Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Corruption in Russia

In Russia, corruption is considered in much the same way as the climate: something that makes life harder and causes constant grumbling, but is an unchangeable part of the fabric of life.


“Of course all politicians are corrupt, we’ll never be able to do anything about it,” says Nadezdha, a 47-year-old housewife in the town of Kimry, about 100 miles from Moscow. She had not heard of the allegations in the Panama Papers, which suggested members of Vladimir Putin’s family, and those close to him, had benefited from dubious cash flows. Instead, she insists the Russian president is part of the solution, not the problem.
“Poor Putin is trying to fight these bloodsucking bureaucrats, but he can’t clean up everything on his own.”
Save for limited online discussion among the politically active classes – one video compares the $2bn (£1.4bn) that passed through a company controlled by Putin’s friend, the cellist Sergei Roldugin, to state spending on healthcare, roads and pensions – for the most part the leaks have passed by with little fanfare. The allegations, published in Russia by the small independent paper Novaya Gazeta, were dismissed by Putin, and state TV, as a western plot.

The above is an excerpt from an article discussing corruption in Russian. This woman believes that Putin is not a part of the problem, but instead a way of solving this massive "corruption" present in their nation. 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/13/vladimi-putin-russia-unmoved-by-offshore-revelations
Here is the full article discussing this, I also wanted to do a blog post on these photos from the 20th century Russia, fully colored now, which are really fascinating and have wonderful captions.

http://imgur.com/a/cxMZT#0

No comments: