The other night one of our guests said she was torn over Russian literature and culture these days. Should she read Dostoyevsky? Is it OK to listen to Tchaikovsky? She threw it out more as a question in general. Over the past year, Ukrainian officials have been urging persons to turn away from Russian culture as it is used as a means of propaganda. Certainly one can argue as I did in a post 9 years ago at the time of the Euromaiden protests that the notion of a "Greater Russia" has long been promulgated in Russian culture and is still very much alive and well, but does that mean I turn my back on Russian culture? I have lost interest in certain writers like Dostoyevsky who was an ardent Pan-Slavist but I like to think that if Chekhov was alive today he would be very much against this war in Ukraine and critical of the Russian government. Russia has been exposing its metaphorical and literal gun since it invaded Georgia in 2008, but we looked the other way until it bec