> but my guess would be that they were, at one point, not so bad, relatively.

In the case of Russia, you would be very, very wrong. You'd have to go back to the Kievan empire of the 13th century to find the last time the place wasn't an ethical quagmire.

I take your point about holding Western governments to a higher standard -- we definitely should -- but don't assume all cultures had a similar starting point. Your average Canadian has never had to deal with the cultural memory of anything quite so devastating as the Mongol invasion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27).