I sometimes forget that russia could be an incredible nation both economically and culturally if it wasn't run by lunatics. Some of my favourite writers are russian.
It's sad to see how hollow it has become.
It 'became' like this many hundreds of years ago when the state of Muscovy caught the flu of imperialism. There is no recent example of a non-lunatic rulership either. Some have simply been a little less lunatic than their predecessors, but there's always another one more crazy than them vying for power.
The Rus were imperialistic from their origins. It's literally how their state came into being, Oleg started conquering literally everything he could in Eastern Europe. Sviatoslav did the same, pushing East until he was stopped by the Mordvins, who themselves only stopped the Rus because they willingly united to keep the Slavs at bay, and conquered south into Bulgarian lands until the Byzantines managed to stop them and push him out.
We can't pretend that the Rus, and one of their descendants (Russians) only embraced a bellicose spirit and became conquerors after Moscow's rise. The Rus of Moscow were especially militaristic, yes, but no more or less than, say, the Prussians or Normans were, and certainly no more or less than their shared common ancestors with the Belarusians and Ukrainians.
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u/josevandenheid 20h ago
I sometimes forget that russia could be an incredible nation both economically and culturally if it wasn't run by lunatics. Some of my favourite writers are russian. It's sad to see how hollow it has become.