[SOUND] So what do we understand by separating old Russians and old Russians. I will start with the old Russians, so to say. By this I understand those people who really had hard times coming from one system, from one country to another. Now 20 something years after this process took place, we probably should say that those people are non-existent anymore. Because it was enough time 20 something years to get accustomed to a new country, to new mentality, to new ideology or at least a absence of the old ideology, and probably now this will be already an obsolete category. And we better talk about these people in terms of the generational discourse, like people who are really in their after their middle life. They're senior citizens depending on what they’re doing. Still we can say that now Old Russian's change their face, a social face. There are now new young people who have not ever lived in the Soviet Union, who didn't know how it was, but due to their normal dissent that people have in their life, and especially to the problems that do exist in the Russian society, these people feel nostalgic about the Soviet Union. And sometimes it's the nostalgy not about the system that they don't know, but it's a protest against what they see now. This is one kind of love for Soviet Union. I wanted to make a word that would be of Greek origin, but it actually doesn't work. The second group will be those who feel they're affinity with the Soviet Union because they were happy at the time, they were affluent, probably they belong to and mostly because they were young at the time. It's not against the nostalgia for the system, it's nostalgia for the time when we were young and happy. And this actually created a certain trend, fashion you can say, for the pork. We now see, especially in Moscow and big cities, cafes, restaurants, museums, other institutions where they are designed in such a way as to remind people about the Soviet times, Soviet artifacts, Soviet slogans, it was popular. This is just a cultural thing. It has nothing to do with political choice, political decision, it just looks cool. And probably it will be so even more later because the further we are from that period the more nice it looks and nostalgic and it's kind of a retro style, so this is one thing. And yes basically we don't, except for these three groups of people, those who are nostalgic for the system, because they don't know how it was there. And because of course there was certain positive things in education and in feeling of brotherhood that are missing now. Then the second group of people who lived at that time. And for them it was their life, their happiness, their young years, and then this fashion trend. That's basically what makes what I called old Russians with new faces. The issue of really people who are now senior citizens, the main discourse related to them during all these years was the pensions, the low level of pensions, their hardships in surviving. But this type of discourse was kind of being cut a little bit exactly because the pensions grew, and also because more people who are now in the senior age already lived trough the period of new Russia, earned their living, worked on their professions, were able to find themselves a new life. And then, coming into the senior age with different perspectives and with different experiences. Still, and I will talk about it in probably more detail later, you don't see many old people, politically correct to call them senior citizens, in cafes and restaurants in Moscow. You were not able to see them like five or ten years ago even in the movie theaters. It was expensive and it was in a way just a thing for the young. Now it's getting better but still there is this disparity and in a way they say that because in any dynamic society, so to say, that it's developing so actively, so aggressively, you will only find the young culture. This is what characterizes such places and such epochs, and Russia especially in big cities now is exactly this kind of society. Next, our next topic within this theme is the issue of middle class. Middle class in Russia, is this a problem now and what problems are there? Actually, there are and quite a few. If, initially, the discourse about middle class, the discourse that you would find, not only in the sociological research, political research about modern Russia, but everywhere, like a common topic was, is there actually middle class? How can we say that in a country which is so poor, and poor in terms of how it's citizens live, can we talk about middle class? And what is middle class if only a few people have decent incomes while the middle class has to be the backbone of the society, takes the middle. And when we talk about the middle, we mean the bell curve, where the majority of population falls into this sector of this curve, creating the majority of population. Well now with the rise of economy and with the rising incomes, and the level of income, life standards. We can say that there is more people belonging to this majority, the center of the bell curve, and so the issue is now probably how we define middle class whether it is the same, could be the same definitions as in the West. And yet another topic of values of the middle class as related to the recent dissent and political protests in Russia. So this would be the issues that we would cover in a moment, talking about middle class. [SOUND]