What do you think of Russia?
Is it getting better? Or getting worse? Or is it the same as in Soviet Days.?
IMO Russia has level with the USSR. It has gotten better in economics and freeoms, but losing out in corruption and how much the government actually cares about its people.
Well, I feel like I can speak with some measure of expertise on this subject, being Russian myself. I live between the UK and Russia, now, but I've spent near on half my life (a considerable long time, I might add) in that country, and the Soviet Union.
And I'm here to say, the question of this poll is quite a loaded one. I don't know whether the Russia of now is better or worse than the Soviet Union was -- it certainly is different. But the important part of this post is to say that the Soviet Union wasn't bad. Most of you have spent your entire lives on one side of the Iron Curtain, or, for the younger members of DP, on neither side. There's so much bad press about the Soviet Union, such a loud minority of Russian emigres and dissenters, and, of course, half the world propagating this sort of thing. They say history is written by the victors, but I think it is more apt to say that what's for certain is that history is written by the survivors.
Point is, though, that the Soviet Union wasn't bad, wasn't a hellhole, wasn't an 'evil empire'. It had its problems, like the other nations of the world, but it had its glories and victories as well. And I'd bet that if you ask most of the Russians today how they felt about the Soviet Union, nostalgia would be the reigning emotion in their answers.
So, long post-short, this poll is bloody stupid, because it's heavily biased against Russia, and no-matter what is decided, Russia is going to lose out.