What is the impact of the Russian Revolution?
The problem is that Nicholas and Alexandra were the two stupidest people ever to try and govern a major country. Even at that they may have survived if it wasn’t for the entry into WW 1. This resulted in severe hardship and famine at home and an unsustainable number of casualties at the front. The people wanted “Bread and Peace” and the government was giving them famine and war.The next major causes came about because the autocracy led by the czar refused to share power with a rising middle-class. In Russia, power had always been in the hands of the nobility but as the country began to modernize it gave rise to a new “capitalist class” whose standing was based on wealth rather than land and coming from a noble family. As a sop to this growing class, a duma or parliament was formed, but was essentially powerless and existed at the pleasure of the aristocracy.After the czar was forced to abdicate, the duma was able to seize power and formed a liberal government under Kerensky. Unfortunately, they did not understand the importance of withdrawing from the war, which paved the way for Lenin and the Bolsheviks who were willing to make peace at any price.After the Bolsheviks seized power, a civil war broke out between them and the nobility. (The Reds and the Whites). Armies from the western allies were sent to intervene on behalf of the whites; but to no great effect except to cause years of mistrust and enmity between the new Soviet Government and the Western Powers.The Reds won the war because the whites were just as ineffectual as the czar had been. The Reds would go into an area and redistribute the land from the nobles to the peasants. When the whites came in, they would take the land away from the peasants and give it back to the nobles.This is a very broad outline of these events. There are many excellent books on the subject and if you are interested, I would recommend that you read three or four of them to get a clearer and more detailed picture of these events.
How do Russians view George Soros?
Scientists receiving his grants in hungry times of 1990ies were grateful. Then it was said he thus got access with his foreign unfriendly hands to sensitive research data and institutes. And his grants to school textbooks authors supposedly demanded denigrating Russian glorious past and present and introduce western “values” like sex education, deemed immoral by traditionalists.And he is believed to be able or have been able to manipulate currency exchange rates.
Why is Russia not an ally of the USA despite being a majority-white country?
Russian liberal elite in Moscow loves USA and UK, prays on it, adores it, tries to resemble everything - from very harsh liberal capitalism to colonial mentality with disrespect to province. They turn blind eyes to all the hostile anti-Russian international activity of USA / UK. USA and UK is less loved in province but rich parts of Moscow adore it as the golden idol.There are many thousands of rich Russians and their kids living / studying in UK and in Putin’s Russia there is even a large English speaking elite district in Moscow, with so-called Anglo-American school, besides English native kids there are some Russian elite kids as well:At the same time, Putin’s propaganda brags about pseudo-struggle with USA / UK. But in this fake struggle only the poor people of Russian province lose their incomes due to devaluation of Ruble. Everyone else are happy - Moscow liberal elite and their USA / UK friends.The tragic start of wrong policy of Anglo-Saxon support by Russia is a long time one. First of all, Russia helped to Protestant side of 30 years war, trying to reduce the power of Catholic church. And it succeed, Catholic church basically lost the war, continental Europe was weakened. But! UK, which did not directly participated in this war, and thus was not weakened, begin to gather major power, still unnoticed by Russia back then.Second tragic move is the killing of Russian emperor Paul who was friend of Napoleon Bonaparte (with unproven rumors of British help) and transferring the rule to Alexander I who liked UK, betrayed Napoleon’s Continental_Blockade of UK, thus angered France. This caused Napoleon attack on Russia and his defeat, which increased the power of UK tremendously. Alexander then received top UK gift Order of the Garter for the victory over Napoleon. During world wars Russia also directly and indirectly contributed a lot to the growth of USA / UK power.And now Russia receives the sanctions, isolation, plundering of our natural resources by oligarchs who love UK..This irrational love to USA / UK imperialists not only by Russian elite but also by many ordinary Russians is the tragic puzzle to me. I like Germany, China, Israel much more and these are much better examples to follow.So, Russia is a kind of “unappreciated ally” of both USA and UK, in many centuries.
Do the younger Russian generation prefer not to speak Russian?
It’s quite the opposite, actually. If you’re of the younger generation and you live in Russia, fluent Russian is one of the skills you’d like to have, with all its quirks, urban slang and the new words that seem to pop up every day here.Russian is spoken by all ethnic groups and is the lingua franca for the whole nation (although you will get a special warm smile if you master a few words of a regional language, they are plenty).At the time of writing Russian is well-developed and has a lot of appropriate professional vocabulary in all major fields of human activity be it woodwork or medicine or nuclear science. The Russian Wikipedia reflects this fact, being in terms of volume*quality on par with the Spanish and Italian wikis and yielding only to the English, French and German ones.So it makes perfect sense for youngsters to use Russian not only in school and university (where it’s mandatory) but in everyday life too.