The Russian blogosphere conveniently, if bafflingly, revolves around LJ. Each week, RUSSIA! scans the chatter and brings you the top five topics. 

• After his much-commented-on "Alcoholism in the USSR" entry, blogger germanych consults an expert on Soviet-time drug abuse. And so, the myth of a "clean" USSR is killed with yet another demonstration of Soviet creativity. Marijuana was hard to find, but in kitchens across the nation they were cooking heroin from scratch and learning just how to properly boil out the junk-potential from a garden variety poppy plant. Also popular: clunky cocktails of stolen pharmaceuticals. Former police detectives/soldiers/musicians comment with brain-scrambling, bygone recipes of their own. [Наркотики в СССР]

• Blogger knup-ru is personally familiar with the infamously crappy Moscow police, repeatedly left bleeding and ranting after the encounters. He informs that according to the department, there are plans to recruit 20,000 military officers to shake and shape up the police force, replacing the physically and morally challenged. Response: "Is it possible to clean up the ranks of the "illustrious" Millicentia without attracting yet more thick-headed belligerents?" [Пронинским соколам подрежут крылышки?]

• Blogger samka posts a dark, slick music video from the sullen Russian hip-hop ensemble "Kasta," complete with fornicating newlyweds and many, many tanks. Here's some lyrical context: they have invented fictitious dissers and are dissing said dissers, then proceed on about the lack of meaning to the current social structure. It's all very anti-consumerist and just like any counterculture these days, it's very commercial. Responses: "What is this sell-out anti-nationalist crap? I am unsubscribing from your RSS feed" and "Sweatshirts under suit blazers look awesome!" [Шум вокруг "Касты"]

• Various bloggers share visual records of a recent political march... wait, no. That's how Russia does pep rallies. Behold some pics and clips of soccer team "Torpedo" superfans taking it to the Moscow streets. [акция состоялась], [Фото], [Фото акции], [Черно-белые на марше 2009]

• Blogger hasid tells an illustrated tale of two of the last great Russian thieves who, in their golden years, abided to the "old honor code" of the thief. One starts his crime life picked up by a band of thieves while wandering the railroad tracks as a six-year-old orphan. The other ends it strangled by another inmate after 44 years in relocation, jail, and prison camps. Response: lengthy dissertations on ethics, expletives, sarcasm. ["Наша позиция пришлась не по вкусу политическим"]