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>What they read is Harry Potter.

Russia has some truly great fantasy series of their own. I never tire of recommending Lukyanenkos Night Watch series. Especially in contrast to trope heavy feel good stuff like Harry Potter that falls back to the heroic fight against ultimate villains. In contrast even the magic system of Night Watch throws the difficulty of the shades of grey in your face. Its especially nice that the whole thing starts as black and white as you can get with the protagonist developing throughout the whole series.

edit: Only read it in German, so not sure about the English translation




I get it, but people calling themself Russian opposition today are oblivious to any shades of grey. For them, Lukyanenko is a vatnik (a popular ethno-political slur not unlike "redneck") and nazi, case closed. Same with his comrade SF writer Oleg Divov. There are no shades of grey in political twitter. If Lukyanenko dies tomorrow, it would be a loud celebration for Russian opposition, whatever is left of it - another Putin's rag quacked. Like they celebrated the death of Darya Dugina and posted ironic memes about that.

I could recommend them a Russian (or Ukrainian) writer or two who are likely sharing their world views today, but they just aren't the booky type in general. Why read more books when you get the knowledge of the current thing from Twitter. And the general life framework from Harry Potter. I don't even think you have to read that one to the end. Most of the memes like the magic hat are in the book one.

I would say that the low quality and race to the bottom in Russian opposition is one of the pillars that lets Putin remain in his chair uncontested. And they keep digging. They reproduce by managing to recruit a new generation of even worse youth.




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