I think we are talking about two different concepts. You can draw a line from Putin's second term through to Krimnash and beyond, where the government went from favorably western with big joint ventures, even discussion about Russia joining the EU, American troops training with the Russian army near Moscow, and Russia being a capitalist anything goes wet dream , to a sudden about face and crack down and the west being full of degernates and perverts and church and state merged as one, and the nashis came out in force. The government decided to turn its back on the west and weaponise that and only at that point was a binary us vs them recreated.
The interesting thing is it happened concurrently with Erdogan's second term in Turkiye and there are numerous parallels between the two governments including both doing the Prime Minister and President swap thing and then changing the constitution to basically reset their time to stay in longer and possibly forever. ( I lived in Istanbul too but for much shorter time.)
The fact you have Russia (deadliest place to be a journalist over the last 20 years) and Turkiye( place with the most journalists in jail over the last 20 years) cracked down on opposition and independent media, and in Russia's case have so much of the population getting primary news from state media- creates an orwellian scenario that is certainly binary when it comes to politics. Turkiye is a bit different in this regard as it had a democratic tradition, greater constitutional protections to unwind and wider news sources.
Russians aren't unique in the acceptance of the state message and blindly following leaders nor any greater skill in resisting it. But it has taken a concentrated effort to have this level of compliance and maintain it.
Countries have their own positive and negative bias. For an American, freedom (as they see it) is the most precious commodity of all. Australians won't tolerate arrogance or anyone thinking they are better than us(even our own heroes). Both cultures are very individualistic by design, which has its pros and cons.
Russians don't tend to think in terms of freedom and many distrust democracy or believe it doesn't exist anywhere. Philanthropy and charity is limited in Russia, but for friends and relatives Russians can be extremely generous. My best and dearest friends, those who would take a bullet for me, are all Russian and I will never apologize for that. But my article is more about how Russians don't tend to think like westerners and we shouldn't expect western responses. Russian history is old and rich and, as a Jew, I see the powerful connection of genetic memory of culture and lore passed down and see it in the nuance and complication that are Russians. I experienced the same thing with my years in Georgia and time among Armenians(being married to the latter). There are too many strings, too many factors, to put Russians in a box and likewise to do the same with Russia itself.
