Especially in the universities....
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21598744-having-occupied-crimea-russia-stirring-up-trouble-eastern-ukraine-end?fb_action_ids=779644735398925&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=scn%2Ffb_ec%2Fthe_end_of_the_beginning_&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B790096497686643%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.likes%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22scn%5C%2Ffb_ec%5C%2Fthe_end_of_the_beginning_%22%5D
Maria Snegovaya, a scholar at Columbia University, argues that Mr Putin’s thinking is influenced by the writings of Ivan Ilyin, an émigré Russian philosopher of the first half of the 20th century, whose grave he has visited and whose works he often cites. “We know that Western nations don’t understand and don’t tolerate Russia’s identity…They are going to divide the united Russian ‘broom’ into twigs to break these twigs one by one, ” Ilyin wrote. A book of his essays, along with the works of like-minded philosophers, was given by the Kremlin as Christmas reading to its apparatchiks. Another favourite is “Third Empire: The Russia that Ought to Be”, a Utopian fantasy set in 2054 that features a ruler named Vladimir II, who integrates eastern Ukraine into a new Russian Union.
>In this world view, Ukraine’s revolutionary bid to escape to the West is a betrayal of Slavic brotherhood. Russia’s attempts to destabilise and split Ukraine are driven by a desire to “save” what it still considers to be part of the Russian world from Western annexation. This is the Kremlin’s way of punishing a traitor, demonstrating strength to the West and to its own population and preventing the emergence of an alternative civilisation on its territory.
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