3 ms·

This is dumb. Ukrainians are not helped by denying them access to Russian culture. Putin is responsible for the invasion, not Pushkin, Dostoevsky, or Tolstoy.

• nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Absolutely dumb. But let's think about why such an emotional knee-jerk response is wrong. A grave error is to underestimate your enemy. A good way to do this is by systematically ignoring them. Demonising a group does not make them unworthy of studying. Quite the reverse. As an Emacs user I even keep a Vim book on my shelf as a reminder of how lucky I am. Consider Machiavelli's "The Prince". Do enemies of deceit and dark-triad mentalities choose not to read it? Of course not. Because, arguably, Machiavelli wrote it as an expose in spite of the Medici's, to be taken as a warning rather than a handbook. Alternatively, consider Martin Heidegger's work. Is his brilliant philosophy, much of which informs humanist existentialism, to be discarded because Heidegger was a Nazi? Both authors were products of their time who made expedient life choices - literally to survive. Machiavelli was imprisoned and had to disguise his writing as flattery. Heidegger despised the regime but chose self-preservation in order to keep writing, as many German intellectuals did. The Great Russian canon offers some of the most profound psychological insights into the human condition. Dostoevsky was arrested by the Russian regime of his time for discussing politics and sentenced to be shot. His work reflects that Russians, like the Jews, are some of the most long suffering peoples in history. To deem it "pro Russian" in a modern context seems the height of ignorance. Burning books is always anti-intellectualism.