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Originally Posted by la aurora
This is not really an example of what you usually point out ax an example of 'russian gang'. Criminality and corruptioness is indeed a problem that needs to be dealt with but, as Freddie mentioned already, this example is a clinical case. Those people were more of maniacs than a criminal 'gang'. I don't really think our current government is to blame for all this. The level and frequiency of such crimes hasn't really noticebly increased since Putin became the president. I'd say it's the opposite actually. All these problems are here for a while and this country was a real mess in 90ies when our democracy began to be built. In last decade we became more civilized, more stable as a country and it did affect society in a positive way.
I hope you realize that no matter how civilized and peaceful we all are, we haven't really left some things behind. The echo of cold war can still be heard. USA, EU and Russia are still important figures on the chessboard this world is and their interests are often quite the opposite. I guess I also don't have to explain you the way media works. They get paid for bringing up scandals and critics. They have no reason in this world to praise the regime of strategical enemies of their country. It doesn't mean they are always wrong or that they tell you lies all the time. But it does make the whole picture a bit twisted. It's just like this thread. There are many positive things about this country but it only takes listing only neative things (even if they all are true) to give a random outsider an idea of Russia being a big criminal mess under dictatorship of Putin.
As I citizen of this country, I feel more secure and confident about us having a future that it was in pre-Putin Russia. Democracy is a great thing but it can get quite an ugly face in the country that isn't ready for it. Criminality, corruption - these are not the things Putin invented. It's something every president would have to deal with and it was quite hard to pay any attention to such things when political forces aren't any solid and keep confronting each other using all dirty methods available. Jornalists had much more material and objects for criticizing before and the fact that death of Politkovskaya was a 'loud' story here says a lot. This profession was much more risky before. Journalists were killed on regular basis. It always became a habbit hearing such things.
Right now I can do more things without having to pay a proper guy. People around me here in Moscow and relatives in further regions stopped trying to survive. Overall level of our lives became higher. Business companies here aren't playing 100% clean of course but they started paying bit less attention to criminal wars and bit more to their customers. We don't live on the bomb of revolution anymore. We have much more civilized dialogue with the rest of the world and less chances to get involved in new war. Media calmed down. They do provide critics of course but at least it stopped being such an obvious war of pre-paid compromates. I'd say society overall feels more stable and secure nowadays. No wonder Putin does have support of the masses. People of this country haven't seen anyone better for a very long while. He's not perfect of course but his 'strong hand' is something this country really needed.
^^ IMHO
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I agree whole heartedly. Except for one thing...
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Democracy is a great thing but it can get quite an ugly face in the country that isn't ready for it.
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Every country, every person, and everything deserves democracy and freedom. It is not democracy that turns an ugly face on the country it's being brought into, it's the country that turns against democracy.
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Boris Yelstin...so so sad
