this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Genuinely, visit Russia. Spend a bit of time in bith the Potemkim cities (Moscow, St Pete) and the 3rd world beyond them (every other Russian city.)
The level of unhinged, blind faith in whatever bullahit is fed to them is off the charts. As far as they are concerned the west has always wanted to destroy Russia and they have always been at war, physically and culturally.
It requires no doublethink or conflicting viewpoint whatsoever to think Russian elections are neither free nor fair, but that the majority of the Russian people are solidly behind what Putin does anyway.
Which is so sad because since they basically put themselves into that state. Fear is the biggest political motivator. Fear of the west has been keeping them going, when I doubt anyone would care what they do at all. It's all being fed to them
Indeed. I was in Kirov once, visiting a (then) friend, and ended up in conversation with the sterotypical Russian street drunk - it was all friendly enough, and he was quite excited never having met someone who spoke English before, so we had a perfectly civil conversation between my poor Russian and my friend translating. Then at the end he asked one thing I didn't really understand, and my friend didn't want to translate. Eventually I pushed her into it - it turned out his final question, quite seriously, after a perfectly civil conversation, was "why are you an enemy of the Russian people?"
Said former friend is former because later I was in Kharkhiv when the Russians invaded in 2014. At that time there were plenty of little green men causing trouble (some wanted to lynch me as a NATO spy,) so when my friend contacted me to tell me I had to get out to stay safe I thought this was admirably world-wise for a Russian. I explained that it was OK, we used VK and Facebook to know where the Russians were causing trouble and I was taking care... And she was "no, no, the Ukrainian government is taking Russian speakers and putting them in concentration camps." (Bear in mind that at this time I'd literally never met anyone in (as it was universally known then) Kharkhov who could speak a word of Ukrainian, so that would have meant rounding up the entire population, but anyway...)
I explained that I was literally standing there, and could swear nothing of the sort was happening... But she wouldn't have it. It was more comfortable for her to believe the lies on Russian TV than a friend of several years.
Honestly, the Russian people are a lost cause.
Which makes me sad, I find their culture really interesting, and I would love to visit, meet them and have a drink, but because of exactly that I'm very hesitant to do so.
Most of Russian culture is "borrowed" from other cultures. If you visit Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan, you'll catch all that you fear you might be missing by not visiting the authoritarian hellhole.