1 - Sure. But not in the immediately immediate future. Playing bully-boy over eastern Europe's gas supply can only squeeze them a few extra dollars. The problem is that they need the cash NOW.
This is true, but a lot of these budget raises were planned last year, pre-panic. I imagine messing with it now might cause a lot of unnecessary difficulties in terms of production, jobs,lead times, etc. Military flexibility will be quite useful given economic instability in surrounding countries, such as Ukraine. This applies to Russia's nuclear arsenal, which needs an overhaul (so does the U.S.'s, for that matter), as it is Russia's geopolitical trump card.
2 - Now where did I say that? Just because I didn't condemn a non-Russian country in the middle of a discussion on the current state of Russia, doesn't mean I'm a McCarthyite.
Other people have done it before so I thought I'd preempt it?
4 - It's even less surprising when you don't treat Communism as such a break with previous Russian history. The attitude stuff goes back way farther than NATO. Hell, it goes farther back than even the Alaska Sale, or (arguably) the US Revolution.
Do you mind elaborating on that?
*Most Russians I know have been happy to say things along the lines of "people in the gulag deserved to be there anyway" and "Solzhenitsyn? Who?" "Or, wasn't he some peice-of-shit defector?".
Really? I've never really seen that degree of apologism, myself. And the first one is correct in a way as normal criminals were sent to them as well. That's probably not what they meant, though.
Stalin may have 'whacked a lotta krauts', but I recall his body count being a lot higher in a few other places. Too bad nobody in Russia ever seems to remember this.[/sub]
You're going to have to define 'places' for me here; even in terms of the Purges the krauts soundly trounce him in numbers.
1 - The issue is that they need more than the projects that are 'on the books'. The entire armed forces is in grievous disrepair. Given the overall size of their military and the need to maintain their Nuclear deterrent in some vaguely working order, only a serious and sustained injection of resources will do - and only then if it's properly managed.
I'm not sure how much of the old Communist creative spark for making do by stripping things to their essentials remains though.
4 - Call it a consequence of geography, or a quirk of national character, but Imperial Russia had a long history of intimidating belligerence that was more bark than bite.
The overall story is rather long, so I'll have to take a rain check on telling it in full here since I want to go to bed, but see: The Great Game, the effect of the Russo-Turkish wars on European foreign policy, Russian shenanigans in Persia/the eastern middle east., etc. The Crimean war was the one time it produced a 'hot war' directly with European powers.
It happened more often post-Napoleon (1812 gave a false impression of Russian military might that lasted for nearly a half-century), but there were quite a few smaller instances in the 18th century (Poland etc.).
Last bits: Yes, there are Russians like that. It's rather depressing to talk to people like that.
Places: Russia proper and East Europe. Especially the Ukraine and surrounding area. Not sure what you meanabout the Germans managing higher, last time I saw the numbers, Stalin's body count ranked in the double-digit millions, while the Germans never got out of the single digits. Stalin had pretty much a free hand during both the thirties and the Post-WWII era, so that made things easier for him. Amusing footnote: Stalin was a Georgian.
In fairness, the numbers vary wildly depending on if or how you include WWII casualty figures. Personally, I would blame him directly for a great many such casualties, as untold numbers of servicemen died as a direct result of asinine battlefield policies directly laid down by Stalin. To say nothing of the indirect effects of the gutted command structure.
Of course, I think Pol Pot still wins the all-time percentage/per capita record.