fred,

We’ve got plenty of good reason to have unfavorable feelings about Russians and their culture – a buttload of pop culture stereotypes. It used to be communist fanatics, now it’s violent Russian mafia.

And vice versa.

I remember one time visiting Ukraine and watching “American Pie” dubbed into Russian during prime time on TV. I was enraged that THIS was the image that they had of us. I paid more attention after that and my anger and sense of unease just grew as I saw the kind of trash that passes for American culture. (Ditto all of the above for the muslim world. They hate us because of Madonna’s cone brassiere … )