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Sure, but ultimately it comes down to economics. You can have all the beautiful buildings, good cuisine and interesting history you want, but with a bad economy, high crime, widespread corruption, rampant alcoholism, poor health.. well, it doesn't matter so much. By any objective measurement, Finns are quite happy, and Russians are not.
P.S. And now - regarding Russian economics.
It will be easier for me to translate my recent post on FB addressed to one of Ukrainians, who stubbornly keeps on coming on Russian sites to argue. This time around his question ( or rather point that he was trying to make,
was "why people in Europe and the US live better than in Russia and have more opportunities to make money the honest way."
So here it goes regarding Russian economy and why it's not thriving as "Western" economies.
The roots of this reason go back to Tzarist Russia. In Tzarist Russia people already lived worse than in Europe, because Russia had semi-colonial status of Europe. The Bolsheviks have set as their goal to break this financial dependency; the collectivization of agriculture and brutal but unnecessary rapid industrialization came as the result of it. I don't need to go about Soviet economic system and its major setbacks that started growing approximately from the 60ies on. Post-Soviet Russia needed substantial reforms, that ( had they been done in national interests of Russia) were not targeting the break-up of the Soviet Union, ( first of all because of purely economic reasons.) But the reforms were not conducted with Russian national interests in mind; instead, they were conducted with American interests in mind - both geopolitical and corporate. These reforms practically brought Russia back to her pre-revolutionary status of a colony. If you live in a third world country, the average citizen of such country will always have less possibilities to "make money honest way," because the opportunity of "making money" are reserved first of all for the upper class, that supports the Western corporate interests and in exchange for loyalty is allowed to share the profits.
So the way I see it, the only way now to "fix" Russian economy for good and make it function proper way, as it intended to be, is to break the whole established economic system of the West, because Russian economy has been entangled into it for the last twenty years and now there is no easy way out. I consider the latest events in Greece as a sign of it, ( may be it all started even earlier,) but what took place in Crimea and particularly Donbass lately is an indication as well.
Lower class - yes. There are plenty of "filters" in "middle class" - trust me)))
It's like judging Mexicans ( and their culture) exclusively by the ones that are coming ( and living) in the US in droves.
Can working class Russians afford to vacation abroad? Russian tourists have a pretty bad reputation.
Can working class Russians afford to vacation abroad? Russian tourists have a pretty bad reputation.
With Russians everything is more complex ( and different) than it is with Westerners, because money don't determine "class" and probably never did. So basically oftentimes you see people with a lot of money, that mentally inherited all the shortcomings of their unfortunate ancestors and nothing is going to change it. Then you see people with very modest means ( always were) yet they are top notch.
So with Russians there is a certain degree of predictability for "insiders" only; no kind of predictability for "outsiders" like, say, with Europeans where you more or less can determine class and income, when people are vacationing abroad.
For outsiders Russians are more like a lottery I'd guess; it's not easy to determine of what background/means people are when abroad, tourists including.
However when I am on FB for example, I can easily figure out who is who, by the way they "sound."
And generally speaking, it looks like people that sound similar to me can't afford to get out of the country and travel abroad. At least not too often.
I do not think that the crime rate is high in Russia. Economic crimes - yes. But in terms of robbery dwellings, robbery on the street, etc. level is quite low when compared to, for example, US. Russia have not ghetto. Absolutely. There is rich districts and poor districts, but police have access to any district.
Of course, situation was different 20 years ago.
Yes, they can. Especially in the Northern Territories, where wage levels is higher. They jump into the pool with a cry "Tagil!!!" (Tagil is city in the north of Russia).
Where do they usually go for vacations?
Egypt? Turkey?
Where do they usually go for vacations?
Egypt? Turkey?
Yes, favorite destination is Turkey.
And I made a mistake, Tagil is not quite north, it is Urals. But there are a lot of factories and city became famous thanks tourists, who come from there.
UPD:
Something like this (Turkey, Egypt) humor and no
What do you mean by this? like they are easier to approach and you feel more comfortable with them?
No. Though they do open up to people more easily, but that's not what I meant. I mean, when you get them sitting down over a pot of tea, the conversation is guaranteed to be very interesting, whether it's about politics, philosophy, history, archaeology, ethnicity, music or literature, or whatever. You could throw a rock into a crowd and be pretty well guaranteed it would hit someone capable of holding an interesting conversation in depth. Do the same in an American crowd, and the likelihood would be you either get a) someone who blathers on and on without allowing you to get a word in edgewise, or b) someone who talks about how great the local mall is, their favorite football team, or their favorite TV shows. Or with women: babies and recipes (if they're married). That sort of thing. Generally speaking, Russians are anything but vapid.
But we digress. What kind of conversationalists Finns are, I couldn't say in general. For the short times I''ve spent in Finland, I've been fortunate to meet fun, interesting people. To what extent that experience reflects the national character, I couldn't say.
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This time around his question ( or rather point that he was trying to make,
