17 ms·

The Russia Left Behind

363 points by mxfh 13y ago

dangoldin 13y ago
Meta: I love this style of presenting journalism content and hope to see more of it. Finally seeing the web being used to do things that print cannot. Great job to the NY Times team.
- jeffpersonified 13y ago
  How long as the NYT been in beta anyway? It seems like quite a while now, and really look forward to the official release.
dm8 13y ago
How much time does it take for NYT to make these interactive stories? (pure technology not data collection or field journalism) If it's not significant then this is certainly future of journalism. [EDIT]: Looking at couple of interactive stories in recent past (Snow Fall and New Silk Road) looks like this is something they want to repeat again and again. Do you think they've developed some sort of framework (like Django/Rails) ?
- jeffpersonified 13y ago
  I'm particularly curious what they're using these interactive stories for. Refining design or technique? Gauging user interest? Putting processes into place to speed up their development? Really impressed either way.
  - kcorbitt 13y ago
    Keeping people from getting the whole experience on something like Pocket or Flipboard. Not that I blame them; it's a good idea.
  - ssully 13y ago
    It's most likely all of that. They seem to be testing the waters on what written journalism means in the 21st century, and I think it's great. The Rolling Stone recently did an article[1] that I otherwise would have ignored(due to my distaste for their material), but ended up reading because of the fantastic presentation. I don't know if this trend will stick, or how it will evolve, but it is certainly an interesting spin at modernizing these features. [1]- http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-geeks-on-the-frontlines#i.c7ydtg2vgdx1s3 http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-geeks-on-the-frontli...
- ubernostrum 13y ago
  I do not work for the NYT. I did, once upon a time, work for a news organization that was considered to be innovative with respect to using technology to further the presentation of journalism. One of the things I worked on was a generic framework for "composite" stories -- that is, a collection of not just text and photos, but integrated presentations of text, audio/video, photos and data visualizations, with customizable templating to lay it all out and organize for the web. Time and link rot have not been kind to the things that were done with that. For example, the data bits of this: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/mining/ http://www2.ljworld.com/news/mining/ no longer function, and it certainly shows its age, design-wise. But that was where we were in early 2007, technology-wise, and it was built with a hacked-together-in-a-week proof of concept of the underlying framework. What we had at the time shipped with some standard out-of-the-box templates for presenting a story, and for one-off stories we could also task someone to work on creating new ones which could be slotted in for use. When new templating work wasn't required, they could put together a composite story presentation in a matter of hours, once they had all the materials they wanted. The next evolution of that, which I was pushing for toward the end of my tenure there but never got to complete, would have been integrated data processing and visualization tools, allowing journalists to toss various sources (my rough draft worked with spreadsheets, since those were a pretty common source) into a denormalized data store, scrub a bit, and generate useful presentations from them. While I can't be sure, I strongly suspect that the NYT has done something similar, developing the underlying framework for tying together a bunch of content in an attractive way, and probably building some tools to simplify and speed up the generation of the data presentations. What they're doing here, and have done a couple other times, seems well within reach for someone who knows what they're doing and has access to six years' worth of advances in technology. (anecdotally, I've heard that the NYT special projects are done in Rails; ours were done in Django since it was originally our in-house web framework, but in either case it's a strong argument for the productivity gains of those web frameworks) Edit: FWIW, here are slides from a lightning talk I gave at PyCon in 2008, about a data-driven project and the timeline involved in it: http://media.b-list.org/presentations/2008/pycon/lightning.pdf http://media.b-list.org/presentations/2008/pycon/lightning.p... Sadly, the story itself is no longer functioning. Here's one that's actually miraculously still online, from the fall/winter a few years back when everyone was worried about swine flu: http://www2.ljworld.com/data/flu/ http://www2.ljworld.com/data/flu/ The core of that was put together very quickly, and then it was about an hour's work each week to update with the latest data coming in.
- jacobolus 13y ago
  Note it’s Mike Bostock et al. putting these together on the tech side. They’re probably getting pretty quick at it by now. http://bost.ocks.org/mike/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/
caiob 13y ago
Is this open-source?
exhilaration 13y ago
How long until this happens to the United States?
olegious 13y ago
Interesting article but this is nothing new. Russian villages have been dying for centuries- life was always better and easier in the cities. Putting forward gypsies as examples of a "Russia left behind" is disingenuous at best- gypsies live in their own societies by their own rules all across Europe. Frankly I'm a bit tired of all the negative coverage of Russia by the NYT, The Economist and other respected establishments. I can drive through the Appalachians or towns in the South or Detroit and describe an "America Left Behind"- but we all know that those places do not represent the USA as a whole. Edit: Russia has problems everyone knows that, I would just like to see more balanced coverage- talk to the middle class that has grown in the cities, the startup people in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities, compare how things are today to how they were in the 90s.
- tsurantino 13y ago
  But the article does talk about cities. In fact, one part specifically targets cities 'as a vacuum' that sucks the life and quality of life from rural regions. If I can hazard to interpret what you mean - I think you are saying for NYT to compare the net benefit (how people in cities are better off). However, I'd call in to question whether we should focus on the net benefit vs. the very fact that Russia has fundamentally discarded its rural regions and the like.
  - memracom 13y ago
    Just like New York city is a vacuum that sucks the life out of the rural regions of upstate New York. Even the NYT covers this from time to time http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/nyregion/13census.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/nyregion/13census.html?pag...
- rdtsc 13y ago
  If we assume that media is subservient in large to the state (one can certainly insert a joke about Russia here, but I actually mean "Western" media), in accordance to Chomsky's model, this would not be surprising. It seems with Snowden's leaks. Every week or so there is new punch thrown into America's eye. Snowden just got some kind of award. He got some time in limelight. American government is shut down. Common, how long till we hear about how horrible some other political rivals are "Russia's poverty problem" sure makes me feel a little better about NSA spying and idiots in Congress fucking around with the budget. I wouldn't mind maybe a few more "China is a terrible place" stories too for completeness.
revelation 13y ago
They need to stop with the scrolling effects for the big images. It just flickers, stutters and is all together a terrible experience.
- MrSourz 13y ago
  On my device it was very smooth. Machine: Chrome Version 30.0.1599.69 on 2012 rMBP
  - joshlegs 13y ago
    it was good on my laptop too, but annoying. some things can be too fancy
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- dublinben 13y ago
  I don't even see any images!
- thejulielogan 13y ago
  Not everything is optimized to your device. Get used to it.
memracom 13y ago
Makes things sound desolate and hopeless. But the residents of provincial cities like Kazan would tell a different story pointing to new subway lines, a new airport terminal, new rapid transit from the airport to the city center, new highways, new apartment buildings, etc. A foreigner will say, but St. Petersburg is an important port city. How could the main road link between the port and the capital be in such a sorry state? The answer lies in the Russian way of doing things. Russia has an excellent train network, and goods mainly travel from the port to the capital by train. Roads serve those areas which are not important enough to have trains, so when you take a road trip in Russia, you are choosing to travel off the beaten track in the back of beyond. Charming and full of natural beauty, but also full of poverty just the same as you would see on an indian reserve in the USA. Only the natives live in such places in Russia, clinging to the traditional way of life of their ancestors. You look at these people and see white faces like those of you and your neighbors and you are confused because you are used to seeing brown faces on the aboriginals. But in Russia, the white faces ARE the aboriginals, living in this land since before the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago when all of Europe was under a thick sheet of ice. Russia is a very big place, and the government cannot afford to spend its money everywhere and anywhere. In order to make Kazan and Sochi into modern cities that are productive and desirable places to live, they have to neglect some other places. In a vast territory that means that most of the villages are neglected. But there are lots of people who like it that way because they want to live in the forest, breathe fresh air, collect mushrooms and berries, etc. It is their traditional way of life since time immemorial.
- D_Alex 13y ago
  OMG you are so full of bullshit. >in Russia, the white faces ARE the aboriginals Also in Germany, France and Norway. >the government cannot afford to spend its money everywhere and anywhere Of course not, they have to focus spending on facilities exclusively used by the elite... right? >there are lots of people who like it that way because they want to live in the forest, breathe fresh air, collect mushrooms and berries, etc. And not have hot water, electricity or access to ambulances. 'Cos to have that, plus fresh air and berries is just wrong.
- tinbad 13y ago
  > Russia is a very big place, and the government cannot afford to spend its money everywhere and anywhere. Is that how you justify pumping 50 billion in olympics that they shouldn't have in the first place?
ujsfdo 13y ago
USA WINS!
danso 13y ago
I'm old fashioned...the parallax motion and the embedded widgets and things don't do much for me, but what really sticks out to me is the great photography, and this format, whether you like the effects or not, at least showcases the great images. That said, I don't think this story-telling format is the future of journalism. The reason why this story looks so attractive is because there are so few ads, if any. Yes, this format lends itself to being able to do full-page ads or special built-in ads...but those take work to both acquire and construct. Given that these type of feature stories are far and few between, I'd be surprised if the higher-CPM on special-feature-story-ads outweighs the bespoke-effort needed to acquire and implement them. In any case, I highly doubt that if it does, that it does so at a scale that is meaningful. And another thing: the reporting and editing is obviously the bottleneck here. But let's let that be a given...the other main bottleneck is the non-web-dev reporters and editors trying to get their ideas into this innovative format. My guess is, that even at the New York Times, this is a very painful and slow process, even if your devs include Mike Bostock, creator of D3. Part of these features are done with generated templates. And part of them appear to be handcrafted. But again, it's not the hand-crafting that is necessarily the most painful part of the tech workflow. It's the editing across systems that weren't designed for this collaboration. Have you ever built a fancy website in Flash only to have your client want to change a bunch of links that were hard-coded? Imagine that, except across several editorial departments. Another way to think of it: newspaper reporters and editors typically do not use Sublime Text. ---- Some technical observations: The NYT interactive team has been doing analytics on these different story formats. Check out the source code for their previous feature on The Jockey: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-jockey/#/?chapt=breaks http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-jockey/#/?chapt=bre... At the bottom is some JavaScript that seems to be handcoded for that feature and refer to analytics: NS.jockeyMeta = { photoPath: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/Jockey/', videoStillPath: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/Jockey/', videoPosterPath: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/Jockey/', videoPath: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/video/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/Jockey/', url: 'http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-jockey/', viewport: document.documentElement.clientWidth, legacyDesktop: window.NYTMM_IE, imageSizes: [1400, 1280, 1024, 980, 800, 680, 640, 540, 420, 380, 320, 280], videoSizes: [320,600,970], blankImage: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/multimedia/ICONS/greyC.png', comment_page_url: 'http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-jockey/comments/' If you view the source of the Russia story, you won't see any such analytics code. You'll see a lot of D3 code and even some special video-player helper code that I haven't seen on the other features. So again, these features are a pretty new thing, but I think it's a long way from being something that is scalable, and not because for lack of technology or skill at the NYT.
dchichkov 13y ago
I think that in the moment, it is very beneficial to have large chunks of rural, not overpopulated lands. And I don't think that it is in any way a problem. Current approach of developing natural resources is an ecologist nightmare! Just consider growing fields of mono-cultured plants. And in developed/overpopulated countries, well, the land is 'developed' on the country-wide scale. Ecological nightmare on a country-wide scale! So. Until we learn how to build better-than-natural ecologies, I'd never consider any under-populated regions as a problem. I wouldn't even think of such region as poor, considering the richness of local ecosystem and natural resources.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  Beneficial to whom? Because residents of said chunks do not feel happy - no heat, no roads, no money, nearest hospital 50 km away. "richness of local ecosystem" doesn't do anything for people.
  - dchichkov 13y ago
    Just look at the photos of these people. Doesn't look like they are too unhappy. As to the "richness of local ecosystem", it does do a lot for people. Consider this another article from the same newspaper, took me only a few seconds to find it, on the frontpage: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html?ref=us http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-s... And compare the photo of that girl with photos of the children from the original commment article.
patrickg_zill 13y ago
I spent some time in a different part of Russia, 10 days in Volgograd. The best and brightest do try to leave for the big city, not much different than many stories of people going to NYC or California in the 40s and 50s.
- khuey 13y ago
  Many of the best and the brightest leave smaller cities in the US for NYC or California today.
colinbartlett 13y ago
Есть ли жизнь за МКАДом? Я думаю, нет.
- genbit 13y ago
  США за МКАДом?
- kutakbash 13y ago
  Охуительная рационализация.
- RomanPushkin 13y ago
  У меня кореш живет в Десногорске (за сотню километров от Смоленска, маленький городок, градообразующее предприятие - атомная станция). Его невеста из Москвы, есть там квартира и возможность жить. Так вот, они почему-то предпочли жить там. Хотя ничто не мешает жить в Москве. Он, кстати, пилит там свои стартапы для US рынка в том числе. Более того, наблюдается обратная тенденция -- люди бегут из Москвы в свои родные города и живут там. Почему? Все просто: ты зарабатываешь в Москве 50 тысяч рублей и снимаешь квартиру за 30. Так зачем там жить, когда в родном городе ты сможешь зарабатывать столько же, только жизнь будет спокойнее? Моя мама, кстати, жила под Москвой (Солнечногорск). Переехала с мужем в поселок рядом с Ульяновском. Продали квартиру и купили там дом. Очень им там нравится, много ягод, грибов и т.д. Спокойная жизнь. Так что это палка о двух концах, не все так однозначно ИМХО.
  - kutakbash 13y ago
    >Почему? Все просто: ты зарабатываешь в Москве 50 тысяч рублей и снимаешь квартиру за 30. Так зачем там жить, когда в родном городе ты сможешь зарабатывать столько же, только жизнь будет спокойнее? Сразу видно москвича. Проблема с регионами не в том, что там доходы ниже (хотя они объективно ниже), а в том, что в регионах нету множества работ. Это важно, если ты не программер / дизайнер на удаленке и не водитель троллейбуса. Не в любом российском милионнике можно найти софтверную контору, которая занимается чем-то кроме аутсорса. В российских стотысячниках в этой области нет вообще ничего, кроме сопровождения одинесок и сборки визиток на джумле.
  - deleted 13y ago
avenger123 13y ago
The America Left Behind A journey through a heartland on the slow road to ruin. Could we not use this title? Take the examples of Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland, Galveston or Atlantic City and many other cities in America and the same could be said. The headline is catchy and I'm not sure if I agree with it. It would be really nice if NYT did a real piece about how American cities are declining and the causes of this and also how we could change it. I guess its easier to study Russia, instead of looking inward.
tvladeck 13y ago
I wish they'd stop saying "problems of the last century". What's described in this article has never stopped being a major problem in many parts of the world.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  And last century isn't that long ago...
- evli 13y ago
  As a Brazilian national I wholehearted agree with this. It is very easy for a develop world country reporter to inform the world on our seemingly barbarous-like ways. As in the case of Brazil, this has been a problem for generations, like our authorities do not live in Brazil or only come for the world cup and carnaval. The picture is much dire, its part of the culture, we are raised to think this way. Someone applies for a job in the police not because they seek order but because they know the corruption behind it can put their family in a better spot. You can find examples of this in any 'developing' country.
  - varjag 13y ago
    It is not a developing country though, it pioneered space travel, invented TOKAMAKs, underwater electric-arc welding and self-balancing binary trees. If anything, it's on the way downhill into late 1800s, at least culturally.
thrownaway2424 13y ago
Why do they bother hauling goods by road if it takes days, and they have railroads and inland waterways?
- raquo 13y ago
  I'm guessing here, but maybe it's because road transport is a flexible and free market, and railroads are anything but that.
  - varjag 13y ago
    Exactly. The rail is a state monopoly, with prices and turnaround times worse than truckers.
itchitawa 13y ago
To me this is a good sign. Not every small town needs to exist. Historically there were reasons for them - agriculture I guess. But now they often serve no purpose except to house the old people who have trouble leaving. The fact is the world doesn't need as many farmers as it used to so these places are better off left to disappear. It might feel sad if your hometown is lost but it's only physical things whose usefulness has passed.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
austenallred 13y ago
I spent two years living in a variety of cities eastern Ukraine (Donetsk, Kharkov, Makyevka, Gorlovka), and what I saw there wasn't too far removed from what is described in the article. As I read the article, with the exception of the 14-year-old Gypsy wedding, I found myself saying "Oh yeah, I remember that." I would argue that what was described wasn't so much a story of a dying and decaying Russia, as it is some aspects of Russian/former-Soviet culture, especially in small cities or villages.
victoro 13y ago
There is nothing really that novel about this story to anybody who knows anything about Russian history. Rural Russians have been saying "God is too high and the Tsar is too far away" for centuries now. A strong central government that cares little for the provinces is the status quo that has been maintained despite a variety of different political systems. Unlike the US, which has had powerful agrarian political parties that were fiercely suspicious of a strong central government since at least Jefferson, Russian serfs and the overall "agricultural class" have never had any significant political power (factory workers and other lower-class city dwellers were the prime force behind communism while the serfs were mostly an afterthought). I don't know if anyone can make any sort of objective claims as to whether the highly centralized Russian power structure is any better or worse than a more evenly distributed one. Yes people in small towns live without infrastructure, but they also choose to live there, often for the "clean air" as the article notes. I'm sure there are many American individualists out there that would love to be able to disappear into an unregulated wilderness, mostly free of government scrutiny and yet be like 4 hours away from the capitol.
- hollerith 13y ago
  >(factory workers and other lower-class city dwellers were the prime force behind communism while the serfs were mostly an afterthought) I heard that that was not because the communists did not like or did not trust the serfs, but rather because factory workers knew how to show up at a particular time and place, e.g., the location of a demonstration.
1gor 13y ago
This coverage reminds me Soviet articles from my childhood about hard life of common people in the USA. Funny to see same propaganda being produced for domestic consumption in the USA now.
- RomanPushkin 13y ago
  exactly, it's a journalism as it is: concentrating on the worst distorting the reader's view and the truth. PS I live here, moreover between Moscow and Spb. In the nice and largest city on this path (Tver'), but they skipped it accidentally. Why you should know something good about Russia? Look, they're savages.
beautybasics 13y ago
Why is that it's fine for major western media establishment to paint unsettling picture of east. - Of course west is doing better - But that does not mean they can point communities that are worse off - I'am sick of BBC covering negative stories on China & India (i'am one) - Why don't NY Times and the like, point to their own troubles where they left ordinary people troubles and spend all the recourses in covering the powerful { Politicians, Actors, Musicians, Sports Personale} - Just like the way BBC sucks up to monarchy
ommunist 13y ago
I believe I am going to hack Russia by going to live there for a while. Let's see what I can do. They have 13% of business tax only.
- pampa 13y ago
  Actually, its 6% if you use simplified taxation. After that you can cash in your companys profits every quarter for a reduced 9% dividend tax (instead of 13% personal income tax).
democracy 13y ago
My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting. I called McCarthy, one of the French garcons, and asked him the cause of the conflict. "The man with the red tie" (that was my cosmopolite), said he, "got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from by the other guy." "Why," said I, bewildered, "that man is a citizen of the world--a cosmopolite. He--" "Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said," continued McCarthy, "and he wouldn't stand for no knockin' the place." A Cosmopolite in a Cafe by O Henry
kutakbash 13y ago
That 'cartographic' parallax is seriously cool. They even increase scale indicator accordingly.
anovikov 13y ago
Nothing new and does not really show how bad things are. Places like he visited are among relatively polished ones. And well, using a wood stove an not having indoor plumbing is simply the traditional way of life, most of those people are subsistence farmers and that obviously doesn't give good quality of life. Problem is that in many regions, there is nothing reasonable people could except subsistence farming + receiving relative's pensions and drinking them away, because there are no jobs and no economy per se. That in turn, happens because the regions are populated sparsely enough due to cities sucking out population, and smart and initiative people who could start a business find that they have so few customers that they are better off just getting a full time job in Moscow, so they leave. And this filtration goes on and on, and we get the population that is rotten itself. That is a natural process, and will result in rural Russia being completely abandoned (probably with no permanent population at all) in couple generations. In the region where i am from, rural population (settelements under 100,000 population) declined by a factor of 5 in 80 years (while total population declined by just 25%). There is not much left and what's left cannot sustain itself, too few people to even maintain infrastructure, which in turn pushes remaining people out. Soviets somewhat contained this trend with restrictions on movement (propiska), which were a gross violation of human rights and Soviet constitution itself, and these limitations were lifted immediately after Soviet Union collapse. That only accelerated in the process. Probably in countries where there are no real reasons for people to live (except resource-rich regions), some kind of non-democratic control is needed to simply make them survive. When leaving becomes very easy, it is true even in not-so-bad countries. Why so many people left Baltic states and they turned from most prosperous Soviet republic to the holes they are now? Answer is simple: because they CAN leave. Nobody is going to live in Vilnius if we can just catch a train, find a job and stay in Berlin with no paperwork at all. And it doesn't even require Vilnius to be very terrible. You just can't make it like Berlin, no way. I know i will be downvoted for this, and of course i'd hate to be in the shoes of those poor chaps locked up in their countries/regions, but it's extremely sad to see places decline, depopulate, and turn into forests for no real reason at all except that the people who lived there initially did so because they've been forced to, and now they are no longer.
- lmm 13y ago
  By all accounts Estonia has been doing very well in cerent years, even though Berlin is available.
DominikR 13y ago
This article is outrageous propaganda, I knew that the US government had issues with the Russian government, but it saddens me to see that most posters here have nothing but hatred towards Russia. Just the fact that the NYT picked life in a gypsy settlement (no water, no electricity, child weddings) to generalize about the life in Russia makes it obvious to me that the journalists had no other intentions but to villify the Russians. What they did not tell you is that gypsy settlements look the same in France, Germany and other industrialized countries. (Yes - children not going to school, no electricity, no water, weddings of 13 year olds and so on)
- CmonDev 13y ago
  If you want to bomb... sorry I meant "democratize" something in 10 years, you better start pouring it with dirt right now.
  - learc83 13y ago
    Yeah, that's never going to happen. Russia has nuclear weapons and wouldn't be afraid to use them, not to mention their sizable conventional forces.
    - GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
      I think everyone is afraid to use nuclear weapons now
      - chris_mahan 13y ago
        I think everyone is afraid to even have nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants too...
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  This article is barely about Russia at all. It's mainly about wealth! privilege! inequality!, which is a perennial favorite topic of the NYT. You aren't expected to read this and thing "omfg, Russia is so bad". No one in the US is thinking this - all they are thinking is "omfg, if inequality keeps growing, the US will be like this". This is of course nonsense for various reasons (we don't have gypsies and therefore the bottom 50% will not adopt gypsy cultural indicators, and our inequality seems to be merely differing rates of positive growth). Note that many of the Americans on this thread are posting about Detroit, Appalachia and even Oakland (!?!?).
rpupkin 13y ago
NYTimes' maudlin travelog aside, Russia is in deep sh*t: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Implos http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Implos
wuschel 13y ago
I have only skimmed this article and thus will not comment on its contents, BUT I wonder what is the software package that has been use to generate the article layout?
ohwp 13y ago
Wow great pictures! Didn't have time to read the article but I had to look up the photographer: http://www.kostyukov.com/ http://www.kostyukov.com/
scarfacedeb 13y ago
It's definitely not a whole picture, but it's rather accurate view of the countryside and abandoned villages. I live in Tyumen and it's not that bad, thanks to the gas and oil industry. But I visited a couple of villages and _it seems to me_ that this article is rather accurate portray of the average out-of-the-city life in Russia. I think that it's written as propaganda, but it doesn't change the facts.
martincmartin 13y ago
Long Bet #5: "By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or words to that effect.” Predictor (who lost) was Esther Dyson, an investor in several Ruassian start-ups. Challenger was Bill Campbell, chair of Intuit. http://longbets.org/5/ http://longbets.org/5/
- dschiptsov 13y ago
  s/software/malware/
- Egregore 13y ago
  Actually the IDE I'm using - JetBrains's Intellij IDEA is made in Russia and I think it's the world leader in IDEs.
  - GFischer 13y ago
    It's definitely among the best, but I believe Visual Studio is better. Still, not enough to say Russia is the world leader in software development. That title still belongs to the US of A for now.
    - V-2 13y ago
      But Visual Studio wouldn't be the same without the great ReSharper :) By the way, Google's recent Android Studio - the best Android IDE, which pushed Eclipse aside - is a customized IntelliJ Idea as well (they made a deal).
  - vetinari 13y ago
    JetBrains is actually from Czech Republic, not Russia. Yes, they have offices in Moscow and SPB, but also in Munich and Boston - that does not make them German or US company either.
    - Egregore 13y ago
      I think the owner decided to register the firm in Czech Republic because it is more western and also a country with Slavic language. As far as I know both the owner and majority of developers are from Russia.
palderson 13y ago
Putting the article aside, I love the functionality. Mapping a story to exactly where you were on the trip when it occurred, the way the NYTimes has, is an amazing way to present the story.
V-2 13y ago
You may argue that it's biased and cherry-picked - presumably as opposed to all these counter-arguments like "I've seen worse around Brooklyn" or "I happen to have a lower crime rate than NY in my 100 thousand Russian town" :))) That's solid stuff fortunately, no cherry-picking going on. However oops, overall statistics also tend to show that Russia isn't doing all that great Eg. Human Development Index, which measures the standard of living based on a wide variety of data, doesn't even place Russia in the world's top 50. It only does slightly better than Cuba or Mexico. Or is this evil, imperialist dollar-paid propaganda too (this one never gets old) :)
Duckpaddle2 13y ago
The subject matter aside, that is the coolest web page implementation I have seen in a long time. The rolling zoom with the mouse wheel and the map display on the side was just neat.
- tomrod 13y ago
  I liked the road progression on the left too.
Tarang 13y ago
Besides the content, Is anyone going to mention the beautiful use of the line as a scrollbar with the SVG? Its nice to see more and more articles beginning to use more interactive web technologies as opposed to just a static text and pictures. There's more of a reason to read content online than just having the latest content.
afiedler 13y ago
This reminds me of this NY Times article about the Amtrak line between NYC and Washington, DC. Similar story of two booming cities and hundreds of miles of urban blight and poverty in between: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/magazine/amtrak-industrial-corridor.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/magazine/amtrak-industrial...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- brohee 13y ago
  This article is pure Soviet propaganda!
sailfast 13y ago
Beautiful presentation work - congratulations to Mike Bostock and company at the Times for making something engaging to read in the modern web environment. Great work and I enjoyed the experience of reading it - things like this will be critical to the future of journalism.
hoiplodocus 13y ago
would love to see this 12 hours drive from the russian driver dash cams
squozzer 13y ago
Two words -- West Virginia.
ilteris 13y ago
does anyone have any idea how they did the left bezier drawing as one scrolls down? thanks.
usaphp 13y ago
I just want the author to go to a Moscow or St Petersburg subway and compare that to the one in New York City. He will be amazed how clean and beautiful is Moscow subway, and he will see how dirty and slow is NYC subway compared to it. You can not judge the whole country just by driving on a highway which not many people use and filming a gypsy wedding which has nothing to do with Russia.
codecrusade 13y ago
Can someone pen a similar - 'The India I left behind' and put the damn thing on NYT

363 points by mxfh 13y ago

Meta: I love this style of presenting journalism content and hope to see more of it. Finally seeing the web being used to do things that print cannot. Great job to the NY Times team.

jeffpersonified 13y ago
How long as the NYT been in beta anyway? It seems like quite a while now, and really look forward to the official release.

dm8 13y ago

How much time does it take for NYT to make these interactive stories? (pure technology not data collection or field journalism) If it's not significant then this is certainly future of journalism. [EDIT]: Looking at couple of interactive stories in recent past (Snow Fall and New Silk Road) looks like this is something they want to repeat again and again. Do you think they've developed some sort of framework (like Django/Rails) ?

jeffpersonified 13y ago
I'm particularly curious what they're using these interactive stories for. Refining design or technique? Gauging user interest? Putting processes into place to speed up their development? Really impressed either way.
- kcorbitt 13y ago
  Keeping people from getting the whole experience on something like Pocket or Flipboard. Not that I blame them; it's a good idea.
- ssully 13y ago
  It's most likely all of that. They seem to be testing the waters on what written journalism means in the 21st century, and I think it's great. The Rolling Stone recently did an article[1] that I otherwise would have ignored(due to my distaste for their material), but ended up reading because of the fantastic presentation. I don't know if this trend will stick, or how it will evolve, but it is certainly an interesting spin at modernizing these features. [1]- http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-geeks-on-the-frontlines#i.c7ydtg2vgdx1s3 http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-geeks-on-the-frontli...
ubernostrum 13y ago
I do not work for the NYT. I did, once upon a time, work for a news organization that was considered to be innovative with respect to using technology to further the presentation of journalism. One of the things I worked on was a generic framework for "composite" stories -- that is, a collection of not just text and photos, but integrated presentations of text, audio/video, photos and data visualizations, with customizable templating to lay it all out and organize for the web. Time and link rot have not been kind to the things that were done with that. For example, the data bits of this: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/mining/ http://www2.ljworld.com/news/mining/ no longer function, and it certainly shows its age, design-wise. But that was where we were in early 2007, technology-wise, and it was built with a hacked-together-in-a-week proof of concept of the underlying framework. What we had at the time shipped with some standard out-of-the-box templates for presenting a story, and for one-off stories we could also task someone to work on creating new ones which could be slotted in for use. When new templating work wasn't required, they could put together a composite story presentation in a matter of hours, once they had all the materials they wanted. The next evolution of that, which I was pushing for toward the end of my tenure there but never got to complete, would have been integrated data processing and visualization tools, allowing journalists to toss various sources (my rough draft worked with spreadsheets, since those were a pretty common source) into a denormalized data store, scrub a bit, and generate useful presentations from them. While I can't be sure, I strongly suspect that the NYT has done something similar, developing the underlying framework for tying together a bunch of content in an attractive way, and probably building some tools to simplify and speed up the generation of the data presentations. What they're doing here, and have done a couple other times, seems well within reach for someone who knows what they're doing and has access to six years' worth of advances in technology. (anecdotally, I've heard that the NYT special projects are done in Rails; ours were done in Django since it was originally our in-house web framework, but in either case it's a strong argument for the productivity gains of those web frameworks) Edit: FWIW, here are slides from a lightning talk I gave at PyCon in 2008, about a data-driven project and the timeline involved in it: http://media.b-list.org/presentations/2008/pycon/lightning.pdf http://media.b-list.org/presentations/2008/pycon/lightning.p... Sadly, the story itself is no longer functioning. Here's one that's actually miraculously still online, from the fall/winter a few years back when everyone was worried about swine flu: http://www2.ljworld.com/data/flu/ http://www2.ljworld.com/data/flu/ The core of that was put together very quickly, and then it was about an hour's work each week to update with the latest data coming in.
jacobolus 13y ago
Note it’s Mike Bostock et al. putting these together on the tech side. They’re probably getting pretty quick at it by now. http://bost.ocks.org/mike/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/

caiob 13y ago

Is this open-source?

exhilaration 13y ago

How long until this happens to the United States?

olegious 13y ago

Interesting article but this is nothing new. Russian villages have been dying for centuries- life was always better and easier in the cities. Putting forward gypsies as examples of a "Russia left behind" is disingenuous at best- gypsies live in their own societies by their own rules all across Europe. Frankly I'm a bit tired of all the negative coverage of Russia by the NYT, The Economist and other respected establishments. I can drive through the Appalachians or towns in the South or Detroit and describe an "America Left Behind"- but we all know that those places do not represent the USA as a whole. Edit: Russia has problems everyone knows that, I would just like to see more balanced coverage- talk to the middle class that has grown in the cities, the startup people in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities, compare how things are today to how they were in the 90s.

tsurantino 13y ago
But the article does talk about cities. In fact, one part specifically targets cities 'as a vacuum' that sucks the life and quality of life from rural regions. If I can hazard to interpret what you mean - I think you are saying for NYT to compare the net benefit (how people in cities are better off). However, I'd call in to question whether we should focus on the net benefit vs. the very fact that Russia has fundamentally discarded its rural regions and the like.
- memracom 13y ago
  Just like New York city is a vacuum that sucks the life out of the rural regions of upstate New York. Even the NYT covers this from time to time http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/nyregion/13census.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/nyregion/13census.html?pag...
rdtsc 13y ago
If we assume that media is subservient in large to the state (one can certainly insert a joke about Russia here, but I actually mean "Western" media), in accordance to Chomsky's model, this would not be surprising. It seems with Snowden's leaks. Every week or so there is new punch thrown into America's eye. Snowden just got some kind of award. He got some time in limelight. American government is shut down. Common, how long till we hear about how horrible some other political rivals are "Russia's poverty problem" sure makes me feel a little better about NSA spying and idiots in Congress fucking around with the budget. I wouldn't mind maybe a few more "China is a terrible place" stories too for completeness.

revelation 13y ago

They need to stop with the scrolling effects for the big images. It just flickers, stutters and is all together a terrible experience.

MrSourz 13y ago
On my device it was very smooth. Machine: Chrome Version 30.0.1599.69 on 2012 rMBP
- joshlegs 13y ago
  it was good on my laptop too, but annoying. some things can be too fancy
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
dublinben 13y ago
I don't even see any images!
thejulielogan 13y ago
Not everything is optimized to your device. Get used to it.

memracom 13y ago

Makes things sound desolate and hopeless. But the residents of provincial cities like Kazan would tell a different story pointing to new subway lines, a new airport terminal, new rapid transit from the airport to the city center, new highways, new apartment buildings, etc. A foreigner will say, but St. Petersburg is an important port city. How could the main road link between the port and the capital be in such a sorry state? The answer lies in the Russian way of doing things. Russia has an excellent train network, and goods mainly travel from the port to the capital by train. Roads serve those areas which are not important enough to have trains, so when you take a road trip in Russia, you are choosing to travel off the beaten track in the back of beyond. Charming and full of natural beauty, but also full of poverty just the same as you would see on an indian reserve in the USA. Only the natives live in such places in Russia, clinging to the traditional way of life of their ancestors. You look at these people and see white faces like those of you and your neighbors and you are confused because you are used to seeing brown faces on the aboriginals. But in Russia, the white faces ARE the aboriginals, living in this land since before the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago when all of Europe was under a thick sheet of ice. Russia is a very big place, and the government cannot afford to spend its money everywhere and anywhere. In order to make Kazan and Sochi into modern cities that are productive and desirable places to live, they have to neglect some other places. In a vast territory that means that most of the villages are neglected. But there are lots of people who like it that way because they want to live in the forest, breathe fresh air, collect mushrooms and berries, etc. It is their traditional way of life since time immemorial.

D_Alex 13y ago
OMG you are so full of bullshit. >in Russia, the white faces ARE the aboriginals Also in Germany, France and Norway. >the government cannot afford to spend its money everywhere and anywhere Of course not, they have to focus spending on facilities exclusively used by the elite... right? >there are lots of people who like it that way because they want to live in the forest, breathe fresh air, collect mushrooms and berries, etc. And not have hot water, electricity or access to ambulances. 'Cos to have that, plus fresh air and berries is just wrong.
tinbad 13y ago
> Russia is a very big place, and the government cannot afford to spend its money everywhere and anywhere. Is that how you justify pumping 50 billion in olympics that they shouldn't have in the first place?

ujsfdo 13y ago

USA WINS!

danso 13y ago

I'm old fashioned...the parallax motion and the embedded widgets and things don't do much for me, but what really sticks out to me is the great photography, and this format, whether you like the effects or not, at least showcases the great images. That said, I don't think this story-telling format is the future of journalism. The reason why this story looks so attractive is because there are so few ads, if any. Yes, this format lends itself to being able to do full-page ads or special built-in ads...but those take work to both acquire and construct. Given that these type of feature stories are far and few between, I'd be surprised if the higher-CPM on special-feature-story-ads outweighs the bespoke-effort needed to acquire and implement them. In any case, I highly doubt that if it does, that it does so at a scale that is meaningful. And another thing: the reporting and editing is obviously the bottleneck here. But let's let that be a given...the other main bottleneck is the non-web-dev reporters and editors trying to get their ideas into this innovative format. My guess is, that even at the New York Times, this is a very painful and slow process, even if your devs include Mike Bostock, creator of D3. Part of these features are done with generated templates. And part of them appear to be handcrafted. But again, it's not the hand-crafting that is necessarily the most painful part of the tech workflow. It's the editing across systems that weren't designed for this collaboration. Have you ever built a fancy website in Flash only to have your client want to change a bunch of links that were hard-coded? Imagine that, except across several editorial departments. Another way to think of it: newspaper reporters and editors typically do not use Sublime Text. ---- Some technical observations: The NYT interactive team has been doing analytics on these different story formats. Check out the source code for their previous feature on The Jockey: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-jockey/#/?chapt=breaks http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-jockey/#/?chapt=bre... At the bottom is some JavaScript that seems to be handcoded for that feature and refer to analytics: NS.jockeyMeta = { photoPath: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/Jockey/', videoStillPath: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/Jockey/', videoPosterPath: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/Jockey/', videoPath: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/video/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/Jockey/', url: 'http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-jockey/', viewport: document.documentElement.clientWidth, legacyDesktop: window.NYTMM_IE, imageSizes: [1400, 1280, 1024, 980, 800, 680, 640, 540, 420, 380, 320, 280], videoSizes: [320,600,970], blankImage: 'http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/multimedia/ICONS/greyC.png', comment_page_url: 'http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/the-jockey/comments/' If you view the source of the Russia story, you won't see any such analytics code. You'll see a lot of D3 code and even some special video-player helper code that I haven't seen on the other features. So again, these features are a pretty new thing, but I think it's a long way from being something that is scalable, and not because for lack of technology or skill at the NYT.

dchichkov 13y ago

I think that in the moment, it is very beneficial to have large chunks of rural, not overpopulated lands. And I don't think that it is in any way a problem. Current approach of developing natural resources is an ecologist nightmare! Just consider growing fields of mono-cultured plants. And in developed/overpopulated countries, well, the land is 'developed' on the country-wide scale. Ecological nightmare on a country-wide scale! So. Until we learn how to build better-than-natural ecologies, I'd never consider any under-populated regions as a problem. I wouldn't even think of such region as poor, considering the richness of local ecosystem and natural resources.

guard-of-terra 13y ago
Beneficial to whom? Because residents of said chunks do not feel happy - no heat, no roads, no money, nearest hospital 50 km away. "richness of local ecosystem" doesn't do anything for people.
- dchichkov 13y ago
  Just look at the photos of these people. Doesn't look like they are too unhappy. As to the "richness of local ecosystem", it does do a lot for people. Consider this another article from the same newspaper, took me only a few seconds to find it, on the frontpage: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html?ref=us http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-s... And compare the photo of that girl with photos of the children from the original commment article.

patrickg_zill 13y ago

I spent some time in a different part of Russia, 10 days in Volgograd. The best and brightest do try to leave for the big city, not much different than many stories of people going to NYC or California in the 40s and 50s.

khuey 13y ago
Many of the best and the brightest leave smaller cities in the US for NYC or California today.

colinbartlett 13y ago

Есть ли жизнь за МКАДом? Я думаю, нет.

genbit 13y ago
США за МКАДом?
kutakbash 13y ago
Охуительная рационализация.
RomanPushkin 13y ago
У меня кореш живет в Десногорске (за сотню километров от Смоленска, маленький городок, градообразующее предприятие - атомная станция). Его невеста из Москвы, есть там квартира и возможность жить. Так вот, они почему-то предпочли жить там. Хотя ничто не мешает жить в Москве. Он, кстати, пилит там свои стартапы для US рынка в том числе. Более того, наблюдается обратная тенденция -- люди бегут из Москвы в свои родные города и живут там. Почему? Все просто: ты зарабатываешь в Москве 50 тысяч рублей и снимаешь квартиру за 30. Так зачем там жить, когда в родном городе ты сможешь зарабатывать столько же, только жизнь будет спокойнее? Моя мама, кстати, жила под Москвой (Солнечногорск). Переехала с мужем в поселок рядом с Ульяновском. Продали квартиру и купили там дом. Очень им там нравится, много ягод, грибов и т.д. Спокойная жизнь. Так что это палка о двух концах, не все так однозначно ИМХО.
- kutakbash 13y ago
  >Почему? Все просто: ты зарабатываешь в Москве 50 тысяч рублей и снимаешь квартиру за 30. Так зачем там жить, когда в родном городе ты сможешь зарабатывать столько же, только жизнь будет спокойнее? Сразу видно москвича. Проблема с регионами не в том, что там доходы ниже (хотя они объективно ниже), а в том, что в регионах нету множества работ. Это важно, если ты не программер / дизайнер на удаленке и не водитель троллейбуса. Не в любом российском милионнике можно найти софтверную контору, которая занимается чем-то кроме аутсорса. В российских стотысячниках в этой области нет вообще ничего, кроме сопровождения одинесок и сборки визиток на джумле.
- deleted 13y ago

avenger123 13y ago

The America Left Behind A journey through a heartland on the slow road to ruin. Could we not use this title? Take the examples of Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland, Galveston or Atlantic City and many other cities in America and the same could be said. The headline is catchy and I'm not sure if I agree with it. It would be really nice if NYT did a real piece about how American cities are declining and the causes of this and also how we could change it. I guess its easier to study Russia, instead of looking inward.

tvladeck 13y ago

I wish they'd stop saying "problems of the last century". What's described in this article has never stopped being a major problem in many parts of the world.

lostlogin 13y ago
And last century isn't that long ago...
evli 13y ago
As a Brazilian national I wholehearted agree with this. It is very easy for a develop world country reporter to inform the world on our seemingly barbarous-like ways. As in the case of Brazil, this has been a problem for generations, like our authorities do not live in Brazil or only come for the world cup and carnaval. The picture is much dire, its part of the culture, we are raised to think this way. Someone applies for a job in the police not because they seek order but because they know the corruption behind it can put their family in a better spot. You can find examples of this in any 'developing' country.
- varjag 13y ago
  It is not a developing country though, it pioneered space travel, invented TOKAMAKs, underwater electric-arc welding and self-balancing binary trees. If anything, it's on the way downhill into late 1800s, at least culturally.

thrownaway2424 13y ago

Why do they bother hauling goods by road if it takes days, and they have railroads and inland waterways?

raquo 13y ago
I'm guessing here, but maybe it's because road transport is a flexible and free market, and railroads are anything but that.
- varjag 13y ago
  Exactly. The rail is a state monopoly, with prices and turnaround times worse than truckers.

itchitawa 13y ago

To me this is a good sign. Not every small town needs to exist. Historically there were reasons for them - agriculture I guess. But now they often serve no purpose except to house the old people who have trouble leaving. The fact is the world doesn't need as many farmers as it used to so these places are better off left to disappear. It might feel sad if your hometown is lost but it's only physical things whose usefulness has passed.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

austenallred 13y ago

I spent two years living in a variety of cities eastern Ukraine (Donetsk, Kharkov, Makyevka, Gorlovka), and what I saw there wasn't too far removed from what is described in the article. As I read the article, with the exception of the 14-year-old Gypsy wedding, I found myself saying "Oh yeah, I remember that." I would argue that what was described wasn't so much a story of a dying and decaying Russia, as it is some aspects of Russian/former-Soviet culture, especially in small cities or villages.

victoro 13y ago

There is nothing really that novel about this story to anybody who knows anything about Russian history. Rural Russians have been saying "God is too high and the Tsar is too far away" for centuries now. A strong central government that cares little for the provinces is the status quo that has been maintained despite a variety of different political systems. Unlike the US, which has had powerful agrarian political parties that were fiercely suspicious of a strong central government since at least Jefferson, Russian serfs and the overall "agricultural class" have never had any significant political power (factory workers and other lower-class city dwellers were the prime force behind communism while the serfs were mostly an afterthought). I don't know if anyone can make any sort of objective claims as to whether the highly centralized Russian power structure is any better or worse than a more evenly distributed one. Yes people in small towns live without infrastructure, but they also choose to live there, often for the "clean air" as the article notes. I'm sure there are many American individualists out there that would love to be able to disappear into an unregulated wilderness, mostly free of government scrutiny and yet be like 4 hours away from the capitol.

hollerith 13y ago
>(factory workers and other lower-class city dwellers were the prime force behind communism while the serfs were mostly an afterthought) I heard that that was not because the communists did not like or did not trust the serfs, but rather because factory workers knew how to show up at a particular time and place, e.g., the location of a demonstration.

1gor 13y ago

This coverage reminds me Soviet articles from my childhood about hard life of common people in the USA. Funny to see same propaganda being produced for domestic consumption in the USA now.

RomanPushkin 13y ago
exactly, it's a journalism as it is: concentrating on the worst distorting the reader's view and the truth. PS I live here, moreover between Moscow and Spb. In the nice and largest city on this path (Tver'), but they skipped it accidentally. Why you should know something good about Russia? Look, they're savages.

beautybasics 13y ago

Why is that it's fine for major western media establishment to paint unsettling picture of east. - Of course west is doing better - But that does not mean they can point communities that are worse off - I'am sick of BBC covering negative stories on China & India (i'am one) - Why don't NY Times and the like, point to their own troubles where they left ordinary people troubles and spend all the recourses in covering the powerful { Politicians, Actors, Musicians, Sports Personale} - Just like the way BBC sucks up to monarchy

ommunist 13y ago

I believe I am going to hack Russia by going to live there for a while. Let's see what I can do. They have 13% of business tax only.

pampa 13y ago
Actually, its 6% if you use simplified taxation. After that you can cash in your companys profits every quarter for a reduced 9% dividend tax (instead of 13% personal income tax).

democracy 13y ago

My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting. I called McCarthy, one of the French garcons, and asked him the cause of the conflict. "The man with the red tie" (that was my cosmopolite), said he, "got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from by the other guy." "Why," said I, bewildered, "that man is a citizen of the world--a cosmopolite. He--" "Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said," continued McCarthy, "and he wouldn't stand for no knockin' the place." A Cosmopolite in a Cafe by O Henry

kutakbash 13y ago

That 'cartographic' parallax is seriously cool. They even increase scale indicator accordingly.

anovikov 13y ago

Nothing new and does not really show how bad things are. Places like he visited are among relatively polished ones. And well, using a wood stove an not having indoor plumbing is simply the traditional way of life, most of those people are subsistence farmers and that obviously doesn't give good quality of life. Problem is that in many regions, there is nothing reasonable people could except subsistence farming + receiving relative's pensions and drinking them away, because there are no jobs and no economy per se. That in turn, happens because the regions are populated sparsely enough due to cities sucking out population, and smart and initiative people who could start a business find that they have so few customers that they are better off just getting a full time job in Moscow, so they leave. And this filtration goes on and on, and we get the population that is rotten itself. That is a natural process, and will result in rural Russia being completely abandoned (probably with no permanent population at all) in couple generations. In the region where i am from, rural population (settelements under 100,000 population) declined by a factor of 5 in 80 years (while total population declined by just 25%). There is not much left and what's left cannot sustain itself, too few people to even maintain infrastructure, which in turn pushes remaining people out. Soviets somewhat contained this trend with restrictions on movement (propiska), which were a gross violation of human rights and Soviet constitution itself, and these limitations were lifted immediately after Soviet Union collapse. That only accelerated in the process. Probably in countries where there are no real reasons for people to live (except resource-rich regions), some kind of non-democratic control is needed to simply make them survive. When leaving becomes very easy, it is true even in not-so-bad countries. Why so many people left Baltic states and they turned from most prosperous Soviet republic to the holes they are now? Answer is simple: because they CAN leave. Nobody is going to live in Vilnius if we can just catch a train, find a job and stay in Berlin with no paperwork at all. And it doesn't even require Vilnius to be very terrible. You just can't make it like Berlin, no way. I know i will be downvoted for this, and of course i'd hate to be in the shoes of those poor chaps locked up in their countries/regions, but it's extremely sad to see places decline, depopulate, and turn into forests for no real reason at all except that the people who lived there initially did so because they've been forced to, and now they are no longer.

lmm 13y ago
By all accounts Estonia has been doing very well in cerent years, even though Berlin is available.

DominikR 13y ago

This article is outrageous propaganda, I knew that the US government had issues with the Russian government, but it saddens me to see that most posters here have nothing but hatred towards Russia. Just the fact that the NYT picked life in a gypsy settlement (no water, no electricity, child weddings) to generalize about the life in Russia makes it obvious to me that the journalists had no other intentions but to villify the Russians. What they did not tell you is that gypsy settlements look the same in France, Germany and other industrialized countries. (Yes - children not going to school, no electricity, no water, weddings of 13 year olds and so on)

CmonDev 13y ago
If you want to bomb... sorry I meant "democratize" something in 10 years, you better start pouring it with dirt right now.
- learc83 13y ago
  Yeah, that's never going to happen. Russia has nuclear weapons and wouldn't be afraid to use them, not to mention their sizable conventional forces.
  - GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
    I think everyone is afraid to use nuclear weapons now
    - chris_mahan 13y ago
      I think everyone is afraid to even have nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants too...
yummyfajitas 13y ago
This article is barely about Russia at all. It's mainly about wealth! privilege! inequality!, which is a perennial favorite topic of the NYT. You aren't expected to read this and thing "omfg, Russia is so bad". No one in the US is thinking this - all they are thinking is "omfg, if inequality keeps growing, the US will be like this". This is of course nonsense for various reasons (we don't have gypsies and therefore the bottom 50% will not adopt gypsy cultural indicators, and our inequality seems to be merely differing rates of positive growth). Note that many of the Americans on this thread are posting about Detroit, Appalachia and even Oakland (!?!?).

rpupkin 13y ago

NYTimes' maudlin travelog aside, Russia is in deep sh*t: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Implos http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Implos

wuschel 13y ago

I have only skimmed this article and thus will not comment on its contents, BUT I wonder what is the software package that has been use to generate the article layout?

ohwp 13y ago

Wow great pictures! Didn't have time to read the article but I had to look up the photographer: http://www.kostyukov.com/ http://www.kostyukov.com/

scarfacedeb 13y ago

It's definitely not a whole picture, but it's rather accurate view of the countryside and abandoned villages. I live in Tyumen and it's not that bad, thanks to the gas and oil industry. But I visited a couple of villages and _it seems to me_ that this article is rather accurate portray of the average out-of-the-city life in Russia. I think that it's written as propaganda, but it doesn't change the facts.

martincmartin 13y ago

Long Bet #5: "By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or words to that effect.” Predictor (who lost) was Esther Dyson, an investor in several Ruassian start-ups. Challenger was Bill Campbell, chair of Intuit. http://longbets.org/5/ http://longbets.org/5/

dschiptsov 13y ago
s/software/malware/
Egregore 13y ago
Actually the IDE I'm using - JetBrains's Intellij IDEA is made in Russia and I think it's the world leader in IDEs.
- GFischer 13y ago
  It's definitely among the best, but I believe Visual Studio is better. Still, not enough to say Russia is the world leader in software development. That title still belongs to the US of A for now.
  - V-2 13y ago
    But Visual Studio wouldn't be the same without the great ReSharper :) By the way, Google's recent Android Studio - the best Android IDE, which pushed Eclipse aside - is a customized IntelliJ Idea as well (they made a deal).
- vetinari 13y ago
  JetBrains is actually from Czech Republic, not Russia. Yes, they have offices in Moscow and SPB, but also in Munich and Boston - that does not make them German or US company either.
  - Egregore 13y ago
    I think the owner decided to register the firm in Czech Republic because it is more western and also a country with Slavic language. As far as I know both the owner and majority of developers are from Russia.

palderson 13y ago

Putting the article aside, I love the functionality. Mapping a story to exactly where you were on the trip when it occurred, the way the NYTimes has, is an amazing way to present the story.

V-2 13y ago

You may argue that it's biased and cherry-picked - presumably as opposed to all these counter-arguments like "I've seen worse around Brooklyn" or "I happen to have a lower crime rate than NY in my 100 thousand Russian town" :))) That's solid stuff fortunately, no cherry-picking going on. However oops, overall statistics also tend to show that Russia isn't doing all that great Eg. Human Development Index, which measures the standard of living based on a wide variety of data, doesn't even place Russia in the world's top 50. It only does slightly better than Cuba or Mexico. Or is this evil, imperialist dollar-paid propaganda too (this one never gets old) :)

Duckpaddle2 13y ago

The subject matter aside, that is the coolest web page implementation I have seen in a long time. The rolling zoom with the mouse wheel and the map display on the side was just neat.

tomrod 13y ago
I liked the road progression on the left too.

Tarang 13y ago

Besides the content, Is anyone going to mention the beautiful use of the line as a scrollbar with the SVG? Its nice to see more and more articles beginning to use more interactive web technologies as opposed to just a static text and pictures. There's more of a reason to read content online than just having the latest content.

afiedler 13y ago

This reminds me of this NY Times article about the Amtrak line between NYC and Washington, DC. Similar story of two booming cities and hundreds of miles of urban blight and poverty in between: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/magazine/amtrak-industrial-corridor.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/magazine/amtrak-industrial...

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
brohee 13y ago
This article is pure Soviet propaganda!

sailfast 13y ago

Beautiful presentation work - congratulations to Mike Bostock and company at the Times for making something engaging to read in the modern web environment. Great work and I enjoyed the experience of reading it - things like this will be critical to the future of journalism.

hoiplodocus 13y ago

would love to see this 12 hours drive from the russian driver dash cams

squozzer 13y ago

Two words -- West Virginia.

ilteris 13y ago

does anyone have any idea how they did the left bezier drawing as one scrolls down? thanks.

usaphp 13y ago

I just want the author to go to a Moscow or St Petersburg subway and compare that to the one in New York City. He will be amazed how clean and beautiful is Moscow subway, and he will see how dirty and slow is NYC subway compared to it. You can not judge the whole country just by driving on a highway which not many people use and filming a gypsy wedding which has nothing to do with Russia.

codecrusade 13y ago

Can someone pen a similar - 'The India I left behind' and put the damn thing on NYT