Hello there. Long time no blog. I hadn’t enough time and there were a lot of work. From now on I will write in english. As you know, english is not my native language, so I expect a lot of mistakes: please reload your facepalms. By the way, it’s not a point of discussion. I do my best – keep in mind that I live in Russia and I don’t have very special abilities in your-language-speaking. Anyway, I hope that you will understand “main course” of every single post that I’ll write. So.
There are a lot of new restrictions from Happy West now: individual sanctions, military and trading restrictions. Many people think that Russia is “main problem” in Ukrainian issue. I don’t want to argue, because The Great Machine Of Propaganda works well – you have your own position, and I have mine. Every single toaster and fridge in Russia (rest of the world) scream that we not using military force in Ukraine (that Empire Of Evil Soviets trying to conqueer our asses, so behold!!!1). That’s why I don’t want to argue about that. I want to tell you how we live under that restrictions: how workers, engineers and house-hold-wifes are living. Another “by the way” here: I speak russian and english, and now learning norsk, but I don’t have a big vocabulary in my head, so sometimes I will use words that probably did not exist. I will combine simple words that I know in one lo-o-o-o-ong word to describe some events. For example, under “house-hold-wifes” I mean “a wife who sitting at home, preparing food, acting with children, etc.”. So on… Excuse my english.
We have a lot of problems now. Prices are getting higher and there’s lack of foreign food in our stores: milk productions, cheeses, yogurts, fish, sea-products and so on. We are not starving – there are a lot of russian food, but prices getting higher and higher, while salaries are still the same. Sometimes we riding to Finland and buying foreign food from the Union in suomi-shops, but it works well only for ones, who live near that country: people from Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and so on are riding to Finland or Estonia so often… I like these countries, they are beautiful! Nature, lakes, forests, you know. And you can buy everything – if you have money, of course!
I don’t like how all the world are looking at us now. I don’t want to be a part of a country that is under a bullet-less fire, because it’s unfair. Seems that I and every single person in Russia did nothing personally to Union or mr. Obama – but we have problems. Not our government – but we. Citizens. On every single foreign forum I try to make people understand us too, but it’s like a farting in the pond – loud but useless.
But I keep trying.
Notes On Liberty 
Mr. Grigorjev I appreciate your blog and what you are trying to say. I am an American. I am a retired Master Mechanic. I write blogs and am just finishing up on a sic-fi novel. I live in Southern California but was raised in a small logging town in Idaho. I am a former Marine. I have long realized that the people of Russia are not unlike the people in the U.S. in many ways. We want to live in safety and provide a good life for our families. We do not like war or strife between our peoples, or any people for that matter. Politics does seem to get in our way however. We both have our problems, crime, drugs, and politicians who seem to have an agenda that is not what we would pick if left to ourselves. So keep on blogging. The more we get to know one another, the better off we are. Eventually, hopefully, people from both countries who have made friends with each other will be in power. Then I hope to see our great countries working together to make life better for us as a united front. I speak only english, very little German, and can hail a cab and tell it to stop in Japanese. So a couple of phrases basically in each. I always admired people from other countries that spoke multiple languages, your english is fine, keep it up. I will read what you write.
Thank You Mr. John Love! Your opinion is what I really need. Novadays it’s hard to understand each other, but we should do the best we can.
Evgenly, I do not have a complete grasp of your political system, even though I have studied it in a formal setting. I do have a decent grasp of my own. It is far from perfect, I am going to go out on a limb and suspect yours is the same as well. So as I said, people are just people, the world over. I believe we all want the same things. Well most of us. I don’t want to kill off anyone who does not believe as I do, and I am convinced most others in the world think as I do. So we owe it to each other to get know one another. I believe the more we do that, the more we will find out we are the same, our dreams are the same, and our goals are not that much different. My blogs, if you look at them are dissonant, to say the least. A product of my unhappiness with our political climate, I suppose. But I try to stay positive about my fellow man, or women, as the case may be. I see you as a person wanting that positivity also. There is a lot of negatives about the internet, but this discourse is not one of them!
Hi Evgeniy. I can empathize with your unease with how people from other countries seem to hold you responsible for things where you have no responsibility. For years I lived under the shadow of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Thank You for your comment, Mr. Amburgey! I think that “government life” and the “citizen life” are two different things. I mean if one country is angry at another – their confrontation should been between governments, but not citizens. We should live in peace while our governments trying to solve all international problems between nations.
Evgeny: Several things:
1 “Fart in a pond” is very good English. Everything you say is completely clear.
2 Free advice from some one who has another language than English as a first language: Don’t use quote marks except when you are quoting. In every other situation, the use of quotes marks makes you sound irresolute, unsure of what you want to say, effeminate.
3 When you use the word “worker” in the way you did, it make me think of the good old days of Stalin. Software engineers are workers too, so are teachers and bank employees.
4 Average Russians are responsible for the aggressiveness, the adventurism, the banditry of the Putin administration. Massive approval in the polls is complicity. Passivity is complicity. I am glad to learn from you that yoghourt may be more expensive in Russia because of Western sanctions. That’s a beginning. I hope we have the firmness to impose new sanctions to make meat and even pasta expensive for the average Russian. I hope trips to Finland will be out of reach. Perhaps, that will sharpen his criticality.
5 Keep blogging. What you have to say is very interesting. In fact, in the US , we get little news from life inside Russia. Somehow, it’s not well covered. Your blog in English will have a disproportionate influence if you continue, I think.
I will not argue with You, Mr. Delacroix, but your opinion is very important for me because You can explain it and prove with your teorethical base instead of saying “you are bad because you are bad”. I will continue to blog. People may agree or disagree with me – anyway it’s better to have a different view on a problem.
PS One more thing: according to the democratic tradition, I, a citizen of the US, am fully responsible for the policies of the Obama administration. I never voted for him, I never would. I think he is a fool surrounded by helpers with fascist tendencies. Yet, I helped elect him because my party was unable to oppose him successfully in fair elections. In a democratic country, the distinction between “people” and “government” is void and morally irresponsible.
I must admit, I was not aware of the democratic tradition that all citizens are fully responsible for the policies of their government. Can you give me a hint of the intellectual history of that tradition? Perhaps a few of the thinkers discussing the tradition?
Evgeniy: this a good place to have discussions to everyone’s benefit. Of course, if I am wrong somewhere, you should correct me, especially for the benefit of others. Just don’t cry, I would shatter my view of Russian men. (Drink 160-proof vodka bottoms up, nibble on light bulbs while doing so.) I hope you continue blogging here.
I could but I will not, Terry. It would take too long.
Just in case someone else reads this let me just say that a legitimately elected head of state or of government is the head of state or government for all citizens. He, or she, (or s/he) is completely legitimate. As I said before, the failure to stop him, her , (him/her) is not an excuse to wiggle out. That’s unless the head is a providential person whose accession to a position of power is sanctioned by History, or by the will of das Volk, of course, rather than by the free exercise of democratic rights.
I too could write a long rebuttal to your nonsense statement but I won’t. It suffices to say that it’s nonsense with nothing to back it up.
A vote makes you responsible for who and what your government looks like. Not voting makes you even more responsible, just in a negative way. I just wish that everyone voted, and took the time to find out what the hell it is they are voting for and how it will effect them personally. I believe most voters do not know. Having said that, I also do not believe in corporate personhood or large donations aimed at drowning out the few of us who are voting, even if we are in large part ignorant. Sorry, I guess I am going off point.
I must respectfully disagree John. I’ve not missed an election since 1972. The very idea that I’m responsible for what Ted Cruz does is nonsense.
John: A vote does no such thing. In fact, your vote is largely worthless, although the recent Citizens United decision made it less so.
Terry: Hahah! JD and JL want to make us responsible for the disasters that were and are the Bush and Obama administrations (well, me anyway; you actually voted for Obama – twice – didn’t you?).
While I will never be able to take Jacques seriously on matters of foreign policy again, I think his point about the complicity of the Russian people in regards to the Putin administration is a good one. Putin is very popular, and Putin himself is only playing to the prejudices of the Russians in order to shore up his domestic legitimacy (the fact that he has to shore up domestic legitimacy should illustrate to our resident national socialists – JD and JL – that there is a distinct difference between state and society, but I digress).
I don’t think sanctions are the way to discourage Russia from becoming more aggressive. These are the same stock of people who turned back Napoleon and Hitler. They have suffered much worse for much less. The only thing that will discourage Moscow from asserting itself is a US military that is focused more on its commitments to its allies in Europe and East Asia (including pushing for more political integration) and less worried about regulating the tribal wars in the Middle East and Africa. (The State Department would be a much better option than the military in the tribal regions anyway.) With Washington stretched so thin, why wouldn’t Moscow make the moves it has made?
@Brandon
“Terry: Hahah! JD and JL want to make us responsible for the disasters that were and are the Bush and Obama administrations (well, me anyway; you actually voted for Obama – twice – didn’t you?).”
Yes. And G.W. Bush once. I’m willing to accept responsibility for those I’ve voted for. Not those I’ve voted against.
Eveginiy: I reacted to your alluding to a distinction between people and government because it evoked memories that are still fresh for one who, likes me, lived in the 20th century. The Soviet government was fond of this distinction for fifty years or more. It allowed it to arm itself to the teeth with weapons that would be used against large population centers while pretending to a be a friend of the same civilians who would have been massacred by these weapons. Paradoxically, the distinction between people and government was valid for the SU itself because it lacked all the features of democratic government that I describe below.
The distinction was also valid with respect to a large number of banana republics and one-party states. It has not been valid for about one hundred years or more for the conventionally defined “Western democracies,” beginning with the US. Such countries have: regularly scheduled elections or elections called by known, well-accepted rules; the elections are conducted in a fair and transparent manner such that their results are considered legitimate by all although there may be some cheating; they enjoy peaceful transition from in to out of power. Such countries also have press freedom, an independent judiciary, the rule of law (with some minor exceptions such as the executive’s ability to commute some severe sentences); the freedom of association is guaranteed, including and especially the freedom to associate on religious grounds. In such countries, the party or parties in power are expect to do nothing to prevent the party or parties out of power from gaining power. Similarly, they are expected to do nothing to undermine the country’s institutions, political and others.
Several big countries such as Spain, South Korea, and South Africa moved in the direction of this model during the latter part of the 20th century while the “socialist” countries got rid of authoritarian so-called “socialism.” After the Soviet Union dissolved, Russia seemed to be moving in that direction too, for a while. Then, the movement stopped and was reversed.
I find it impossible to consider as equivalent any gap between people and government in today’s Russia and in the US. This is so, although Mr Putin would probably win easily an election in his country today while Mr Obama wouldn’t in his own country. Russia is lacking everything on the list above except elections (if that).
In 1929, Westerners who, like Mr Amburgey, make light of this distinction would have died from a bullet to the head in the basement of the Lubyianka while insisting that the differences between Bolshevik and Social-Democrat are minimal. Just to be explicit: There are few historical examples of social-democrats using bullets to win an argument.
History will judge us, Terry. Tremble!
Evgeniy: When Brandon characterizes me as a “national socialist, he is indulging in a bit of juvenile exuberance fed, I suspect, by an excess of testosterone. I dislike all forms of socialism, even the word itself, and I am not a nationalist except by necessity (another story, obviously).
I draw your attention to the fact that I never said the sanctions against Russia will have any effect (unless they become much more massive). I was pleasantly surprised to read between the lines of your original essay that even modest sanctions may matter at the street level (“read between the lines,” you did not say this explicitly).
I hope you keep blogging.
I feel like I am walking into a gunfight with a small stick in my hand, but here goes. Terry, would not want or claim to be responsible for Ted Cruz either. I was alluding to a broader stroke of the brush. Our government is what we make it, regardless of the vote, which makes us responsible. Now your right, my vote as things stand is insignificant, but I cannot give up the belief, regardless of how deluded, that we will succeed in changing that. Politicians all feed at the trough that money pours into, regardless of what party, and some more that others. We as citizens who vote have to make it plain that those that pander to money and the promise of a high paid position later on are not going to get reelected. A pipe dream, well right now the answer is yes. But there are small inroads being made. A politician here and there paying attention. A major controlling state in who gets elected president, Texas, starting to alarm Republicans by going more blue by the month. Not making a statement here about whether or not that is good or bad, but if it does manage to go blue, Republicans can forget about electing a president! In my opinion that is voting that could count, and in the near future if the trend continues!
Democracy is not a religion, Mr Love, no matter how hard you and other democrats (small D) try to make it so.
It is bad enough that the West is fighting wars in the name of democracy, but to me the sheer stupidity of the democrat’s opposition to Citizens United – which made it legal again to criticize incumbents – suggests that democracy is not even worth the reverence it is now shown by too many people.
It serves as a good release valve for the public, but it is nothing more than that. The political process is driven by factions. Always has been, always will be.
Well first off Mr. Christensen, I don’t think I deserve the vitriol you seem to be spewing at me. Second, I am a registered Republican, just not practicing that religion right now. I would not be called a good Democrat either. I have never voted a straight ticket. I myself do not think we should be fighting wars all over the globe, but that war in some instances is necessary. I have some experience with war, having been a Marine Sgt. with a couple of tours in war. I can tell you that the average Marine, once in combat is not political, or moral, he is only interested in staying alive, keeping his buddies alive, killing the enemy is only a means to that end, nothing more. The Citizens United fiasco overturned a Bipartisan act who had as it’s major contributor, John McCain. So not exactly sure how that plays in your obvious hatred of democrats and apparently democracy itself. I see no problem in curbing political ads. They are almost always inaccurate, and sometimes just deliberate prevarications! I will not be responding you your comments from now on, so have at me buddy! I should have figured out earlier why no one directly challenged anything you had to say, but I was a little slow on the uptake.
Hi John,
Your self-sacrifices in the name of god and country are duly noted (my mother is also often fond of reminding me of how generous she was with her time), yet I don’t see anything anywhere in your response (or your sacrifices) that actually addresses my point.
When I was talking about voting I was responding to Brandon, but it looked like I was talking to Terry, I apologize.