"He speaks very well ... but still do not know for whom he works"

I once asked my russian landlord his opinion about president Putin. "He speaks very well ... but still do not know for who he works." Russian sense of humor is sometimes indecipherable, but perhaps because of that is the best clue to understand this huge country.

Putin, former KGB agent, is now prime minister of a country were people think that "there are no ex-KGB agents, they never cease to be."

What does not kill, fattens. So it would not be surprising that the carnage on Monday in Moscow would make Putin more popular. One of his most famous phrases is: "Who does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Who wants it back has no brain." Today poverty is not rare, but Saint Petersburg welcomes you with a huge Lenin.
 
Ninotchka is a 1939 film in which Greta Garbo plays a Russian communist agent who is sent to Paris to investigate the work of three comrades lured by the trappings of capitalism. They ask:

- And how is Moscow?
-Okay, mass trials have been a success. Russians will be less but will be better.

Pruning is becoming more fine now: only the elites matter, the murder in the right dose. Lenin said that democracy is a form of government in which changes every four years tyrant. Surrounded by the Urals and the North Pole, some Slavs want to last forever.