My parents grew up in Russia - actually, the USSR (Kazakhstan und Usbekistan, respectively). My family had been living in and around that area since about 1800! Probably needless to say, shit got bad during and after WWII (yay gulag) and eventually they emigrated to Germany, where my parents met. I don't have any relatives in Russia, and I'm the second kid in my wider family that was actually born here. But while you wouldn't ever be able to tell from the outside, our culture is still heavily influenced by that time.

So I've always been interested in seeing the country's trajectory.

I've always been impressed by Russia's ability to remake itself. From Peter the Great's titanic efforts to modernize the country over how the country came to span two continents to the october revolution and then the dissolution of the union, it seems that few countries have the penchant for abrupt change Russia has.

Modern Russia? I don't like it (polictically). From the outside it looks like the fights Russia fights are superfluous are best. For a country that's already wrecked by so much ethnic unrest, inviting some more by annexing minority regions seems like a really stupid thing to do. For a time, a few years ago when Putin just got into power, things were starting to look up. The country became more open, our relations were better. We could've been such great friends! But now Russia is boogeyman #1 for europe again (ecept refugees maybe).

And what have they gained? An economy that never really was that great to begin with that's really suffering now? A democracy in name only? I don't know, maybe Putin just can't stand being irrelevant - but they way things are going now, he'd doing his best to make Russia just that. I'm disappointed, because after all that really hard work that went into reforming (politically&economically) post-USSR is being squandered. I'm sad that people seem to choose promises of "stability" over freedom every time, but that's not something unique to Russia at all. But like I said before, Russia can change drastically in a short time, so I'll wait and see. I wouldn't count the Russian people out just yet.

I like the country itself, and its people. For my money, Moscow has the most awesome churches, and the Hermitage is my favourite museum in the world (if not for that fucking queue). The Russians I know are all very awesome, and they don't like any of this shit more than I do, but I have to ask myself if that's just selection bias.