I've been talking to this Russian guy in the Hostel and he has a pretty interesting theory. He says foreign relations and expectations of Russia would be better if only Russians looked more different than Europeans (like asian or black or something). His theory is that people don't realize how different Russian culture is from european and that people tend to forget because Russians are white. Expectations are thus set differently and people are less sensitive to cultural difference which just paints the Russians as being "crazy"instead of different. He rambled quite a lot about Russia, he has some interesting perspectives. You talk about Tsarist ideals but he compared Russia to Byzantine. You're either a slave, manager or slave owner in Russia. Which honestly s not too far off the truth considering Russia was the only place to enslave their own people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia) less than 150 years ago.