I guess you mean "paradise of gender equality" compared to Pakistan. By that logic, Russia is a paradise of peace compared to Nazi Germany because it's "only" providing weapons to rogue states rather than actually killing U.S. soliders on a battlefield. I realize it's difficult for Russians to understand, but we in the West have higher standards than that.

You're comment is wildly ignorant, since the treatment of women in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is widely criticized in the United States. In case you haven't noticed, you moron, this blog isn't about those places. If you want to address their issues, find a blog about them. Accusing this blog of "hypocrisy" for not talking about Pakistan is the statement of a true Russophile maniac.

It's classic Soviet gibberish to respond to a criticism of Russia by pointing to defects of OTHER countries. Where is your affirmative evidence that the position of women in Russia is GOOD? You have none, so you resort to the pathetic propaganda tactic of trying to divert the discussion to some other topic. The ability of Russians to mislead the West in this way was lost a long time ago, it's sad you haven't realized that yet.

If you consider one Russian woman being killed by her husband every forty minutes to be "paradise," then we'd hate to know what you think of as "hell." But then, perhaps you've never had an actual conversation with a Russian woman.

NIKOLAY:

Why is it that whenever anyone mentions a virtue of a country that exceeds Russia, Russophile nutjobs like you say "Russia is a different country" and can't be compared to others, but when you want to defend Russia you immediately start talking about other countries? Won't you ever mature past this childish idiocy?

I don't mention Saudi Arabia or Pakistan because this blog isn't about those countries, it's about Russia. Frankly, you don't mention them either, because as usual you don't bring anything of value to the discussion, no links comparing the fate of women in Russia to those of any other country (not that such information would be meaningful, of course, unless Russia's goal is to match their performance). Just hot air, like a typical Russophile waste of space.

On the other hand, I don't mention them because the study doesn't; but it does say that Russia needs to be talked about in the same class as Afghanistan and Sudan, which is pretty darn low.

It's really sad, and proof of how low Russia has sunk, that you can't defend your country on its merits but only by picking out countries that you think are EVEN WORSE than Russia. This is just the way it was in Soviet times, and you are walking right back down the same failed path. It's the reason Russia is headed for extinction as a country.

Let me try to make it clear enough so even your puny little mind can understand: Unless you can cite some evidence of good news for Russian women, all you are doing is spewing pathetic propaganda, influencing nobody and covering yourself with the mud of failure.

Have a nice boat trip down the longest river in psychiatry . . . Denial.

This has been a thoroughly amusing argument between Nikolai Ershov and La Russophobe. I have a few questions for La Russophobe (I know this article is quite old, but I hope the author checks the comments from time to time). The article has no other evidence of systematic abuse of women in Russia other than the purported fact that a woman is being killed in Russia by her husband every 40 minutes.

While the fact of murder is certainly horrible, the figure is not shockingly high statistically - even if we overestimate and say there are 2 deaths every hour, then there are 48 deaths every day, which makes about 17000 deaths a year; this is by no means accaptable, however, the US statistics on the issue is not much brighter. According to the Family Violence PRevention Fund, "Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives, according to a 1998 Commonwealth Fund survey.4 " and "Nearly 25 percent of American women report being raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date at some time in their lifetime, according to the National Violence Against Women Survey, conducted from November 1995 to May 1996.5" and "In the year 2001, more than half a million American women (588,490 women) were victims of nonfatal violence committed by an intimate partner.7" Website http://www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/

So, if these figures are accurate, we are not dealing with an issue of systematic abuse and discrimination against Russian women but male aggression which is unfortunately common throughout the world. I do not mean to say that everybody beats his wife, but rather that Russian women do not seem to be badly treated as far as crime statistics goes. In fact, as a young Russian woman who has lived in a large Russian city, I have never encountered any sex-based discrimination. Moreover, I would say that Russian women play a very important social role and are never seen as inferior except by a certain minority of men who are present in any society in various proportion.

I do not wish to be overly patriotic and vehemently defy any accusations of Russia being a hard place for a woman to live. I would like to state some facts that I have personally observed. In my university and in my friends' universities there is rarely a class in which girls constitute less than 50%. In fact, most university classes that I know of are composed mostly of girls. If female students constitute roughly more than half of the student body, it is not possible to say that women are discriminated against in Russian higher education institutions. Being a university student myself, I cannot remember of any incident of discrimination based on sex.

I would also like to comment on another article on this blog in which the author expresses his/her indignation that such a small percentage of the Russian population are licenced female drivers. It is certainly quite a shocking figure if you look at it from the American point of view. I do not want to be rude, but this statistics does not sound so terrible to someone who is trying to survive on 3000 roubles in Tulskaya oblast than to a grocery store owner in Pink Springs, Colorado, who has three vans and a lawn mower. Simply because the average income in Russia is much lower than in the US or rich European countries, and licenced drivers of any sex are not a prevalent group of the population. The reason there are only 2 percent female drivers is probably because a lot of people cannot afford cars, not because women in Russia are oppressed.

I have lived in an Arab country for quite a long time, and I must say that it is much less liberal toward women, but since La Russophobe does not desire to discuss how Russia compares to Muslim countries, I will not expand on that subject. However, it is interesting then why La Russophobe does not develop hostile feelings toward Arabs for treating their women with a different degree of freedom than the Westerners are used to. I do not wish to convert you, but Westerners and Russians (and oriental cultures) have different understanding of what constitutes freedom. While someone from the West may think that not letting a woman drive a car is an oppression of her freedom, a person from a Muslim country may say that women in the West are degraded because men in their society often treat them like sex objects and therefore humiliate their feminine honour. It is a question of whether or not we wish to impose our own standards upon cultures we do not thoroughly understand

I will be waiting to hear La Russophobe respond with more facts of Russian women being treated badly and unfairly on a regular basis. I would like to point out that violent crime is not necessarily a sign of widely supported misogyny that is rooted deeply in our culture. Violent crime exists everywhere.

ANONYMOUS:

You are mentally deranged and we will not carry on extended argument with a person who thinks the murder of women is "amusing." Stalin also had such ideas. We suppose you find him funny, too. That's just plain sick.

But we will say that it's an utterly pathetic attitude to try to justify Russian failure by claiming that America is an even bigger failure. That's what the USSR's leaders did, and look where the USSR is today. Is America the standard by which Russia is to be judged? If so, radical alternations are needed in Russia's form of government. Are you content to see Russia destroyed as long as America is too? If so, you are a traitor to Russia. If not, your hypocrisy is mindboggling, truly neo-Soviet in its character. It's really pathetic that you look to American faults when seeking to rationalize doing nothing to reform Russia, yet you ignore American virtues when seeking again to avoid reform.

Finally, any intelligent person can see that being "physically or sexually abused" is not the same as being killed. Your response amounts to the same kind of pathetic propagandistic attempt to change the subject that the USSR engaged in, and will lead Russia to the same results that the USSR achieved. Moreover: "Rape itself is down – its incidence having dropped 75 percent since the early 1990s, according to the Department of Justice."

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/thelma-and-louise-in-the-rear-view-mirror/index.html?ref=opinion