I would blame more the cold messed up soviet-era society for this. Artists produce their best works during suffering, not when having the best time of their life. And there was/is plenty of suffering for non-conformists in Soviet Union/Russia.
Please read The Prince, The Karamazov Brothers, Eugene Onegin, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, or Dead Souls before writing this kind of grotesque sweeping statements.
This country is dystopian af too; the American dream died with 9/11. We’re just another empire that’s rotting from the core.
America is beginning its decline, there's no question. I think you're worried about the wrong things, but that's simply a matter of opinion.
Thankfully, we're nowhere near the insanity of 40s-50s Soviet Russia. Here, we have a right to freedom of speech, and at least ostensibly a right to bear arms. Hopefully we can maintain those rights and avoid the hellish police state phase of the collapse.
The police state is here, and if you own guns they’ll just storm your house with a swat team, shoot your dog, and charge you for assaulting an officer.
You need some Socratic Method in your life.
That's a very werid take. I don't see how e.g. the Strugatskii are darker than Gogol. Have you read the books you allude to?
One prominent goal of the Western world was always to destroy Russia (last prominent example: German invasion in 1941 which clearly stated that the final goal is to exterminate Slavs). There were and there are numerous plans in the current Europe and USA that continue the work of Hitler. Almost every day you can read in the news on the new plan of USA/NATO/GB to start a war with Russia.
So, all the news, all the books, all the history you get on the West is dedicated to one thing: paint Russia and Russians as the most evil savages, the history of Russia as a bloody bloodbath, etc, etc.
There's simply no English source on Russia/USSR/Russian-USSR history I've seen that was free from that bias. Even English prose contains absurd exaggerations when telling about Russia.
Speech of famous USSR/Russian dissidents require different explanation, but most of them exaggerate the rusophobic bullshit with even more zealousness than anglosaxons themselves. I think the main reasons are that they need to find vindication for their treason and they need to demonstrate to the Western world that they're loyal. Also, it's possibly the only source of income for many Russian emigrants that have some humanitarian degree (writers, journalists) is to write rusophobic pamphlets.
Very fitting.
If you open social network, like reddit.com/r/worldnews, it would be even more obvious. If you open comments under any news about Russia there, you'll find even direct appeals to kill Russians (BTW, always ignored by Reddit, Facebook and Twitter moderators, but try to write the same about any other nationality and you'll be immediately banned).
My comment was about a small part of russophobes - Russians that emigrated abroad. Most of the time they become the most zealous russophobes.
I don't really know the explanation, nor do I really care. I've just made a rule to avoid Russians abroad as most of them hate themselves to the point of schizophrenia.
The general feelings that permeated Soviet society were apathy and misery. It was so pervasive that modern Russians fetishize it and even feel nostalgia for it.
There was an excellent little movie from the 80s called Moscow on the Hudson, with Robin Williams, which beautifully portrays the Soviet immigrant experience. Robin Williams' character says the following lines, which resonate with me completely:
"When I was in Russia, I did not love my life... but I loved my misery. You know why? Because it was my misery. I could hold it. I could caress it. I loved my misery."
Nevertheless Russian expats are praising these third world countries as "best in the world" and endlessly vilify Russia. In fact, vilifying Russia is the main talk topic everywhere where 2 or more Russian expats gather, main reason why I avoid making friends with Russians abroad. You can easily find lots of proofs on Facebook and travel forums.