>>20314070>russian empire has never antagonized or rejected european and western valuesThe Russian Empire was known for imprisoning political dissidents in a way that was brutal even by 19th century standards. It was the last country to abolish serfdom in all of Europe, in 1861, but the abolition of serfdom wasn't officially implemented in Russian-ruled Poland till 1864.
Pogroms, persecutions of Jewish people in the late Russian Empire, were exceptionally harsh by the standards of their time and forced many Jewish people to migrate off to other countries, such as America, the UK, and Ottoman-controlled Palestine, while countries such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire could pride themselves in having formally emancipated Jewish people.
Even today, Russia has an odd relationship with the West. Its intellectuals claim to be influenced by Western philosophers such as Plato, Kant, and Nietzsche, while its common people are heavily influenced by American-dominated Western pop culture. Even today, they wear Western-style clothes and consume Western-style music and entertainment. Russia's poor human rights records notwithstanding, it's a non-Western country with heavy Western influence. In fact, Russian people are arguably more Westernized than Japanese, Brazilian, or Egyptian people.
