{"id":373142,"date":"2018-08-13T00:38:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-12T23:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/notes-from-a-russian-american\/"},"modified":"2018-08-13T00:38:11","modified_gmt":"2018-08-12T23:38:11","slug":"notes-from-a-russian-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/notes-from-a-russian-american\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes From a Russian American"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>I\u00a0had\u00a0just finished exercising and went to\u00a0the\u00a0sauna. The gym I go to is a modern facility with\u00a0new equipment and is\u00a0very\u00a0popular in our city.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite parts\u00a0are\u00a0the\u00a0sauna and\u00a0the\u00a0steamer.\u00a0Both remind me of my old country \u2013 Russia. Though, to be politically and geographically correct \u2013 I never lived in Russia: I was born and raised in one of the fifteen republics of\u00a0the\u00a0former USSR \u2013 the republic of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n<p>So, I am\u00a0a\u00a0Russian from Kazakhstan.\u00a0It\u2019s kind of confusing for Americans, and when\u00a0twenty-six years ago\u00a0my American wife brought me here, the customs official gave me\u00a0an alien card where my nationality was stated\u00a0not Russian but\u00a0Kazakh.\u00a0My friends make fun of me, because Russians and Kazakhs are like apples and oranges. We look different\u2026<\/p>\n<p>In 1992, when I arrived in America, the relationship between\u00a0the\u00a0two cold war rivals was\u00a0excellent: Americans traveled to Russia, opening McDonalds, KFC\u2019s, Burger Kings, and other businesses, and Russians were opening not only their hearts but even the secrets of the overthrown KGB.\u00a0Millions of Russians and Americans\u00a0enjoyed such a\u00a0\u201cromance\u201d between\u00a0the\u00a0two most powerful\u00a0nuclear\u00a0countries in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Not\u00a0anymore!\u00a0Every morning\u00a0I wake up to the\u00a0words,\u00a0\u201cRussia is terrible,\u201d and go to sleep with the humiliating jokes of\u00a0the \u201cnight-show-clowns\u201d about\u00a0\u201cthe\u00a0dictator\u201d\u00a0Putin and\u00a0\u201cbarbaric\u201d\u00a0Russians, whose 13 hackers changed the electoral minds of millions&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/08\/10\/cold-war-in-the-sauna-notes-from-a-russian-american\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u00a0had\u00a0just finished exercising and went to\u00a0the\u00a0sauna. The gym I go to is a modern facility with\u00a0new equipment and is\u00a0very\u00a0popular in our city. My favorite parts\u00a0are\u00a0the\u00a0sauna and\u00a0the\u00a0steamer.\u00a0Both remind me of my old country \u2013 Russia. Though, to be politically and geographically correct \u2013 I never lived in Russia: I was born and raised in one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-373142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}