Before my exposure to the four writers, I thought that Russians were just like many other cultures, wanting to dominate other cultures. The "conquer or be conquered" was part of most of our thinking, which is slowly being shed. But Russian psyche is deeper than that. 'Dysfunctional heritage" indeed.

The article below is about when I was gathering my thoughts in this matter:

https://medium.com/tiered-democratic-governance/what-the-russians-can-teach-us-cc630325b251

This article takes this approach. If the Russians can be so manipulated, maybe western cultures have had their manipulation as well.

While it's easy to point fingers at the Russians, we are not exactly walking on the high road.