Status Updates From Putin Country: A Journey in...

"The last time Russia was Russia was 1917. The Soviet identity was in many ways an artificial construct, but it existed for a long while, and by the time it collapsed, who knew what Russia was or what being Russian meant?"

"He is proud of Putin, and between him and those who dread their country's current course, there is an unbridgeable divide."

Gambling illegal in 2008... many underground places to gamble, though

"Chelyabinsk with its military plants and Soviet industry was a dead zone for the Church."

"Russia cannot be known by the mind / Nor measured by the common mile: / Her status is unique, without kind — / Russia can only be believed in." - Fyodor Tyutchev

"Some have argued that the mystical nature of Orthodox belief, combined with its rigid hierarchy and long alliance with an all-powerful state, helped shape a backward, subservient population."

"It comes from out history, from hundreds of years when people were afraid. It's in our blood. We are always waiting for something bad. If something good happens, we are sure something bad will follow. You can't believe in something good in our country. It's only when we go abroad that we relax and see another side."

VKontakte (Russian version of Facebook)

"Russian officials were slow to address the issues of drug use and HIV. Experts here now estimate at least 1/100 Chelyabinsk residents is infected. This is more than twice the national average, which in turn is now twice that of the USA. And HIV infection rates continue to grow, with the Urals and Siberia at the top of the list."

HIV-positive prisoners were known derisively as "chocolates."

"Tatiana says he was 'needy' and sought out older boys whose esteem he desired. By fourteen, he was in one of the all-too-prevalent gangs, extorting from stores, providing 'protection' and stealing... 'All the values [Tatiana] had grown up with—the Communist Youth League, conformity, and the value of education—were eclipsed by quick money, lure of luxury, and rampant crime."

"His mother, Tatiana, calls him 'one of the lost kids of the 1990s.' She says she too was lost for a while as everything she knew and grew up with dissolved... she had Kolya in 1982.. as spiraling inflation and food shortages took over in the later 1980s and early 1990s, Russians could obtain basic food items only if they had ration tickets and waited in long lines, and only then if they were lucky."

Russian proverb: When there is a fire, you don't ask who the fireman is."

okay actually on the book: the writing can leave something to be desired. "While Russian suspicions of the West are often unfounded as well as cynically manipulated by the government, they are not without foundation" ??? you literally said they were unfounded? who edited this?

ads for "Italian bath tiles and fixtures" and "European kitchens" for townhomes and apartments. Washing machines are common but dryers a luxury.

"There are also new clusters of attractive 'taoon haoozes' in neighborhoods with English names like Green Park. Those first mini-mansions, styled as crenellated fortresses, complete with turrets, have become more refined and tasteful as Russians travel, gobbled up Architectural Digest, and hire foreign designers or a new generation of foreign-influences Russian decorators."

Restaurants — Pretty Betty: 1950s American diner, Wall Street Cafe: coffee, Venice, Basilio, Deja-vu, Avignon, Titanic (complete with themed design). Japanese and Chinese restaurants (with Western names) are more affordable and all the rage (sushi is big).

"The proliferation of Russian-accented English words transcribed into Cyrillic letters is mindboggling. The 'restaurans' advertise 'kreizy menus' to lure in people for 'biznes launches,' The new rich live in 'taoon haoozes' or 'kottedges,' a somewhat fanciful word for the new mini-mansions. This drives some populists in Russia's parliament 'kreizy' but 'oh my God,' they have been unable to staunch the flow."