was still an unsettled question of whether we'd survive as an independent nation, fall apart, or be reconquered by Britain. In many ways, the 20-year-old Russian Federation is stronger and more democratic than was the 20-year-old United States.

I think Putin's shenanigans are of grave concern to all freedom-loving peoples but it looks like the Russian people will stand up and be heard. I think nothing good can come of jingoistic saber-rattling rhetoric from either Americans or Russians.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To be fair when the USA was 20 years old, that leaves either George Washington and his using the US Army to repress a bunch of people who didn't want to pay taxes or alternately James Madison, who reaped the fruit of what could have easily been Jefferson's batshit insane military policies. The Russian Federation by comparison really *is* better but that's not necessarily saying much.

[general-denikin.livejournal.com]

Hopefully both countries can overcome mutual distrust.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

As you know Mother Russia regained her lost political clout and now every country has to reckon with her.

No, I don't know since that didn't happen. Last I checked Russia had a fucked up government full of weird guys I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw a tank, a seriously messed up infrastructure, a seemingly endless supply of crazed Nashi supporters and that most of the people in the rest of the world STILL don't care all that much about what happens there.

[general-denikin.livejournal.com]

O, really?
How did you checked Russia? I don't think everybody is member of Nashi.
Anyway, it is time to go sleep for me.
Take part in the poll, buddy

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

In Russia... Poll takes YOU!

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Sorry, you're not permitted to see this poll.

Don't know what you did when you were creating this poll. It must be some other Russian hacker trick or something.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

I was also unable to take the poll.

[general-denikin.livejournal.com]

Very sorry!! Completely perplexed. I don' t know what wrong is.
I cat' t take poll too.
May be I need first publish it in my own journal??

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

To me? As a Bulgarian, it's complicated - Russia to us has been both literally and metaphorically Big Brother, and in both the good and bad meaning of the word. Recently: mostly in the bad.

And please, could you tell comrade Putin to exclude us from his project for the Eurasian Union? No one here wants to be part of it, so THIS TIME please stay away from us. If we want to be part of your new empire, we'll notify you, kthxbye.

[michael barnett (from livejournal.com)]

Bulgaria -- your country has made enormous economic strides and my company is opening an office in Sofia this year. Greetings from Italy.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I'm Icelandic but I live in Sweden. So here's how Europe looks to Swedes. I'm sure you can find Russia on the map. ;)

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Aw, that's a pretty cold attitude to give Portugal.

Also, I'm trying to imagine what Swedish hillbillys might be like.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

As much as i've observed the Russian bloggers here on LJ, they're very critical of your government for the most part. But that shouldn't be a surprise, since LJ has become a sanctuary for Russian dissidents. Which is why, in turn, Putin has been keeping a close eye on the Russian segment of "ЖЖ". The string of DDoS attacks are another proof for that.

I don't know if i "like" their opinions, but it sure is good that there's at least one place where they can freely express their opinions. You must preserve this at any cost.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Agreed wholly.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Honestly, attitude is pretty bizarre. Here in LiveJournal everybody easily could communicate with any foreigners thanks to google translate. But it's very unusual when 2 biggest parts of LJ communicate with each other. Why?

In America, we are pretty chauvinistic about English. I think a lot of this is our geographical distance from most non-English speaking nations and the relative absence of foreign languages in school.

Although most Americans will consider being multilingual an asset, we just don’t practice that. I personally studied Spanish, Italian and German in school but never pursued practicing these languages. My parents spoke Polish and Slovak (mostly to hide their conversations from us kids), but never saw value in passing their heritage on to us.

There are many in America who are just intolerant and consider anyone speaking any language other than English a national threat.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

I have an interesting situation here. I am Icelandic and my husband, too. Although my two biological kids have lived in a foreign country ever since they were born, they are exposed to Icelandic speech on a daily basis. Additionally we recently adopted three local kids who are older and they already mostly communicate with their peers in English and some Xhosa. Afrikaans is also very useful in daily conversations, particularly in the region where we live, so I think they should be encouraged to become fluent in it too. The adopted kids have expressed their desire to learn some Icelandic so we could all communicate in the "lingua franca of the home".

In result, what we might end up with is a trilingual family... or possibly quadrilingual. But then, this is due to the specifics of the culture of the country. It has 11 official languages and most people are at least bilingual, if not trilingual. Languages are not seen as an asset, but rather a necessity there.

As for most European cultures, being exposed to so many neighbours of diverse heritage has resulted in languages being seen as a treasure. In fact one of the most precious treasures one might possess. Learning one more language is seen as a way to invest in oneself. In fact, if you ask me what people should invest into at a time of crisis, it is not gold, not property, not stocks and not currencies. It is in themselves. So that they could emerge in a better position at a later point.

However a language has to be constantly practiced, otherwise it slowly dies out.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Actually Russia hasn't regained her clout - we still don't create villains out of Russians for Hollywood films since Rambo III and that was the 90's.

Please stop hacking livejournal and making fake polls. That and anti-semitism have been my most common experiences with Russian bloggers.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Man that makes me wanna watch Rambo III.

"Who are you?!"

"Your worst nightmare."

Ahahahaha....

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I can't take anything a Russian says here seriously since LJ is owned by what Russian political organizations and I see everything as an attempt to jingoistic promote Russia.

That said, I'm Russian and every Russian person who still lives in Russia is a nice person. Some of the friendliest people in the world. If they move to America they become jaded and mean.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

WHERE THE FUCK IS THE 'LIKE' BUTTON GODDAMMNIT!

[michael barnett (from livejournal.com)]

Russia is a wide-open market for me to business in. My prosperity, then, is to a minor extent also improved as the prosperity of Russians improve. So for me they are "trading partners".

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

The Russian segment of my customers form a significant part of my income, granted. Maybe 1/5. That said, the British are nearly half of my customers but there's a difference: i see Russia and Russians in quite a different light, in that there's some emotional attachment in me to them, whereas i merely see the British in the exact way that you described.

I can see Russians from my house

[caerfrli.livejournal.com]

I thought everyone in Russia had up and moved to NYC

Re: I can see Russians from my house

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

Only those with money.

We expect results of poll soon, or no soup for you!

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Even as a kid during the worse parts of the Cold War, I didn't really fear Russians as much as I did Nuclear Fallout™.

I do have a token Russian, maybe two on my F list and when she posts in Russian, I will allow Chrome to roughly translate it. I do respond in English because I don't trust a re-translation, and I know they can understand English better than I can understand Russian.

This is much more than a 'token' relationship. I do not go out of the way to seek Russian content, but I can become curious if it crosses my path.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I have to continuously remind myself not to judge Russia as a whole by the attitudes of about three quarters of the Russians who contribute to livejournal forums I read.

But it isn't always easy cause some of you all are just bat shit fucking crazy. (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/805873.html#comments)

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Funny, I think the same thing about American journals. :P This community being one of the few exceptions.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

My opinion about Russia is that Russians are generally good people but they've had the worst single string of clumsy, incompetent, racist, butchering thugs to ever misrule an empire that size in global history and honestly I feel sorry for them. A country whose best and brightest are Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Stalin, and Gorbachev has had some bad fucking luck happen to it. The only people worse-off in terms of leadership are the Palestinians, and that's not even a joke.

So....yeah. Russia? Beautiful country, if cold and full of bears. Russians? Nice people, somewhat strange but so's all peoples if we get down to it. Russia's leaders? If I could gather the whole assembly of them from Rurik I onward I would choose the option "Terminate with extreme prejudice" as those guys have done much to ensure that Russian history is a sequence of "And then it got worse".

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Oh, and you named yourself after that White General during the Russian Civil War? Fail. At least name yourself after someone like Suvorov or Kutuzov who might actually *deserve* an LJ screen-name, not some guy who got the rank of general because his predecessor had a heart attack and who got buggered by the Red Army. That's like an American using the screename John_Bell_Hood.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

None of the above, a fairly insignificant country at the other end of the Earth, the only reason why they factor at all is because of their security council veto ability. It's not like they're China or anything.

[general-denikin.livejournal.com]

China is more menacing for you than Russia?
Strange.

[general-denikin.livejournal.com]

I apologize to everybody for poll not working.
I didn't test it because I took russian part of poll before.
Try to fix it on weekend.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

It's okay. We got the idea.

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

Two reasons why the two parts of LJ don't interact much, imho.

1) Translation or not, if an American can't read the stray Cyrillic words they probably aren't much interested in what it means, sad to say. They have enough trouble with languages that use most of our English alphabetic characters.

2) Most LJ users are here for the lulz.

Okay, three reasons: 3) Russian blogs are the reason LJ gets DDoS attacks and we can't have our lulz, therefore Russia must be bad. (Not my opinion, just an assertion of a possible reason.)

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Hehe, "English alphabetic characters" ;)