When I in my last post stated that, according to the vice-premier of Russia, this country has five problems getting in the way of its development, one reader (thank you, Stas!) brought it to my attention that, initially, Russia only had two problems. And initially they were called «беды» [trouble, singular form «беда»] instead of the modern «проблема» [problem]. Already sometime during the first half of the 19th century, one classic Russian writer (philogy as well as history scholars are still undecided if it was Пушкин [Pushkin], or Гоголь [Gogol], or perhaps Карамзин [Karamzin] who said it first) stated that «В России две беды: дороги и дураки» [In Russia there are two troubles: roads and stupid people]. A couple of years ago, while on a train somewhere in Siberia, I heard someone add to this the following: «И одна ремонтирует другую» [And one is fixing the other]. I found an interesting article in Russian about this here, which deals mostly with explaining the problem of bad roads in Russia. Though bad roads may be an exclusively Russian thing (and bad news for all of us Russophiles who dream of roadtripping from coast to coast instead of taking the train), I must say that stupid people are common in most places…