Dawidko1200

We've all done that right?

Well, it probably doesn't count as "hacked", but I got the WiFi password for the entire school. They changed it. I got it again.

I'm a Russian. I'll try to provide the best picture I can.

In the 1970s, USSR's economic growth started to stagger. Ever since WWII ended, USSR was growing at an unprecedented rate, easily comparable with Japan's "economic miracle". The country was just beginning industrialization before the war, and after the war, people started to flow into the cities in millions. Up until the 70s, Soviet Union, on its own, could compete with the world economy lead by the US. As you might be aware, USSR tried isolationism, and only got involved politically or unilaterally in other countries (be it military like in Vietnam and Korea, or economically like in many African countries). They didn't get much out of those deals. So, with a closed economy, they were still doing quite well.

The 70s come, and the miracle wears off. Western historians claim it was the arms race and the space race that caused it, but I disagree. It's much more easily explained by a simple lack of people. USSR in 1970 numbered 241 million people, with a surface are bigger than that of Pluto. An economy of 250 million, especially without beneficial naval positions, can't compete with the rest of the world. The US lead (and still does) an economy much larger than its own population, because it included Europe and many Asian countries, like the aforementioned Japan, or South Korea. So, USSR started to lack workers. The resources were abundant, and nobody starved. Few people were homeless as well. 70s are a period when a big amount of khrushchevkas were built (cheap panel housing, big grey slabs like this).

But there weren't enough workers, and stagnation was getting obvious. USSR started to lag technologically. Students, instead of getting proper professional practice as they did before, were sent to kolkhoz as workers. Everywhere you went, signs "Workers needed" could be seen. And as we all know, that lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

However, the details of the collapse are scarcely known in the West. Initially, the government tried to reform the country, somewhat inspired by NEP and China's semi-communist example. That's the perestroika, or as it's translated from Russian, "reconstruction". Reconstruction of the country. It had mixed results, but a lot of liberties were granted. Private businesses were allowed, information was less censored, etc. Still, the Party wasn't quite homogeneous. There were fractions within the party, who saw different futures for USSR. Eventually, that lead to armed conflicts in the cities and even in Moscow. Prior to that, a referendum was held, where people were polled on whether or not USSR should remain a thing, albeit heavily reformed. Most people answered "Yes". And frankly, given what followed, any sane person would do the same.

The referendum had to be ignored after the events of the August coup, and USSR was officially disassembled. What followed is chaos. The 90s are called "Wicked 90s" in Russia, because it was not in any way reminiscent of either modern Russia or the USSR. Crime ran rampant. Shootings in the streets weren't all that uncommon. Ruble was in the pit, people started using dollars as currency. All the Soviet infrastructure was ruined, the borders that were suddenly in place between Russia and Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc. ruined trade and ruined lives. Putin is sometimes quoted for saying that the collapse of USSR was the biggest tragedy of the late 20th century. If we didn't rip out the context, that quote is just the truth. Millions of people were suddenly living in a different country. Some were discriminated against (two of the Baltic republics have refused to give them a chance to get a citizenship, treating them as second sort). Some were murdered (national movements in the republics escalated into terror acts and sometimes even wars - Chechnya was one those). Food was harder to find, the stores were empty. Gasoline was too expensive for emergency services to afford. Gasoline, the one thing Russia has an absolute abundance of!

And amidst all that, the politics got interesting. It's true that they were freer than they are now. But they were without rules, and they were without any desire to help the country. Instead, politicians got cozy with the oligarchs and plundered the country - much more than they're doing now. Yeltsin wasn't really popular in his first election, but good enough to pass. He was a great public speaker back then. In his re-election, however, he was not popular at all. Yet he won. TIME magazine made an article about that, pretty much bragging how Americans helped Yeltsin win. Against the Communists, of course.

And so, Yeltsin got a second term. And he was horrible. The economy kept going down. 1998 was the worst year for Russian economy. Yeltsin was a drunkard, he lost all his aptitude for public speech. And so in his New Year address to the nation in 1999, he announced that he's "going away". There's a bit of Mandela effect at work there - people always remember him saying "I'm tired, I'm going away". He never said that he was tired, but simply looking at him, he as good as said that. He pretty much made a confession then. Asked for forgiveness. He ended his term several months early, and appointed Putin as his temporary replacement. In the election three months after, Putin won, barely getting above 50%.

And things started to improve. One cannot blame or praise Putin for all that happened in that time. But nevertheless, for many he represented the new era of Russia. Economically, Russia was getting better all the way to 2008, and it rebounded quite well after that, having continued growth until 2014. Crime rate dropped. People stopped to fear being shot on the streets. Food returned to the stores, and finally reached the level of supermarkets Yeltsin was so impressed with in the US. Life was starting to get better.

In the background, looking at it now, moves were made to consolidate power and to limit the press. It wasn't always done out of malice, in my opinion. Russian history is rife with people trying to use evil to achieve good. Putin made deals with the oligarchs, didn't even hide it. He put them in line. It does seem like something wrong, if you're looking at it with the benefit of the time that passed, or the benefit of living in a stable democracy like the US. But reality is always complicated and grey. Putin's done the best he could out of a horribly terrible situation. But that is just an opinion, I want to outline that.

In any case, life of the ordinary Russian became better. And as it is often the case with nations, the leader became the symbol of that improvement. Just as a bad leader becomes the symbol of degradation. But no man rules alone, and so Putin isn't entirely to praise here, just as he is not entirely to blame for anything bad. Some in the opposition, mainly Navalny, will have you believe that things only got worse under Putin. I'm afraid facts disagree with that. Almost any statistic you look at - GDP, unemployment rate, minimum wage, average income, even suicide rate, - everything from started to improve starting in 1999.

And that is how a lot of the people in Russia see Putin. Not as a perfect man, few are dim enough to think that, but as someone who managed to put things in order after the chaos of the 90s. That is by no means an argument that he should remain in power indefinitely. But as Yeltsin has appointed Putin to prevent a power vacuum, so Putin will need to do something similar. Because the opposition is next to useless. Be that because of their inherent traits or because of actions by the state, I won't try to guess. If Navalny is the best alternative to Putin (as a lot of the Western media seems to think), then I'm worried for the future of Russia.

The future of Russia is uncertain, as it always was. Putin is a strong leader, capable of uniting the majority of the country. Navalny doesn't even come close to that, and the opposition "within system" wouldn't do that well either. When Putin goes, we've no idea what happens. Maybe we'll have to get a "shock" of a bad president with a bad administration to get the politics heated up and working. Or maybe that'll just drive us to huddle around a single leader again. Russians are willing to endure great hardships, and sometimes that isn't a good quality.

Russia needs change. Stagnation is what killed USSR, and we mustn't ignore the mistakes of our past. But as many Russians, I am afraid of what would happen if that change was too violent. Or too unpredictable. The US can usually afford to play such gambles, they have a long history of it, and some stable institutions that will withstand. But even they are having trouble with Trump. Russia doesn't have that great of a stability. If the new leader is incompetent, or if the change in power is violent, things will come crashing down. And nobody wants to be sitting beneath those things when they do.

Americans have a habit of treating others in a distant way, disregarding their troubles and worries. To them, a revolution in Russia would be a good thing, because they don't take into account the chaos it will bring into ordinary people's lives, or the losses it will incur. So they chide Russians for not standing up, and talk about how more sanctions are needed to make people march on Putin.

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I hope I've made some things clearer. I want to underline that, while a lot of what I wrote is just historical fact, a great part is still my opinion. I'm not claiming to preach the truth, but this is how I see it, from my position as someone living in Russia. I'm not Alexey, but I'm also a Kovalev. Signing out.

Then again, so are the Genjis...

USSR had compulsory foreign language lessons in schools, with the choices being English, German, and French. Russia still has the same, but with a few more choices depending on the school (Spanish and Chinese appear now and then, and even Japanese).

German was much more useful though, because of ties with East Germany. It's also regarded as the language of the engineers, and has been since the 19th century. Still, the default choice was English, and many people learned that, just not too well - there was no use for it and everyone forgot it as quickly as they learned it.

Thing is, that isn't a new saying. It's about 200 years old, but might even have roots in older times.