Refusing to engage with Russian culture will not change President Vladimir Putin’s calculations, let alone impel him to withdraw his forces from Ukraine. It will merely cut off a potential source of information about his objectives and motivations, while seemingly lending credence to his claims that Russia is a "besieged fortress."
NEW YORK – Before he wrote The Brothers Karamazov or Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death by the czarist government for allegedly participating in revolutionary activities, sent to a Siberian prison camp, and forced to perform military service in exile. Nonetheless, it was after returning from Europe, where he spent years living in freedom, that Dostoevsky wrote in A Writer’s Diary, that “everyone” has “secretly harbored malice against” Russians, that Russians “were followers and slaves.”
NEW YORK – Before he wrote The Brothers Karamazov or Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death by the czarist government for allegedly participating in revolutionary activities, sent to a Siberian prison camp, and forced to perform military service in exile. Nonetheless, it was after returning from Europe, where he spent years living in freedom, that Dostoevsky wrote in A Writer’s Diary, that “everyone” has “secretly harbored malice against” Russians, that Russians “were followers and slaves.”