Commentator Sean took offence to my comment about the eternal Russia and I felt trying to justify myself would really be counterproductive.
So I thought I would bring a different perspective to the claim.
Marrti Kari is a former colonel in Finnish Intelligence. Apart from losing some territory to the Soviets in the Winter War, Finland was never occupied by the Russians, so was spared most of the cultural trauma that Central Europe went through.
He has two good talks on You Tube about the Russian mindset which I would urge my readers to look at. Since everyone is time poor, the fist four minutes of this video explains a lot about Russia.
The interesting stuff begins at 6:37.
He also gives another good talk, How Russians Think and Why They Do What They Do and a summary of this talk can be found here.
