Pretty solid article. I would question your definition of fluency though. I am a linguist, studied Russian language at Kuban University in Krasnodar, spent a year in Uzbekistan among Russian speakers, 7 years in Russia and 6 years in Georgia (using Russian as lingo franca) and married a Georgian Armenian who has a Russian as a first language and Russian is the language of my household- I would not call myself truly fluent in Russian. Perhaps you had a conversational level of Russian and that would be fair enough, but to get to the level of advanced Russian takes 1500 hours of study...and that still wouldn't give you full fluency in their literature which uses archaic old Russian.
As for your general observations they are fairly accurate, though Russians are not a monolith. Although diversity in thought and ideals is much less than the west.
The correct answer if someone says you are gay is "sorry you are not my type I do not want to have sex with you."
Yes dating is much easier in Russia. It is highly regulated with gender norms. Men always pay, open every door, even help their girlfriend or any other woman off the tram or bus, men stand for women to sit on public transport, both stand for elderly or invalid. You never have to worry about being called a chauvinist by assisting a woman in anyway. Every major holiday flowers and gifts are required. Meeting parents you should bring gifts too. It can be expensive all in all but you know where you stand. There are plenty of negative aspects to this as well, of course, in a super patriarchal society when it comes to the workforce etc but someone visiting would probably not encounter this.
I'm not sure you got the right take away about the fences. The fences are for the same reason there are steel doors on every apartment. You are trying to deny access to thieves or make it clear where your property line is so a thief knows exactly when he is trespassing. And this includes animals, preventing the neighbour's cows from entering and eating your apples. Failure to secure your land is an invitation for neighbour's to take liberties. Especially if it is a dacha you visit rarely. Yes stock ownership is low but the stock market is a fairly new thing and I know plenty of Russians who owm stocks. Many got money stuck with sanctions as they had foreign stocks. And plenty of Russians have embraced bitcoin and crypto too.
I think the biggest oversight in your commentary is no mention of the 1990s in Russia. When people were selling their apartments for bread. It was an incredible hard time and has imprinted itself on the Russian consciousness like a PTSD. And it has made Russians terrified of democracy or any change that has any potential to send them back to 90s. So they allow centralized power and a strong man leader and they don't care that much if he loots the country and robs the future- just as long as he keeps the 90s at bay.
