Great post, Dylan.

I grew up during the cold war. The Nazis were in the past and didn't appear that much as villians. The Indiana Jones movies were retro, so they harked back to old villains.

The Soviets were often the villains. Rambo, for example, fought the Soviets.

Although I have read a fair amount of Russian history, I have to plead guilty to holding the idea that they were victims of a bad system. The Bolsheviks were a minority party that seized power. Once they were gone Russia would be a normal country. How wrong I was. In the past I thought that that the cold war was overblown. I don't think that anymore.

What I didn't get was the thrust of this post: Russian culture was the problem. I still think that they can fill in as the bad guys. Torturers and rapists in Ukraine and any other situation where they gain power. Some Russian colonel in an African country backing a warlord to steal gold and diamonds. A hero runs in guns to local revolutionaries who successfully throw out the Russians.

Also, many people who closely follow the Ukraine war may have come to hate the Russian culture that lead to this atrocity. That suggests Russian villains for a few decades.