I'm a graduate student here in Russia, and I gotta say the idea of 10*F being an excuse to cancel class is ridiculous. Professors here at my university cancel class only when civil authorities start shutting down above-ground public transportation, usually when it gets down to -35 to -40*F, which is somewhat rare even…

I give the USA the benefit of the doubt when it comes to fingerprinting foreigners (full disclosure, I'm a RUS/USA dual citizen). I agree that America is generally (some Middle Eastern oil sheikhs excepting) very stringent about who it lets in. Many of these guys are also just inadmissable to the USA period, because…

Exactly. OP and the other pious purity people are acting like Pussy Riot are a bunch of 'White Feminist' NYU undergrads who invited evil FEMEN to a Women's Center "Smash the Patriarchy" party or something.

YES! THIS! Who exactly would they turn to? Alexei "Ban the Lezginka" Navalny? This gets me with Jezebel folks' approach to foreign countries. Racism sucks and racists should be ashamed of themselves. Ideas about this stuff (Liberal Arts stuff like intersectionality, privilege, etc. hardly even exist at all here in the…

Oh definitely, real estate in the USA is huge. Russians especially love Euro real estate though, because you can vacation in it when you're not fleeing the taxman/the FSB/the Mob.

Also, the wealthy here keep their money in a variety of countries, but the USA is less often one of them, because the USGOV has been known to freeze Russians' assets in the past for criminal activity or human rights violations. Money is often laundered through places like Latvia (although less so now that Latvia has…

The whole narrative that the government uses against dissidents is that they're upper class dilettantes who want Russia to become Westernized (that is, un-Orthodox, gay, effeminate, weak, subject to US authority, etc.). Much of this narrative also centers on the insinuation that dissidents in this country are agents…

No, it absolutely would not. In fact, if any of the Pussy Riot members sought US citizenship, it would be a godsend for Putin. It would allow his people to portray them as the Western lackeys they've been depicting PR as all along.

Thing is, though, if you refuse to associate with racists in Russia and the FSU, you're not going to be able to work with very many people. Westerners should be careful about imposing untenable (however correct they may be) purity requirements on Russian opposition figures, not just because those figures will…

Not to mention those traps! fans myself

As for my Russian-ness. I was born in Boston to Estonian and Russian parents, and I grew up in USA. I'm living in Saint Petersburg now getting a grad degree.

Good, just making sure.

No, these people are the Romanovs. Horrible Nicholas II and his horrible wife Alexandra were like these people. This upper class that has formed after the fall of the USSR is exactly the sort of decadent, evil, rotten overclass that made the Socialists, Communists, SRs, etc. so popular with the working population of…

Exactly!! It is a free country! Neither you or I think that dudebro here should be arrested for flirting with someone. But he shouldn't expect us to validate and condone him annoying women he doesn't know.

I'm gonna go further even than this and say just don't flirt/bother other people, men or women, or speak to them without a good reason. The subway isn't a dating service, it isn't a bar or a cafe, it isn't a place where people have the reasonable expectation of being flirted with, etc. Just let people get on with…

They shouldn't strike up conversations with you either, its rude, but even so there isn't the same power dynamic. Men don't have the same safety concerns when it comes to women as women do when it comes to men, and men aren't socialized in our society to please and placate women the way women are socialized to to just…

Here's a tip: don't talk to a woman on the train when you wouldn't talk to a man. I'm thrilled that your friend found love on the subway, but I hear from female friends that guys keep trying to talk to them on the train, when they'd rather just be left alone. Maybe its my frosty New England nature, but I know that I…

Totally agreed.