The whole of Russia was living hell, with the sole exception of the political elite, or top athletes.
My wife is a physician, and both her parents were physicians, and their combined income in southern Russia left them poor. No joke. They had little, but they did have a balcony on the front and back of their flat. And when girlfriends of my wife came to visit her, and saw both balconies, it was like they were living fat city. They were not living fat city.
I bought my mother-in-law her first clothes washer. Prior to that, she hand washed and hung the clothes to dry on lines hanging outside the flat.
Even our poor live better than most in Russia.
@jafo2010 That was certainly true before the USSR collapsed and became Russia again,but I could see it changing quickly when I went there the first time after the collapse.
It was the most unique experience of my life. The class difference was not only right there in full display before your very eyes,it was impossible to not notice it. There were the upper classes who were related to the former Soviet ruling classes riding around in Mercedes,and elderly widows sleeping on park benches because their "comfortable life savings from working a factory job for 30 years" suddenly wasn't enough to buy a meal at the Moscow McDonalds. So they rented out their flats to foreign investors who moved to Moscow for the business opportunites so they would have enough money to eat. Plus,their flats would get renovated for free,which would greatly benefit them if the foreigner got fired,quit,or promoted to a job outside of Moscow. The Soviet Union had been artificially rating 1 ruble with 1 dollar in value the whole time the USSR existed,and IIRC,after the collapse of the USSR and the "market adjustment to a free economy",it took something like 7,000 Rubles to equal 1 dollar of purchasing power.
There was a whole nation of very intelligent people,most of whom seemed to be more than willing to work hard,many with advanced degrees,who were suddenly out of work and didn't even know how to find a job because they had only worked one job their whole lives,and they had been assigned to that one.
I don't know how we got the idea that Russians were dour people,but that was one of the biggest lies ever told.If there has ever been an optimist people,it has to have been the Russians. They are so optimistic they even bought the lie of Communism leading to a brighter future for all.
For a decade or so. After that they weren't fooled,but stayed silent to avoid going to a labor camp. Your boss,and EVERYBODY else's boss was the government,and I think that regardless of where you come from,we all understand THAT is an uphill fight against embedded cretins regardless of what country you live in.
Good thing for them that most of them seemed to have been born with a lot of patience,also.
I have to admit,I have been to several foreign countries and even lived in a few,and have never met any group of people more friendly than Russians. Just about every one of them I met felt like they needed to warn me about trusting other Russians "because you never know who they are or what they really want".
I went back for a second visit 2 years later,and was planning on going back again and buying a "Ural motorcycle (in reality at that time,a 1930's German BMW) with a side car and visiting several different cities. That was when I started getting sick,and I had to cancel my plans.
As plans go,that was probably the dumbest plan I ever came up with now that I look at it in hindsite. I neither speak nor understand Russian,and would have probably been robbed and murdered once outside of a city. These were desperate people in desperate times,and I would have looked like a millionaire to the people of rural Russia. A millionare rubbing their poverty in their faces.
