BTW, on your comment about the insularity of Russians: my son has just gone to the Czech Republic for a few months' stay, and is planning to get an English teaching job. I hope he finds that there are more Czechs interested in studying English than there are Russians interested in the outside world. -
--- I would have gotten back to this earlier. but I have been out of town. The flip side of Russian inward-directedness is the repulzive Russian cult of foreigner worship, which seems to be dying down now that the borders have been open for 13 years.
The Russian version of Sex in the City is advertized as being about "OUR sex in OUR city." I saw a TV documentary on Russian victims of 9/11 called simply "Ours."
BTW, the list's occasional contibutor Peter Lavelle has a nice piece on the contemporary Russian political worldview in, of all places, In the National Interest.:
The following is an abridged thumbnail sketch of Russia's usage of similar Western political terms. Presentation of these terms does not assume, like most Russia-watchers do, that Russian society is an unsophisticated and differentiated herd of mindless individuals. Class today does not particularly divide Russia, though membership of a status group does. Thus, the following definitions encompass general attitudes in the broadest sense, recognizing that different status groups certainly have nuanced attitudes towards politics.
Authoritarianism: A recent commitment on the part of the authorities to establish "law and order," with "order" considered more important than law. Strong authoritarian rule is welcomed over what many called "market economy” and “democracy" of the 1990s.
Bolsheviks: A group of political radicals that destroyed the Tsarist Empire and accompanying political economic backwardness. The originator of Bolshevism, Vladimir Lenin, today is considered a positive historical figure in the country's recent past.
http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/Vol3Issue22/Vol3Issue22Lavelle.html
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