What are your associations with Russia, mates?
 

Hello, mates! :)
Just curious, what are your associations with Russia/Moscow?
And have you ever been to my country? ;)
There are some traditional and standard associations with my country which foreigns have: vodka, white bear, Putin, snow, matreshka e.t.c...
Do you have any another? :)
Just a couple of words will be enough... ;)
Cheers.

great topic... It always intrigues me how one country has preconceptions about other countries..

Russia from my UK perspective...

Vodka..
Oil Barons being controlled by the state..
Government corruption..
Football Billionaires..
Fluffy fur hats...

Russia from a US perspective...

Brave countrymen making the efforts to change their country
Government corruption, but then again aren't most to some degree?
Awesome vodka
Hackers
Snow, lots of snow
Putin.. what more needs to be said?

Colder than Canada

Off the top of my head, this is what comes out when I think of Russia for 5 minutes:

Mendelev (periodic table),
Sikorsky (first successful helicopter),
Dostoyevsky ( "The Idiot", "Crime and Punishment", "The Brothers Karamazov"),
Tolstoy (who can forget... "Anna Karennina"and "War and Peace"?),
Baryshnikov (ballet dancer),
Anna Pavlova (ballerina),
Tchaikovsky (composer),
Yuri Gagarin (astronaut),
AK-47 Kalashnikov (automatic rifle model)
Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev (Government),
Alekhine, Karpov, Kasparov, Spassky (chess masters),
Davydenko, Kafelnikov, Safin, Youzhny, Anna Kournikova, Kuznetsova, Dementieva, Maria Sharapova (tennis players)

I found today's Russia populated with rational and very intelligent people, but unfortunately, closed up for too long in their own reality, in my humble opinion they would need to socialize more, open up and mingle with the world, and yes, yes, also comes to mind lots of vodka, caviar (real and fake), computer wizards (hackers), and very, very cold, as others wrote above.

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Some of history’s best chess players
Yuri Gagarin – the very first man in space
Some eminently watchable women tennis players
One of the most expensive cities in the world (Moscow)
The irony of an almost-state-religion (the Russian Orthodox Church)
Sensible management of Arctic cod in cooperation with Norwegian authorities
An amazing talent for dealing with the darker aspects of life through jokes and humour
A one-time leader in modern art – oppressed in favour of Social Realism
A language you can recognise from lip movement, even with no sound
The bravery of St. Petersburg’s citizens under the 900-day siege
Losing more people to Stalin than Europe lost to Hitler
Paying the heaviest cost of World War II
A country with a huge drinking problem
An immensely patriotic people

I am still trying to figure out what really happened when Gorbachov lost power...

I try not to think of other countries. I'm told it's bad for my health...

Just kidding: This is a list of things I recall from my Russian History Class. I figured everyone else was hitting the obvious contemporary things:

Peter the Great
Catherine the Great
Muscovites
Golden Khan
Serfdom
Beards
Russian Orthodox
Icons
St. Petersburg
How Stroganov was developed by a French Chef
the Kosaks (don't know if it's spelled right)
Ivan the IV (or the Terrible, which really should be translated more as Awesome, but he also happened to be a bit Terrible, so whatever way you want it.)
St. Nickolas
Folk Religions
Actual Russian Orthodox Doctrine that claimed you must beat your wife and children or they would never be moral (this is about mid 1600's), also, there was specific church doctrine on how intercourse should work...

OH, and for kicks and giggles, some contemporary things:
Tetris!
The Kremlin
Mig-29
Mig-25
Su-27
The Hunt for Red October (and every other Tom Clancy novel I read as a teenager)
Hind-24 Gunship
KGB

Yeah, in the modern sense, I've only really dealt with Russia through Clancy novels. Quite frankly, it's not the fairest lense to be looking through. Tell me Nickopolidis, are you going to tell us how accurate we are at some point?

vodka
potatoes
dance (ballet)
good looking women (dated a russian girl once)
Cold
Communism - Marxism
Rasputin
Kremlin
Czars
syberia
syberian tigers
KGB
cold war


that is all that came to mind, how do you perceive the USA..like this?

fat
greedy
arrogant
world police
best music and movies
etc?

not sure I agree with best music... :D

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HwqbndPrCrA

ah weird al...

crap I almost forgot

AK47

lol

I like the Russian national anthem

I will back up your disagreement.

Trying not to double up:

Yeltsin
Nagan
Marshal Zhukov
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Profumo Affair
Chelski FC
Oligarchs
NKVD
Spetznaz
Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig place!
Sakhilin Islands
Ordzhonikidze/Commander Crabbe
Sexiest female accent ever!
Space Program
Obsolete nukes
Gary Powers
The Steppe
Mikoyan Gurevich
Mikhail Kalashnikov
Red Square (Is it still called that?)
Yekaterinburg
Medvedev
Tomb of Lenin
Antonov
T34/55 etc.
Ural motorcycles
Machorka tobacco
www.mobile-review.com
Gulags
Gorbachov
Zil
Gaz
Moskvitch
The Volga

I'd better stop now, phew! :)

On personal level there are some nicest people I ever met. I used to visit Moscow in 1980s every other year. It is the most unique metropol I ever been to. Nothing like US big cities or European. Best movies and art.
On the level of Russia as a state now and then: arrogant bully, with very little brain. Huge danger to the peace and stability. Right there with US and China. And not to forget that today Moscow is the most expensive city to live in.

Mates, I really enjoy reading your posts! :D Thanks a lot!
I was pretty sure that you can't know so much about Russia.. But you really know much about my country! That's great! ;) I hope this is due to some changes in my country: it becomes more and more opened, transparent and interesting.. :)
By the way, those of you who has been to Russia, is it really so hard to get Russian visa?

Well, honesty, I don't know much about some of the things that you post about Russia. :D (Muscovites, Serfdom, Stroganov - meal?.., Czars..)
But generally everything that you all mention are the things that characterize Russia.. :)

Well, the country was weak by the end of 80-s.. So there was a group of initiators with Yeltsin in the top of it that took the authority.. Then comes 90-s a so-called "transition period" when we start getting a market-oriented economy... Huge inflation, privatization... hard times.. Todays so-called Oligarchs are the consequence of the wrong privatization process.. They easily got the government property and started accumulating huge money.. Then we got a financial crisis in 1998, denomination.. After 1998 there become flourishing period.. Our economy and life level started to grow with nice temps.. Everything is much more better by now.. But still we are far from leading countries... :o

Yeah, that's right! I am convinced that Russian girls are the most beautiful ones.. :)
We have a joke: alcohol is a great Russian problem.. But that is why Russian girls are so beautiful... :D

Yeah, it's called Mausoleum.. It is placed on the Red Square.. I have never been there inside.. They say they have 2 bodies of Lenin (one is natural and another is made by wax or something) ant they change it each every time they need to elaborate the natural one with some special components.. :o

Fast food
Stupid (sorry) George Bush
Alaska
Best movies and actors
One of the best music (British music is also one of the best)
Stars and Stripes
52 States
Unfamiliar country for me (have never been to America)
Silicon Valley
Las-Vegas
American Dream
Provocative policy
Iraq
Low-quality cars (comparing with Japanese and European ones)
NATO
The State of Liberty
Texas
Washington D.C.
Wild West
Cold War
FBI
Marshal's Plan
Benny Franklin
Teodor Rusvelt's New Course
McDonalds
M-16
Lexus, Acura, Infinity

Lexus = Toyota
Acura = Honda
Infinity = Nissan

All Japanese car companies really, they are just marketed a different way in the USA to justify higher end cars and charge us more money.

Yep, sure, I know it. :) But this brands associates with USA for me but not with Japan.. :)

Yeah, funny how a lot of people in the US don't even realize that they are the same company. They just know they are better because they cost more, hahaha.

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Ice Station Barneo, the northernmost ice base in the world.

It’s reestablished every year by the Russians, and is the point of departure for many an expedition to the North Pole -- such as the ones that I’ve been covering for Børge Ousland. He is one of many who are impressed by the flawless logistics of the service-minded Russians!

:) ArcticStones

Matryoshka dolls
(It's a wooden doll, within a doll, within a doll, etc.)

The Fabergé eggs
(Jeweled sculptures resembling eggs, virtually priceless.)

Grigori Rasputin
(A mystic who was supposedly; poisoned, shot, beaten, and drowned.)

Alexander Karelin
(Previously undefeated Greco-Roman wrestler who was upset by Rulon Gardner at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.)

The Tunguska event
(Inexplicable massive explosion which happened in Siberia in 1908.)

The Heavy and his Sandvich.

That infamous ricin umbrella assassination.

Odd looking text encodings in my web browser.

Junk mail.
(Somehow, less annoying than the West African variety.)

Zombie networks.

The word "comrade".
(Strangely, couldn't find the Russian antonym for this word.)

My association to Russia has changed somewhat with the Georgia war. I think it is now mainly threat to peace and stability in the world.