I lived in Russia until my pre-teen years and generally share the more gloomy prognosis of the Russian people as a collective entity (as opposed to the wonderful, brave isolated cases.)

The totalitarian impulse is simply too deeply imbedded in the Russian soul. To generalize a bit, they think Western values of freedom and civil rights (among others) are naive and idiotic. Hence you get the Putins. The problem isn’t Putin; he’s the symptom of a problem. They simply haven’t been able to find a way out of their historical hole.

The Stalin-love is typical and unsurprising. Of course, the kid just doesn’t know any better (and I suspect, academic elitism might be a big component of such thinking) but it illustrates the dilemma: Russia swings between the strongman and the drunkard/incompetent, neither to its ultimate benefit.

Needless to say, Russia is still paying for a huge chunk of its talent pool (and their potential progeny) lost to the Gulag. We’re seeing that today with their degraded condition. And in the more “relaxed” times corruption becomes a way of life, as under Brezhnev. This was apparent to me virtually from grade school.

Talk about a vicious cycle. I truly feel it’s a God-forsaken place.