[East]

New Russians, i.e. the nouveaux riches, arrogant and poorly educated post-perestroika businessmen and gangsters, are a new and most popular category of characters in contemporary Russian jokes. A common plot is the interaction of a New Russian in his Mercedes with a regular Russian in his modest Soviet-era Zaporozhets after having had a car accident. The New Russian is often a violent criminal or at least speaks criminal argot, with a number of neologisms (or common words with skewed meaning) typical among New Russians. In a way, these anecdotes are a continuation of the Soviet-era series about Georgians, who were then depicted as extremely wealthy. The physical appearance of the New Russians is often that of overweight men with short

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