gorgich

I doubt I am. I'm dead sure there are some police and/or FSB employees who keep an eye on me, among thousands if not millions of Russians with similar views, but I don't feel like I'm in danger.

That of a small ethnic group in my area that has gone through some wild shit.

First, they had to leave their homeland because it was invaded by another tribe, then they were forced to stop living as nomads and settle in newly created towns by the Soviets, which led to massive famine because they weren't used to non-nomadic lifestyle or familiar with agriculture. Then a massive gas processing plant was built in their area, making the ecological situation total shit. In the late 90s they had to resettle again, and the government ended up moving some of them to tiny commieblock flats in a ghetto'ish area on the outskirts of the nearest city, despite their promises to build a nice new town for them. And during all that stuff, they never had formal recognition as an ethnic group, were lumped together with bigger ethnicities for census purposes and other official stuff, and absolutely overlooked by the media and just general public. And many more sad stories.

Even I partly regret it. Nostalgia often works like that, you remember the good parts and forget the bad ones. And the USSR definitely had both.

The Stalin part is terrible though. Really sad.

I live in Russia, in the city of Astrakhan in the South-West. Here are some pics of my city in case anyone is curious what it looks like. It’s beautiful!

Right now I’m in Saint Petersburg though, but that’s also in Russia.

I really hope so. At this point almost any drastic change would be for the better.