People ask me a lot what it's like to be in Russia right now. If you're reading this much later, just to situate you, a few days ago Russia tested a missile capable of penetrating missile-defense systems like the one the US happens to be building in Poland, and Putin's drawing more and more criticism for censoring the media and curtailing freedom of speech.

I don't ask my students about it too much, because I don't want to treat them like my amateur pet sociology project, but when politics does come up, they seem fairly resigned to the fact that the government's going to do what it's going to do and it's a waste of time to think about it much beyond that. The same attitude, I suppose, is common in America, but the difference is Americans feel guilty about it. We hang on to the belief that the government represents us and that, in the end, we're responsible for its actions because we elected it, so we really should be paying attention even if we're not.

That feeling of responsibility doesn't really exist here. People view the government is its own beast, something that has to be sidestepped and accommodated so they can go on with their daily lives. (Khrushchev's granddaughter has interesting things to say about the government and peoples' mentality: http://www.readrussia.com/a_1_2007_12.htm) The protests in Red Square a few weeks ago got a fair amount of press abroad, but here there was barely a blip. The people who paid the most attention, as far as I could tell, were the expats.