What I saw was totally different from my prior impression! And I got the same feedback from friends who came here first time as well. It is a quite developed country and at least on the surface, I don't see any drastic difference between a Russia city from a Western country city. On the contrary to my surprise, Russia seems to have been very influenced by the West from the commercial perspective. All the major US/EU brands are easily seen on the Russian commercial streets. Shopping malls or centers are nothing inferior to those in the US. People on the streets all appear happy and busy with their daily life. We have met quite a few Russian guides for our tours and they all sound quite positive and satisfied for their current life. This is not an impression change we have got just from one or two cities we went. We spent 10 days there via a River Cruise (Viking) from St. Petersburg to Moscow, passing many different small towns on the route. We have seen and heard the same thing all along. With the Viking cruise, we also benefited from their quite informative history lessons they offered every day, which allowed us to have a crush course to learn a lot about their long and rich history. A few personal takeaways I have got from their talks:
- The decades long socialism/communism implementation in Soviet Union was just like a historic joke for nowadays people. It was a rather brutal period for them but they are happy that it has finally been turned over. When they talk about what happened back then, they just sound like talking about some ridiculous things that were so terrible that should have never really happened but somehow actually happened and caused a lot of harms to the peoples and society! I'm afraid something similar will be repeated as well sooner or later not far from Russia. I just wish it will be a smooth transition process, not so violent as for Russia.
- For those Russians who have experienced the past SU time, they know how bad it was in comparison with what they can enjoy now. The freedom they are having now is unthinkable in the past, which often meant life or death. I'm sure it is not the same type of freedom yet for them vs what we have in the West, but at least there is no restriction for the media, especially the online social media as they can freely search for anything. And they can openly criticize or joke about Putin as we often heard about during their talks.
- The laughable centrally controlled planning economy with a promise of Free for All had turned the once rich and powerful country to the edge of collapse that eventually dissolved the seemingly unbeatable country! They showed us a few photos from the SU time, which looked quite familiar for people in my age: long queue for buying everything and empty shelves in stories. Ironically Free for All that has been tested and demonstrated again and again with nothing but brutal failure is becoming a fashion now in the US. People are brainwashed for the socialism ideas that are becoming more popular here. What a tragedy we are going to see if the Left extreme ideology will become reality some day. Unfortunately the chance is high as far as I can see that the push for the extreme left will indeed invade into our daily life, like it or not!
- They shared some terrible stories occurred during the SU time. One of them: if you wanted to expand your living space, you could simply report to the KGB about some wrong doing of your neighbor without a need of any evidence. Your neighbor would be taken away by the KGB very soon and you could move into their living rooms. Sounds familiar? If you don't like anyone, you can just "Me-Too" him here! No evidence? No problem! the DEMs will force the poor Me-Too'ed guy to surrender or at least being humiliated in public. Anything different from the SU KGB's behavior? Not much for me at least!!
- Russia is facing huge challenges for sure. And indeed it is still suffering dearly in economy due to two major headwinds: lower oil/gas prices as Russia is hugely dependent on natural resources; and severe sanctions imposed by the US/EU. But as far as I can see and hear, Russia is surviving quite well under enormous challenges. That leads me to my conclusion:
- I think Russia has likely seen its worst by now. More bright future is unfolding for Russia. Maybe the stock market has already sent this signal to us. If you don't know yet, Russia stocks (RSX) are outperforming the US market this year and more so for the EU. For risk takers, betting on Russia may turn out to be a great idea in the next few years!
The weather was not so great for us in the past 10 days but we indeed have seen quite similar breathtaking beauties there. If you haven't been there, I'd highly recommend you to go there to see with your own eyes. Thanks to the intensive sanctions, the Russian Ruble is very undervalued, just 16 cents for each Ruble (or 62 Rubles for each US$). So everything is cheap there. But I'm not sure how long this will last. If the Russian economy starts to turn around, especially with sanctions being removed even partially, Ruble will go up quickly. 
During our trip, I was "elected" to be a team leader for 5 golden flowers (5朵金花)👰👩👸👱👯 My job? Take care of their umbrellas when they are busy with sightseeing and take photos for them when they need....😇
But there are a lot of fun for sure and we are already thinking when to go back again.
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