Yeah, it would be better if Hitler had won, because Millennials are ignorant, Then Putin couldn't point out how Russians are patriotic, tough and resilient.
The grandparents and parents of people my age continue to live under the weight of their traumas, secrets, and unresolved histories.
Yeah, modern Russians are snowflakes.
Archives to things related to the Gulag and other records that were burst open shortly following Glasnost/Perestroika era are locked shut under Putin.
Good thing the Russians didn't hold the Kennedy assassination records.
Lenin’s body remains unburied and lies in open display in Red Square in the manner of a saint.
So Pope Frank can visit him?
The traumas of the Soviet era are not always as obvious as Gulag imprisonment. For example, did you know that at certain points in the 60s and 70s, there were five to seven abortions for every birth among Russian women? (The Soviet Union was the first country of the modern era to legalize the practice in the 1920s give or take a few phases of restrictions.)
That really is below the belt, even for you, Putin has spoken out against abortion: Putin’s Next Target Is Russia’s Abortion Culture
Unlike American DemoRat's Planned Parenthood selling baby parts.
I was pointing out that abortion culture exists and that it is a problem, and it was entrenched in profound ways due to factors stemming back to the Soviet era. And in fact, Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood fame was one of several Western radical feminists who got their cultural/sociological cues from their USSR travels.
Even she did not agree though, that abortion should be the first tool of contraception, which for many years it was in Russia.
Sex-education remains a controversial topic, and the current HIV rate in Russia is at a tipping point. You can look that up also. I am not saying that secular Western sex-ed is the solution to everything. I am staunchly Catholic.
The Orthodox Church’s initiatives with support from govt has made headway in lowering abortion rates, but not enough. There are a lot Western-inspired Pro Life activism groups operating in Russia also: founding crisis pregnancy centers and shelters for battered women. (Domestic violence also a major social ill, as it is more culturally accepted.) Russian proverb says: “If he beats you, he loves you.”
Fatherlessness also plagues mainstream society.
As for ballerinas and the photo you posted, some of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th Century are Soviet defectors to the West: Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Makarova, and the father of American ballet himself, George Balanchine.
Composers Stravinsky and Rachmaninov both spent their final years of life here in the USA and Russian artists argue climate now for culture hearkening back to the days they escaped.
Of Russia’s ballet culture today, Baryshnikov says: “it’s a damn soap opera of course, which is like everything in Russia. It’s a horrific reality and there is a non-stop ugly vaudeville.”
You can watch documentary “Bolshoi Babylon” on Netflix/Amazon one of those maybe. I saw screening on visit to Estonia. The film details the acid attack which blinded the Bolshoi artistic director in 2013, but can also serve as a peak into Russian political culture as a whole.
Also, “Icarus” is for sure on Netflix, about the state-run doping system in athletics.
Be critical of modern America all you want, but I will remain proud to represent and live in this country even with all her flaws. And if any experience cemented this even further, it was experiencing life in Putin’s Russia.