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Plenty of Russians aren't Russian. As long as you speak Russian and don't look obviously non-white you can pass for one pretty easily. As an extreme and over t
by zeth___ 8y ago
Plenty of Russians aren't Russian. As long as you speak Russian and don't look obviously non-white you can pass for one pretty easily.
As an extreme and over the top example: Stalin wasn't Russian.
- iguy 8y agoRussia I know least about (in my list) so I could be wrong there. Maybe it's more like the West than I imagined. But Georgia is kind-of what I meant by "if you come from the edge of". Are there people from Japan, or Somalia, who many Russians (and the newspapers) would unthinkingly refer to as Russian? (Not a rhetorical question!)
- pandaman 8y agoYou are not wrong. There is confusion about the word "Russian". There are Russian nationality and Russian ethnicity. These are different words in Russian language but one in English and often confused (native Russian speakers add to that by misusing word "nationality", which, in Russian, means "ethnicity"). One can become a Russian national through immigration but one cannot become an ethnic Russian, obviously. Newspapers would not refer to anyone as ethnic Russian (русский) and use only nationality (россиянин) even for ethnic Russians. As for Stalin, he wanted to call himself (ethnic) Russian and it so happened nobody could object at the time.