The only significant difference between a resident of the village of Pishnur in Arbazh District and someone living on Leningradka in Moscow’s Sokol area is the gap in income levels. In the provinces, poverty is seen as a way of life, while destitution, contrary to the classic writer’s claim, does not become a moral failing. In just one weekend on Pushkin Square, I saw more drunk people than I did in an entire year spent here. People in the villages are not particularly concerned with buying themselves a new TV. They dream of a good future for their children; what matters to them is how to improve the life around them: organizing snow removal, restoring an old monastery well, cleaning out the pond. They have no intention of leaving their villages, and over the course of their lives they do, on average, more small good deeds than a typical nonprofit living on grants from the Civic Chamber (a state-affiliated public body). With many of them, I find it much easier to speak the same language than with the average patron of a GQ bar, a Moscow taxi driver, or Alexander Prokhanov (a nationalist Russian writer and publicist). http://www.forbesrussia.ru/column/46914-est-li-zhizn-v-provintsii