₦airaland Forum

Akinmail: Do you think you can ever fall in love with sport. Football is nice and russia will be at the world cup. Nigeria will be there too. How popular is football in russia? Would you watch the worlcup?

Football is the most popular mass sport but everyone here knows Russia sucks at it internationally and people mostly care for domestic matches. I prefer hockey though, I used to play it in school.

Akinmail: Who do you think would win a russia vs nigeria football game?

Nigeria. But I'm not sure, I only know that our football fans get very happy if we aren't kicked out of World cup after the first match.

Akinmail: What other sports are popular in russia? Can a average russian like you that has no oilblock ar wealth by inheritace really hope to become rich in the future. Do average russians want to be rich.

Yes. My aunt works as a main secretary of a guy who became rich after 15 years of hard work in retail business. He started with a kiosk selling junk food on the street intersection and now ended with his own milk products factory, meat products factory, beer factory and a network of convenient stores and warehouses. But of course if you have inheritance or relatives in high positions its all easier. Of course people want to be rich but its not like its their life goal.

Akinmail: Are you open to other religions. Will you try to read the QURAN if i recommend it to you.

I'm an atheist and so far don't see how I can change my belief. No, I'm not going to read Quran or Bible or whatever. The only religious book I've read was 101 Zen stories.

Akinmail: Do you watch nigerian films? Have you watched any nigerian film?

No, never.

Akinmail: Sincerely, how many percentage of russians do you think have heard of Nigeria?

I think almost everyone heard of it. There is a popular saying here (invented by Google founder, russian emigrant Sergey Brin): «Russia is Nigeria with snow».

Akinmail: How good do you think russian computer programmers are?

Pretty good I think.

Akinmail: The last russia-geogia war ehich lasted 8 days, how was russians feelings towards the way? Has there been any situation ever when russian oppose the russian government on a decision to fight a war?

Basically everyone was angry at georgians for siding with americans after all we've been through during USSR, then everyone was "yeah, we are awesome" when our forces were steamrolling through Georgia and then anger at americans when they started smear campaign which thankfully failed. Also everyone laughed at Saakashvili who was chewing on his neckerchief. I think there may have been a few who opposed intervention but they weren't stupid enough to voice it because of overwhelming support for government. Especially people were angry for attacking our peacekeepers stationed here. They even forgot their disdain to caucasian muslims who composed the main force which fought in Georgia.

Akinmail: Do you think your government has political or economic interest in african countries? What do you think i can export from nigeria that is in short supply in russia?

Yes, mostly for rare minerals I think. I don't know what can you export to Russia, some exotic fruits maybe? But I think China will sell them cheaper.

panafrican: I read a lot about Marshal Zhukov, and watched a lot of videos over the battle of Stalingrad. Your people are very brave.

I like Rokossovsky better but Zhukov was cool too.

panafrican: Science wise I'm curious about the supremacy of Russia in aerospace. How did you manage to dominate all other nations in that domain?

If you are talking about space launches its because USSR chose to pursuit cheap one use rockets while USA more expensive but theoretically cheaper per launch reusable space shuttles. They didn't succeed in making them cheap enough though and dropped the program, also Cold war is over and there is no need to show off your advantages in front of the world. Other countries simply didn't have enough resources like USSR or USA did, except for China which is developing fast in that direction now.
If you are talking about aircraft we have no superiority there. Maybe some of our aircraft are better than american ones but its their fault for becoming corrupt leeches on their military budget (though american A-10 is still the best ground support aircraft imho). Other countries have good airfighters too, for example french Rafale.

panafrican: Politics wise: Are Russians aware of Western negative interference in African countries domestic politics ? How can Africans
have Russia get involved and help stop this harassment? What would be the best way to lobby in Russia?

Russians no, nobody cares what's happening outside of ex-USSR, China, Europe and USA. Russian government probably yes.
Our government won't do anything which isn't benefiting it. For now its Chinese business to invest in Africa and our government doesn't want to ruin our relations meddling with them. Though some our companies have big business projects in Africa, mostly in arab countries like Lybia and Egypt. Russia doesn't need resources so badly as to get its hands into Africa like Chinese do. I hope you don't have any delusions about Russia being a savior of the world or anything, its just that we are profiting from kicking americans out of friendly countries and making them look stupid and evil in front of the whole world.

Z3tdee: Do Russian see themselves as Europeans, Asians or neither?

Europeans. Though majority thinks europeans went the wrong way with all their political correctness, gay rights and mass immigration and don't want to follow them there.

Z3tdee: Do Russian (older gen) think communist rule was better than the current system?

Yes. People about 30-50 generally dislike USSR and say it sucked a lot though had some positive things like pioneer movement, people >50 love it and say all bad things were because of stupid leaders during the 80s and later.

Z3tdee: Why did Russia make such bad cars, while making great aircrafts?

People are relatively poor compared to europeans, americans and japanese so our car manufacturers cannot make good expensive cars since nobody would buy them and so they make bad but cheap cars. Since every semi-poor country makes its own cheap cars (like Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, Polish, etc) almost nobody outside of Russia buys them and we cannot invest into producing better cars. But people are getting richer and recent Ladas are pretty good as I heard, I don't know for sure though.
Airplanes are another story, for them cost isn't that relevant as for cars.

[quote author=since_1914]Under the leadership of Medvedev, I saw a Russia that was more Pro-west and a lot more liberal, but under Putin, it seems Russia has become a tad more authoritarian like it used to. Would you say Russians prefer a Medvedev to a Putin Presidency?
What do the average Russian think about, cases like the arrest of Greenpeace activists of even the detention and trial of Alexei Navalny? Are they scared that their civil rights could be threatened under Putin?[/quote]No. Some of course do, but majority sees Medvedev as Putin's puppet who is there only to relay Putin's orders and enjoy soft president's chair. He constantly did immature stuff, behaved like a teenager, started several failed projects (like "let's make full Russian made cellphone without any chinese parts!" or "lets make a Russian made car which fits all european standards, is easy and comfortable to use and is also cheap!" which has then been either closed or are under corruption investigations. He started privatization of our huge oil companies like Rosneft which was thankfully stopped by Putin because losing control of our main source of economical lever over Europe would be horrendous.

By immature stuff I mean like when he lost his cat and all news were about how presiden't guard is searching for it, or how after meeting with Steeve Jobs who gave him an Iphone he said that government must provide free Ipad for every deputy as a necessary work instrument, or how he started arguing with people on twitter and got upset when they called him "Dima" and "Dimon" instead of respectful "Dmitriy" and asked not to call him like that anymore.
Seriously, a president using Iphone and deputies using Ipads is a huge threat to national security, it was obvious to anyone more or less tech savvy that americans can spy through them.
During his whole presidency whole country was like "the fuсk man, what the fuсk are you doing, we wanted a president and not a kid".

Greenpeace were arrested rightfully, even our opposition doesn't try to deny that. Boarding aboard another sea vessel illegally is a piracy. We know they didn't try to steal anything or take hostages, but law is still a law, they stalled oil production and used money our taxpayers spend on border patrol.

Majority of population doesn't know who that Navalny is. Only 30% heard about him. In 2011 I watched closely for Navalny and that whole opposition gang to form an opinion whether to support them or not and decided to not. Navalny seems to have ties with american NGOs (and even if CIA or whatever isn't behind those NGOs I doubt american NGOs want any good for us). In fact, many people did the same. But in 2012 people seem to have formed their opinion on things and now only a few nationalists and pro-western liberals who have had their little circlejerk since the beginning of Russia still pay attention to him. Anyway, on the recent elections for Moscow mayor only 20% supported him, I think about the same amount of people support him in Petersburg and maybe like 0.1% support him outside those two capitals. If I remember correctly when there were ~50000 protests in Moscow in 2011, in Novosibirsk, the third largest city, only 20 or so people came to protest.
What I meant is, only a small portion of people support him in Moscow and St. Petersburg while everywhere else people look at all that as some stupid entertainment by those Muscovites who have nothing more useful to do rather than go to public places, throw stones at police, get arrested and cry for international media about police brutality and evil Putin.

Henry120: The west say your economy is totally dependant on oil and gas,

It was very true until about 2003 but not now. Even though our budget still gets a huge chunk of it from oil and gas comanies like Gasprom and Rosneft we have other industries now and gas and oil prices changes won't cause any serious problems now. Also we control the gas market here and we set the prices .

Henry120: and you run a completely corrupt and repressive government which stifles media freedom and free speech.

Well, we had very widespread corruption among all government services in 90s, but since then conditions improved and now corruption happens mostly in the financial and bureaucratic sphere and not in police or road police like before. Government contractors stealing money and going bankrupt, some regional governors abusing their power and alike.
As you know Russia is ranked 133th among about 178 countries in perceived corruption index, behind countries like Mozambique and Uganda, polls show that 80% of people consider the level of corruption in Russia is high, about 12% average and 2% low, but the same polls show that 81% of people didn't have to deal with corruption during last year and another 12% said they had to deal with it once. ( http://wciom.ru/index.php?id=459&uid=114572 ).

About freedom of media and speech - we have so far only ban on gay propaganda among minors, ban on calls to religious and ethnic based hatred and violence and ability to sue people who publicly accuse you of something which they cannot prove ( for example when one election candidate accuses another of corruption like it happened recently).

Though recently some crazies got a taste of banning things and they have pushed a law which allows them to ban sites which have things like descriptions of producing drugs or effects of using them, drawn porn with underage kids, instructions about suicide, sites which allow you to get access to banned content, etc. That seriously is too much and people are getting angry. Though as usual after introducing laws nobody cares to enforce them and you can still find even child porn or other content which is illegal everywhere on our main social network vk.com (clone of facebook).

Henry120: Are all these allegations correct or are they simply made up? Apart from oil and gas, and military equipment what else does russia export?

Mostly resources like metals, wood and coal and their simple derivatives like pipes and billets. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russia_Export_Treemap.png , its old though, it uses 3 year old data right after crisis.

Henry120: Mr russian, I see you have been banned by the anti-spambot. To free your user I.D, go to the complaints thread on the main board of the politics section, lay a complaint to the MODs and your handle would be un-banned.

I wasn't in a hurry so I just waited through it. Thanks for advice though, I'll do if it happens again.

Nomski0: I read in Elle that Russia has the hottest/sexiest models...... How true is this? Are all Russians like Irina and Sharapova?

I have no idea who that Irina is, my mom is Irina too. Of course there are ugly and/or fat girls but generally there are no such retarded things like american "fat acceptance" here so they all are trying to look beautiful and never say "I am ugly but you should say I'm beautiful because I am too lazy to really become beautiful". Sharapova is beautiful I think, but I've seen women more beautiful than her, they were all younger ofc . Here in uni I'd say among 10 girls 1 is super gorgeous, 2 are beautiful, 6 are average and 1 is ugly/fat. It all depends on your taste though. What saddens me is that too many girls use makeup heavily and it looks disgusting sometimes.

Elliotwiz1: lol. Funny you. Are russians fetish? Do they have indigenous religions?

Yes. Yes. We a bunch of retards who think that jews are alien hybrids left by reptilians to control the theft of Earth resources and that ancient russians built egyptian pyramids to fight against them. They are harmless though, what they do is live in forests and worship wooden penis-like statues. There are of course lots indigenous religions like russian paganism (which is almost dead now), lots of native pagans on the North and in Siberia, some noncanonical Orthodox believers left from church split during Tsardom, but after materialistic USSR people rarely take any kind of religion seriously. Despite statistics saying that about 70% of people are religious majority says that only to point out that they celebrate religious holidays and wear crosses. Only 4% of Orthodox christians visit church regularly, I bet the same is with muslims and pagans. I celebrate Easter for example but have been to church only twice in my life, and only because those were two awesome churches in Moscow kremlin (just so you know, there are quite a few other kremlins in other cities).

[quote author=since_1914]There seem to be a lot of anti-Russian sentiments amongst the countries of the old Soviet Union. As can be seen from the on-going bitter debate in some of these countries over the propriety of Russian language as an official language or even as a language of instruction in schools. Do you think their reservations towards Russia are unfounded? What does the average Russian think about people from these countries?[/quote]That's only prevalent among Baltics and Ukraine. Belarus and all *stans are pretty friendly, and all caucasian countries excluding Georgia are friendly too. Now that Georgian Saakashvili is gone and a new president elected we are no longer enemies with them too.
As for Baltics its understandable that they resent us since they treasure their sovereignty even though they were better during USSR than now (Latvian population rose twice during USSR years and fell by almost 30% during past 20 years after USSR dissolution).
But Ukraine is a special issue. During the 90s we were on the same path - we turned into a democracy, started economical reforms which ruined industry and opened country for foreign goods while selling them crude oil and living in poverty. But in the early 00s we turned back, government took control of industry again, we started to produce our own stuff, etc. Ukraine now has GDP (PPP) per capita of the same level as Namibia while Russia's GDP(PPP) p.c. is three times that, meaning average Ukrainian is approximately as poor as Namibian or 3 times poorer than Russian.
According to polls 70% of Ukrainians speak Russian at home yet they refuse to recognize russian as one of their official languages. In eastern majority russian parts of Ukraine and Crimea 100% of population speaks Russian.
Ukraine is desperately trying to get into EU even though Turkey which is in much better position didn't manage to get in and even though other than easier immigration there would be no benefits to it from joining. Ukrainian president himself said that if they join EU their industry will die, though he said that their agriculture and other low-cost production will flourish. Right now they have eased taxes on imports and with every month their production withers. Even their agriculture isn't as good as they expected and only 60% of the food is domestic made.
Ukraine looks like a stupid child, who would rather injure himself than go back to mother. And Ukraine does exactly that, they strangulate their economy which leads to the fastest decline in population after Baltic countries, fastest HIV growth rate among ex-USSR countries, problems with alcohol and drugs, etc. Yet they proceed to decline offers from our government to join the trade union and possibly CIS like Belarus and Kazakhstan did (and both their GDP(PPP) p.c. is twice as big as Ukraine's) which would allow them to buy cheaper gas and get better economy. The current Ukrainian president was elected on the promise of reestablishing relations with Russia yet he proceeds to go further away. Its like their government has gone insane or was bought by some forces who don't want any good for Ukraine.

Elliotwiz1: You're so funny, What's your age range? If you don't think It's too impertinent*

Aren't people supposed to be rude and disrespectful on the internet? Or is it only the runet which is like that?
I'm 22.

Henry120: What the hell man? You are very funny oh.

I'd also like to know if there are any russian comedians? Everyone looks too serious over there.......... Look at vladimir putin.

There are of course. For example we have thing called KVN where students from different universities make teams and compete for the funniest team, then they compete among universities and the final competitions are shown on TV. Though I don't know if there are any translations of that. Also TV channels host their own comedy programs like Comedy club with lots of comedians (there are mostly toilet and sex jokes though) or a famous comedian Zadorniy (whose humor is basically "haha look at how fat and stupid americans are and look at how cool we are", I dislike him but some people like). Even our classics were comedians, for example classic writer Saltykov-Schedrin. Read his History of a Town book or some of his short stories, comedy gold.

rigormortis: did your grandfather overdose on vodka?

No, on cigarettes.

rigormortis: are you a communist pig?

No.

rigormortis: it gets really cold over there, are there any virgins left in Russia?

Average age of losing virginity in Russia is 18.

rigormortis: is your uncle in the KGB?

No. KGB only remains in Belarus now, we have FSB here.

rigormortis: can you play Russian roulette?

Everybody can do it.

rigormortis: are there comedians in Russia..why is everybody so serious over there?

We are not serious, we just are so good in comedy that we can joke about anything with straight faces.

rigormortis: are you a Nigerian student.......I read what you said...just asking again?

No.

rigormortis: are you very sure of your answer to the above question?

Yes.

rigormortis: do you know anyone whose name doesnt end with -ski or -rov

I don't know anyone who has such name, but know one guy with -rov ending family name. Also -ski is west slavic (aka polish) ending of family name and not russian while -rov is only when something ending with «r» gets -ov ending. I have -ov ending but not -rov.

rigormortis: do you wish you were American?

No.

rigormortis: is it snowing outside?...does it ever stop?

Yes, it will stop in April or May.

rigormortis: do you need a refrigerator in Russia?

Yes, but many people have underground storage in the garages where they store potato or other crops because the temperature there is always below zero thanks to permafrost.

rigormortis: what did you do with the body of the American that thought you English?....don't tell me you didn't kill him/her....the dirty capitalist

I left him live his miserable NEET life, so that he would proceed to masturbate to cartoons and store his piss in bottles.

rigormortis: are Russian girls cold towards foreigners or is it the weather?

Russian girls love foreigners especially rich ones.

rigormortis: lastly..

do you think I am a spy?

No, spy would have known all that and wouldn't waste his time in this forsaken place.

Henry120: "Hey MR russian, I want an SU-35 and an S400 missile defence system" .

Pay a billion of dollars and we may talk.

Elliotwiz1: Nice one. . I really laughed when i read about the chinese guy who eats eggs boiled in piss. Lmao. . But eating dogs is also common in some part of Nigeria, some people even eat snakes. Lol

There might be no chinese guy who ate piss-boiled eggs, its just that some chinese do it, so we could tease all those tourists about that.
Chinese are really weird, they always spit on the ground everywhere, talk loud and for some reason like to take photos of themselves with russian kids, especially with blonde ones. Also they poach our wildlife for their traditional medicine, kill our endangered tigers, pick our endangered herbs, poison and eat our pigeons and sparrows.
But on the other hand they spend their tourist money here and their food which doesn't include piss, worms or fetuses is actually very tasty and they don't get mad when you exchange jokes so its ok.

Elliotwiz1: hmmm it seems I've read something wrong, i read about an outer space rock which struck a part of russia which is now known as the siberian wasteland. This happened decades ago, i saw pictures of fallen trees and not a factory. Hmmm are we talking of the same incident?

That's probably Tunguskan meteorite which has fallen more than 100 years ago deep in the forest. It was forest then and is still forest now.

Elliotwiz1: The chechens and muscovites are they names of tribes?

Chechens - native people of Chechnya - a Muslim region on the very south of Russia. There were rebellions there during the 90s in which Russia was very close to further dissolution, the shameful first Chechen war and a lot better second Chechen war. In the end, almost all ethnic russian civilian population of Chechnya was either killed or expunged from it, many Chechens died, western media blamed Russia for killing its own civilians in an attempt to deny them freedom of religion.

Muscovites - common english name for citizens of Moscow - the capital of Russia. Petersburgers - citizens of St. Petersburg - previous capital of Russia and second biggest city, famous for its museums, old buildings and its hipsters.

Swaggot00: what your people did when i was in your country was to insult niggas and call us monkeys cos we gettin attention from your ladies... can u imagine one dude calling me over to ask if i love bananas' knew wat he meant i jst ignore d shit outta him. but your girls tho' they re fit bedically ...

You see, calling someone a niggеr isn't considered insulting here. The usual word for blacks here is «negr», and niggеr is a pretty new word which has same meaning but is also easier to pronounce. It has only recently that people started to know that its actually considered an insult in america and europe for some reason (though its just "black" in Latin).
As for bananas... well, get used to it. We constantly tease each other here, in school we teased ukrainian kid (though I am half ukrainian myself) because there is a stereotype that ukrainians love salo, then we teased a korean exchange student for eating dogs and chinese tourists for eating insects and eggs boiled in piss. When I moved from Far East to Siberia and started attending uni I and my fellow Far Easterners called local Siberians western barbarians while they called us rice gobbling cunt-eyeds. Don't know what about the rest of the world but here its considered fun to tease people based on their stereotypes (finns and estonians are slow, chinese are many and eat everything, japanese love being cool and suicide, caucasians are violent hairy muslim barbarians from mountains who love to copulate with sheep, blacks are cannibals and love bananas, chukchas are stupid and naive but honest, russians are miserable self-hating stupid drunkards, ukrainians are stupid russian-hating salo-loving peasants, etc).

People will chase anyone they find foreign or exotic. Since you are black, you cannot get even more exotic. If you are a black girl you'll be chased by guys, if a black guy by girls. Not mongoloids like chinese though, we have enough of our own mongoloids and they are considered normal.

Elliotwiz1: Have you ever been to the part of siberia which was struck by meteorites? How does it look? Is the place recovering from the explosion?

No, but Chelyabinks isn't even in Siberia, that is Ural which is in between Sibera and Central Russia. The only place which was destroyed was some abandoned factory nobody cared about and lots of windows which were replaced in a few weeks. Not a big deal.

Elliotwiz1: Ok. . . Has there ever been conflicts among different people because of the part of russia they come from?

Everyone hates chechens and dagestanis. They are muslims, they have wild accents and they are usually rude towards women and easily get angry even at jokes. Also many organized criminal organizations consists of them and they are known for their corrupt ways and family ties with which they illegally gain benefits.

Also everyone hates Muscovites and Petersburgers because they are considered arrogant assholes who think of themselves as of "best russians in Russia" (which is actually true) and expect everyone to treat them like important people when they visit small towns. Also the only cities in Russia where its considered cool to be pro-western liberal fighter for gay rights.

Nomski0: I once read that in Russia, the young dont take properly of their old.
How true is this?

Don't know about general situation but among my relatives people try to support each other as much as possible. Though sometimes its hard, for example my grandmother refuses to quit her job, she says that he hates being a parasite. She even got back to it after she broke her arm and almost had it amputated. What everyone is worried about is that she insists on working in her garden almost every day with her still healing arm (despite that 2 years have passed) and proceeds to tell everyone how bad and tired she feels after doing that. My other grandmother lives with her other relatives and although not working she helps with house and kids to them. As for grandfathers, one died from cancer and another is still working and full of energy despite being almost 70. My parents aren't even that old (they are in their 40s) to worry about.

There are of course examples of families where old people are treated as servants and if they cannot they get beaten, but that's usually in ultra poor families with alcoholic men present which is pretty rare nowadays.

adaobi123: What brought you to this forum ?

One guy posted link here like a year ago in a thread about Africa. I was browsing through my bookmarks today and found it. Also found that facebook clone of yours called fancyarena but it appears to be dead. And I decided to make a thread here too for no reason.

Elliotwiz1: Where was the name 'RUSSIA' gotten from?

Well, old name for easter slavic state was «Rus» pronounced kinda like «Roos'». That name somehow evolved into our modern name «Rossiya». How did Englishmen manage to get our name wrong is unknown to me though I suspect it was because of some wrong spelling of Rossiya somewhere in middle ages by some european traveller or maybe because they heard that name from Germans who heard it from Poles who heard it firsthand. At least «Russia» resembles «Rossiya» somewhat, for example Chinese call China «Zhongguo» and themselves «Zhongguoren» which doesn't resemble «China» and «Chinese» even remotely.

Nomski0: I didnt know you were Russian, I'm sorry. I just thought you were a Nigerian who knew a lot about Russia.

I mentioned it in the first post.

Elliotwiz1: You're russian? Was thinking You're a Nigerian who lives these, how did you know about Nairaland?

Don't worry, I'm neither from 4chan, nor Stormfront.

Nomski0: Do you guys have multiple time zones?
And the international date line is close to Russia, have you ever crossed it?

Yes, for example my parents live 4 hours forward compared to me.
No, never crossed, I've never been to americas.

Nomski0: I meant that of Russia. Their meaning for them, as in, in Russia.

But you know, I am russian so you should have said "your education system". Whatever.

I don't really have anything to compare with. You come to Russia, you pay, you study and you go back home or something like that. I don't really know any foreigners apart from Kazakhs who are ex-USSR and thus not really foreign. Also the university I am studying in is not a usual place because we only have real scientists teaching us here and not just professors so I cannot speak for other universities. And finally in the recent days government has started reforming education and things are changing rapidly now.

For example in the recent days there were normal universities where they really teach you things and establishments where you pay them money for five years and then they give you a diploma at whatever you were paying for, no matter whether you ever attended lectures and seminars or not. Now government has started a rating of unis and disbands those who rank low so it must be getting better but on the other hand their rank is bullshit since its biased towards economic-oriented unis and many good technical and medical unis have been closed.

So, what I wanted to say is, I have no idea what's going on in the medical education sphere right now.

Nomski0: So lastly, how would you rate their educational system? And their medical schools and nursing schools, how do they work?

Their? Did you mean Russian, Nigerian or what?

Dannylux: How long would it take a non Russian (Nigerian, precisely ) to learn to speak Russian?

No idea.

Nomski0: How about vines? Do they grow fruits, especially wine fruits, like grapes and berries?


They're also famous for their Vodka(I heard Russian Vodka is very expensive). How much of the strong drink do they brew per day?

Southern regions like Krasnodar grow grapes and produce wine but its not anything special and everyone prefers foreign made wines like cheap Georgian or more expensive european one. Also pear and apples are widely grown. Southern fruits like pineapples, oranges and bananas are all imported. As for berries we mostly consume wild ones (wild strawberries, blueberries, foxberry, briar or those grown individually like usual strawberries, raspberries, currant and gooseberry. Many people have their individual country houses or relatives with them or village relatives who grow all that stuff.
Also many people enjoy fishing, hunting, and picking mushrooms.

I for example get strawberry and raspberry jam from my grandmother every year, also whenever I visit my relatives from village nearby they give me a bag full of veggies and salted lard from their own pig farm.

As for drinks our vodka isn't really for export, almost all of it is consumed domestically and isn't of high quality. All those russian sounding brands are american, canadian, polish or finnish. Our vodka is cheap, has shit taste and is basically a cheap and safe way to get drunk. Many people from village produce moonshine though, its a lot better usually. My other relatives, now dead unfortunately, used to produce the best moonshine I ever tasted.

The most popular alcohol drink now is beer and also kvas which is basically something like low alcohol bread beer.

Nomski0: Thanks for that explaination.

Russia is freakishly close to the Arctic circle, and from some movies i've seen it always snows, how's the vegetation under this cold condition. Do they import raw foods? Or do they cultivate farm lands?

No, it snows only half a year. Permafrost which covers 70% or so of Russian territory doesn't mean it always snows here, it means that ground's temperature is always below zero if you dig 1-2 meters in it. Russia actually more exports agricultural production than imports. Of course, the majority of stuff grows along the southern border and in southern regions and some stuff like rice, soy or corn barely grows here at all.

demelza: Are people still being sent off to Siberia for political crimes?

There are no political crimes now. Although there are punishments for propagating hatred on ethnic or religious basis and propagating terrorism. Usually criminals are sent to prisons in their home region.

Shen Teh: Pls do you have any languages in Russia, or there just is one language- Russian

National republics like Saha (Yakutia) or Nenetskaya autonomous oblast or Chechnya teach their students national languages but everyone knows russian and even natives speak in Russia most of the time. English is tought in schools too, as well as sometimes German or French but besides "My name is Ivan, I know cat eat dog." most of the people cannot say anything.

Nomski0: Can you tell me why USSR became Russia. I still dont understand it.

Nobody here understands it either.
From the first look it seems like tensions between national republics started to rise and Gorbachev decided to reform USSR into another union, less solid and with bigger responsibilities of national governments. But after USSR was disbanded and CIS was created Yeltsin suddenly usurped power in Russia, overthrew communists and banned communist party. Similar things happened in other republics except for Belarus and Belarus is the only country who is in CIS now except for Russia of course.

But if you dig deeper it seems like either Gorbachev himself or Yeltsin or both of them were either controlled by USA or were just outright CIA agents because what they did was pure traitory - they made it possible for our resources and scientific developments to be bought cheaply by Europe and US. The economy lay in ruins, people fled the country, starved, took drugs, forced each other into prostitution or mafia rings. As one of the ministers from that time said "We had no time to care about anything - we only had to destroy industry so that communists would never rise again".
People were overwhelmingly against USSR dissolution,yet Gorbachev allowed it to happen. Some strange snipers without uniforms were shooting and killing both supporters of Yeltsin, supporters of Parliament and even neutral military forces who tried to make opposing forces to negotiate. Thanks god it didn't slide into full-scale civil war.

Putin seems even a bigger mystery to everyone. He was appointed by Yeltsin and yet he basically saved Russia during the Chechen wars. He works perfectly in foreign politics but cannot make those corrupt asses to work good domestically. He is friends with some corrupt oligarchs and opposes other corrupt oligarchs. Nobody of common people knows what's going on there on top but at least Russia still exists and seems to be doing pretty well compared to 90s.