Home away from home
For our second week in Russia we rented this apartment in St Petersburg, across the street from the Winter Palace. Although it was hardly a humble Kruschevka, it allowed us to commit seven days to a decent survey of the Hermitage galleries and also an opportunity to experience the Russian economy at the supermarket and public transport levels. The Australian media had parroted the usual American fable of Russia being a "gas station masquerading as a country" and an economy that was like an old shack, just kick the door down and the whole thing would collapse. Well, it was nothing like that, and I had a hard time convincing the young devotees of the late Navalny (I think they were able to sniff me out) that really things in Russia, which by no means perfect, were not radically different to conditions in the so-called West and in many ways even better, especially in access to education -which was my field. Last week the World Bank announced that Russia had surpassed first Germany and then Japan to become the fourth largest economy in the world by GDP-PPP. This was not supposed to happen before 2027 but then Russia is full of surprises, and the ill-conceived sanctions imposed on Russians by the West have accelerated Russian economic growth, potentially catastrophically for Europe. If you find this information difficult to believe then follow this link to the World Bank website and read the section headed Figure 2: www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/ICP2021_DataViz_1
Home away from home
For our second week in Russia we rented this apartment in St Petersburg, across the street from the Winter Palace. Although it was hardly a humble Kruschevka, it allowed us to commit seven days to a decent survey of the Hermitage galleries and also an opportunity to experience the Russian economy at the supermarket and public transport levels. The Australian media had parroted the usual American fable of Russia being a "gas station masquerading as a country" and an economy that was like an old shack, just kick the door down and the whole thing would collapse. Well, it was nothing like that, and I had a hard time convincing the young devotees of the late Navalny (I think they were able to sniff me out) that really things in Russia, which by no means perfect, were not radically different to conditions in the so-called West and in many ways even better, especially in access to education -which was my field. Last week the World Bank announced that Russia had surpassed first Germany and then Japan to become the fourth largest economy in the world by GDP-PPP. This was not supposed to happen before 2027 but then Russia is full of surprises, and the ill-conceived sanctions imposed on Russians by the West have accelerated Russian economic growth, potentially catastrophically for Europe. If you find this information difficult to believe then follow this link to the World Bank website and read the section headed Figure 2: www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/ICP2021_DataViz_1