Does that look Soviet or what?
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Russia left behind
NYT doing what it does best, a journalistic survey of the 12 hour drive between St. Petersburg to Moscow. Very nice web design. Great use of Java. And very good reporting and photojournalism too. We see deterioration, a modern train, a rotting city. Video of a 14 year old getting married. Seventy mile traffic jam, a beautiful church surrounded by poverty and very nice vacation home for Putin.
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And, yet, the Grey Lady was a relentless apologist for the old Soviet Union, and still has not learned the lesson of what caused the pathetic, bloody and tragic failure of Red Russia.
The Grey Lady seems determined to visit the same catastrophe upon the U.S.
I'll read the article later after I've finished the day's work.
It sounds like things have not changed much from the Soviet years.
Of course they have changed dramatically. I visited the Soviet Union around the time of the coup. There were hardly any private cars in St. Petersberg. The food in local restaurants was literally dangerous and inedible (spoiled meat that was rancid was being fried and served).
Russia still has a long way to go and has some huge endemic problems, but there has been some improvement. The problem is the Putin autocratic government is getting in the way of any real revitalization and economic reform. Boy am I glad that could never happen here...
I was disappointed there were no photos of the running of the
Jew, but yeah, that's Kazakhstan.
Communism. We should give it another chance.
Perhaps we can get it right this time! Ignore the wreckage.
I didn't know towheaded means blond. I'm still not sure why they say towheaded and not blond or white hair. I guess I still don't get it. When I hear it, I think it means their head slopes projecting a primitive look and most likely stupid.
In Soviet Russia, lug nuts turn you.
Tow headed....from the German word for flax which is a very light yellowish white.
The romanticizing of old Soviet Russia and ignoring the decay is just another instance of progressive liberals being blind to the realities of life and the realities of what is happening to us now. The pleasure of being able to say "I told you so" is very much outweighed by the pain and suffering that will ensue.
As an aside, the photo of the man actually 'doing' and working hard on his truck..... is quite sexy.
"The people on the top don't know what's happening down here."
So this is a story about fly over country?
As an aside, the photo of the man actually 'doing' and working hard on his truck..... is quite sexy.
Hmm. I could almost go there, but there's something about the clothes or shoes, whatever, that makes the guy seem more like an overworked beast of burden than anything else.
Lydia said...
As an aside, the photo of the man actually 'doing' and working hard on his truck..... is quite sexy.
Hmm. I could almost go there, but there's something about the clothes or shoes, whatever, that makes the guy seem more like an overworked beast of burden than anything else.
That photo to me is a quintessential image of a soviet slave. Beast of burden is apt in the times of the soviets.
That photo to me is a quintessential image of a soviet slave. Beast of burden is apt in the times of the soviets
Perhaps so. He probably wishes he had better tools and vehicles. We don't know if he has had a choice of occupations. Many of us here in the good ole USfoA don't get much choice either.
However, his hard working photo isn't much different from those of oil rig workers, commercial fishermen and dare I even say plumbers and well workers in the US. Some jobs are just hard and dirty. Not everyone can push pencils or pontificate in lofty ivory towers. Some people get their hands dirty, get oil under their fingernails, get dirt ground into their palms and wade through mud, muck and shit. Often people don't have the choices that others do. They take the dirty job. The hard job. The THANKLESS job. Doesn't make them 'beasts of burden' or any less than someone else.
If you want to classify the guys who work these same jobs in Russia as beast of burden, what does that make the logger, concrete guy, brick layer or diesel mechanic in your/our country?
Soviet art will be up there with ancient Egyptian in some future museum.
I think it's the particular position the Russian guy is in that photo that puts me in mind of a yoked ox, more than simply a hardworking man. Compare that photo with this one of oil rig workers. The oil rig guys don't look like that, at least not to me.
I agree DBQ. Big man working with his hands--->teh hawt, as the kids say.
I don't see what you're seeing, Lydia.
I contrast that in my mind with the Ron Livingston character in Office Space--pale, pasty, weak, doing pointless intangible work in a cubicle farm. That's existential despair for you.
But I may be romanticizing physical labor.
But I know which guy makes my ovaries twitch.
That photograph could have been taken here in the Great Depression. Or in the near future, if things proceed as they are currently headed.
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