As someone who’s dedicated much of my professional life to studying Russian literature and culture, I’m following the tragic war in Ukraine with great interest and sadness.

It is teaching me lessons both personal and political: how dictatorships work, how bullies maintain their grip on power, how leaders’ deep inferiority complexes often masquerade as superiority complexes, and how repressive regimes project their pathologies onto the world while keeping their own citizens cowered in fear and misinformation.

The war is a case study specifically of how Russia’s imperial ambitions throughout history, often justified by violent nationalist rhetoric and factual distortions and lies, have never served either the world or the Russian people well.

Putin and Russia

A few days ago, Putin gave voice to those same ambitions and distortions in a rousing, rabid speech commemorating the 80^th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, in which the Soviet Union successfully held off Hitler’s invading army. “Unfortunately, we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country,” Putin told the hysterical crowd.

Nobody seemed troubled by the fact that this attempt at a historical parallel was 180 degrees off course. Like Nazi Germany in 1943, Russia today is ruled by a megalomanic and driven by sick nationalist rhetoric that has lodged itself deep inside the culture. And Russia, far from the victim, is now the invader trying to impose its will onto a peaceful neighbor.

If my interest in the war were purely academic, I could probably cordon off what’s happening in Russia right now from the rest of my life. But I can’t, because this is personal. Russia is a country and a culture I love, have written four books about, and have been teaching with great enthusiasm for twenty-five years.

How do I reconcile this longtime passion with the brutality and inhumanity that have often been a part of Russian history and that are on full display right now?

Paradoxes of the Russian Culture

I’m not sure I ever will. I’m even beginning to wonder whether the real lesson I’m supposed to have learned from all my years of immersion in Russian culture is how to hold love and hate in my consciousness at the same time.

The fact is, the country that produced Pushkin also produced Putin. The culture that created “Swan Lake” also created the Gulag. The nation that gave us War and Peace also gave us this barbaric, idiotic war in Ukraine.

Nor do I think such paradoxes are mere coincidence. One reason Russia has been home to some of the world’s towering artists is precisely because of the repressive political culture in which they created. Most of these artists viewed it as their mission to find the beauty in the broken, glimpse the light in the darkness, and celebrate ideals of human goodness and compassion amid the evil all around them.

It pains me that I probably won’t be able to return safely to Russia for a long time, if ever again. I won’t get to hang out with Russian friends on Red Square, stroll along the banks of the Neva River in Petersburg during the magical White Nights, or spend days getting lost in Tolstoy’s sprawling estate at Yasnaya Polyana.

That Russia—the country I love—now lives in my imagination. The Russia I hate is on full display on the evening news. Both places are real. Both are true. If I am to truly know the land and have an authentic relationship with her, I don’t get to choose one without the other.

I owe much to this dark, beautiful place that has captivated and enlightened me for some thirty years. Of all the important lessons Russia has taught me, perhaps the most important is that countries and cultures, like people, can be full of both good and evil, and that the line separating love from hate is often very fine indeed.

Until next month,

Andy