The relationship between Russia and the West has often oscillated between attraction and antagonism. But culture, especially classic literature, helped bridging the gap. Russian writers like Leo Tolstoi or Feodor Dostoevsyi had often spent time in Europe, and Germany, as part of their education and their works were read with curiosity by Germans, inspiring the young Thomas Mann, but also Oswald Spengler, who were fascinated by their rejection of modernity. Their attitude towards non-Russians within the empire is less well known, but telling. Alexander Pushkin's poem "To the Slanderers of Russia" from 1831, directed at Western Europe, seamlessly fits into the Russian narrative for their current war against Ukraine and their anger at Western "interference" in their colonial conquest: 

"T' is but Slavonic kin among themselves contending, 

An ancient household strife, oft judged but still unending, 

A question which, be sure, you never can decide." 

Much like in the 19th…