After “The Sunny Father”, “The engineer of Humanity”, the murderer of all kind of people, Josef Stalin, Nikita came to power.
Nikita, a stubborn stupid kolhosnik, as my Russian friend calls him, was put aside because he was just a disaster.
Then came Breshnev, who ruled the country with vodka and was probably brain-dead the last years of his time. The rest is a stream of the old guard that still was around and kicking.
Gorbatchov tried to change things, but he had not enough power, much good will, but begun also to oppose the usage of The Holy Vodka.
Jeltsin did not directly kill anyone, but killed tens or hundred of thousands of people putting them in an early grave = the pensioners that had built up the whole country, did not get their pensions. He betrayed his people beyond all belief.
His datcha (summer-house) in Karelia, has cost to build, according to western press, something between 300 - 500 milj. USD.
You can hardly imagine how much You can build for that kind of sum here in Russia.
It was forbidden to take photographs, but the western press wrote that the roofed swimming-pool was made according to the standards that the Olympic games can be held at his datcha!
Naturally he has a golf, tennis and whatever.
The richest guy in Russia, who looted all the former USSR pharmacy plants, is now building a exact copy of Versailles, outside Moscow.
If I remember right, Versailles has about 1.100 rooms and 1.600 statues in its gardens. Or vice versa.
(On the other hand this is quite a free country; I can really post this from Russia, and 101% sure my line is tapped, because we are only about 10 foreigners in this city of 350.000 inhabitants, and the FSB-house (former KGB) is big as a parliament in a
maller country. Nice white marble btw.)
I can understand that the US president has a place like Camp David, but the US government hardly gives a Camp David to every ex-president that wants to loot the Treasury or what ever You call it.
Let me clearly state, that I am very happy with Putin, the former spy in Finland and Germany. Btw. everyone knew he was a spy, when he was ‘active’ in Finland.
Putin is steering the Russian ship to welfare as hard as he can, but it is not so that he is not having an opposition.
How to get elected here, using the governmental TV etc., is a shady story, but Russia could not have found a better president. (And this I am not writing for the three-letter-guys).
So much about history.
Nowadays, here is a robber-capitalism where everyone “catch as catch can”.
The militzioneers are robbing tourists, there is no business-moral to speak about, almost everyone takes bribes.
Many authorities are very rich because of their influence and power.
If You need more electricity for Your plant, You usually need to bribe someone to get it the same year or so.
The same thing with telephone-lines etc. etc.
The laws are just crazy: If You buy a new saw-mill or whatever that gives people work, You have to pay “investment-tax” first. I think it is 24% of the value of what ever You buy.
So nobody invests. There is a hole in the law, but I do not begin to explain holes here. Usually the Russians can’t use the holes, without bribing again someone.
So You can bribe the tax-inspection, the judges, the militzia etc.
And there is no difference between militzia and the criminals. The former street criminals runs nowadays quite big plants also.
Even jails, the selling production in jails, gulags etc. are run by criminals.
I had the good luck to find a jail where I used to work as a teacher and exporter, that had no criminal links.
Unfortunately when I wanted to make an EU social project of re-educating ‘lighter’ criminals, neither the administration nor the EU was interested.
I had to (mainly) stop my work in the jail, because the only ones that were interested in this work was the prisoners.
A prisoner has a salary of about 0,5 cents per day. So it takes him 188 working days to earn a US dollar!
I paid them each about 40 cents per day + cigarettes, salt, pepper, tea for every day.
Sugar is forbidden in jail, but there is certain sweets that was not. Furthermore I bought them books, mostly to those few that did not smoke.
When they got freed I wrote, to about half of them, a certificate that declares that they have studied and knows the European standards of sawing birch and making pre-sawn components. Then I gave them each 500 rubles, and work.
But I did not pay the guards any bribes, so it was hard to get birch for my purposes.
And yes I earned my money by exporting the products to Finland and Sweden. Now I do the same with the freed prisoners and people that has never been in jail.
Pure capitalism, but I also pay much higher salaries than here usually is paid.
The workers works and gets paid according to what they produce, per approved cubic meter.
I have a Russian wife, who has a daughter 16 years old. And we have a cat.
To be continued…
