Furthermore, China plans to invest $5 billion (RI, RBTH, China Banks to Finance New Russian Hi-Speed Railway) in the construction of a new high-speed rail system from Moscow to Kazan as part of the New Silk Road project of economic development and trade throughout Eurasia, a project that Russia will figure prominently in. Speaking of railways, Russia has been investing heavily in reviving and updating its rail system, with United Wagon Company being one of Russia's most recent success stories with its "state of the art factory that last year became the biggest producer of the world-class wagons in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and has left the rest of its Russian competition in the dust."
Myth #3: Russians Just Want to Be Americans in Furry Hats -- if Only Putin Would Stop Holding Them Back
Russia has a rich and complex history and culture that is four times older than that of the United States.
Russia was deeply influenced by the Byzantine culture after Prince Vladimir chose to adopt Orthodox Christianity as the official religion in the 10th century. The Mongols invaded in the 13th century and left behind their administrative state system with its tribute paying and overweaning bureaucracy.
Peter the Great began a ferocious Europeanization and modernization program in the 18th century, which was continued erratically through the 19th century. Alexander the II, a serious reformer, oversaw the liberation of the serfs, facilitated virtually free access to education for anyone who wanted it -- including women, flourishing of the arts, literature, philosophy, architecture, crafts, trade and a free and vibrant press until his assassination by nihilistic revolutionaries in 1881. This ushered in an era of emboldened and radical political activity by extremists who saw reform as a threat to their vison of a utopian society that required a clean slate upon which to build, necessitating the destruction of essentially all existing social foundations. The ends justified the means, including the use of terrorism.
Even under the inexcusable brutality of Stalin's regime, advances were made in industrialization -- the speed and level of which many Russians acknowledge likely made it possible to break the Nazi war machine. And for all the stagnation, repression and rigidity of the Soviet Union (post-Stalin), many of those who lived under it speak of a life that was more nuanced and even positive in some respects than most Westerners would assume.
One of the common themes that came out of ethnographer Michelle Parsons' interviews for Dying Unneeded: The Cultural Context of the Russian Mortality Crisis was Russians' sense of security, connection and even a limited sense of freedom that was fostered by the Soviet state.
Older Muscovites were often nostalgic for Soviet order because it ordered social connections. People's positions vis--vis the Soviet state influenced what people could give to other people -- the ways they could be soulful and needed. Work was the principle means by which Soviet citizens were ordered by the state. At work, Russians had personal connections and access to resources and services. Someone in the Soviet bureaucracy could arrange permission to build a dacha. A friendly butcher could set aside a good cut of meat. A test proctor could help a student pass an entrance examination. Collectively, people often circumvented the state, but they depended on the state to do that. Order here refers to both the order of the state and the order of social relations because they are mutually constitutive.".The paradox of space and order -- the unbound and the bound quality of social relations in Soviet society -- resolves into the even higher-order concept of freedom. For these elderly Muscovites, freedom was not always compromised by the Soviet state. In some cases the constraint of the Soviet state heightened a sense of freedom. As people using their connections, collectively pushed against the limits of the state, and as those limits bent back or gave way, they experienced a sense of freedom.
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