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

• Doctor dok-zlo presents the only legal porn available in the Soviet years of 1917 through 1991 - paintings. And so, the average woman-loving comrade could observe reclining and bathing rubenesque beauties, impractically, at the local museum. Soviet "porn" includes cultural artifacts, like the birch-tree branch bunches used for exfoliation in saunas by the bathers smacking each others' various curves with it... hot. And festive living room rugs... hot. One commenter points out that between 1963 and 1974, Lenin cracked down on even the art and even medium of eroticism disappeared for a bit. Not hot. [То… чего якобы не было СССР.]

• Blogger arina-holina contemplates the American standards of beauty vs. European. American infantile fear of aging stupefies all and locks famous beauties into a never-ending race to look like their own airbrushed magazine photos, apparently. "Madonna trains like an Olympic athlete and still looks like all her fifty... Oh, Charlotte Gainsbourg is so beautiful." Amidst more female-on-female criticism is one man's prophetic comment: "A look at the average American or European woman will show: McDonald's shall bury us all!" Yeah, that's really America's least popular export over there. [Европа форевар!]

• History wiz hasid returns this week with photographs of Lithuanian enemies of the Soviet State in Gulags circa 1951-55 and they look like they're having a good time. Various portraits of non-agony include suited buddies half-smiling from a festive, hand-drawn frame of Siberian scenes: polar bears and seals fishing on icebergs, a stagnant ice breaker, a heavily dressed man mid indistinguishable labor and a cheery ribbon-banner above: "Greetings from Chukotka!" Commenters enthusiastically pretend the oddity was a trend, as in, see, we weren't so bad and all. [Литовские "лесные братья" и бандеровцы в ГУЛАГе, 1951-55 годы]

• Blogger na6ludatelb shares a video of a news report from a city near St Petersburg. An emotional mob of angry citizens storms the mayor's office with woes: no hot water or gas for weeks, joblessness, their starving children... you know, the usual. The mayor's resulting statement: hot water will turned back on after they'll turn off the cold water and the mass lay-offs are delayed for a few days, you're welcome. See the first dozens busting down a door at 3:06 followed by a mother screaming at the mayor and at 0:24 watch as government official says: "Stormed in? Nobody stormed it. It didn't happen." Commenters call the protestors wimps for wanting hot water in May - "They turn the heat off every summer where I live, you don't see me storming the administrative offices." [жители Пикалево штурмуют здание администрации]

• Blogger sfrolov has dug up one of Russia's oldest computers, Rasvet, at an auction. This is truly a wondrous piece of equipment - looks like a crappy tv and runs tetris. Sfrolov puts the junk through a photo shoot, all the insides spread and all. Response: "Maybe it works on secret codes. You enter it in and that duck game will control the missile system" and programmers chortling with tech lingo. [Рассвет].