Russia

As I picked up Vodka, Tears, and Lenin's Angel, by Jennifer Gould, I thought that I was about to read a novel that would be boring with nothing but facts and statistics. As I began to read it, the novel became much more interesting. Jennifer Gould, a journalist, decided to go to Russia. She was there to research Russia and its culture. I would have never believed some of the situations and conversations she had with so many people. The topics that made me change my mind about Russia in general were the Internat, the cars and drivers, the homeless, and sexpionage.

While reading about the Internat, I started to get disgusted. One of the reasons for this is that Russia sent healthy children to orphanages with ill kids. They were not like orphanages hear in the United States, with reasonable housing conditions, education and a chance to live with a family to provide them the better things in life. Instead, as a punishment they would be beaten, or sent to a psychiatric facility and drugged or tied to their beds for months. The law will not allow foreigners adopt healthy children. In place of the healthy kids, they would find a Western doctor that would diagnose the sick children as healthy. I believe that is not far to the children or the family who is adopting the child. Also, in the summer the orphanages close down and the majority of the kids go to camp. Once the camps are filled the extra kids get sent to psychiatric facilities. A man named Vitaly Llynin told Jennifer, "Some children are sent to the orphanages because they are too hot-tempered and get into too many fights." The children say that they do not understand why they go to these hospitals. An administrator believes that the children deny the fact that they are there because they are ashamed. None of the children receive counseling. Instead they are given antidepressants and tranquilizers. I personally can not believe that any person would think that this kind of action is okay.

Another subject that I found a little disturbing was how the people drive and who are the drivers. To me, Moscow sounds like its road are worse then Pennsylvania. There are no traffic laws. People can make illegal anywhere they want. Streets turn from one way to two way frequently. They have many potholes. It is astonishing to think that 1.7 million cars are out on these roads. Jennifer states that a thousand people die and five thousand people get injured every year from the lawless roads and conditions of those roads. I can not believe anyone would want to drive with out laws and how the situation of the roads. One other thing that I found interesting was that anyone can be a cab driver such as students, drunks, KGB Agents, and retired acrobats. These people can charge you any amount of money, take you only one direction, take you the wrong direction or take you the long way if they wanted to. Russians do not have any resect for the traffic police. From what the author wrote it sounds as though they have every right to not respect them. The traffic police can pull you over if they think you are drunk and if you deny that you are drunk then they will expect you to give a blood test. There are ways of getting out of the blood test. First you could give them money and they will let you go. Second you could give them Vodka as a payment for what they were accused of. I think that if I lived in this country I would go crazy because there is no order. It seems like the more people you know, easier you can get out of illegal situations.

Furthermore, the homelessness seems to be just as bad if not worse then the United States. The author talked about how some families live in a train station. The police do not do anything to help or bother them, which shocked me. Children get stolen by gangs or are sold by their own families to get by. Some families teach their children to steal, beg, and prostitution. I could not believe there was only one shelter for homeless