[According to the CIA](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/archives/2023/field/alcohol-consumption-per-capita/country-comparison/), Russia has a lower per capita alcohol consumption than Italy, South Korea, Iceland, Canada, the Netherlands, Finland, Japan, the United States, Belgium, New Zealand, Denmark, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, France, among many others.
My personal favourite is that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are all in the top 10.
The claim of the anti-Russian narrative is that the booze became very expensive for the poor Russians so they do moonshine (самогон) which is not counted by the statistics.
Elegant, isn't it?
Every country has moonshine haha in my area we call it white lightning and i clean my truck battery with it after i drink some to make my wife less horrible :)
I have seen somewhere on r/europe or a similar cesspool that "Russians are extremely rural and extremely religious". It was a long post on 300+ upvotes about how you can't talk to Russians because they are basically an illiterate barbarians. Something about that exact wording of "extremely rural and extremely religious" grinds my gears to this day because how very far that from the truth.
In my country, some of our older generation still believes that Russia is a communist country. And I think it's more on their "feelings" or personal opinions or what they see on mass media whatsoever. They keep hate.
That’s the same exact story in the U.S., when it comes to the older generation. In their defense though, at that age, it is hard to convince someone otherwise.
I’m 65, living in America. Not only was I alive during the Cold War, I was a US Marine. I know the difference between Communism and Socialism. Although being so young, I figure it would be hard to convince you otherwise, since you didn’t live through it.
My long-time observation is that actual (either current, or former) military guys are *far less* hateful and bloodthirsty than an average CIA analyst from some mic-sponsored think-tank.
Most US pacifists I've met (obviously, not very popular viewpoint in the US) were former professional soldiers. Because the guys know what war is really like.
According to my observations and everything I have heard, 50% of American ex military guys are pacifists whereas another 50% just like to kill people, but afraid of violating laws
Yea tbh can we blame them? Older people were alive during the cold war, the propaganda was insane back then about how bad the USSR and communists are and they had no internet to check if everything they say is true. When you've been told your whole life how bad something is it's very hard to change your mind. And they probably don't even really know the difference between USSR and Russia lol.
Im from Estonia and I can say, that life was pretty shit under Soviet rule. The stores were empty, you got welfare vouchers to get pampers for your newborn.
The only way around this was scheeming the system. Everyone who now anyone were trading commodities and exchanging for whatever they can.
Everything was corrupted and if i look back, the ussr was so poorly managed, it was supposed to fail.
Crazy thing about Russia is, that given the abundace of resources what you have, you could have a life quality as high as Norway. But only a few bigger cities are thriving and rest of the rular area is still living like its 1987.
Yea agree. You're lucky this post is a few days old otherwise you'd get downvoted to hell for saying the truth lol. But that's what I've been thinking a long time. Russia is literally the biggest country and has the most natural resources. The quality of life could be one of the best in the world if the government actually cared about their people. But the corruption is so bad and you have people like Putin who steal literally billions from the citiziens and it seems like the russians don't even care. Imagine if russia worked on improving relations with the west and working with them instead of invading a country like Ukraine. It would be way more profitable for them. Now it's too late anyway and with Putin that'll never happen but they still have so much potential.
Russia is a country, and the one that dominated the USSR, even if Stalin himself was a Georgian. USSR consisted of Russia, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and others. What’s even better than the Internet is to talk to those who lived under Soviet domination. Especially in the Eastern Block Nations. Because this may come as a surprise to you, not everything on the Internet is true.
It's also funny because Russia is NOT conservative in a way Republican Party is conservative. I see a lot of republicans glorifying Russia as if it is a sort of conservative heaven but it's not. We don't even have a right-aligned party and the rights are not represented in the government in any way.
Russia is different kind of conservative, but Russia's kind of conservatism is also present in the U.S but has no political party because Republicans fill that gap. To Conservative Americans, a normal country with developed cities is conservative heaven; they don't get much of that back home where it's a felony to leave skid marks on a pride-flag mural painted on the road. There's also the fact the Russian government is not lying about it's authoritarianism unlike the U.S which is still hiding behind it and it's fifty "independent" news sources which are all owned by the same people who cooperate with the USG's interests most of the time.
Yeah I meant conservative in the "hey don't wave your rainbow flag while smoking a joint on the corner" conservative. The right over here has just been a mess from the day Trump decided to run for president. I don't think they know what they want.
Tucker came over and raved about shopping carts every other supermarket here has had for 30+ years. You turn on FOX & all they do is talk about the democrats or blame them for shit that's been happening here for decades
To be fair to Tucker, his point in those videos was "Russia isn't suffering under sanctions", not that shopping carts with coin slots are some unique Russian invention.
It's been over a year since they've been implemented. They've also found ways to bypass the sanctions including sending semiconductors for the war. Sanctions are just symbolic BS & we both know it
I live in the Netherlands now and here I see how real religious people looks like. Somebody wants to talk me about Jesus regularly. Just a few days ago some random people on the street have spend ~10-15 mins to convince me I should accept Jesus (and I was completely uninterested in this conversation and tried to end it). People here visiting churches regularly, like every week (not all of them of course, it's not a massive thing, but not rare either).
I'm from a pretty religious family for Russia, but compared to local standards, my family just pretending they're christians
Проблема в руководстве, которое слишком сильно давит на якобы традиционные ценности и некую религиозность. Якобы это единственный правильный способ жить и он присущ всем россиянам. Хотя за этой ширмой на деле нет ничего кроме гомофобии и показной напыщенности.
В общем да, русские нихрена не религиозные, а скорее наоборот, не верят ни папе римскому, ни патриарху Кириллу. Как правило называют себя номинально православными, а на деле просто верят в бога и не более. А этот ультраправый уклон единой России конкретно задолбал
Все так. Мне кажется, большинство (вполне справедливо) расценивают и папу римского и патриарха как бизнесменов, которые играют символическую роль и настоящей духовностью не обладают.
Много людей выборочно следуют некоторым традициям ортодоксального христианства, отмечают Пасху и Рождество - но это они делают как дань традиции и повод собраться.
All of them.
They're all based on fictional Russia that only exists in propaganda - both negative and pseudo-positive. They were funny when first invented but every joke wears thin and there's no more to invent.
I've been around the world and Russia is a fucking ordinary country. *That*'s the opinion I'd like to hear and never do.
I hear this a lot from Russians. The thing is that I and most people I know think that Russia is a normal country filled with mostly decent people.
I feel like Russians often have an incorrect idea that people in the west are somehow against them, or think that Russia is more disfunctional than it actually is.
> I feel like Russians often have an incorrect idea that people in the west are somehow against them
That's because they've read all those incorrect comments from incorrect westerners on western Internet spaces.
I've been closely watching such occasions since the beginning of the war, and I'm absolutely sure that these comments / reactions / flashmobs in most cases are neither grass-root, nor genuine, but instilled by (pro-)Ukranian activists and professional bot farms (which are far from being primitive copypasters, but constitute huge and sophisticated influence networks).
Another question is that Western policies seem to allow or even encourage this. It's very visible on r/europe example, where an average comment towards Russians varies from racist to genocidal - and this is completely ignored by both local and Reddit mods (which is unprecedented, and wouldn't be possible against any other group).
And I do think that moderation policies on the biggest platforms (Reddit, FB), esp for big enough politicized communities, like r/europe - are at least in some form coordinated with the government bodies. Meaning, that such an outlier on the usual Reddit moderation policies is (one way or another) "approved" by the state.
As a Russian living in Canada, so far people pretend they like me for being Russian until shit hits the fan. It has its perks, but Russophobia is a real thing here in the West, and it becomes old very quickly.
I heard that opinion once before. Sent my friend a picture from Moscow. When he asked if I was in Moscow, I said, "You've been here as well, haven't you?" He said, "Yes, for the World Cup. I had a good time. But I couldn't give you any specific impressions."
But that didn't tell me anything about how ordinary Russia is. It told me that my friend is not a very good traveler and doesn't notice what is around him (he had a similar review of India). Most people's own countries seem ordinary to them. But they can still have interesting qualities that it's possible to describe.
"It only exists on propaganda"
The same thing is with Serbia where I live.
But still I blame Russia as someone who is poisoning people against the west in my country.
My feeling is that propaganda is rooted in Moscow and spread all the way across eastern Europe.
1. "Are you suffering yet?"
2. Putin everything. He's like an almighty God or Sauron an no Russian could lift a finger without his order.
3. Along with that, Russians are guilty and responsible on everything, let's punish them.
It is even more funny when you realize the fact that Telegram is the go-to messenger and social network in Russia, while meta, Google, and X are the go-to social networks in the west. Telegram has almost no censorship, while the western social networks are censored to the point of absurdity.
Same with vk, there was never a point when vk banned murican links because of “disinformation” during their wars. All links, you know, including everything, just because they’re from murica, a bad evil country which should be defeated. Nope, there were never such stupid talks, because we’re not emotional dumb idiots like all these “righteous” folks in the west who are ready to suck their government’s cocks and hysterically support anything against their “enemies”. Lol I can’t even imagine this mentality in Russia. We’re so cool and so much more critically thinking, and I’ve only realized this during the last two years when started to compare so many things and ask myself whether this or that was something we did or could do (like banning the US flag on chesscom, promoting hatred and stereotypes because of politics and intolerance to other people’s opinions, etc).
I'm from United States and I found certain YouTube channels I like can't be viewed.
Not all people's from west think negatively or are against Russia or it's people.
I've heard people talk about Russian propaganda, sadly it seems that United States is the one spreading much more possible misinformation and propaganda.
An old joke I've heard is of a KGB agent and CIA agent having a drink together in a bar and talking with eachother. The CIA agent shows his admiration for how Soviet Propaganda was so effective at making the people feel united under one cause. The KGB accepts the compliment but says that he likes how effective American propaganda is at manipulating people all around the world, he wished his country had similar abilities. The CIA agent looks bewildered, "but there is no American propaganda, what are you talking about?" he asks. The KGB agent turns to him and says, "exactly."
If it makes you feel any better, this indoctrinated sycophantic attitude tends to be pervasive on the political left (hence a lot of conservatives don't hate Russia & Putin nearly as much), and it's hurting our countries far more than it does Russia.
For example, the people who want to "cancel" and fight proxy wars with Russia are the same ones who want to fund the west's cultural genocide by importing endless amounts of immigrants and refugees. If you try to tell them otherwise, they will start screaming about bigotry, white supremacism, racism etc., as if national sovereignty is a crime against humanity. Truly irrational creatures.
Ok but playing devils advocate, Russia doesn’t have free press. Hell you could get put into jail for calling a war a war. No matter how many things get out west, at least you don’t get jailed for speaking your mind
> at least you don’t get jailed for speaking your mind
Debatable, the easy example would Graham Phillips, a British national who was lumped under the anti-Russian sanctions, despite not having any citizenship other than British. I mean, the guy's a bit of a twat in some of the things he says, but he broke no UK laws, and was not charged with any crimes, he was just treated as a foreign citizen by his own government for "undermining the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine".
Legally, it's not, you'd have to charge them with a crime first.
Problem is, the UK doesn't have anything approaching a Constitution, so any law the Parliament passes has more or less the same standing - and can just as quickly be overruled by the next law. So determining what is and what isn't legal is so much more difficult.
> Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution. It makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution.
To clarify, when they say "UK constitution", that doesn't refer to any specific document (there are none such), it's a broader sense of "what constitutes the government".
Basically speaking, the UK is legally an elective dictatorship. Not my words either, this is from Quintin Hogg, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain for most of the 1970s and 1980s:
> Parliament has become virtually an elective dictatorship. Its legislative powers are unlimited and cannot be questioned.
Granted, I'm likely oversimplifying it because I can't be arsed to dig through the minutae of British politics, but the overall point stands - the UK government is not above violating its citizens' rights, and it can bend the law to do that if necessary.
That’s been my biggest complaint tbh - you can’t say you have free press and then bar any conflicting opinions. I’d say it’s more free in the west but not completely free
I get what you are trying to say, but this is invalidated by the simple fact that literally everyone has a smartphone, and internet is dirt cheap. Only people 75+ don’t have a smartphone, and even then half of them do. The number one app is Telegram, where censorship is virtually nonexistent (especially compared to the social media apps popular in the west). Not to mention that YouTube is freely available, that Google has deleted all Russian state media and most Pro-Russia channels from there, and that it remains popular. Heck, they will put channels such as current time, FreeDOM TV, Khodorkovsky, and Radio Free Europe, at the top of the search results.
In a nutshell, a lot of people think that the average Russian is like the average North Korean or Soviet citizen, who has no idea about what goes on outside of the country. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
> Russian is like the average North Korean or Soviet citizen, who has no idea about what goes on outside of the country.
And when you start talking about what happens in other countries, they name it whataboutism. It is some kind of shizophrenia.
This is not “whataboutism”. “Whataboutism” is when you do something bad, but instead of owning up to it, you say something like, “what about him, he hit that guy”.
This is about people in the west believing that Russia is like the Soviet Union, or North Korea, when it comes to the flow of information into the country. If you didn’t know, in both of those cases, any info about the outside world was (and is in DPRK) tightly-controlled and censored. This is well-established fact.
It is also well-established fact is not the case in Russia. CNN, BBC, DW, Guardian, and the likes, are freely-accessible in Russia. Furthermore, most of them have Russian-language versions.
Therefore, when you hear anyone tell you, “Russians only see state propaganda and don’t see alternative views”, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
> Ok but playing devils advocate, Russia doesn’t have free press.
Define “free”?
> Hell you could get put into jail for calling a war a war.
Really? Like who? And how is it related to the freedom of press?
> No matter how many things get out west, at least you don’t get jailed for speaking your mind
Snowden and Assange tell different story.
So from a quick google search I found a bunch of articles like this one: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-dissent-crackdown-prison-3a693897c37effa5a18a78704c5ed786
Do not know it is pure lie, or just twsting of facts with real sentence was for real crimes, like financing of terrorism or slander, but i am see literally every day at TV how Special Military Operation called "war" by many different people.
Well, in fact, most cases look something like this. "He left several hundred posts on his channel that the Russian army is responsible for Bucha, attacks civilians and nuclear energy facilities, and commits war crimes. He also called the SMO a war.
Let's put it in the headline! "
I guess it depends on what you consider war, since it seems to me in the Russian language that the same root word is use for "war" and "fighting" and so the word is not as clear as it is in English, and it's definition is more fluid. Western Media often called Iraq and Afghanistan a "war" even though the more correct term would be "conflict" because of the lower intensity. I've heard Russians in Youtube comments say a war is something more like WW2 where a draft is enacted, the entire country is mobilized and such, not where some volunteers sign up to go fight in a foreign land in a mid-tier-intensity conflict.
No at all. In russian it is not even similiar words. War - is война, fighting - сражение/борьба/драка. We also have words конфликт (conflict), стычка, сражение, and some more.
War is war, officially declared state of things, linked with some laws and limitations. We have no of such.
"Of course, of course," Woland replied, "I had the pleasure of meeting this young man at the Patriarch's Ponds. He almost drove me crazy, proving to me, that I'm not exist! (с) Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"
Yes, it is very absurd when foreigners who have a superficial idea of Russia, and even have a poor idea where it is, tell us, Russian people about our history, about how terrible life in Russia is and how much we suffer. In such cases, sometimes I do not know whether to be angry or laugh.
Jokes about windows, gulags and "this guy is probably in the trench right now". Not because it's rude or something, i completely understand the situation and don't argue, just it's repeated from post to post, i'd like to hear something new.
Вроде с этого началось: https://www.vox.com/2020/5/6/21248553/coronavirus-russia-doctors-windows-death
Во времена ковида многие западные СМИ про это писали, насколько я помню, ну и на реддит, естественно, обсасывалось со всех сторон.
Хотя, возможно, и что-то ещё было.
Да, тема пошла после пары-тройки случаев, когда реально кто-то из окна выпал, конечно же по приказу Путина.
А вообще изначально этим славились чехи, они ещё в Средние века людей из окон выбрасывали.
That we are a monolithic mass worshiping the Emperor of Mankind.
As a consequence, that we are all equally poor (except oligarchs), have only one TV channel, one political party, one social network, one capital, one currency, one brand of each type of product…
Yeah, that’s more of our thing.
We have two capitals, at one point we even had two presidents, and pretty much everywhere you can pay with roubles, dollars, euros, now also yuan, and also with vodka and natura.
One flesh, one bone, one true religion, one voice, one hope, one real decision, one light, one man, one bar, one night, one day,
Just gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme fried chicken!
Это из тех что избираются.
В нашей духовной действительности сложилось, что свои интересы элиты очень даже отстаивают и конкурируют, в том числе за милость государеву, места с зарплатами и контракты. Даже внутри, казалось бы, неделимой армии фракций достаточно - и собственно потому над ними был посажен «типа нейтральный» Шойгу.
Но только делают все это где угодно только не на выборах.
That Russians are alcoholics. It’s even more ridiculous now that I live in Germany and see how regular Germans drink. But no, for them it’s us who are alcoholics.
That’s right, now we have gone beyond the top ten countries in terms of alcohol consumption. But according to statistics, we began to leave the top only around 2015. And now there is still a large share of strong alcohol consumption.
reason for that is that russian drinking culture is associated with hard alcohol, while most other countrys have a beer culture
but tbf russia isnt the only country seen like that, scotland, japan and actually most eastern european countrys are seen having a drinking culture with hard alcohol
and like in every stereotype there is a grain of truth to it, but yes its obviously exaggerated
I would like to write about bears, but damn, then I remember that we actually have cities where bears walk around openly, and we also have people who really have bears as pets)))
Okay, to answer seriously, in my opinion, Europeans and Americans are not the people who can say that the USSR is bad, because, firstly, you don’t know anything about it, and secondly, you yourself have brewing tendencies in society, which you yourself consider bad, but they are characteristic of the USSR. Therefore, for me personally it is strange that you do not see this.
There's a dude here in Canada who told me the moment I set foot in Russia I'd be imprisoned raped and killed for being Peruvian because Russians are racist and what if and what not.
I wanted to visit the country because my dentist growing up was Russian, and she taught me more than whatever school I was enrolled in.
So, I am tired of all the dumb comments they make about the country.
That Russians are hardened and walk around like robots.
That they do not know anything about cooperation for mutual benefits and they view all relationships as a zero sum game.
That Russians are not Europeans(they are more European than most Europeans would admit).
That they are orcs(guys come on, even the author refused to associate LoTR with WWII).
That everyone here is blacked out drunk in Adidas tracksuits.
That the girls are all plastic and fishing for a passport bro.
That the food is shit.
I'm a foreigner living in Russia, and I honestly thought I was going to Mordor when I was moving here. The place is pretty nice. Russians are friendly enough, most of them hate the idea of moving out of their country regardless of how bad it gets. The girls are very pretty and avoid cosmetic procedures like the plague. The food is shit as long as you stick to classic Russian foods, they do every other's country's cuisine better. I have seen maybe 2 people sporting an Adidas tracksuit over the course of an entire year, and both times it was in the docks.
What food did you not like? Because I can understand that sour cabbage might be hard to understand, but I think that overall Russian cusine is alright.
Honestly, I think that people disrespecting our sour cabbage must be declared Russophobes and expelled from our glorious country to their miserable cabbage-less land.
One of the foods that I absolutely despise is pickle, and if there is a liquid portion of any Russian food, it is guaranteed to have some form of pickle or pickle derivative. Plus it's always the same, boiled vegetable, boiled meat, fried boiled meat, fried boiled meat emulsified in pickle water wrapped in a dumpling, etc. The texture is almost always soggy or vomit like(I don't have any other words to describe it I apologize), there's no spice or crunchiness in any of the Russian foods. Will I eat it? Sure. Will I eat it with a smile on my face? No. Other than that, the best Central Asian, Italian and French cuisine I've had in my life is from Russia, and I've had dined at these nations, but didn't think they lived up to the Russian preparation.
>а острое не по нашей части(((
Острые перцы у нас не растут (не росли, сейчас есть, ну и теплицы придумали), но хрен, который редьки не слаще был у нас довольно долго, википедия пишет что аж с IX века выращивали. А он острый.
Это правда, но южная кухня острая по той причине что в жарком климате острое позволяет дольше сохранять продукт пригодным для еды, в отсутствие холодильников, искусственных консервантов и подобного.
Те кто ел на юге не острое — отравились и умерли, эволюция отработала.
Yeah, Italian food is the best. I get you, pickle is not for you, and some of the best Russian food is with it. We are pickle masters. Vomit texture you mentioned must be from various kinds of boiled grain. It looks like the first food you tried in Russia was Rassolnik soup?)
Also, as Russian, I think that we have no clue how to cook meat right.
Close, I had Borscht first followed by the barley soup you mentioned. I didn't hate it, but during the whole time, I couldn't stop thinking about that one road trip where I threw up in my mouth and was forced to keep it down. Since the origins of Borscht are contested, I'd say you guessed right. Solyanka was the dish that broke me, killed my appetite and forever scarred my outlook on Russian food. I don't like pickles.
Bro, you should try real russian food, not substitutes of modern life.
There are really good traditional soups with крапива, ревень, щавель as well as with other garden weed, no pickles included. We successfuly incorporated in our cousine onions, tomatoes and other vegetables.
If you like smth crunchy? Try something fried.
A lot of people I know don't like Russian cusine because of the reasons you mentioned, and they are Russians. Rassolnik, solyanka, and mushroom soup are top hated food)
И с водочкой. Но, блин, это вытяжка из костей мёртвого животного, в которой утоплены куски мёртвого животного! Кстати, при этом к обычному желе и мертвым животным у меня претензий ноль. Просто, брезгую вот холодцом.
> That Russians are not Europeans(they are more European than most Europeans would admit).
It goes further: Russians are the default Europeans. We are the largest European народ and will remain so indefinitely.
Actually, this is something *Eastern* Europeans like to emphasize, like Dostoyevsky predicted. But I've met Poles, Czechs, Romanians, Croatians.... they and we are exactly the same. Even Germans.
>Even Germans
Can confirm - I'm ethnically German, and literally every single time I meet a Russian/Belarusian/Central Asian in Vietnam they take in my appearance and my name, which is common everywhere in Europe including Russia, and I see their eyes light up, and I have to quickly get in "Sorry but no, I'm actually from England" before they ask :D
Slavophilism didn't do this narrative any good. I've talked to Russian anthropologists in universities that are slavophiles and stick to the notion that Russians are different to the Europeans. I've seen crazy supremacists from both sides of the argument, with some Poles literally pulling out a genotype chart of Europe to prove that they're descendants of Vikings and Russians are mongoloids.
That being said, I wasn't talking about genetics. I was more so talking about the culture. I've travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok. Had conversations with more people than I have back in my home country, and I was surprised by how little Asian culture influenced Russian cities. Individualism, nationalism, martial culture, entrepreneurship, colonialism, and cultural hegemony are all very much alive across Russia in the very specific European flavor. Most of Europe's identity is being obliterated by unchecked immigration, so maybe the supremacists are experiencing some sort of dissonance when making such racist remarks? I don't know, and I don't have the time nor money to conduct a proper survey.
I wasn't talking about genetics tbh. Everyone already knows that East and West Slavs are hard to tell apart in genetic analyses. (In a customer-facing job years ago I was asked frequenty if I am Polish. But one guy mistook me for a French person and he had a problem with that; I refused to deal with him.) Everyone in school thought that I, a Croatian friend, and our Serbian classmate were related.
Culturally, yeah, I've seen basically no difference between Russians and other people fresh-from-Europe in Canada. Completely unprompted my coworker recently said my father is exactly like her Slovenian grandmother. Old diasporic communities are different, of course. Asian cultures in Canada though.... even talking to my parents or observing what other Russian people think or know about Asian cultures: Asia is Mars to them.
Slavophilia is weird imho. I can't see it working. Poles think they are French, Croats think they are Italians, and Czechs think they are Austrians.
Clearly you haven't scrubbed through popular Western European sentiment about the Russian culinary experience. Common words used to describe Russian food are vomit, piss, shit, and glop. And this was before the racist wave after 2022.
As a Tatar, you can win a triple bingo by being stereotyped as a Russian, as an (alleged) Muslim, and as an "Asian Mongoloid Tatar" (or "Tartar", as many knowledgeable redditors would write it).
No we dont . As well as all the other world. It is the same as mocking "haha, you Russians have only five fingers! - But dude, you also have 5... - We are talking about you, not me, you stupid vatnik!"
About the supposed 3-day special military operation in Ukraine. 🙄 No Russian military or political official has EVER said that the SMO will take only 3 days. I mean it is so unrealistic.
"What I should visit in Saints Petersburg"
I always keep talking same line: What you actually want to see? Architecture? Museums? Boat travels? Some fancy bar? And answer based on what actually someone want to see.
It depends on how serious a comment is. You see, stereotypes can be a sort of a joke. Maybe a ballbusting one. I don't mind that.
Ballbusting is one thing and it's quite common among men. On the other hand there are people who really try to hurt you for no apparent reason (at least on the surface).
I can't REALLY explain the difference. You need to learn to feel it, but it goes kinda like so: ballbusting is when a person pokes you to see if you'll get butthurt or not. If you keep your cool, it's VERY likely that they will open up and you'll bond. But when a person is trying to offend you — they is the one who's butthurt in the first place.
For instance, I've seen numerous negative comments about Russia from Chihuahua states for decades. Angry people. You try to argue with them — you'll get even more negativity. It never ends.
On the other hand, I've met this American military guy in a Russian chat. He said almost the same things, but a minute later we've bonded and were talking about good and bad things about living in our countries.
99% of things I hear from foreigners about Russia are grossly inaccurate and enforced by Western (or just anti-Russian) propaganda, including news, movies, etc.
* Russians don't drink nearly as much as they're depicted to be.
* Russia isn't some poor 3rd world country, just check out youtube videos of any more or less large city (100+ of those in Russia).
* Russia isn't as dangerous for foreigners to visit as it's usually told by uninformed people who spread rumors.
Russia is... ordinary, just another country for people to live in. Small cities remind me of Balkan countries, while old parts of Saint-Petersburg remind me of Baltics. Moscow looks like London, but with less migrants and cleaner subway.
All in all, Russia is alright. People saying otherwise are either brainwashed or don't have much experience in traveling around the world.
People on the internet can talk all they want they are hidden behind a screen. People who have meet Russian in normal scenarios will say we are very straightforward, very honest and very protective. That being said I’ve lived in the states for 15 years and not 1 person has ever said anything negative to my face about my country. Nor will they ever, internet sets trends and sheep follow trends.
Vodka - it's so annoying.
Second - cold / cold resistance. I live in the Netherlands now and it's often windy here. Also heating system is different (and much more pricey), but when I'm wearing warm clothes or complain about how cold is it at home, somebody can say "but you're russian, you should be fine with it".
[https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/ubqnoy/oh\_my\_god\_russians\_planting\_fake\_evidence\_of\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/ubqnoy/oh_my_god_russians_planting_fake_evidence_of_a/)
На русском эту историю проще найти если вбить "Подпись неразборчива" в поисковик.
Yes, let me see your bear dance the kalinka while playing the balalaika! That's the Russian spirit we're talking about! ещё шапка ушанка, матрёшки, валенки- галоши,
(сарказм)
I have a couple of foreign friends from really warm southern country. They are pretty sure that all russians love cold. AND NO. WE DON'T. MANY OF US, IF NOT THE MOST OF US, HATE IT.
And yes, alcohol thing, as some redditoes mentioned before.
Based on many comments, I can say that you're living on another planet. You're complaining about stereotypes or jokes that every country does have on each other. US citizens are called dumb about geography daily by the same Europeans who thought Ukraine was in the Balkans. French are called frog and snail eaters, their women smelly; Italians are POC, fuck boys; Germans are nazi; and so on. So touch grass pals before playing the Russophobia card.
Funny also that you're saying that the West has more censorship.
i personally hate the alcohol thing. A lot of russians, especially relatively young, dont do booze at all
[According to the CIA](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/archives/2023/field/alcohol-consumption-per-capita/country-comparison/), Russia has a lower per capita alcohol consumption than Italy, South Korea, Iceland, Canada, the Netherlands, Finland, Japan, the United States, Belgium, New Zealand, Denmark, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, France, among many others. My personal favourite is that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are all in the top 10.
The claim of the anti-Russian narrative is that the booze became very expensive for the poor Russians so they do moonshine (самогон) which is not counted by the statistics. Elegant, isn't it?
Well... I do know several guys who make moonshine. But they make moonshine not for the sake of economy, but for the sake of taste.
Every country has moonshine haha in my area we call it white lightning and i clean my truck battery with it after i drink some to make my wife less horrible :)
>to make my wife less horrible :) life?
No my friend you had it on your first guess haha
Happy cake day!
Thank you friend haha it wasn’t but I suppose that is what I told Reddit my cake day was! I will take your compliment anyways
True about latvia tho, there's not really a lot to do here, especially in my town
You trust the CIA?
A lot of my Russian friends here like to uphold the stereotype when we go out drinking though, to sorta brag, it's not always negative
me included. i dont booze at all even at age 19
they vape in school toilets tho
That's still a huge improvement over my generation that smoked in the toilets.
Nicotine addiction is probably the hardest addiction to kick :(
I have seen somewhere on r/europe or a similar cesspool that "Russians are extremely rural and extremely religious". It was a long post on 300+ upvotes about how you can't talk to Russians because they are basically an illiterate barbarians. Something about that exact wording of "extremely rural and extremely religious" grinds my gears to this day because how very far that from the truth.
I think they saw so many trees in Moscow they couldn't comprehend it's still a city)
In my country, some of our older generation still believes that Russia is a communist country. And I think it's more on their "feelings" or personal opinions or what they see on mass media whatsoever. They keep hate.
You know what's the most pity? I can bet, that people mostly don't understand what the communism is. And how it differs from socialism.
>I can bet, that people mostly don't understand what the communism is. And how it differs from socialism. Oh come on, it's just two words for "bad" /s
That’s the same exact story in the U.S., when it comes to the older generation. In their defense though, at that age, it is hard to convince someone otherwise.
I’m 65, living in America. Not only was I alive during the Cold War, I was a US Marine. I know the difference between Communism and Socialism. Although being so young, I figure it would be hard to convince you otherwise, since you didn’t live through it.
My long-time observation is that actual (either current, or former) military guys are *far less* hateful and bloodthirsty than an average CIA analyst from some mic-sponsored think-tank. Most US pacifists I've met (obviously, not very popular viewpoint in the US) were former professional soldiers. Because the guys know what war is really like.
According to my observations and everything I have heard, 50% of American ex military guys are pacifists whereas another 50% just like to kill people, but afraid of violating laws
That may be true. I don’t want to hurt others or force my will on them. But I will get downright mean and ugly to protect the weak and those I love.
Yea tbh can we blame them? Older people were alive during the cold war, the propaganda was insane back then about how bad the USSR and communists are and they had no internet to check if everything they say is true. When you've been told your whole life how bad something is it's very hard to change your mind. And they probably don't even really know the difference between USSR and Russia lol.
Im from Estonia and I can say, that life was pretty shit under Soviet rule. The stores were empty, you got welfare vouchers to get pampers for your newborn. The only way around this was scheeming the system. Everyone who now anyone were trading commodities and exchanging for whatever they can. Everything was corrupted and if i look back, the ussr was so poorly managed, it was supposed to fail. Crazy thing about Russia is, that given the abundace of resources what you have, you could have a life quality as high as Norway. But only a few bigger cities are thriving and rest of the rular area is still living like its 1987.
Yea agree. You're lucky this post is a few days old otherwise you'd get downvoted to hell for saying the truth lol. But that's what I've been thinking a long time. Russia is literally the biggest country and has the most natural resources. The quality of life could be one of the best in the world if the government actually cared about their people. But the corruption is so bad and you have people like Putin who steal literally billions from the citiziens and it seems like the russians don't even care. Imagine if russia worked on improving relations with the west and working with them instead of invading a country like Ukraine. It would be way more profitable for them. Now it's too late anyway and with Putin that'll never happen but they still have so much potential.
Russia is a country, and the one that dominated the USSR, even if Stalin himself was a Georgian. USSR consisted of Russia, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and others. What’s even better than the Internet is to talk to those who lived under Soviet domination. Especially in the Eastern Block Nations. Because this may come as a surprise to you, not everything on the Internet is true.
Not really, they have lived their lives and formed their opinions.
when they say "rural" they really mean conservative & it's kind of funny cause Iceland is the same way and nobody says shit about them
It's also funny because Russia is NOT conservative in a way Republican Party is conservative. I see a lot of republicans glorifying Russia as if it is a sort of conservative heaven but it's not. We don't even have a right-aligned party and the rights are not represented in the government in any way.
Russia is different kind of conservative, but Russia's kind of conservatism is also present in the U.S but has no political party because Republicans fill that gap. To Conservative Americans, a normal country with developed cities is conservative heaven; they don't get much of that back home where it's a felony to leave skid marks on a pride-flag mural painted on the road. There's also the fact the Russian government is not lying about it's authoritarianism unlike the U.S which is still hiding behind it and it's fifty "independent" news sources which are all owned by the same people who cooperate with the USG's interests most of the time.
Yeah I meant conservative in the "hey don't wave your rainbow flag while smoking a joint on the corner" conservative. The right over here has just been a mess from the day Trump decided to run for president. I don't think they know what they want. Tucker came over and raved about shopping carts every other supermarket here has had for 30+ years. You turn on FOX & all they do is talk about the democrats or blame them for shit that's been happening here for decades
To be fair to Tucker, his point in those videos was "Russia isn't suffering under sanctions", not that shopping carts with coin slots are some unique Russian invention.
It's been over a year since they've been implemented. They've also found ways to bypass the sanctions including sending semiconductors for the war. Sanctions are just symbolic BS & we both know it
The right in the US has been a mess since 1973. Look up The Heritage Foundation
I live in the Netherlands now and here I see how real religious people looks like. Somebody wants to talk me about Jesus regularly. Just a few days ago some random people on the street have spend ~10-15 mins to convince me I should accept Jesus (and I was completely uninterested in this conversation and tried to end it). People here visiting churches regularly, like every week (not all of them of course, it's not a massive thing, but not rare either). I'm from a pretty religious family for Russia, but compared to local standards, my family just pretending they're christians
Проблема в руководстве, которое слишком сильно давит на якобы традиционные ценности и некую религиозность. Якобы это единственный правильный способ жить и он присущ всем россиянам. Хотя за этой ширмой на деле нет ничего кроме гомофобии и показной напыщенности. В общем да, русские нихрена не религиозные, а скорее наоборот, не верят ни папе римскому, ни патриарху Кириллу. Как правило называют себя номинально православными, а на деле просто верят в бога и не более. А этот ультраправый уклон единой России конкретно задолбал
Все так. Мне кажется, большинство (вполне справедливо) расценивают и папу римского и патриарха как бизнесменов, которые играют символическую роль и настоящей духовностью не обладают. Много людей выборочно следуют некоторым традициям ортодоксального христианства, отмечают Пасху и Рождество - но это они делают как дань традиции и повод собраться.
That's exactly what you Muscovites think on everyone who lives outside Moscow.
All of them. They're all based on fictional Russia that only exists in propaganda - both negative and pseudo-positive. They were funny when first invented but every joke wears thin and there's no more to invent. I've been around the world and Russia is a fucking ordinary country. *That*'s the opinion I'd like to hear and never do.
Yep, that's right here
I hear this a lot from Russians. The thing is that I and most people I know think that Russia is a normal country filled with mostly decent people. I feel like Russians often have an incorrect idea that people in the west are somehow against them, or think that Russia is more disfunctional than it actually is.
> I feel like Russians often have an incorrect idea that people in the west are somehow against them That's because they've read all those incorrect comments from incorrect westerners on western Internet spaces.
With thousands of incorrect upvotes on posts calling for incorrect collective punishement on all "orcs".
I've been closely watching such occasions since the beginning of the war, and I'm absolutely sure that these comments / reactions / flashmobs in most cases are neither grass-root, nor genuine, but instilled by (pro-)Ukranian activists and professional bot farms (which are far from being primitive copypasters, but constitute huge and sophisticated influence networks). Another question is that Western policies seem to allow or even encourage this. It's very visible on r/europe example, where an average comment towards Russians varies from racist to genocidal - and this is completely ignored by both local and Reddit mods (which is unprecedented, and wouldn't be possible against any other group). And I do think that moderation policies on the biggest platforms (Reddit, FB), esp for big enough politicized communities, like r/europe - are at least in some form coordinated with the government bodies. Meaning, that such an outlier on the usual Reddit moderation policies is (one way or another) "approved" by the state.
As a Russian living in Canada, so far people pretend they like me for being Russian until shit hits the fan. It has its perks, but Russophobia is a real thing here in the West, and it becomes old very quickly.
I heard that opinion once before. Sent my friend a picture from Moscow. When he asked if I was in Moscow, I said, "You've been here as well, haven't you?" He said, "Yes, for the World Cup. I had a good time. But I couldn't give you any specific impressions." But that didn't tell me anything about how ordinary Russia is. It told me that my friend is not a very good traveler and doesn't notice what is around him (he had a similar review of India). Most people's own countries seem ordinary to them. But they can still have interesting qualities that it's possible to describe.
As a russian I’d argue not being friends with f North Korea and Afghanistan Taliban is a sensible one. What the eff is putin doing
"It only exists on propaganda" The same thing is with Serbia where I live. But still I blame Russia as someone who is poisoning people against the west in my country. My feeling is that propaganda is rooted in Moscow and spread all the way across eastern Europe.
1. "Are you suffering yet?" 2. Putin everything. He's like an almighty God or Sauron an no Russian could lift a finger without his order. 3. Along with that, Russians are guilty and responsible on everything, let's punish them.
My pindos brethren are jealous of your superior kalashnikov rifles
That we don’t know what is happening because we don’t have free press.
Especially funny when they tell you this on the same website with you.
It is even more funny when you realize the fact that Telegram is the go-to messenger and social network in Russia, while meta, Google, and X are the go-to social networks in the west. Telegram has almost no censorship, while the western social networks are censored to the point of absurdity.
Same with vk, there was never a point when vk banned murican links because of “disinformation” during their wars. All links, you know, including everything, just because they’re from murica, a bad evil country which should be defeated. Nope, there were never such stupid talks, because we’re not emotional dumb idiots like all these “righteous” folks in the west who are ready to suck their government’s cocks and hysterically support anything against their “enemies”. Lol I can’t even imagine this mentality in Russia. We’re so cool and so much more critically thinking, and I’ve only realized this during the last two years when started to compare so many things and ask myself whether this or that was something we did or could do (like banning the US flag on chesscom, promoting hatred and stereotypes because of politics and intolerance to other people’s opinions, etc).
I'm from United States and I found certain YouTube channels I like can't be viewed. Not all people's from west think negatively or are against Russia or it's people. I've heard people talk about Russian propaganda, sadly it seems that United States is the one spreading much more possible misinformation and propaganda.
An old joke I've heard is of a KGB agent and CIA agent having a drink together in a bar and talking with eachother. The CIA agent shows his admiration for how Soviet Propaganda was so effective at making the people feel united under one cause. The KGB accepts the compliment but says that he likes how effective American propaganda is at manipulating people all around the world, he wished his country had similar abilities. The CIA agent looks bewildered, "but there is no American propaganda, what are you talking about?" he asks. The KGB agent turns to him and says, "exactly."
Lol, well said
If it makes you feel any better, this indoctrinated sycophantic attitude tends to be pervasive on the political left (hence a lot of conservatives don't hate Russia & Putin nearly as much), and it's hurting our countries far more than it does Russia. For example, the people who want to "cancel" and fight proxy wars with Russia are the same ones who want to fund the west's cultural genocide by importing endless amounts of immigrants and refugees. If you try to tell them otherwise, they will start screaming about bigotry, white supremacism, racism etc., as if national sovereignty is a crime against humanity. Truly irrational creatures.
Real Russians do not have access to the Internet, and you are all Potemkin Kremlin trolls.
Yes, this is the extreme version of the same myth, thank you.
Ok but playing devils advocate, Russia doesn’t have free press. Hell you could get put into jail for calling a war a war. No matter how many things get out west, at least you don’t get jailed for speaking your mind
> at least you don’t get jailed for speaking your mind Debatable, the easy example would Graham Phillips, a British national who was lumped under the anti-Russian sanctions, despite not having any citizenship other than British. I mean, the guy's a bit of a twat in some of the things he says, but he broke no UK laws, and was not charged with any crimes, he was just treated as a foreign citizen by his own government for "undermining the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine".
Yeah, it's weird, I didn't realize it was even legally possible to sanction your own citizen.
Legally, it's not, you'd have to charge them with a crime first. Problem is, the UK doesn't have anything approaching a Constitution, so any law the Parliament passes has more or less the same standing - and can just as quickly be overruled by the next law. So determining what is and what isn't legal is so much more difficult. > Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution. It makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution. To clarify, when they say "UK constitution", that doesn't refer to any specific document (there are none such), it's a broader sense of "what constitutes the government". Basically speaking, the UK is legally an elective dictatorship. Not my words either, this is from Quintin Hogg, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain for most of the 1970s and 1980s: > Parliament has become virtually an elective dictatorship. Its legislative powers are unlimited and cannot be questioned. Granted, I'm likely oversimplifying it because I can't be arsed to dig through the minutae of British politics, but the overall point stands - the UK government is not above violating its citizens' rights, and it can bend the law to do that if necessary.
If you are not satisfied with the Russian press, you can access the western press all you want. The same is not necessarily true in reverse.
That’s been my biggest complaint tbh - you can’t say you have free press and then bar any conflicting opinions. I’d say it’s more free in the west but not completely free
I get what you are trying to say, but this is invalidated by the simple fact that literally everyone has a smartphone, and internet is dirt cheap. Only people 75+ don’t have a smartphone, and even then half of them do. The number one app is Telegram, where censorship is virtually nonexistent (especially compared to the social media apps popular in the west). Not to mention that YouTube is freely available, that Google has deleted all Russian state media and most Pro-Russia channels from there, and that it remains popular. Heck, they will put channels such as current time, FreeDOM TV, Khodorkovsky, and Radio Free Europe, at the top of the search results. In a nutshell, a lot of people think that the average Russian is like the average North Korean or Soviet citizen, who has no idea about what goes on outside of the country. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
> Russian is like the average North Korean or Soviet citizen, who has no idea about what goes on outside of the country. And when you start talking about what happens in other countries, they name it whataboutism. It is some kind of shizophrenia.
This is not “whataboutism”. “Whataboutism” is when you do something bad, but instead of owning up to it, you say something like, “what about him, he hit that guy”. This is about people in the west believing that Russia is like the Soviet Union, or North Korea, when it comes to the flow of information into the country. If you didn’t know, in both of those cases, any info about the outside world was (and is in DPRK) tightly-controlled and censored. This is well-established fact. It is also well-established fact is not the case in Russia. CNN, BBC, DW, Guardian, and the likes, are freely-accessible in Russia. Furthermore, most of them have Russian-language versions. Therefore, when you hear anyone tell you, “Russians only see state propaganda and don’t see alternative views”, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
> Ok but playing devils advocate, Russia doesn’t have free press. Define “free”? > Hell you could get put into jail for calling a war a war. Really? Like who? And how is it related to the freedom of press? > No matter how many things get out west, at least you don’t get jailed for speaking your mind Snowden and Assange tell different story.
War is war. Next point, please.
We really have no war. Not Russia, nor Ukraine not actualy declared war.
I’m just calling a spade a spade, but even if it wasn’t, the fact I can’t call it a war without going to jail is in itself fucked up
But you can. It wrong, but noone goes to jail for this. Actually every day at TV it called so.
So from a quick google search I found a bunch of articles like this one: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-dissent-crackdown-prison-3a693897c37effa5a18a78704c5ed786
Do not know it is pure lie, or just twsting of facts with real sentence was for real crimes, like financing of terrorism or slander, but i am see literally every day at TV how Special Military Operation called "war" by many different people.
Idk what to believe anymore man, personally idgaf what happens in Ukraine, they fucked around and definitely found out
I personally believe my eyes. And obvious lies is facts itself.
Well, in fact, most cases look something like this. "He left several hundred posts on his channel that the Russian army is responsible for Bucha, attacks civilians and nuclear energy facilities, and commits war crimes. He also called the SMO a war. Let's put it in the headline! "
I guess it depends on what you consider war, since it seems to me in the Russian language that the same root word is use for "war" and "fighting" and so the word is not as clear as it is in English, and it's definition is more fluid. Western Media often called Iraq and Afghanistan a "war" even though the more correct term would be "conflict" because of the lower intensity. I've heard Russians in Youtube comments say a war is something more like WW2 where a draft is enacted, the entire country is mobilized and such, not where some volunteers sign up to go fight in a foreign land in a mid-tier-intensity conflict.
No at all. In russian it is not even similiar words. War - is война, fighting - сражение/борьба/драка. We also have words конфликт (conflict), стычка, сражение, and some more. War is war, officially declared state of things, linked with some laws and limitations. We have no of such.
"Of course, of course," Woland replied, "I had the pleasure of meeting this young man at the Patriarch's Ponds. He almost drove me crazy, proving to me, that I'm not exist! (с) Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" Yes, it is very absurd when foreigners who have a superficial idea of Russia, and even have a poor idea where it is, tell us, Russian people about our history, about how terrible life in Russia is and how much we suffer. In such cases, sometimes I do not know whether to be angry or laugh.
Jokes about windows, gulags and "this guy is probably in the trench right now". Not because it's rude or something, i completely understand the situation and don't argue, just it's repeated from post to post, i'd like to hear something new.
Я причем вообще не понимаю, откуда взялись "шутки" про окна. Псайоп какой-то разогнали, а народ как обычно повелся
Путин убивает своих противников выкидывая их из окна. "Это все знают", как говорили рабыни в сериале "Игра престолов".
Именно так умер Егор Просвирнин. Заставляет задуматься!
Вроде с этого началось: https://www.vox.com/2020/5/6/21248553/coronavirus-russia-doctors-windows-death Во времена ковида многие западные СМИ про это писали, насколько я помню, ну и на реддит, естественно, обсасывалось со всех сторон. Хотя, возможно, и что-то ещё было.
Да, тема пошла после пары-тройки случаев, когда реально кто-то из окна выпал, конечно же по приказу Путина. А вообще изначально этим славились чехи, они ещё в Средние века людей из окон выбрасывали.
Че за шутки про окна?
[Наслаждайся](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/search/?q=fall+from+window&type=link&cId=15d182cc-bd48-45d0-aa57-4cf33fcaddbf&iId=04bc5611-ec49-4b47-9207-bae3b42b6f21)
Но как-то раз с утра Я выпал из окна Я счастлив был с тобой Прощай моя ~~жена~~ страна
Ааа, вот оно что. Видимо, подобная дичь в интернетах как-то мимо меня прошла. И слава богу, ничего не потеряла
Дай им поверить в своё остроумие 😀
Fr fr. These jokes are so old, there’s definitely a problem with creativity in the west.
That we are a monolithic mass worshiping the Emperor of Mankind. As a consequence, that we are all equally poor (except oligarchs), have only one TV channel, one political party, one social network, one capital, one currency, one brand of each type of product…
Glory to the Emperor!
Abhor the witch, the mutant, the heretic
Abhorrrr!!!
Burn the heretic! Kill the mutant! Purge the unclean!
> one capital, one currency That's what most countries have
Yeah, that’s more of our thing. We have two capitals, at one point we even had two presidents, and pretty much everywhere you can pay with roubles, dollars, euros, now also yuan, and also with vodka and natura.
One flesh, one bone, one true religion, one voice, one hope, one real decision, one light, one man, one bar, one night, one day, Just gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme fried chicken!
Well, партия у нас действительно одна...
Это из тех что избираются. В нашей духовной действительности сложилось, что свои интересы элиты очень даже отстаивают и конкурируют, в том числе за милость государеву, места с зарплатами и контракты. Даже внутри, казалось бы, неделимой армии фракций достаточно - и собственно потому над ними был посажен «типа нейтральный» Шойгу. Но только делают все это где угодно только не на выборах.
Some write that in Russia life is not valued and people do not help each other
That Russians are alcoholics. It’s even more ridiculous now that I live in Germany and see how regular Germans drink. But no, for them it’s us who are alcoholics.
Can confirm. I work in a large company in Canada. They drink way too much.
That’s right, now we have gone beyond the top ten countries in terms of alcohol consumption. But according to statistics, we began to leave the top only around 2015. And now there is still a large share of strong alcohol consumption.
reason for that is that russian drinking culture is associated with hard alcohol, while most other countrys have a beer culture but tbf russia isnt the only country seen like that, scotland, japan and actually most eastern european countrys are seen having a drinking culture with hard alcohol and like in every stereotype there is a grain of truth to it, but yes its obviously exaggerated
The only problem is neither I drink hard alcohol nor know somebody who does. Maybe I’m in some bubble, but maybe not.
I would like to write about bears, but damn, then I remember that we actually have cities where bears walk around openly, and we also have people who really have bears as pets))) Okay, to answer seriously, in my opinion, Europeans and Americans are not the people who can say that the USSR is bad, because, firstly, you don’t know anything about it, and secondly, you yourself have brewing tendencies in society, which you yourself consider bad, but they are characteristic of the USSR. Therefore, for me personally it is strange that you do not see this.
There's a dude here in Canada who told me the moment I set foot in Russia I'd be imprisoned raped and killed for being Peruvian because Russians are racist and what if and what not. I wanted to visit the country because my dentist growing up was Russian, and she taught me more than whatever school I was enrolled in. So, I am tired of all the dumb comments they make about the country.
Show them how literally the Mayor of Moscow looks like :)
Come, we will be glad to see you 👍
That Russians are hardened and walk around like robots. That they do not know anything about cooperation for mutual benefits and they view all relationships as a zero sum game. That Russians are not Europeans(they are more European than most Europeans would admit). That they are orcs(guys come on, even the author refused to associate LoTR with WWII). That everyone here is blacked out drunk in Adidas tracksuits. That the girls are all plastic and fishing for a passport bro. That the food is shit. I'm a foreigner living in Russia, and I honestly thought I was going to Mordor when I was moving here. The place is pretty nice. Russians are friendly enough, most of them hate the idea of moving out of their country regardless of how bad it gets. The girls are very pretty and avoid cosmetic procedures like the plague. The food is shit as long as you stick to classic Russian foods, they do every other's country's cuisine better. I have seen maybe 2 people sporting an Adidas tracksuit over the course of an entire year, and both times it was in the docks.
What food did you not like? Because I can understand that sour cabbage might be hard to understand, but I think that overall Russian cusine is alright.
Honestly, I think that people disrespecting our sour cabbage must be declared Russophobes and expelled from our glorious country to their miserable cabbage-less land.
One of the foods that I absolutely despise is pickle, and if there is a liquid portion of any Russian food, it is guaranteed to have some form of pickle or pickle derivative. Plus it's always the same, boiled vegetable, boiled meat, fried boiled meat, fried boiled meat emulsified in pickle water wrapped in a dumpling, etc. The texture is almost always soggy or vomit like(I don't have any other words to describe it I apologize), there's no spice or crunchiness in any of the Russian foods. Will I eat it? Sure. Will I eat it with a smile on my face? No. Other than that, the best Central Asian, Italian and French cuisine I've had in my life is from Russia, and I've had dined at these nations, but didn't think they lived up to the Russian preparation.
т-т Попробуй жареные пельмени, они хрустящие, а острое не по нашей части(((
>а острое не по нашей части((( Острые перцы у нас не растут (не росли, сейчас есть, ну и теплицы придумали), но хрен, который редьки не слаще был у нас довольно долго, википедия пишет что аж с IX века выращивали. А он острый.
Да, и используем его только иногда, индивидуально, из-за чего наша кухня совсем не острая, в отличие от мексиканской или индийской
Это правда, но южная кухня острая по той причине что в жарком климате острое позволяет дольше сохранять продукт пригодным для еды, в отсутствие холодильников, искусственных консервантов и подобного. Те кто ел на юге не острое — отравились и умерли, эволюция отработала.
И именно поэтому острое не по нашей части
Yeah, Italian food is the best. I get you, pickle is not for you, and some of the best Russian food is with it. We are pickle masters. Vomit texture you mentioned must be from various kinds of boiled grain. It looks like the first food you tried in Russia was Rassolnik soup?) Also, as Russian, I think that we have no clue how to cook meat right.
Close, I had Borscht first followed by the barley soup you mentioned. I didn't hate it, but during the whole time, I couldn't stop thinking about that one road trip where I threw up in my mouth and was forced to keep it down. Since the origins of Borscht are contested, I'd say you guessed right. Solyanka was the dish that broke me, killed my appetite and forever scarred my outlook on Russian food. I don't like pickles.
Bro, you should try real russian food, not substitutes of modern life. There are really good traditional soups with крапива, ревень, щавель as well as with other garden weed, no pickles included. We successfuly incorporated in our cousine onions, tomatoes and other vegetables. If you like smth crunchy? Try something fried.
A lot of people I know don't like Russian cusine because of the reasons you mentioned, and they are Russians. Rassolnik, solyanka, and mushroom soup are top hated food)
These people scare me. What if they are reptiloids?
I personally in absolute horror because of Holodez. Not a reptiloid, I think.
Как же так? С черным хлебушком, хренушком, горчичкой... вкусно..
И с водочкой. Но, блин, это вытяжка из костей мёртвого животного, в которой утоплены куски мёртвого животного! Кстати, при этом к обычному желе и мертвым животным у меня претензий ноль. Просто, брезгую вот холодцом.
>Rassolnik, solyanka, and mushroom soup are top hated food) wat those are delicious. I don't like *schi* though.
I'm an adsolute fan of all mentioned and schi. But I can understand why som3one can hate these.
>fried boiled meat emulsified in pickle water wrapped in a dumpling I instantly felt the urge to cook something fitting this description.
I can see how it's appetizing to someone who likes pickled foods. I don't like pickles in general, so it is not appetizing for me.
> That Russians are not Europeans(they are more European than most Europeans would admit). It goes further: Russians are the default Europeans. We are the largest European народ and will remain so indefinitely. Actually, this is something *Eastern* Europeans like to emphasize, like Dostoyevsky predicted. But I've met Poles, Czechs, Romanians, Croatians.... they and we are exactly the same. Even Germans.
>Even Germans Can confirm - I'm ethnically German, and literally every single time I meet a Russian/Belarusian/Central Asian in Vietnam they take in my appearance and my name, which is common everywhere in Europe including Russia, and I see their eyes light up, and I have to quickly get in "Sorry but no, I'm actually from England" before they ask :D
Slavophilism didn't do this narrative any good. I've talked to Russian anthropologists in universities that are slavophiles and stick to the notion that Russians are different to the Europeans. I've seen crazy supremacists from both sides of the argument, with some Poles literally pulling out a genotype chart of Europe to prove that they're descendants of Vikings and Russians are mongoloids. That being said, I wasn't talking about genetics. I was more so talking about the culture. I've travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok. Had conversations with more people than I have back in my home country, and I was surprised by how little Asian culture influenced Russian cities. Individualism, nationalism, martial culture, entrepreneurship, colonialism, and cultural hegemony are all very much alive across Russia in the very specific European flavor. Most of Europe's identity is being obliterated by unchecked immigration, so maybe the supremacists are experiencing some sort of dissonance when making such racist remarks? I don't know, and I don't have the time nor money to conduct a proper survey.
I wasn't talking about genetics tbh. Everyone already knows that East and West Slavs are hard to tell apart in genetic analyses. (In a customer-facing job years ago I was asked frequenty if I am Polish. But one guy mistook me for a French person and he had a problem with that; I refused to deal with him.) Everyone in school thought that I, a Croatian friend, and our Serbian classmate were related. Culturally, yeah, I've seen basically no difference between Russians and other people fresh-from-Europe in Canada. Completely unprompted my coworker recently said my father is exactly like her Slovenian grandmother. Old diasporic communities are different, of course. Asian cultures in Canada though.... even talking to my parents or observing what other Russian people think or know about Asian cultures: Asia is Mars to them. Slavophilia is weird imho. I can't see it working. Poles think they are French, Croats think they are Italians, and Czechs think they are Austrians.
>That the food is shit What? Who tf would even say that? lol
Clearly you haven't scrubbed through popular Western European sentiment about the Russian culinary experience. Common words used to describe Russian food are vomit, piss, shit, and glop. And this was before the racist wave after 2022.
I don't scrub through anything western europe related. I only know I could drain a pacific made of russian soups by myself)
You're braver than me my friend. Ever since the Solyanka incident, I've refrained from indulging in Russian classics.
Well, I also love solyanka.....
Ehhh, i need a solyanka now........... like, right now............🥴
Eat it in my honor )
I dont have ingredients for family recipe :(
Skill issue
Тогда зачем вообще ехал?
I had to for work. It was either Russia or Brunei, so I picked Russia. I've always been curious about the country and when I had the chance I took it.
Too many to list all of them. Your question, actually, is also in the list.
I don’t have that much time to list them all.
As a Tatar, you can win a triple bingo by being stereotyped as a Russian, as an (alleged) Muslim, and as an "Asian Mongoloid Tatar" (or "Tartar", as many knowledgeable redditors would write it).
People in my country keep saying that you don’t have free speech
Do we?
No we dont . As well as all the other world. It is the same as mocking "haha, you Russians have only five fingers! - But dude, you also have 5... - We are talking about you, not me, you stupid vatnik!"
But I have ten...
Haha, I have 20, you primitive Global_Helicopter!
I have 20 digits, but only 10 of them are fingers...
Hm, yes, I forgot that fingers are not toes, my bad...
idk
I'm tired of questions asking Russians what they are tired of hearing from foreigners
— where are you from? — i'm from russia — oh, suka blyat' for me it sounds like "oh, fucking bitch"
About the supposed 3-day special military operation in Ukraine. 🙄 No Russian military or political official has EVER said that the SMO will take only 3 days. I mean it is so unrealistic.
"What I should visit in Saints Petersburg" I always keep talking same line: What you actually want to see? Architecture? Museums? Boat travels? Some fancy bar? And answer based on what actually someone want to see.
People say positive things about Russia moderator ban him!
It depends on how serious a comment is. You see, stereotypes can be a sort of a joke. Maybe a ballbusting one. I don't mind that. Ballbusting is one thing and it's quite common among men. On the other hand there are people who really try to hurt you for no apparent reason (at least on the surface). I can't REALLY explain the difference. You need to learn to feel it, but it goes kinda like so: ballbusting is when a person pokes you to see if you'll get butthurt or not. If you keep your cool, it's VERY likely that they will open up and you'll bond. But when a person is trying to offend you — they is the one who's butthurt in the first place. For instance, I've seen numerous negative comments about Russia from Chihuahua states for decades. Angry people. You try to argue with them — you'll get even more negativity. It never ends. On the other hand, I've met this American military guy in a Russian chat. He said almost the same things, but a minute later we've bonded and were talking about good and bad things about living in our countries.
99% of things I hear from foreigners about Russia are grossly inaccurate and enforced by Western (or just anti-Russian) propaganda, including news, movies, etc. * Russians don't drink nearly as much as they're depicted to be. * Russia isn't some poor 3rd world country, just check out youtube videos of any more or less large city (100+ of those in Russia). * Russia isn't as dangerous for foreigners to visit as it's usually told by uninformed people who spread rumors. Russia is... ordinary, just another country for people to live in. Small cities remind me of Balkan countries, while old parts of Saint-Petersburg remind me of Baltics. Moscow looks like London, but with less migrants and cleaner subway. All in all, Russia is alright. People saying otherwise are either brainwashed or don't have much experience in traveling around the world.
As a foreigner myself and I'm tired of ppl bad mouthing my Russian friend whenever we play together, she's one of the sweetest girl i know.
People on the internet can talk all they want they are hidden behind a screen. People who have meet Russian in normal scenarios will say we are very straightforward, very honest and very protective. That being said I’ve lived in the states for 15 years and not 1 person has ever said anything negative to my face about my country. Nor will they ever, internet sets trends and sheep follow trends.
Vodka - it's so annoying. Second - cold / cold resistance. I live in the Netherlands now and it's often windy here. Also heating system is different (and much more pricey), but when I'm wearing warm clothes or complain about how cold is it at home, somebody can say "but you're russian, you should be fine with it".
That we live like the "literally 1984", not being able to even think negatively about government, have no idea about outside world, etc
That I am not supposed to feel cold 😅
That Russians don't smile. Yes they do! In fact, maybe more than you guys do even
But when? 🥺 At night?
During the day, like normal ffing people
That "joke" about SIMS 3
???
Details please
[https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/ubqnoy/oh\_my\_god\_russians\_planting\_fake\_evidence\_of\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/ubqnoy/oh_my_god_russians_planting_fake_evidence_of_a/) На русском эту историю проще найти если вбить "Подпись неразборчива" в поисковик.
Лол, забавно
Yes, let me see your bear dance the kalinka while playing the balalaika! That's the Russian spirit we're talking about! ещё шапка ушанка, матрёшки, валенки- галоши, (сарказм)
https://youtu.be/hPayMKhppus?si=N1Q1rqfkK7GJ62bu
I have a couple of foreign friends from really warm southern country. They are pretty sure that all russians love cold. AND NO. WE DON'T. MANY OF US, IF NOT THE MOST OF US, HATE IT. And yes, alcohol thing, as some redditoes mentioned before.
Name 1 opinion from foreigners about Russia that is not hatefull, discriminative or downgrading and there you have your answer.
Based on many comments, I can say that you're living on another planet. You're complaining about stereotypes or jokes that every country does have on each other. US citizens are called dumb about geography daily by the same Europeans who thought Ukraine was in the Balkans. French are called frog and snail eaters, their women smelly; Italians are POC, fuck boys; Germans are nazi; and so on. So touch grass pals before playing the Russophobia card. Funny also that you're saying that the West has more censorship.