Hey, could you elaborate on this? I'm often struck by the age/class/etc. segregation of US society, but sometimes forget it could theoretically be another way.
--- Look at it this way: Say you graduated with a degree in Chemistry in the USSR in 1980. After capitalism was introduced, you started working in an area not in your field, maybe you're a mid-manager at Gazprom or something. You're middle class. Your school chums who stayed in science now work for the state. The state is broke, so it pays a pittance (though I am happy to say Putin doubled salaries for government employees), and your friends wear threadbare clothes and live off imported South Korean instate soup. They are still your old school friends. You still talk to them. You know you could have easily wound up in the some place. Moreover, you respect them and are jealous of them because they stayed in a field they enjoy. ---
Also, didn't Alexander Solzhenitsyn say (when he was in the US) that the greatest crime in the US was not to use deodorant, whereas in Russia people were generally accepted as is? Or maybe somebody else said this, or it's the product of my fevered imagination, since I can't remember anything else about it. --- Maybe Sol. said it, been Russians are big on deodorant, cream, cosmetics (both genders). Nivea is making a killing.