Moscow’s Urban Renewal Budget Equals Rest of Russia’s
Political ad acknowledgement: "This maximum inequality is approved by the Putin regime."
During the reign of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, who -- along with his wife and children, lived an extravagantly luxurious life in Saint Petersburg. Certainly they dined on pheasant under glass, wore hand stitched satin dresses and sat on gold-gilded dining chairs as they were served by a staff of smartly dressed waiters. But outside, over the wall that provided them privacy, people were eating their family pets because they were starving. People were freezing to their deaths lying on the street of the city during the harsh Russian winters. That's why the Bolsheviks overthrew the monarchy and murdered every one of the Romanovs.
This same type of oligarchy goes on today in Russia. Moscow is their jewel and they polish it and put it on display for the world in all its grandeur. But outside of Moscow is a completely different scenario. It's almost impossible to find a decent salary and comfortable living conditions in Russia. For many young people, the only options are to build a life in Moscow or leave the country.
Things are pretty good in Russia! Especially if you live in Moscow. Even better, if you were born there and don't need to rent an apartment that costs half of your salary. It's just that Moscow is not all of Russia. It's only this easy to love Russia if you are in the capital of Moscow.
National TV propaganda is trying to convince Russians that the whole world is against them because they have traditional values. "The West has nothing, that's why they envy us. The West is decadent, we are besieged by enemies, but our spirit will not buckle under the pressure of gay-friendly Europe." This broken record has been playing on Russian TV for five years.
Nobody in the West hears the stories about people disappearing in Russia if they're a dissident of Putin. Nobody in the West understands that journalists aren't free to print opinions. Nobody understands that gays are thrown off roofs in Moscow or that women are not treated as equal in Russia.
This article from the AP illustrates how Russian women are perceived.
In Russia, gender equality still a long way off
MOSCOW (AP) — When a Russian army recruitment office ordered a photoshoot to celebrate International Women’s Day, it didn’t feature any of the 45,000 women currently serving in the country’s armed forces.
Instead, the photos showed ballerinas in floaty white dresses posing with active servicemen in combats and machine guns. “The men’s power lies in women’s tenderness and love!” read a congratulatory note from the army office, based in Russia’s fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg.
Women in Russia may hold prominent positions in the government — including the influential chief of the Central Bank and speaker of the upper chamber of parliament — but traditional gender roles still hold sway, and efforts to address problems like the gender pay gap, domestic violence and sexual harassment have hardly scratched the surface.[/end]
