Russians have had an on-again, off-again obsession with seeking answers through their dreams. The Yandex search engine recently turned this obsession into a report on what people in the world’s largest country dream about.
By compiling the 200 most popular dream-related search queries (“meaning of dreams about…”) entered in various parts of the country during the morning hours, Yandex created a Russian Map of Dreams. Not surprisingly, it reflected the country’s geography: bears visit the dreams of those living in wild, Siberian regions, Russians in the North dream of cranberries, while only residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg dream of the metro. In Chelyabinsk, people dream of meteorites.
person, fish, child, snake, to die, alive, boy, pregnancy, water, tooth, dog, house, white, blood, former, large, cat, small, hair, hand/arm
In the centennial year of the Russian Revolutions, some Russian officials have been consumed by nostalgia for the prerevolutionary world. Among the stranger recent manifestations of this was an interview with lawmaker Natalia Poklonskaya, a former prosecutor in Crimea.
“You know, this morning, the bust of our Emperor Nicholas II that we unveiled in a park near the chapel started oozing myrrh. People come with their children to hold them against the bust so that they will be cured,” she said, smiling excitedly in an interview with the Orthodox TV channel Tsargrad.
The revelation instantly went viral, inspiring all sorts of online tomfoolery.
Poklonskaya is not the only Crimean politician to wax nostalgic. Governor Sergei Aksyonov also said in March that what the country needs is a tsar. “When there is no unity of command, there is collective irresponsibility. When the country faces outside threats, outside hotbeds of resistance, harsh measures must be taken. In my view, today Russia needs a monarchy.” (RIA)
Yet most Russians don’t agree. In a poll by Levada Center, 34 percent said the end of the monarchy was a great loss for the country, while 52 percent said it was not, and 13 percent couldn’t say. Only 16 percent said they felt great affection for Nicholas II among the figures of the revolutionary era. The Bolshevik figures Lenin, Stalin, and even Dzerzhinsky were far more popular.
Russian officials continue to contort themselves, trying to avoid saying the name “Alexei Navalny” in public. Here are some of the ways Russia’s leadership have referred to him in the past:
“This character Этот персонаж you refer to openly says that ‘everyone is horrible, choose me for president.’”
If someone у кого-то has any real chance, we should help these people этим людям show themselves, draw attention to themselves.
Wherever this gentleman этот господин appears… there is always some problem.
But people люди who fight corruption, they should themselves be as clean as glass.
Some of these activists кто-то из таких активистов are real fighters against corruption motivated by altruism, but for others для кого-то it’s a political program.
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