I remember how surprised I was to discover that practically everybody in Russia seems to have a mobile telephone.
In Western lefty publications I read all the time about how the oligarchs are cruelly exploiting their workers. In fact, the workers who are fucked are the ones in the cash-starved state enterprises. Oligarchs are bad for a whole bunch of reasons, but they pay well. If you're a worker at Norilsk Nickel, you earn $700 a month, which is over twice the Moscow average, plus you have free housing and a daycare center for your kids.
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