1) Where in Russia do you live? 2) How would you rate the wealth distribution? (as in, what percentage are lower-class, middle-class, upper-class) 3) Is the political system as repressive as it sounds?(I often get different responses to this one, depending on whether or not someone is pro-Putin or anti-Putin) 4) Are the sanctions actually doing anything notable to the Russian economy? 5) How hard was it for you to learn English? (to get a rough guage of how hard it is to learn Russian)
1. I currently reside in Tomsk for the university study, but I've spent my first 20 years of life in Kemerovo. Both cities are in Western Siberia, beyond the Ural Mountains and "in the middle" of the Asian part of Russia. Russian Wikipedia pages for Tomsk and Kemerovo show nicely where both cities are on the map of Russia: skip a bit of the pages until you see the maps; the big red dot is Moscow, and the small green dot is for the respective cities. Living beyond the Ural usually means that the living is a bit worse compared to the European part of the country (the part where Moscow and Saint-Petersburg are). I've never been to the European part of any prolonged period of time, so I can't compare how big the difference is. 2. I'm afraid I lack the information or any significant insight into the issue. The best I can do for you is point out that there turned out to be plenty of information on the issue online. That being said, there are still a lot of people in Western Siberia living what we call "бараки" [bah-RAH-kih] - small houses, usually old, ill-stuffed and most suited for poor people, since бараки are cheaper and require far more manual maintenance (shovelling snow, cleaning the roof, chopping wood for the fireplace, so on). Many people live in small apartments in the old houses built in the 70s and earlier (my Kemerovo house was build in 1961) because they can't afford buying newer flats (of which there are a growing number nowadays). Those of the lower-income have to survive on the miniscule amount of food their income can allow to afford - without the mention of the rent or mortgage, necessary medicine for older people and othersuch. I come from a mid-to-higher middle-class family of three, and we were able to afford a capital repair of the apartment twice in my lifetime (as well as pay for the new car, the pretty good but not outstanding food and so on). 3. I'm not a politics kind a person, so I don't pay attention to it or to whatever our government does. I'm pretty apathetic politically. That being said, my friend once told me about the Boris Nemtsov murder and gave me the link to an online discussion of the matter on a Russian forum. There have definitely been a consensus: it was an FSB wetwork and the government allowed it to happen (given a list of factors that would otherwise make such a murder impossible not affecting the case). People - the common people with whom I get to spend time - talk in great lengths about how the government is corrupt and how it's going to shit - deeper than it already is, that is. Rarely do I get to hear how the government did something good for its citizens, which may or may not be the result of the cynically-inclined Russian culture due to the very recent USSR breakdown and the amount of people still remembering the time. 4. They seem to, at least for parts of the market. I don't keep that big of a track of the prices in grocery shops, but I do notice changes in the cheese prices and quality because I buy it rather often. What I've noticed is that there are still imported cheeses, but they're very expensive - more expensive than they used to be. Moreover, because importing certain high-quality kinds of cheese - Maasdam, Chedder and othersuch - is less financially viable now, Russian productions now try to replicate those kinds locally, with little success - the taste of the European-produced counterparts is definitely superior - but for a much lower prices. Vegetables far more often come from the local sources rather than from Europe and Europe-affiliated countries; they might be as good but they don't look as bright, which may or may not be the only difference. Beyond that, I don't have the necessary insight to provide any more truthful information. 5. I don't remember how difficult it was for me to learn English - I've been learning it from the very young age - so instead, I asked my English Linguistics groupmates (I study the subject as the Russian equivalent of the uni major). The definite difficulty which all Russian English-learners face is the articles. Russian doesn't have such a thing - all the ideas the articles contain are extracted from the context most of the time, with demonstrative pronouns filling the gaps - and to wrap one's head around the concept would present a challenge. Another one seems to be pronounciation: English has some sounds that have no mirroring in Russian, like the interdental consonants expressed in written form as "th", which are difficult for the students to get right (and some never do, going for "ze table" and somesuch). Auxiliary articles take some getting used to, as well, right there with modal verbs and their necessitation of "to" ("need to [do something]" vs. "must [do something]"). Those four take a lot of practice and are often enough failed, partially or completely, by the students.
"1.2 degrees Farenheit". The US is the only major country to use the Farenheit scale. It depends on what you call "bad". A fellow student of mine is from Azerbaijan, which is a sunny and warm country, and so, for him the Siberian winters are very cold. For my mother, born in Siberia, winters are cold, while for me it can be cold sometimes but is not a hindering. Any winter can be weathered given proper clothing and shoes. That being said, it's pretty common here to have the roads iced, which causes quite a few road accidents. I don't understand it in any reliable manner, but my guess is that when temperatures shift suddenly from, say, -20°C to 0°C (like they did just yesterday), the snow on the roads melts and then, when the shift is towards the lower minuses, it freezes up again. This can be bad.
You did? I just checked both Kemerovo's and Tomsk's climate tables from the English Wikipedia pages I've linked to, and you don't come close to either of those cities' average January temperature, which is what threw me off: at no point January is as warm. The closest you come to, Celsius-wise, is average year temperature in Kemerovo, and even then, you're a .1 off, or January's average Farenheit temperature, with .2 off. Were you checking something else, by any chance?