In 2025, essayist and cultural critic Andrey Arkhangelsky published the book The Country That Decided Not to Be. In an interview with Sorin Brut, he said one reason for the war against Ukraine was Russian society’s failure to make a “decision about itself” after 1991. In his view, many people chose to remain in the past, while the authorities first encouraged that nostalgia and later turned it into a political resource.
Arkhangelsky argues that the Putin era has been marked by “value and semantic nothingness”. In his assessment, the Kremlin avoids clear definitions and replaces ideology with hints, abstract patriotism, and rhetoric about national greatness. That vagueness, he says, keeps society in a state of constant emotional tension while sparing the authorities any concrete commitments.
“The goal of the current ideology is apocalypse,” Arkhangelsky says, adding that any radical statement can later be dismissed as merely a private opinion.
Speaking about culture, he says the post-Soviet decades failed to produce defenses against totalitarianism. Mass culture pushed reflection aside, while violence and the legacy of earlier wars were never fully confronted. He regrets that Russian literature produced almost no strong anti-war tradition, and that war too often became material for glorification and adventure narratives.
Arkhangelsky also reflects on exile, psychological survival, and the crisis of humanism. In a world shaped by exhaustion and daily violence, he says, ethics and personal choice remain the main support. Any new humanism, if it emerges, will be more modest than earlier ideas of progress and will rest above all on responsibility and the effort to prevent the worst.