I remember the time, when I was proud to be Russian. Really proud. I stood up during Kremlin's clock chiming when we entered the new year. My parents laughed at me, but I felt that this a symbolic gesture to honor everyone's work in keeping the country alive. I was young, and foolish, at the time, but at some point this did become pointless in my eyes, because I lost that sense of pride. It did not happen after bandit Putin invaded Ukraine, no, it was years before that, almost 2 decades even.
Feeling of change
I do not know when exactly it happened. Probably, it was a gradual shattering of the pink glasses, and not just 1 particular moment. While most of my life Putin was the president, I do remember some of the times of Yeltsin. Do not remember USSR, since I lived only 2 years there, and who does remember their first 2 years?
Obviously I did not care about presidents at the time, but when Yeltsin resigned and Putin took his place, there was something... "In the air". It felt like something was changing. Or at least that's how grown-ups around me felt, and that mirrored in my feelings, too. There was this feeling of things getting better. Slowly, but still - better. Modern analytics say that this was actually not because of Putin: while the change itself brought some hope and excitement to people, it was mostly the implementation of changes in laws and processes that were initiated during Yeltsin's rule. Laws take time to get implemented, but general populace does not care for that, and thus there was a misperception, that changes were done by Putin specifically. And since the changes were positive and seemed to affect a lot of people and things were improving in places... The cult of Putin began.
Since I was young, I did not care about any changes, and, honestly, I can't even pinpoint something specific, that could be considered a good change at the time. But people around me, and especially on TV, were saying how Russia is blossoming finally. This in turn fed the patriotism feeling, which was also supported by teachers and annual Victory Day celebrations. But around the time I was 14, something started changing.
Critical thinking
My guess is that I was starting to see contradictions. I consider this somewhat of a talent of mine: I see patterns in things, in events, and that sometimes helps me draw out non-obvious conclusions. I am not talking about illusionary patterns and connections, though: in my experience they always turned out to be real and very accurate, even though not 100% accurate, of course. And I was not seeing the same things that they were telling.
They were telling, that we have great education, but I was seeing how certain subjects were minimized or completely removed, how the plans were being changed, and all that was making the education almost useless. They were telling, that we have awesome healthcare, but the older I got the more money we had to spend on private clinics or paid services in government facilities, because we could not get necessary help for free, even though it was supposed to be available. When I grew up and switched to "adult healthcare", I practically always used my medical insurance, rather than governmental clinics, because free services were complete waste of time (with very few exceptions).
(Not so) free speech
There was also this notion of "free speech", but already saw some TV channels being closed or sold to become extremely different, and had certain levels of censorship appearing at school. We had a history teacher with whom we had debates about certain history events (not only in Russian history), and at the time we had discussions about the pact Stalin had with Hitler, and how there were certain cooperative acts, but then there was a teacher swap and if this topic was brought up (because obviously we needed another year of study of WW2), it was being forced into "we did not cooperate, there was only anon-invasion pact", which is not true.
Another example of freedom of speech suppression was literature classes. If I dared to question anything that was being discussed about any piece of literature - it would become almost a scandal. Sometimes with "I know better than you, what the author meant to say" or "I know better what happened back then in history". And granted, in some cases it was true, but in others... Things were up for interpretation.
Red company
And in general, I felt bullied by the teaching system most of the time, which contradicted the narrative of how nurturing our education system is. Yeah, only if your parents spend lots of money on extra home-teaching and/or you study yourself to the bone. Which actually might have broken quite a few children from my generation.
It became worse as I grew up and tried other aspects of Russian society, especially during trying times for myself. No one really gave a damn about anything. You would not get any kind of support for anything. You always had to do things yourself. Oh, and if you did do something yourself and that somehow helped your group - it became group's achievement and not yours, and good luck demanding appropriate compensation. If you are familiar with color theory for companies - this is what "red company" is, but on societal level. In fact, I believe the description of the red companies was written based on USSR and China.
Which brings me to an important point: USSR was not really dismantled. Yes, some republics became independent countries, but the new "Russia" was actually still the same. It was still a big red company, which was lead by gluttons. It just shrunk in size. One would think, that this is actually good, because fewer silos... But again, the biggest silo was still there. The very few good things that started happening during Yeltsin's time were either reversed or corrupted/abused by Putinists, and we gradually returned to the initial state or even worse.
Impulsive spending
When Putinist annexed Crimea in February 2014, I was like: "Wha? Why? You don't have the money to support your own regions." When they started war in Donbass, there was not that much of coverage of the event in local media for some reason, but I was still thinking the same thing. And then they got involved in Syria, as well... Not just military, but hospitals with doctors and schools with teachers. For free, while in Russia itself hospitals and schools were (and still are) getting closed due to lack of funding. And then there even was the "Денег нет, но вы держитесь" ("There's just no money. Cheers!") meme, that was said in Crimea, believe it or not.
One would think that alone would trigger people, but... No. Still lots of people lived in literal shit, were sick and unhappy, but believed, that they need to suffer just a little bit longer, so that the demigod Putin could save them all. And even the war did not change this. Because people do not care for other. A guy returns from the front without legs, and his village spends all the money that were meant for his rehabilitation on exquisite foods and alcohol eaten and drunk within several days.
Everyone for themselves
And these people say, that Russians are such "good caring and inviting people". Yeah... People selling each other left and right, if they can. People where it's the norm for parent to bully and abuse their children. When my mom died, my father did not wait too long to start stealing from the apartment and demanding, that I sign off the 2nd one (which I got as inheritance from mom) to him, because "reasons". Seriously, the reasoning was "just because you have to".
I think the most honest person in my own family was my father's brother (from same parents), who was an alcoholic and died from stroke. He did not deny that he is suffering, he did not steal (at least as far I know), he was really happy to see me and spend time with me, when we visited his family's place or he visited ours. Of course I do not know what was going on in reality, but at least there was no "stuck up" behavior, which was common in families of the other 2 brothers, who liked to "boast" they bought something expensive, whether it was a thing or a trip somewhere. You know, like other people, that come to other countries as tourists and start flaunting their money, thinking that everyone owns them something. Until someone breaks their jaw, that is.
I am an extremist
To be honest, I am not even sure, why I am writing this. I am sure I did not write anything someone else has not. And even if I did, no one will read this in the first place. I just felt like I need to try to show, that Russia was and is a bullshit country. Its people is a bullshit people. There are some exception, yes, but the country they want is not Russia. I would even say that they are delusional, if they think it will change. It won't, because they are not really part of the people, that make up this bullshit country. They are abnormal, and abnormal is always being pushed out.
Russia needs to be literally destroyed. It needs to split into smaller pieces, way smaller than what we got from USSR. The pieces need to become so small, so that the new "nations" would either die out because they are filled with incompetent and impotent alcoholics or that will have high enough percentage of those "abnormal" people, that will be able to push things forward towards recovery and "brighter future".
I mean, the prick up top is playing some strategy game where you claim hexes, and he is trying to own all the hexes, but he is playing really poorly, so sooner or later, he will run out of resources, and will start losing those hexes.
I believe that this is the only reason for this war. To jerk the Russian nation so hard and for so long, so that it would build up so much pressure, that it would have no other way, but to explode in a bloody ejaculation, that would bring forth new nations. And that being said, now I am probably a real extremist in Putinists' eyes.
