deeper into russia

Negotiations with Russians often involve flared tempers. During negotiations and meetings, temper tantrums and walkouts often occur. Never say never and now never say sorry because...


Some 'hard-line' Russians still view compromise as a sign of weakness, and often refuse to back down. To these individuals, compromising is bad business. once i witness a young taxi driver quarreling with a poor old lady because she didn't shut his door hard enough. Old lady too wasn't giving in, she fought back like a fierce kitten.

Russians are highly literate, and have almost a 100% literacy rate.


Now, somehow, i don't trust my observation but what i see are small shops popping up everywhere like mushrooms after the rain but they shut down very quickly too.So, there might be some explanation here. 


A major problem is a small share of small businesses in overall economic activity. For example, in UK as much as 46.2% (2003) are employed in small businesses (compared to 11.5% in Russia) and while the turnover of small businesses in UK reaches 38.3%, it is a mere 4% in Russia. The official statistics might lower the real turnover details, as many Russian businesses prefer to "hide" the real figures to avoid taxes. However, there are estimates that such businesses account to about 50% of the total number of enterprises, so even in this case the share of small business is very small. 


Get some money, hide them and run?


There are estimates showing that from 30% to 50% of salary in Russia is paid "in envelopes" (thus, not officially registered and taxed), and that about 50% small businesses are not showing part or all of their turnover.
One of Russia's main problems is that it was for a long time isolated from the outside world. The internet is something that can solve this problem faster than anything else. The more people, schools, regions, have access to the internet, the easier it will be to integrate the society and provide a free access to information to everybody. The standard level of internet penetration in EU countries is about 50%, in USA, Australia and New Zealand - 65%, in Scandinavia - 70-80%. Eastern European countries have about 30% internet penetration.

Internet users in Russia (2005):(% of total population)	12 Mln 8.3%
Computers owned: (% of total population):	15 Mln 10.4%

These numbers are in 2005, i got them from the internet. without doubt, the numbers are higher now.
so, russians are clever. its just that the russian intelligence is now transferring from paper to computer.


today, right now, i think no matter how rude and clever ( because admit it, clever people aren't fun sometimes ) russians are, i will miss russia and the few few lovely humble people i got to know.


p/s  i want to write something original but nothing clever ever comes up.