Russians have generations of underwhelmedness in preparation.
I had a friend who was on a year out in Moscow during the 1994 coup - the one with Yeltsin having the army shell the parliament building. She'd received a frantic phonecall from her mother in the UK asking if everything was OK, and was she safe.

She actually hadn't even noticed. Apparently the locals' response had been something along the lines of, "Oh, there're tanks on the streets. That's nice..."
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 13:58, Reply)