About essential public services, and remembering I am just repeating what "small people" say, this is where the worst degradation happened between the soviet times and now : drugs that used to be free and which are now paid for, miserable salaries for teachers with the best elements looking for a better fate elsewhere, etc.

What happens in small towns is that medical resources which used to be there (such as anesthesists) have just disappeared, so that unless one has the means to go get care in the larger towns, one's health is left to luck.

And after the jobs boom of a few years back, the situation has become quite grim again. I know of some young russians, educated in France, who couldn't adapt to the place, went back to Russia, but are now in a dead end over there : no jobs, no future.

I have no agenda, I don't have the overall view, but I can't help thinking resources don't go where they should, and authority is not applied where it should.

Now, the same can be said here, and I certainly won't say the western leadership is any better...