From an article in the NYTIMES, I gathered that some naive folks actually expected somebody in Russia to give a damn about the so-called doping scandal. That, of course, didn’t happen.
Russian – speaking people are extremely jaded about things like lying, cheating, stealing, sexual violence, domestic violence, corruption, bribery. None of these acts are considered to be a big deal. Ukrainians are now painfully and slowly trying to extricate themselves from this way of thinking. Russians are yet to see anything wrong with it.
This is all a legacy of the Soviet Union, of course. There, the greatest sin was not having enough money or consumer goods. This bleak, soulless materialism was only reinforced during the bandit wars of the 1990s. Morality could only stand in the way of personal enrichment, so there was no space for it.
In Russia’s war with Ukraine, we have seen mothers and wives (fathers are always absent either physically or in any way that matters) agree to pretend that their sons and husbands never existed for either a payout or a promise of one. More recently we’ve seen complete indifference in Russia to the crash of a Russian plane in Egypt. We’ve seen so many horrible things, and now we are to believe that somebody is going to have anything to say about a sports doping scandal?
The biggest reaction to the scandal will be a flaccid condemnation of the evil West for, once again, scheming against Russia, and that will be it. Once again, Russia will descend into a soporific admiration of its own uncontested greatness.
Clarissa's Blog 
Yeah, just like Cold War days at the Olympics, when the International Olympic Committee turned a willfully blind eye to East German female swimmers that were so pumped up on steroids they looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sisters.
Remember those good old days?
LikeLike
Is it the 1980s Olympics? I was 4 years old and I do remember seeing the bear fly away on TV.
LikeLike
Sorry, I keep forgetting how young you are. For decades, the IOC had a double standard for Western / African athletes and for athletes from Communist countries.
Aside for overlooking obvious doping, the IOC once had a strict “amateur athletes” only policy, but never showed concern that the “amateurs” from the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries were clearly pampered wards of their governments who never had to hold a real job or obtain private funding for their training. (Katrina Witt was a good example.)
LikeLike
Those Soviet amateur athletes all had fake jobs at factories, etc assigned to them. It was such a joke because everyone knew they never saw the inside of the factory where they supposedly worked.
LikeLike
Back in the 1960s, there were Russian Soviet female athletes, Tamara Press and Irina Press, who looked stronger than the strongest men. Ordinary people suspected that the Press sisters took steroids, but the authorities did no investigation, of course.
Well, Russia and decency have nothing in common.
LikeLike
The Russians just see everything through the prism of new cold war with the West. Thus, the widespread reaction is – “They are trying to punish us through sports matters? Good. This means they cannot do anything more serious to us.”
LikeLike
Good point. I can see how this can be interpreted positively.
LikeLike
http://www.theonion.com/americanvoices/report-russian-athletes-used-peds-years-51822
LikeLike