Russia.  The Motherland.  Kingdom of the Tsars.  The Rodina.  The former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Crazyland.

It’s 2009.  It’s a whole new world.  The era of Obama.  Or at least it was the Obama-Time 100 days ago … maybe not so much anymore.  In this new world, we have a new Russia.  Or so we’d like to think.  Truth is old KGB Vlad Putin is little more than a Nikita Khruschev with a $16 haircut.  I wrote about this regression back to Commie fun-times a few months ago (Just Like Old Times).

Regardless, Russia is pretending to be apart of the new commercialized, omni-international global economy.  Part of this participation is the exporting of commodities.  For example, Japan sends out robotics, electronics, and bad porn.  Germany sends out cars, watches, and sick porn.  Afghanistan sends out carpets, sweaters, and opium.

And make no bones about it, Russia has its lovely list of exports, but not just normal exports like other countries.  No, Russia has to do it in its own way – stark, raving, shit-bird crazy.  It wouldn’t be Russian if it weren’t scratch your head, kick you in the nuts different.

So comrades, I present the Top 10 Exports of the Rodina.

1. Mail Order Brides: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world market has been flooded with burnt out, Eastern bloc gutter sluts looking for any white man with a 401k to escape the land of black markets and barb wire.  In fact, the movie Birthday Girl (2001) with Nicole Kidman was based on such phenomenon.

Does anyone really think that they are going to get a sexually submissive, quiet, yet blazingly hot blonde with a thick accent?  Hell no!  You’re going to get a former weightlifter with hips like a draft horse with a full mustache.  If you are dumb enough to buy a mail order bride from Russian, then you deserve the black, wet leather gimp suit that the Rus barbarian bitch queen is going to make you wear while you are washing the dishes in your own house as she goes crazy with your credit cards on the Home Shopping Channel.

And you know what – Thank God for the Internet.  It’s the easy, low cost solution for matching these chain smoking, vodka whores to Viagra free-basing, old American men.  Thank you Al Gore.

2. International Crime Syndicates: At one time in our nation’s history, the Cosa Nostra had a strangle hold on organized crime.  But slowly drug trafficking and international politics released a wave of terror into the United States.  It was the Columbians and their chainsaws, the Haitians with machetes, but perhaps it was the crazy Ivans that made the most fearsome impact.  Most of these guys were ex-KGB that made their bones learning how to create explosives or torturing Afghan women.

I am not kidding you when I tell you that the FBI caught two Russian mobsters attempting to sell a nuclear submarine on the black market in Florida.  Perhaps the only people in the world that are more crazy as a race are the Albanians, but I’m not going to press my luck by speaking about them in an public forum.

3. Sambo: For the record, Sambo is a style of martial arts, a relatively newly created system of self defense.  It’s a combination of judo, folk wrestling, and broken beer bottles.  It’s a national sport in Russia and widely popular.  Strangely enough, Sambo has a bit of a crisis of identity – they were the top of the karate gi, but the shorts of a collegiate wrestler.  It’s a terrible combo, like they are transvestite geishas in a Soviet steam bath.

From the sport of Sambo, we get Russian mixed martial artists and there is only one name among Russian MMA that matters.  And that is Fedor Emelianenko, undisputed heavy weight ruler of MMA and arguably the best pound for pound fighter in the world, regardless of promotion.  He is 32-1 and his only loss came five fights into his career from a cut stoppage.  Remember, MMA is not boxing and the records are not comparable.  To go 32-1 in MMA is probably more of the equivalent of Julio Cesar Chavez’s record (107-6-2).

I feel compelled to also mention MMA pioneer, Oleg Taktarov.  So … Oleg Taktarov.  There.

4. Vodka: This one is fairly self explanatory.  A couple of fun facts the word vodka is a diminutive of the Russian word “water”, which makes sense considering how many red-faced Russians drink it at every meal.  Secondly, most vodkas in the world are NOT Russian.  If you want to support your comrade buddies, then buy Smirnoff, Starka, Stolnaya, Stolichnaya, Shustov, Rodnik, just to name a few.  Grey Goose is French.  Absolut is Swedish.

5. Movie Villains: Of course, the one thing that Americans excel at is passively aggressively casting our current international nemesis in our cheap movies.  And the best of these is Rocky IV (1985).  Ivan Drago is quite simply, my hero.  I know, I know … that bastard killed Apollo … but knowing Creed, he would have wanted to go down like a soulja and Drago was the best way.  I analyzed that epic fight here BTW.

One thing I have to quickly insert, legendary Ivan Drago was played by Dolph Lundgren and he’s Swedish.  Not Russian.  But I can understand the desire not to cast a Russian in this part as they probably would have refused to lose to the 5′ 1″ Italian in the final match.  I mean it was Moscow.  Christmas Day.  C’mon!  I’m sure that the Russians would gladly extend Dolph national citizenship just based on the merits of this movie.  “I defeat all man.  Soon I defeat real champion.”

Some other notable movie Russians: Arnold in Red Heat (1988) as Ivan Danko, Rade Serbedzija in Snatch (2000) as Boris the Bullet Dodger, Karel Roden again in Hellboy (2004) as Rasputin, and Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October (1990) as Marko Ramius.  Strangely the following actors playing these Ruskis are in order Austrian, Serbian, Czech, and Scottish.  Scottish?  Really?  Are we Americans that dumb?

6. Discount Cold War Weaponry: Anything that you could need to equip your home arsenal is readily available from Sikorsky helicopters, the T-80 tank, a full assortment of MiGs, and even weapons grade plutonium.  Just be sure to look out for any of the guys referenced in #2.  Tell them Lucky sent you and they’ll cut you a heal of a deal.

7. Female Tennis Players: This one gets a little crazy as there has been a wellspring of pseudo-hot Russian tennis players in the last ten years.  Here is a short list of notables all of whom participated in the 2009 US Open and apparently 1/3 defected … deep breath: Dinara Safina (#1), Elena Dementieva (#4), Svetlana Kuzentsova (#6), Vera Zvonareva (#7), Nadia Petrova (#14), Elena Vasnina (#24), Maria Sharapova (#25), Alisa Kleybanova (#30), Anastasia Pvalyuchenkova (#41), Vera Dushevina (#50), Ekaterina Makarova (#53), Maria Kirilenko (#54), Anna Chakvetadze (#59), Alia Kudryavtseva (#90), and … Anastasia Rodionova (#99).

Holy shit, I need a tylenol.

Just want to make one observation. Dinara Safina, currently top ranked women’s player and the ugliest #1 since Jelena Jankovic, has never won a Grand Slam singles title.  Not even an Olympic Gold.  Kinda pathetic.

8. Natural Gas: Russia is rich in resources with natural gas pipelines running into nearly every country of Eastern Europe.  This is also one of Putin’s fun time toys as he threatens to pull gas whenever others don’t threaten to play nice or dare to criticize the Motherland.  You know … like that whole invasion of George on the eve of the Beijing Olympics.  Damn South Ossetians can’t take a joke.

Oh yeah, the Ruskis also have lots of oil, coal, timber, and STDs.

9.The AK-47: I’m not short on national pride and the USA’s M-16 is a fine weapon, but let’s be serious – 7.62mm Avtomat Kalashnikov Assault Rifle is the best standard combat issue rifle ever created.  It is the most widely used weapon in the world solely for the fact of its reliability, low cost, durability, ease of use, and endorsement by the Los Angeles Crips.  The weapon was first designed in 1947 and remains a primary mainstay in global warfare ever since.

The AK-47 has tremendous impact power, being able to shoot through a police car door, an engine block, a bag of flour, and the front counter of the typical US Postal office.  It was THE weapon of South America, Vietnam, China, the Eastern Block, drug cartels, Al Qaeda, and Cobra.  Over 55 national armies incorporated it into their standard armament.  It is included in the national flag of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Hezbollah, and the album covers of numerous gangsta rappers.

Of an estimated 500 million total illegal firearms available worldwide, 75 million are AK-47s.  This is not even counting the number of legal rifles are found in the armies of the world.  Thank you, Russia.

10. Sport Team Buying Russian Millionaires: This is perhaps the strangest advent of new Russia.  A few mobsters made a ton of money right after the fall of the USSR on the black market, legitimized their businesses, and then began searching overseas to buy foreign sports teams.  Makes perfect sense, right?

Most famously of this trend is comrade Roman Abramovich, who bought the English Premier side, Chelsea FC for a paltry £140 million in 2003.  The purchase apparently worked, because Chelski has been among the short list of EPL teams in contention for the treble every year along side ManU, Liverpool, and Arsenal.

This same phenomenon has migrated to the United States, as well.  Earlier this week Russian mogul, Mikhail Prokhorov agreed to a $200 million deal to buy the New Jersey Nets as well as their new arena being planned in Brooklyn.  Prokhorov would become the first non-American NBA owner in the process.  So much for Jay-Z.

These Russian athletic supporters were famously parodied in Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla (2008) with the character Uri Omovich, played by Karel Roden.

Well, that’s it in a nutshell.  Support the Rodina, Buy Russian!  Dosvedona Comrades.