"Cossackia?"  Where the hell is "Cossackia!?"  And don't give me that cock and bull about "Cossackia cannot be understood with the mind, nor its land measured by the acre. It is a special case. You can only believe in Cossackia."

Americans and Nazis thought that if there was an Cossack SS unit on the Nazi side, there must be an opressed Cossackia. Simular for Idel-Ural, it's coming from Nazi designs.

"I feel like as a patriot I should do my bit in contributing to the improvement of Russia," the U.S.-born son of Soviet immigrants said from his suburban Chicago home.

Might be that American exceptionalism is getting tired. Or most likely is that Moscow is more interesting place than Chicago suburbia.

Slightly related, I saw an article (in Russian) yesterday that 82% of Russian  jews in Israel think that Israelis do not see them as Israelis but as Russians; 25% think they were discriminated for being Russian, 51% of their kids in school were discriminated against and 31% of kids were physically assaulted by non-Russian kids.

On emigration topic, remember this from Medvedev G8 interview:

MICHAEL LUDWIG: Mr President, a few days ago we read in a survey that among the young middle class elite that you want to develop up to 60 percent, that is the majority of this elite is contemplating emigrating from Russia. They are the future, the professionals, people who have been fortunate in life, and yet most of them are nonetheless considering emigration. What can you do so as to not to lose this generation?

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: To be honest, I do not know what survey you are talking about.

Before G8 the theme of 60% of Russian elite wanting to emigrate appeared in inosmi.ru translations of Polish and UK press.

Levada Center published an explanation that they were conducting a poll among upper middle class (Levada Center estimates 2-3% of population) 6% are thinking about "leaving a country at least for some time" and 15% think "often" about leaving. The way question was worded, it could be understood as a tourist/business trip.

WCIOM had a similar poll among general public, and 35% wanted to travel abroad, 9% to work, 4% - to study. 8% wanted to emigrate. 50% did not want to leave Russia at all.

V-Dawg.  Looking particularly Original Gangsta today...

Did you hear his latest doctor joke that cost Mechel 7.5 bln $ in market capitalization (50% on the Russian stock exchange)?