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I think that Stavka2 and Austin Willard are the only people refraining from ignorant hatred on this thread. I was just in Russia three weeks ago. Did you you know that the Kremlin is SURROUNDED by shopping malls? Yes, it's true! The GUM (department store just east of it) was built in 1883-1887 and was probably the world's first shopping mall as we know it with luxury goods and great variety. Just WEST of the Kremlin is a new $350,000,000 shopping mall, which we had great fun visiting also.

In support of Stavka2 against various ignoramuses, I will confirm his actual FACTS about the 13% flat tax; about the great and increasing prosperity and private enterprise in and about Moscow (such that you couldn't guess from looking out our hotel window that you weren't in some other great world city); about the TOTAL ABSENCE of even one symbol of Communism (i.e. NO red flags, No red slogans on banners; NO statues of Lenin, etc) but their replacement with Russia's TRADITIONAL symbols (the double-headed eagle carried down from its affiliation with the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire; the icons of St. George).

I am sorry to see that the dummies in the West are still fixated on Russia as a threat to their prosperity. I think the problem is that things in the West (at the pinnacle of its power and wealth) can only get worse; things in Russia can only get better.

I dunno, I think we are not hating Russians here, unless you are not reading correctly. And Xenophobia was quite well set up after the defeat of Russia to Japan in soccer.

The point is that former Soviets are participating in a system that is simply unaccountable, internaly and externaly. Whether it is breaking treaties abroad or promises at home, the system there is geared toward confinement. The rulers keep being in position of prosecuting their people when it should be the people prosecuting them. Where is the hatred of the Russians in there? Quite the contrary, there is none.

and mind you, those criticizuing Russia on these threads have criticized the Clinton administration and their own liberals here too. So this is not xenophobia, this is genuine assessment of where the prosecution tools lay, whose hands they lay in and how reasonable these people are.

Russia does need a central government to manage nuclear responsibility, but why claim to stop the cold war yet keep the nukes pointed? That's socialist hypocrisy.

So Russia has finally discovered what the PRC discovered. Big deal. Russia is yet another nation state where idealogy and political systems are worn like fashions, whatever works best in any given time to further underlying sinister goals. In the cult of personality, it is the lines of power (and accurate and strategic handoff thereof) that is most important. This is probably why the West lacked the courage to occupy lands, demand unconditional treaties or demand accounting by the "past" leadership when the West "won" the Cold War. The West somehow knew that if, after the 1989 - 1991 "fall," any sort of true settlement was sought, that the brilliance of the "dream" that had emerged would quickly become tarnished, and that, likely, overt conflict (hot, not cold) would emerge. So, in typical Western liberal fashion, appeasement, conciliation and benefit of a doubt started to reign surpreme.

Of course, to say that the West "won" the Cold War is akin to saying that the Triple Entente "won" WW-I, yet another indistinct and ambiguous European "armistice" that solved nothing and led to a much greater conflict 20 years hence. Disturbing yet true...

I think the problem is that things in the West (at the pinnacle of its power and wealth) can only get worse; things in Russia can only get better.

Believe me, if anyone is laughing about their own greatness to come, it ain't Russians, God maybe, but not Russians. You guys paint yourselves in this delusional picture that is really ... well just childlish images. That you call others ignoramuses in the same breath does not impress.