I've always thought that Russia was a neat country. I'd like to visit there someday. I've got a lot of resepect for the Russian people. Somehow I think the story would be different in the middle east if the terrorists had flown a plane into a building in Moscow.

History seems to teach us a lesson: Don't mess with Russia!

I'd like to visit Siberia along with St. Petersburg. Lenin Square in Yakutsk is looking kind of run-down though:

http://www.yakutsk-city.ru/images/co...lery/img43.jpg

Typical, communist kitchens in Russia are bigger than communist kitchens in Poland...
Communism was a really bad time for us. It's funny that the architecture is almost identical all over the whole eastern bloc.

good discussion so far folks. keep it up! im intrigued.

Wow! Thank you for the pictures, CCIP and CptSimFreak. I haven't gotten around to scanning my negatives (gotta clean the oil off the platen glass).

I'd love to get the full-res originals from either of you. Those are wondefully sharp and detailed.

I agree, an incredible insight

Wow I lived in Petersburg for 6 months but my ex girlfriend has all my photos :(

I'll post some of my pics of Moscow from my time there if I can find any.

Hey I married a Russian and would love to go back for good if I could though.

Siberia is cool, literally, very flat. I'd recommend going in winter and spring, summer has too many mossies about. Watching cars drive over a frozen river is fun.

CCIP I'll try and remember where my flat in St Petes was and then you can tell me if I was lucky not to get into trouble or not. When I first got there I stayed in the ob. with the other students in my group. That was on the broken metro line. I wonder if they have fixed that yet?

Let me post some more.

http://xed.xanga.com/8ba8346102ca810.../w74402311.jpg

Here’s the famous little ship named ‘Avrora’ parked on Neva in St Petersburg.


http://xb6.xanga.com/1b8d00331433110.../w74402321.jpg
And here are some pictures from Kronshtat (http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=14...0.080338&om=1), an island with naval school.



http://x83.xanga.com/abbd1a34d7d3110.../w74402320.jpg


http://x04.xanga.com/cea8066302ca910.../w74402315.jpg
http://xaa.xanga.com/b2fd01325433110.../w74402319.jpg

http://xa3.xanga.com/a1dd03333413110.../w74402313.jpg

What sub is that ;)



Final picture for today: Typical sight; a completely rusted and ignored ship. It does make a good photogenic scenery.
http://xcc.xanga.com/39b835f6592a810.../w74402317.jpg


(I can send full pics, send my private with email address)

That sub would be a 877 (or other version) Kilo Class SSK.:know:

More excellent pictures. You guys are going to force me to take two weeks to visit there, aren't you? :rotfl:

For those who live or have lived in Russia, what do you think is the biggest problem now? What's the largest issue for the average Russian person?

http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/2121/scan0001pg7.jpg
Moscow 1994, White House. This was taken 6 months after Yeltsin attacked The White House. more to come...

wow fascinating. :yep:

My stepfather lives in the rich side of st petersburg so the only view that ive ever realy had is the people with money and he has some money:

To give you what he gets a month a break down:

Pension from Stena bulk $351.18 per month
Pension from the former soviet navy paid by the russian government $32.00 per month
Payment for any service he provides in the naval academy $12 per day
Payment for going to sea $53 per day.

Total with no days at sea and 5 days teaching included (which is average)

total is about $443 per month for a 62 year old
Out goings is around $390 to $410 per month.

That makes him fairly well off some of his friends get allowencies of just $38 per week to live on.

ive been there only a few times most of my trips take me into murmansk where he lives in what i can only discribe as incredibly poor conditions, its a big leap from rich to poor, the block of flats are half disused and blocked up the childrens play ground is well hasnt been maintained since the 80's most likely, but the buildings would what id discribe as the following:

A realy realy bad council estate thats due for demolition (for the UK people)

Theres very few people with money in murmansk and if you show you have money you probly end up getting mugged or robbed (hence the dress down), its pretty wild out in murmask cut off an isolated and St Petes for me is a 50 min plane ride.

In the city of murmansk tempratures get down to around -18*c (thankyou tall buildings) (thats as cold as your deep freeze) in the open country side the tempratures have been known to drp to -32*c and further east in omnicom the record is -89*c (thats in siberia)

He lives about 55km from the acctual arctic circle and its winter 9 months a year in summer the best you can realy hope for is around 5*c or 6*c.
Being so high up the nights are far longer and in summer the days are longer if i can remeber right its light for 24 hours a day for a whole week at one point in the calender (have to re check that)

My stepdad lives on the 5th floor of a block of flats near the docks, there is 1 bus but thats fine because nearly everything is within walking distance (yes including the pub)

It is fun theres a great sence of comunity and most of the old old locals do not like forigners (americans AND BRITISH (YES EVEN ME))

My stepdad isnt hard core old soviet style but you can tell he does have alot of it in him born when stalin still reigned ! so he has been through the entire cold war and listed to the soviet proaganda and is in more of a position to wiegh up the situation than most other people because he was a soviet person who was working on british registerd ships so he got both sides of nearly every story.

I enjoy it i was due to go out there a few weeks before the london meet up with you dan and lesrae but he went to sea so i had absolutly no where to go so i didnt go (dont fancy my chances alone).

Anyways thats about it.

I still haven't had the chance to do my rant yet, but it's definitely socioeconomics. That is, the vast majority of the population is poor; many are unemployed; naturally, problems with housing, living conditions, crime and so on stem from that. This is why I think it's a misconception in the West to view the 'un-democratization' under Putin as the overriding issue in Russia. It's fairly low on the agenda compared to trying to edge out a stable living. This is why, for example, since the mid-90s the support for real liberal-democratic politicians has plummeted to single-digit percents of the vote.

Consider Kapitan's pension figures. My grandmother, who worked as a teacher all her life, gets 3500 roubles (~$140) a month, with price levels for household goods and food being virtually identical to those in the US.

More Moscow pix.
This is not me!
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/2702/lenin1lr9.png


The wall behind the White House.
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/1473/wallkd1.jpg

Avrora with guard.
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/9320/avroragc3.jpg

Kolomenskoye -15 degrees when I was there that day.
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/6...enskoyeit1.jpg

great stuff