Just saw your photos over at SimHQ... very interesting! :up:

Some interesting comments on this thread. I'm certainly no expert on the matter, as I've only ever been to Russia once, and that was in 1979 when they were not exactly flavour of the month with a lot of the world. Lots of nations were planning to (and did) boycott the Moscow Olympics the following year, in protest at what the Russians were doing fighting in Afghanistan, now of course it's perfectly fine to go doing that it seems.

Which just goes to show what a lot of b*llocks the Cold War was I suppose, and the East and West were not so different as might be supposed when you get to the top of the tree.

Moscow was very interesting when I went there, of course in that time (being westerners) we were shepherded around a bit, but it was nevertheless fun and there are some really fantastic things in Moscow, even some of the underground railway stations in Moscow were better than a lot of public buildings I've seen in other countries! Ladas might be crap, but when the Russkies really want to build something nice, they sure as hell can. Nevertheless, it was apparent that we were to a large extent only seeing what they wanted us to see.

Oddly enough, when I went to the Czech Republic a few years ago on a press trip, on the surface the people appeared to support their 'Velvet Revolution' as they call it, which made them independent. But many people that I spoke to, when you got them started, told you a very different story. I lost count of the amount of people working in bars and hotels who were actually teachers (and similar professions), but who couldn't find a job and were scraping a living as a consequence.

The instances of drug dealing were evidently escalating and the telling hand of 'the west' was starting to appear in the form of McDonalds and KFC on Wencelas Square. You could see that basically one regime was giving way to another, and both of them had their ugly side. Of course Prague is very pretty, in fact probably the prettiest place I've ever been, but the ride out to Prague from Ruzyne is probably more educational than looking at Prague itself in many ways. Being a former Soviet Bloc country, outside the picture-postcard town, the buildings are depressingly awful Soviet-style monstrosities.

So what you are left with if you view Prague and it's surrounding country as a microcosm of the switch from former Soviet Bloc to Capitalist hotspot, is between one regime and the other as far as I could tell, you could either have state controlled ugliness, or the ugliness that comes from personal greed.

Kind of sad really.

:D Chock

Here are some blithe, and not so, pictures of St Petersburg.

http://x75.xanga.com/389d64716243114...w107230281.jpg

http://x69.xanga.com/3aec10734073314...w107230384.jpg

http://x5c.xanga.com/a97c10756103314...w107230246.jpg

http://x42.xanga.com/660d92766273114...w107230302.jpg

http://xe6.xanga.com/410d8b6a3973314...w107230333.jpg


http://xe3.xanga.com/cf3d856ac033314...w107230426.jpg


http://xdf.xanga.com/f1fd93756403114...w107230456.jpg

http://x02.xanga.com/e47c02735243214...w107230485.jpg

more to come.

While i dont live in Russia, I live in a country boardering it. What little i can remember before the collapse of the soviet union wasnt like the first poster said "we didnt have much but at least we had pride". Arround here we had hatred for our ocupiers.
Before i go any further ill give some insight into my family history which might explain my position. When the soviet ocupation came, my grandmothers and thousands of others were deported to siberia to die. She survived and made it back to Estonia where she met my grandfather who had fought the soviets during WW2 with the 20.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (estnische Nr.1) as a voulenteer to try to keep the soviets out. After the war for Estonia was lost he defected and managed to get back into the general population here and avoid repressions. My father had to serve in the Soviet armed forces, as did most of my relatives, he was a steersman in the navy. During his forced service he was severely injured in some sort of incident though he has never really told me much about it.
Anyway as for life during the soviet union compared to life now in an independant country, the two cant really be compared. What we had during the long soviet ocupation was survival, not life. Everything was in short supply, even the most basic food items. Everyone had to conform or had dealings with the secret police, hell even listening to foreign radio stations was illegal and several people were shot for doing so. The public transportation was not too bad actualy, it worked and was relatively on time and this is about the only good thing i can think of to say about that period. Everything was government controled, there were no elections there was just voting for candidates or a candidate that the party put there. The only people who miss that era are either completely brainwashed, dilusional or were unable to make it when the doomed from the start system that kept them sustained collapsed and now blame everyone else for their own failings.

I have heard the same story many times from other Estonians.

I just want to say thank you to all of you for sharing your pictures and stories with us. :smug:

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...Frank/lada.jpg

They still exist:hmm:

http://www.pinklink.ru/uploads/posts...6_lizwcjok.jpg Yes, Lada still exists :damn: Inscription on the picture "Devil drives Lada" "see daily on the streets of a city" . Below the photos are the names: Hachik Akhverdian, Arslan Zaboev, Ashot Paparyan, Semen Palych, Vasya from Naro-Fominsk (town in Moscow region). In Moscow old models of Lada ( 2106, 2104, 2107, 2105 and so on) mostly used by comers from Caucasus for individual taxi "service". There are zounds of them on the streets and what they do is undescribable. In their hunt for money they drive despite all the road rules. The same do the drivers of Gazel's (these are the light commercial vans which have a lot of modifications from light truck to small commertial bus (or "marshrutka") ). For the Gazels the trouble is that it provides a feeling of allmightyness for the driver because of it's maneuverability, but one can not see anything around himself on the road while being on the driver's place in this car. http://www.autovek.ru/images/upload/1273/ru/gazel.jpg But it is rather cheap and very suitable for small business so there are a lot of them... :huh: On sunday I will post my pictures of today's Moscow and Russian countryside. ;) Best Regards

A couple of years ago I was in Finland, and we ended up driving across a frozen lake in a Lada 4x4. I was pleasantly surprised, a great car.

Now, your average four door Lada....run away!

Ladas actualy have one redeaming feature, if you can drive a lada, you can drive anything.

Tchocky, maybe you mension Niva (VAZ 2121) - That's the true masterpiece of a country car. It's cheap and it can go anywhere at all no matter is there any road or it isn't :up:

http://agtustud.ru/forum/modules/pho...va_v_Paris.jpg


More modern version: Chevrolet Niva still the cheapest 4x4 but not quite as good money/quality ratio as it's predeсessor hashttp://www.cars.ru/files/news/1253/_n_1253_img1.jpg

Best Regards

Sadly so true i find driving a 26 tonne or even the bigger 32 tonne dustcarts easier to drive than a lada niva, the one i was driving had no power steering 4 gears and it loved to kick the clutch pedel back into your foot.

The only vehiacle iv found hardter to drive than a lada is the forklift we ahve at work, 3.5 tons and no power steering.

They were a car of the year....40 years ago :)


I got to drive this thing around ....quite exciting, especially when breaks started to fail.

http://xdb.xanga.com/937834636563810.../w74296311.jpg

I mean look at this munificent little paragon! It doesn't even have a rpm gauge so driver have to feel the car throuth the body.
http://xe4.xanga.com/0dcd645b5303114...w107410222.jpg