--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> Never mind Perry Anderson, but life in Moscow is not
> the equivalent of
> life in Russia, right?
>
> Joanna
>
I was taking the piss, not being serious!
Not even life in Russia is equivalent to life in Russia. The place is huge. It's like talking about "life in America." Where? New York? Rural Ohio? Appalachia? If you want a breakdown of income per capita on a regional basis, go to Goskomstat's handy income map, which uses Feb. 2007 data and is usable if you know the Cyrillic alphabet: http://www.gks.ru/gis/D_04.htm , ranging from a high of 29,924.7 rubles in the city of Moscow to a low of 3842.1 rubles in Kalmykia (the current exchange rate being 25 rubles to the dollar).
Kalmykia is a actually a good example of what I am talking about with this corrupt regional elite thing. Kalmykia is a largely Buddhist, ethnically Mongolian region (the only Buddhist people in Europe, I think) who were part of the Don Cossacks (http://www.kalm.ru/en/cossacks.html ) until they were officially abolished and later deported by Stalin and returned by Khrushchev because of collaboration with the "sons of Valhalla." The president of Kalmykia (http://www.kalm.ru/en/president.html ) is one of those guys who gets reelected with 98% of the vote. He has devoted his time in office to making Kalmykia the capital of the World Chess Federation, building a $50 million dollar complex, Chess City, outside the capital city of Elista (http://sport.guardian.co.uk/chess/story/0,,1877426,00.html ). He also claims to have been abducted by aliens.
____________________________________________________________________________________ Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/