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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
by 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 agoBut 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 agoJust 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 agoIf 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.
- pekk 13y agoIt's ironic that your implication is that the media should focus entirely on US problems to the exclusion of any other country's problems - and you think this will be unbiased
- rdtsc 13y agoWhat is ironic is the coincidence of "look at shitty Russia with 14 year old brides" when a) US government is shutdown b) Snowden documents keep revealing NSA's dirt form under the carpet.
- cma 13y agoNot to mention the age of consent in some states in the US is as low as 14 (if one partner is younger than 18)...
- bcoates 13y agoThe marriage in the article would be legal in California.
- ScottBurson 13y agoOnly with a judge's approval -- which I doubt would be forthcoming -- particularly if the putative groom sat glumly through the hearing playing video games.
- auctiontheory 13y agoIn Georgia (the US state, not the formerly Soviet country), the age of marriage and sexual consent is 13. source: Wikipedia [http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_sexual_consent_in_the_United_States http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_sexual_consent_in_th...]
- vasilipupkin 13y ago
- cinquemb 13y ago>I would just like to see more balanced coverage Well, this is the NYT, so I wouldn't expect much of that, or from any major news publication that is heavily influenced by the government of where it calls home. I think one can reasonably get balanced coverage by sourcing from different places with the biases of the host nation in mind.
- olegious 13y agoThat's the thing, I'm a subscriber to the NYT and I like a lot of their coverage, especially their in depth pieces and interesting multimedia heavy articles like this one. But if they're providing me biased info about a topic I know a lot about, how can I trust them on the topics I know little about?
- cinquemb 13y agoWell personally, I wouldn't inherently trust any source by itself, on any topic, to make me not want to look up more information (no matter how they display it). I think for every type of publication (major, minor, etc) I always think about who finances them, where they're hosted, who their audience is, and what emotions they are trying to evoke in that audience by the language/graphics they use (how much they try shape the perceptions of the reader).
- auctiontheory 13y agoBut if they're providing me biased info about a topic I know a lot about, how can I trust them on the topics I know little about? That's exactly the feeling I have about all non-specialist media. All of it, even NYT, BBC, The Economist, and NPR. I know a lot about a few things, and they never can get the details right, or often even the main points right. I still consume the stuff - for entertainment, I guess. It's good to keep in mind that it's at best an approximation of the facts.
- znowi 13y agoSame old in a new package. Dilapidated villages, evil Putin, some churches, and an oddity, this time in a form of a gypsy wedding :) Very well executed though. Great photography and web layout.
- mc32 13y agoThere have been a few Western photographers of renown who have treated Russia as a subject. 1. http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2010/nov/27/bruce-gilden-magnum-russian-gangsters http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2010/nov/27/bruce-g... 2. https://www.lensculture.com/articles/simon-roberts-motherland#slide-1 https://www.lensculture.com/articles/simon-roberts-motherlan... 3. http://englishrussia.com/ http://englishrussia.com/ [1] Bruce Gilden [2] Simon Roberts
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- malkia 13y agoChicago!
- dschiptsov 13y agoMore balanced coverage shall include epidemic heroin usage, mass alcoholism and total degeneration and population decline, criminalization and corruption, ruined and sold out industry and social system at the very least. As for Detroit, come on, we have thousands cites like that, actually, all except Moscow, Spb and Novosib.)
- olegious 13y agoYes all those problems exist, but compare the situation today to the mid-90s and I would argue that people as a whole are better today than back then- we see very little of that kind of coverage.
- dschiptsov 13y agoYes, yes, proles and animals are free.)
- usaphp 13y ago> As for Detroit, come on, we have thousands cites like that, actually, all except Moscow, Spb and Novosib. Obviously you know nothing about Russia if you say that...I can list you hundreds of cities where life is much better than many US cities and city areas...I am myself from a city called Pyatigorsk (Stavropol Region) and we have a much better roads, much less garbage on the streets and a lot less crime compared to NY (especially Brooklyn and parts of Queens and NYC which to me looks like a sewer)
- dschiptsov 13y agoObviously.)
- m0th87 13y agoNYC has unprecedentedly low crime for its density and size [1]. There might be places in the US that allow you to draw parallels with Russia, but NYC is a pretty awful example. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City
- jashkenas 13y agoInteresting comment but this is nothing new. Hacker News threads have been suffering from "Eternal September" for years — opinions were always better and more interesting in the old days. Putting down original reporting as an example of "seen it all before" is disingenuous at best — according to the unwritten rules, one never scores points with "this is nothing new"; it's practically expected. Frankly I'm a bit tired of all the negative comments about the NYT, The Economist and other respected establishments by simple reflex. I can scroll through comment threads or posts in the archives and describe an HN where "middlebrow dismissals" rule the roost — but we all know that those do not (or should not) represent Hacker News as a whole. Edit: HN top comments have problems everyone knows that, I would just like to see more relevant thought coming out on top. Talk about the specific technology and techniques being used, a response to the article that demonstrates you actually read it, or compare these "new news" approaches to attempts that were made in the '00s. ;)
- brey 13y agonostalgia ain't what it used to be ;)
- nether 13y ago> [] were always better and more interesting in the old days Replace [] with your favorite magazine, newspaper, website, music genre... Was it really any better, or are you just wiser to the bullshit now?
- cpleppert 13y ago>>Frankly I'm a bit tired of all the negative comments about the NYT, The Economist and other respected establishments by simple reflex. I can scroll through comment threads or posts in the archives and describe an HN where "middlebrow dismissals" I think that this comment thread has become a good example of a typical hacker news discussion right now. The top comments don't add anything to the discussion and the vast majority of the rest are entirely political and repeat the same thing while being totally devoid of any facts or analysis. I could (and would have if I knew nothing about the topic) learn more by searching for information about the quality of life in the rural russian countryside than by reading this thread.
- D_Alex 13y ago>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. But... This is not about a cherry-picked stagnant area, this is about a main highway between Russia's two largest cities. It seems to be woefully neglected, while facilities used by Putin are done up to @#$%-the-expense standard. This is about the leadership of the country gone morally astray, and not caring about who sees it. > Russia has problems everyone knows that, ... Oh well, that's allright then. No point actually doing something.
- olegious 13y agoYou're missing the point- negative coverage on Russia is ALL you hear coming from the major Western media outlets, this is my complaint.
- smtddr 13y agoI understand. Africa(-Americans) & Oakland can almost never catch a break either... trying to explain the imbalance is an uphill battle. If you only got your world-view from western-TV, you'd think America is paradise with perfect people, aside from blacks & mexicans. Everyone outside of it are savages not worthy of respect or consideration; perhaps a bit of pity though...
- mogrim 13y ago> If you only got your world-view from western-TV, you'd think America is paradise with perfect people, aside from blacks & mexicans. That's not the view of the US I get from Spanish news: there's a /lot/ of coverage of gun crime, obesity, etc. This is "balanced" by the amount of US TV shows that are imported, of course.
- kristofferR 13y agoYeah, it's the same here in Norway too. The US gets a lot of bad press here. Obesity, corruption, disfunctional government, inequality, surveillance, religion, puritanism, gay hate, gun violence etc are much more in the focus in the news about the US than the positive sides of the US are. Most Norwegians thinks of the US as this slightly weird, ignorant country that believes it's still the best at everything and doesn't bother with the rest of the world.
- mynameishere 13y agoYou've never driven through Appalachia. Good roads, orderly towns and lovely scenery.
- m0th87 13y agoI have, and I grew up downwind from it. Parts of it are nice (e.g. Boone and Asheville where I grew up in NC), but off the beaten track are villages that look like they haven't progressed in the last hundred years. I've been to the rural parts of Pakistan too and it's frankly surprising how similar parts of Appalachia can be to it.
- allochthon 13y agoIt was a weird contrast. The photographs were beautiful. But the tone of the article was definitely biased against something about the Russian government's involvement in the economies of the places that were visited. When I read the negative comments, I personally thought of many places I've been in the US (where I'm from) which reminded me of what I was reading. The comments about the Russian villages both seemed like they could be true and like they were a little hypocritical.
- adventured 13y agoI grew up in Appalachia, and have spent a lot of time there. I'd love to have you show me where there are towns without electricity, ambulance access, running water, easily accessible paved roads, hospitals within easy driving distance, broadband access, etc. Even the smallest of towns I can name in Appalachia, have such things. In fact, I grew up in an exceptionally poor part of Appalachia, with 15% to 20% unemployment at a time when the nation had 5% unemployment. Technically I grew up quite poor, and we had all the modern conveniences everybody else in America took for granted in the 1970s or 1980s. Incomes have doubled since then, and are roughly three times that of the average wage in Russia, much less the average wage in the dilapidated Russia (probably 8 to 10 times higher than that). I don't think you've actually spent much time in Appalachia. It's not a bustling and booming metro, obviously, but it's not even remotely comparable to what this article describes in Russia.
- cpleppert 13y agoRussia has a GDP per capita of about a fourth of the US or other Western countries but it also has a very large inequality among regions and rural/urban areas. So the difference between rural GDP per capita in the US and Russia is something like 5-6. So when people in this thread are screaming how this is all propaganda and the rural areas of Russia are comparable to any area of the US they are claiming things that can't possibly be true.
- hessenwolf 13y agoIt can be true, but Russia also has the largest land area in the world, and a population less than half that of the US. Fixing it is not a challenge I would take on lightly.
- gtirloni 13y agoI've middle class friends living in small cities in Russia and they all tell me that, despite Russia not being the "2nd greatest country" anymore, life is much better. Some of the older people still think the Soviet era was awesome and miss it. But most of the newer people (<30yo) think everything is much much better. I think this article went to some extreme places and made it look like Russia outside Moscow/StPtbg is just dying. Disingenuous at least.