Russians doing nothing wrong whatsoever.

So how should Russians react to Butthurt Belt whining about muh repressions, calls for reparations, etc?

I would recommend an indifferent aloofness.

After all, Russians did not vote for the Bolsheviks; it was imposed on Russians by Latvian bayonets. Communist brutality towards Russians exceeded that towards its East European satellites by several orders of magnitude; in a non-Communist timeline, just the territory of the present-day Russian Federation would have twice as many people. Even disregarding the Lenin/Stalin period, it’s worth noting that the Novocherkassk massacre happened exactly halfway between the Hungarian Uprising and the Prague Spring in time. It was a regime that hated, despised, and actively repressed Russian culture and traditions, despite Russophobe attempts to equate Russia and sovok. So what exactly is there to apologize or “answer” for?

There can, to be sure, be differing levels of empathy.

Objectively speaking, the Czechs (whom I like) really did get the short end of the stick. Bad for them. But at least by the Communist world’s dismal standards, they did pretty well in the 20th century. No large-scale democides, relatively successful economics.

Conversely, the Germans (1953) and Hungarians (1956) have no grounds to complain whatsoever.

As for Latvia, in a perfectly just world it would spend the next millennium tyrannized by an immortal Stalinist superintelligence. Instead, even in the USSR, it got to enjoy being a “window on socialism”. Life in Riga was incomparably nicer than in Rzhev.

Anyhow, whatever. I don’t really care.

That said, the one thing I am curious about is why Butthurt Belt-style rhetoric against Russia doesn’t (AFAIK) really exist in East Asian countries that were also mauled by the USSR.

After all, the Koreans were practically dismembered as a nation. They have been separated for far longer than the two Germanys, and the economic and cultural differentiation is much deeper. Ossies were mostly just poorer Germans; Best Korea is basically an alien civilization at this point. It seems doubtful they will ever reunite now, even after the Kim dynasty falls. But South Korea gets on pretty well with both Russia and China. Russia has visa free travel with South Korea. Not only do Koreans view Russia more positively than most Europeans, but also much more positively than the Japanese, who are the only people in East Asia who actually dislike Russia – even though American nukes ruled out a Hokkaido People’s Republic.

The Chinese outside China have no particular reason to like Russia either. Apart from all the broken lives, Maoism lost China around 20 years worth of development – though I suppose this was mitigated somewhat by Chinese Communism being a genuinely grassroots movement, and Mao’s early break from the Soviet camp. Even so, not only is China Russia’s strategic partner, but there are no problems with Taiwan either.

It’s not like the East Asians even care or understand these Soviet vs. Russia disputes. They are just more pragmatic, and don’t carry a chip on their shoulder with respect to Russia – or rather more cynically/realistically, they reserve their parochial squabbles and rivalries for their own immediate racial/cultural neighbors (it has been demonstrated that genetically closer peoples go to war more frequently, and yes, that’s after adjusting for geography). This is a good hint for Russia – if any more are needed at this stage – that its better prospects lie to the East.