Yes, that's completely correct, there is definitely a cultural element that goes into it. I remember reading that the Russian liberal party, the Yabloko party, was shocked back in 2014 following the Crimean annexation by the depth of anti-Western sentiment that it revealed among the general public: by contrast Yabloko stated in their electoral manifesto that Russia was a European country and needed to remain loyal to this ideal. Dostoevsky was famous in his comparison of the Russian soul to the European soul.You may be right; still you conced that there;s a difference in perspective between the West and Russia that flares up during times of global conflict. There's also the question of Russians themselves and whether they have historically considered themselves members of the liberal West, and whther that be the Slavophilia of the 19th century or the aminosity between Russia and pro-Western instituions such as NATO, it would seem as if a sizable percentage of the Russian people still do not view themselves as in step with Europe.
But at the same time I don't think it's necessary to overstate this cultural difference: there are plenty of comparisons of British to Europeans, and similar anti-European sentiment is a major part of the British identity and came out prominently on display on their last major tiff, Brexit - nevertheless, nobody really claims that Britain is not European nor that it is not Western. I don't argue that Russia being European/Western is inevitable, it is perfectly possible for Russia to adopt a Eurasian ideal (or maybe even an Asian ideal in some more wild scenarios - I have some hopes of playing around with aspects of that in my own timeline eventually) and for both sides to reject each other, just that up until as little as around 15 years ago Russia would have been considered a Western country and if things had played out differently since then, still would be.
There's nothing shameful about not being part of the West. I personally admire Russian classical culture, high literature and contemporary science fiction literature, music, dance, space and technological achievements, find Russian history fascinating, and have some close friends who are either Russian or Russian speaking, and I jumped through a whole series of hurdles to learn Russian despite the pandemic and the war. But Russia is not "western" right now in the way that most people would define it, in terms of economics, politics, foreign policy, and arguably culture. That's not automatically bad, even if the direction that the Putin government has taken it in most certainly is. Japan is also not a western country, but people do not mean that as an insult and generally rather admire it.Before I updated this thread (seeing only the first couple of postings from yesterday), I would have said:
COME ON GUYS, it's true that Putin is the aggressor in Ukraine and is posing his Russia as the counterpole to Westernness, but does that really justify using such a kind of blatant suprematist and racist discourse? I mean, what other group of humans is it presently acceptable to treat this way? You wouldn't post a thread with the title:
"How could Negroes be seen less as slaving animals?"
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