chinaSMACK Honors Sino-Russian Friendship with russiaSLAM

China has had a long relationship with Russia, with quite a few up and downs, changing governments, and no less than three “Treaties of Friendship” to show for it. There has been, on both sides, alternating support for the monarchists, the nationalists, then the communists, and finally the reformists…plus a general apprehension about the Japanese and, of course, a suspicion of “the West”.

Today, cleverly on Russia’s Day of Conception, chinaSMACK is proud to announce the launch of its latest sister-site, russiaSLAM.

Whereas once it was about the workers, now its about the netizens.

Like chinaSMACK, russiaSLAM is committed to providing a glimpse into modern Russian society and internet culture through coverage and translations of trending topics on the Russian-language internet, an internet not dissimilar to China’s own, with its own arguably segregated or even insular ecosystem. There was a “Runet” before someone thought they were clever and came up with “Chinternet” and while that internet isn’t filled with a bunch of ideograms, Cyrillic is still damn near inscrutable.

Fortunately, russiaSLAM’s lead editor Joe can make sense of that strange alphabet, because frankly the only Cyrillic character we recognize at chinaSMACK is the Hong Kong MTR. Him and a couple of Russians (or so we assume judging by the number of iminov’s and shkin’s in their names, and the persistent whiff of vodka) will be working hard to provide English readers a taste of the Russian zeitgeist through the Russian netizen-dictated mixture of good, bad, and ugly.

For example, currently on russiaSLAM:

• Russian radio stations encourage people to listen to songs by telling them it may not be suitable for them to listen to.
• Russian netizens talk shit about Putin, while another Russian netizen accuses them of being foreign agents with state department manuals.
• Psychopath murders two women and then writes a note to police with their blood demanding freedom for Pussy Riot.
• The relics of Christians saints goes mission in a possible anti-church crime inspired by those people involved in vaginal social disturbance.
• You think being an English teacher in China is tough? Wait till you see what happens to this English teacher in Russia.

As with the rest of the chinaSMACK family, russiaSLAM will be updated daily, so be sure to subscribe to the russiaSLAM RSS feed, get email updates, like them on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter to get their latest updates.

We’re extremely excited with this newest expansion and we hope you’ll find it a consistently compelling, eye-opening, but also entertaining way to follow the world’s largest country and its own colorful netizens…in the Latin alphabet you know and love.