I was talking to a 21 year old Russian recently and he mentioned that older Russians, like his mom born in 1978, were basically raised to see everyone except China as an enemy. His mom lived through the collapse of the USSR and genuinely thinks everything is worse now. No real free speech, you can't own anything, the system screwed everyone over
Of course he told me that not everyone is like that, and he isn't like that himself. He basically said it's more of a boomer Soviet generation thing, that they're the ones who are distrustful and xenophobic toward foreigners, and that younger generations don't really have a say in how the country is run anyway
I'm just curious to know if this is true, what's really going on in Russia, and what Russians are actually like when it comes to their opinions on foreigners
I have many Belarusian family members and ex-friends who's "distrust" materializes as blatant and aggressive racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, and chauvinism.
You do not know what you are wishing for.
True. Distrust that stems from anything but a thorough analysis of history through a materialist lens is meaningless.
I'm completely distrustful of Westerners because maintaining imperialism and only distributing it's spoils more equitably amongst them serves their material interests.
No, no, I do. Way too many fellow orcs openly believe that westerners don't mean us any harm. And I don't mean that they distinguish between people and governments(not that there is that big a difference in a couple of cases), but they deadass think western governments don't mean any harm, which is outright dangerous to believe these days.