Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky

Living in Eastern Europe, I have to say that I've always felt that there was something brutal and thuggish about both Russian and Ukrainian culture (they are more similar than Ukrainians want to admit). The article merely hints at this while talking of the "illiterate peasants" that create the foundational popular culture.

The Russian people's spectrum is incredibly wide though, and have also produced some of the deepest writers, musicians and filmmakers humanity has seen.

Admitting both of these truths at the same time is something people have a hard time doing, and that's the real issue here.

A Ukrainian here - couldn't disagree more with the author. Take a beloved in the West author like Solzhenitsyn, whose "compassion" suddenly evaporates when Ukrainian question is raised. Even a modern sci-fi author Sergei Lukyanenko does not shy away from racial jokes against Ukrainians or Lithuanians in his Dozor books.

Ukraine is a pawn at the world stage, but if the West is serious about battling russia (for its own sake really), cultural front has to be among top priorities.

>I understand why people hate all things Russian right now.

Bigotry?

He is right and wrong.

This part is most definitely true: "The Russian system of political power has remained unchanged and unchanging down the centuries—a pyramid of slaves worshipping the supreme khan. That’s how it was during the Golden Horde, that’s how it was in Stalin’s time, that’s how it is today under Vladimir Putin."

This is why 90s and russian democracy failed so utterly, why it will fail completely in the future. There is no nice way out. People love the tsar that wins, it does not matter if he murders, tortures, rapes. He is tsar and above it all, boyars might be held responsible.. but tsar has one measure, winning. Narod will love him as long as he is strong.

"Slaves give birth to a dictatorship and a dictatorship gives birth to slaves. There is only one way out of this vicious circle, and that is through culture."

This is a delusion, there is only one way out and that is the fall of the empire. As Golden Horde died so must its successor state. Culture has not saved Russia in the last 2 centuries, it won't save it now.