They Say

One of these days a Russian online magazine and news aggregator Tjournal published an interview with Jovan Savovich, a Bosnian Serb who immigrated to Russia from former Yugoslavia early in 2000-s and started some very successful Internet sites, among which invitation-only Leprosorium and a very popular (hundreds thousands visitors) community Dirty.ru.

I am not going to translate the full inteview, it would take a lot of time and makes no sense for me, as Internet issues and mentioned sites are not what I am concerned about. Just a couple of paragrphs that fit the topic of my blog.

Here I am, a Serb who came to Russia from Bosnia, and for 13 years I've been running a web site visited by hundreds thousands people daily, and they write whatever they want, and nobody touches me. So every time somebody slanders the freedom of speech in Russia I just feel lack of words to say — my personal experience is different.

Just like every one who slanders medical service in Russia, goes against my personal experience. In Russia one can do whatever he or she wants with more freedom than anywhere else in the world, and then Russian doctors will save him from any shit, when the others would say "Just take him the f*** out to the morgue".

Surely, many people have different experience, but my personal one is more or less like that. So I live here, and not because I still have not decided where to escape, but because it's cool here.

They say various things about Russia, just like about all cool places, but in practice I do not know a country which is more free. Evidently, I am a very vatnik*. And we the vatniks are for freedom.

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*Vatnik (pronounsed ['vut-nik] — a quilted (cotton wadded) jacked, used by Red Army as a part of winter uniform, cheap and warm enough for frosty weather. Vatniks were (and still are) widely used in all regions of Russia with harsh winters by all people, from prisoners of legendary and heavily mistificated GULag to free workers and peasants of both genders.
Since 2011 is used as a derogatory and offensive term for people with pro-Soviet and patriotic mentality. However, after the Ukrainian Maydan events the word is widely used by pro-Ukrainian (I mean the current Kiev regime) propaganda for anyone supporting Russia, Putin, Novorossiya, Donetsk and Lugansk Republics and ideas of the so called "Russian World". So is used the basic word vata ['vuh-tuh], literally 'cotton wool'.