November 13th

My lovely city (the blue building is a Women's Monestary near my house- this is a photo from across the Voronezh River).

So, I know it seems like it’s been no time since I returned from the Kafkaz (it’s been what? Eight days? My life is one tragedy after another…) but I’m off again in a couple hours. It’s my first self planned trip so it will probably be fraught with poor planning and disasters, but then again, that’s what life’s about right? So anyways, I’m heading to Irkutsk; described a long time ago as the “Paris of Siberia” (I suppose that’s like describing Boise as the “New York City of Idaho.” Some things just can’t be improved by words…). But who knows, I may be pleasantly surprised. Leg one of this trip is a bus trip from here to Moscow (from 11 PM to 7AM…). We are spending the day in Moscow and then we’ve got a flight from Moscow to Irkutsk. It’s a 5 hour flight plus a 5 hour time difference, so I’ll be 13 hours (11?) from the East coast and I’ll be closer to California then New York. Also my first official foray into Asia… It’s just five of us West Point guys going, so it should be a pretty good time as we’re all down for a good adventure. Hopefully I’ll be full of stories when I return (and still alive…)!

In other news, Dmitry Medvedev gave his State of the Union address the other day and my hozyaika and I were listening in on the radio. It was all rather too much for me so I had to ask her what was being said. The first thing she mentioned is that all he ever did was talk and talk and talk. She mentioned that he was totally missing one of the biggest issues facing Russia (as a retired State employee, she might be slightly biased): pensions. Currently, government employees receive a 40% pension, but it is widely understood that 40% of the already tiny wages received by civil servants (padded by bribes while in the service) is not enough to live off of (hard to take bribes once you’ve retired. I’ve always said that). As the speech went on, Medvedev touched on the fact that Russia’s economy is totally based on raw materials right now and there really isn’t a whole lot of production going on here. Take one look around and this becomes readily apparent. Everything here, from medicine to food to furniture is produced in Finland, Germany, China, etc. The only native products I see her are the tragically sad Lada cars. You can judge a city’s wealth based solely on the percentage of Ladas in the streets (maybe 10% in Moscow, around 70% in Voronezh). But it is hurting the economy and making everything more expensive in the process. Medvedev moved on to the brain drain that happened in this country and is haunting it still. He said that 50,000 highly educated Russians are now working in America alone and that he has a plan to lure them back to the Motherland. We’ll see about that. Olga Arkeedevna didn’t seem so impressed (bear in mind that she was translating all of this from complicated Russian to my Russian and she was liberal in adding her own opinions). Medvedev also talked about the rapidly shrinking population in Russia, something that will leave this country wrecked in 20 years if not checked. In fact, in the Voronezhskoe Oblast, with a population of 2.5 million, the population is shrinking at 25,000 people a year because the death rate has far outstripped the birth rate. So, the government is begging people to have 3-4 kids (I’m sure you’ve heard the gimmicks. You know, give the family who has their kid closest to midday on Victory Day a free tractor and stuff like that…). Well, Olga Arkeedevna was explaining to me that Russian’s will never have both parents work while there are kids in the house to be raised. Thus, there is no way to have 3-4 kids and still support them with only one parent working (or drinking full time as many men do here). It’s something of a Catch-22 and thus, again, she was not impressed. Well, I’ve gotten a bit carried away and I really need to go pack (I leave in an hour now…)! So long!