How poor Russia is now?

At what resolution should the picture be?

Have you noticed the recent drop on the stock exchange?

Maybe you should ask "how poor America is now?"

Imagine Saudia Arabia with nuclear weapons. If you want lots of facts and figures, Google "CIA Russia Economy". They have an excellent report (this is the sort of thing they do well).

The collapse of Soviet empire was, mainly, due to the economic disaster in their economy. The situation could have been changed if, and only if, they changed the concepts about life, work, relationship. The problem is that people's mind is corrupted to the core, they have changed their life to the modern Western style but even those of the second generation are keeping "the tradition".

Now, they are sitting on a wealth of energy. They inherited a formidable arsenal and....that it! Ah, no, there is their longing for the Old Soviet power that is manifest in their political views: Tsar Putin.

So, by resource black mail and by army power black mail, this is how they keep the European Union on their toes, this is how they went on the Iran's side and many other "Russian things" that we are used to.

As my father used to say: the Russian man has a golden soul but, all together, they are...nasty (he used another word).

Yes I agree with Indel here's where you should go Globalization .org I rest my case

Keep in mind that as soon as the economy and the Soviet collapsed, every western european criminal organization drove into Russia like starving hyenas looking for a safe spot to work away from the Lions. They found the corruption, disdain for human life and hardened nature of the Russians amenable to their criminal activities, and with the higher educations and military skills the Russians made excellent criminals. However, they are too good and soon began to branch out themselves to overtake the other organizations in the world. The established and embedded power of such criminals and the corruption of the impoverished government workers creates an environment unfriendly to the evolution of modern democratic ideals, and promotes a degree of anarchy and loss of governmental power on the international scene. The idea of going back to the Soviet appeals because under that government, they had order, the people were well educated, they were cared for, and crime (besides those committed by the government) was minimal (and not so random appearing in nature).