Life in the Heartland?

One of the new screens on Blogger shows me where the post I write are from.  I find it interesting that Russia is light green and getting greener.   I know little about Mother Russia other than what I know about their involvement in WWII.  It was described to me that in the United States, we had a lot of families that sent people off to that war.  In Russia, the number of people we sent to war was the percentage of people that died in Russia.  We sent a lot of resources to the fights and we can't possible understand the commitment they had.

A lot of Americans have been brought up on the propaganda that Stalin and Communism was bad for them but we have little frame of reference for the reasons they did what they did.  The teaching point was that the Soviets had a nuclear weapon and might someday blow us up.  We actually had a drill in school where we would get under our desks if there was a bright flash. The question I always had was who had the first one and who actually used it? Didn't they have the right to be afraid of us?  

When we look at the effects of the depression on the United States, we need to remember they too had a depression and then a war that was fought on their dirt.  Perhaps Stalin shouldn't get the bad rap for starving people, as much as he should rewarded for the number of people that didn't starve.  I don't think that we understand the depth of love the people there have for their Mother Russia.

One thing I do know is that because of the National Geographic programs there is one great big beautiful country there.  I am not so fond of ice and snow but I don't live in Minnesota either.   They, because of the horrible nuclear accident have a segment of the country where there are no people because of the radiation.  They are having the opportunity  to watch a large segment of the countryside revert back to a time before man was there to plow the ground, cut down the trees and eat all the animals.  Just the other night there was a program about the wolf population.  the speculation was that the wolves would over populate and play havoc on the number of other animals.  It seems that they have developed a fairly stable population and seem to be developing normally.

I really can't say that I have the need to travel to Russia right now, there is so much of my own country to see.  I will try to keep an open mind and see if there isn't room for an old retired Colonel to better understand the people and not hate or fear them because of what happened in the past.  

 Спасибо вам и до свидания  (Thank You and Goodbye)

MUD