Hi fella!
I'm glad to find somebody who spent some time in Russia. I was there for 6
LONG years while I was completing my B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biology at
the Moscow State University (M. Lomonosov) at Lenin's Hill in Moscow. Let
me tell you that my life there was quiet an experience, because I had the
oportunity to live and see what's going on in the other political system.
I was living there from 1974 to 1980 and traveled a lot around the country
(Could see from above the North Polar Circle to the Black Sea and from
Vielorussia to Central Asia) and I never saw a VW bus anywhere, the only  
german cars I saw were Mercedes Benz pulling out from the Kremlin. You
are right the russian cars broke a lot and were real uglies, except the
cute Neva that is very inefficient with the use of gas. Russian always were
good building heavy duty vehicles ( so now) and military too, but the
thing comes to sedans they are behind anybody (I remember the tall roof
of a car called Moskvich with huge trunk good for carrying a nasty mother
in law). Sorry no any bug either, I think the Caravelles came in back in
1991. Russians now are so busy solving their own problems that I don't think
they have the desire and tradition of culturing cars like in America, let 
them to have some more time in the capitalism.
Talking about education, I think follows the overall pattern in Europe, more
classical and basically they prepare people to be researchers at the uni-
versity level. Like in any place, students are the same.  I really enjoyed
all those years, meeting people from everywhere specially during summer time.
We had a musical band and did a lot of concerts and learned the richness of
other cultures. By the way we learned how to drink vodka " pa russki " and
how to pass examinations without knowing a lot of russian ( all the tests were
oral).  O.K. if you want to know more about the educational system please,
e-mail me directly.

Peace,
Angel
'78 Caribbean Westy
'85 Nasty with rough riding EcoVanagon GL