#Russian Culture
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Russia occupies a paradoxical place in my understanding of cultural history: a country capable of extraordinary artistic, scientific, and intellectual achievements — from Orthodox iconography and literature to groundbreaking advances in mathematics, physics, and music — while simultaneously being marked by a century of profound moral collapse, political violence, and systemic repression. The same land that gave rise to Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and the mathematical schools of Moscow and Leningrad also bore witness to the horrors of Stalinism, the Gulag system, state-sponsored terror, and now, the authoritarian revival under Putin’s regime.
What troubles me is not only the brutality of its rulers, but the broader social complicity in these developments. Russia today presents itself as a case of civilizational exception — where immense cultural potential exists alongside widespread apathy, fear, and resignation. Instead of becoming a society rooted in dignity, openness, and human rights, it has regressed into militarism, political murder, and moral inertia. My approach in writing about Russian culture is therefore twofold: to acknowledge and honor its deep cultural and intellectual heritage, while critically examining how state power, nationalism, and cultivated fear have led to systemic degeneration — not only of political life, but of the very promise of its civilization.
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