re: #259 Wendell Zurkowitz (slave to the waffle light)

Things have improved, but not at a level comparable with Western Europe.

Older folks look back fondly on the heyday under Brezhnev when Russia was able to use oil revenues to import tons of consumer goods to keep the masses happy, but outside the major urban centers, progress has been slow to negligible.

Several years ago I dreamed I visited Russia. Once I got outside the city, into a suburb, the roads weren’t even paved and people were truly struggling. I was appalled at the poverty—it was what I remember as the rural south in the late ’40s and ’50s.

I expect that dream wasn’t so far-fetched.