Oh, what a celebration of sports! What beautiful gold medals, as well as silver and bronze! What wonderful athletes and sportswomen! How fun and festive it is at this wonderful Olympics in such a beautiful capital of a hospitable billion-dollar state. And let those who want to interfere with our fun with their whining about the infringed rights of Chinese citizens shut up.

The Olympics are a holiday. Definitely for the fans. But the Olympics in Beijing turned out to be non-celebratory. And now, after it’s over, for the first time in my fan career I don’t feel sad that the fire has gone out and it’s all over. Actually, it probably couldn’t have turned out any other way. The Olympics coincided with the war - day after day, and after that it was no longer possible to be sick sincerely and carefree.

History teachers were introduced to the concept of the new textbook “History of Russia 1900–1945,” which focuses almost exclusively on the motives of the actions of the authorities and the motives of those who justify them, writes the Vremya Novostey newspaper.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on August 25 that if NATO doesn’t need relations with Russia, then it’s welcome, they didn’t really want it.

Just today, on Monday, according to the talkative Dmitry Rogozin, a representative of Russia in NATO, in the Kremlin they will decide how to build relations between Moscow and the North Atlantic Alliance. Moscow has already given its adequate response to the decision of the North Atlantic Alliance not to hold meetings of the Russia-NATO Council. It was stated that our country was generally suspended military cooperation with NATO. The most, as they say, is time.

"United Russia" is establishing cooperation with the church, the Vedomosti newspaper writes today. From now on, the party ideology will be based on conservatism and adherence to the traditional confession. On August 22-24, an All-Russian seminar-meeting of regional Centers for Social Conservative Policy (CSCP) was held in Samara, at which economic issues were mainly discussed. But not only. We also talked about ideology.

There was no sensation. As expected, the State Duma and the Federation Council adopted an appeal to the Russian President calling for recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Deputies of both chambers voted for the corresponding document unanimously. The Federation Council turned out to be even more agile; 130 members of the Upper House came out for recognition of independence earlier than 447 deputies of the Lower House.

For the umpteenth time, reading in the news about yet another project of a “symphony” between the state and the church in Russia, I can’t help but feel: it’s all make-believe! The decoration is such that something purely secular and even commercial will almost certainly be hidden behind it; none of this will happen and cannot happen! - I don’t know where this feeling comes from, it may well turn out that these are ordinary age-related changes in the psyche, but there you go!

On August 23, 1968, Alexander Galich asked his contemporaries a simple question: Can you go out into the square, Do you dare go out into the square at that appointed hour?! On August 25, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Larisa Bogoraz, Pavel Litvinov, Victor Fainberg, Vladimir Dremlyuga, Konstantin Babitsky, Vadim Delone and Tatyana Baeva answered this question. Baeva said during the investigation that she was an accident and “got off” with expulsion from the institute.