I think you are conflating the Russian establishment with the Russian people, presumably next you will attacking George Orwell for writing animal farm. The Russian establishment in the past, Nicholas II, Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev deserved a sound intelectual and ideological kicking as do Putin and Medvedev today.
Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer
Yes, personal experience… Very important and can not be just put aside…
Funny though that most of the Nordic peple I know say exactly opposite about Spaniards. You know “wide open mouth”, “too pushy”, “too forward”, “too loud”. You know, this kind of prejudice crap.
Probably just responses to a very different culture, both the Nordic one and PK’s. People who aren’t like us always seem a bit strange.
When I was a kid in the 1950s and 1960s the dominant Celtic-Anglo Aussie response to the flood of southern European migrants was similar to the Nordic one to Spaniards. Too noisy, too emotional, talk with their hands, eat crap like squid, etc etc. They were just different to the monoculture that existed here then. We don’t notice it now, because we’ve got used to them, and they to us, and each absorbed a lot of the other’s characteristics, conduct, culture, and cuisine over a few generations.
Of course! I have the same impression of Chinese f.ex. I simply can not read their emotions. It felt strange in the beginning to realise that you can not get what you normally get when looking at some one similar to you. But with a little bit of brain activity you quickly realise that 1 billion man can not be THAT differnet in essence. Rather other way arround as there by far more Chinese than lets say Russians.
Though I am not saying that the nations are completely similar. All nations are gifted and corrupt in a unic way. Divercity, you see.