#5 How to learn Russian - Some Culture and some Humour.

Dear Steemians. This is the fifth in a series I'm posting to support Golos and expand the Steemit system. I'm a Russophile and I'm tremendously excited about the changes Russia is experiencing.  I hope you enjoy it: 

всем привет! Hello Everyone!

One of the key factors in learning a new skill is enthusiasm. The more enthusiastic you are the more quickly you learn. Therefore, to keep your enthusiasm for learning Russian at a high level it is useful (sometimes) to step away from learning grammar and vocabulary and make things fun.

Here we'll take a short break from what I call the hard language skills to enjoy some humour about Russia. And through these you'll learn about what has been going on in Russia in recent times and perhaps what is likely to happen in the future.

First, here's a great story. Many people think it's the greatest comedy anecdote ever. It does an extremely good job of explaining what Russia was like after the collapse of the Soviet Union and before Putin. 

Here's Bert Kreischer: 

Good eh?

So what does this tell us?

Mainly, that in the 90s, Russia was a hive of corruption and lawlessness and things were largely run by the mafia. 

But this poses another question. How did Russia find itself in such a bad situation?

To that question there are both long and short answers.

Here's the short answer!

Sadly you'll also need the long answer to fully understand how things got so bad. However, whilst I have an opinion, there seems to be no full consensus on what the exact form of the long answer is, so we'll deal with it in detail in another post. Suffice it to say that during Yeltsin's reign the Oligarchs were allowed to come to power. This caused problems for ordinary Russians.

Still, for reasons of clarity, I'm going to present you with a very quick version of what happened.

In the west the Oligarchs are generally seen as self interested businessmen who rapidly accumulated their wealth after the fall of the Soviet Union. I believe this perspective falls short of disclosing their full objective, which was to balkanize and ultimately destroy Russia whilst making themselves as wealthy as possible. Crucially, they undertook this with the encouragement and support of western elites.

And then came Putin. 

To cut a very long story short, Putin foiled the west's and the Oligarch's plans for the breakup of Russia. He did this by very carefully cementing his power without upsetting the West. When he put himself forward to return to power after Medvedev this was a total surprise to the west. Arguably this can be seen as a coup in Russia against the Washington consensus. From that point onwards the west's attitude to Russia changed markedly.

Here is Putin making an example of the billionaire Oleg Deripaska

As the man says, 'Classic Putin'.

This aggressive approach towards corrupt oligarchs, coupled with determination to strengthen and unify Russia, is why Putin is disliked and feared by the western establishment. Indeed if you know what to look for it seems obvious that he is setting in motion the means for Russia to fully decouple from 'Dollar Hegemony.' When this will be fully completed is anyone's guess.

Once this, and the west's desperation to stop this happening are understood, clips like the following take on a deeper level of meaning.

Heads of state rarely joke on camera about bribing one another. Whilst it is hard to tell precisely what Putin is implying, Kerry's discomfort is clear.

Hope you've had fun. More next time...