It’s a fair question to be asking, especially in light of the recent invasion of Ukraine. When people find out I’m learning Russian (despite not having any familial ties to the language nor the country), they are surprised and at times unsettled. I can’t blame those who conflate the government with “Russia” itself—it’s easy to do and sometimes this conflation makes sense (not only with regards to Russia, but in general. An American can easily say “I dislike America”, and be accused of malicious treason, when they truly mean “I dislike American foreign policy”, which is a fair—and some may say sane—indictment).

But the metonymy is misleading. Just because I’m learning Russian doesn’t then mean that I support the actions of the Russian government and military. Similarly, just because I speak English doesn’t then mean that I am a bloodthirsty endorser of American colonialism or military intervention in the Gulf, for example.

It’s simply a bad faith argument that also ignores the fact that Russian is spoken in countries that aren’t Russia, such as those of the CIS and many enclaves in Western Europe. Israel, as well, is home to a large number of Russian speakers, particularly Russian Jews that fled the USSR in the face of widespread anti-semitism.

A big factor in choosing to learn a language might be the number of speakers it has. And guess what, a language that has many speakers doesn’t happen to be that way because of serendipity or any inherent quality of the language itself. It’s due to many years of violent colonialism, invasions, and cultural oppression. In this regard, Russia unfortunately has just as much blood on its hands as does France, England, or America. Yet nobody reacts with much consternation when you say that you’re learning French, Japanese, or Arabic (see what I’m getting at here?).

Russia has existed before the (genuinely evil) corruption, power-hungry oligarchs, and violent political suppression that now infect its state. And it will exist after all these things. It’s a home to hundreds of millions of people, and home is nothing short of sacred.

The fact that many Russians continue to love their country and have complete faith in it, while the current government is making an absolute disgrace out of itself, should never be shamed. Contrarily, it deserves the utmost admiration.

I know I didn’t directly answer the question posed at the start, but I hope I’ve made my point of view clear.

Added on October 1st, 2024.

Suppose someone told me they were learning Hebrew, at a time when the state of Israel is committing a very real genocide against Palestinians, and have been doing so for the past seventy-odd years. The Nakba. I'm obviously against the war. Many Israelis are against the war, as flaccid and impotent as the Israeli Left is (not that the American Left has much to be proud of nowadays, either). But how could I condemn them for learning a language? A language, the complete resurrection of which has been nothing short of a miracle?

I see leftists stridently pointing out that Israeli culture is somehow fake, that they've stolen from the surrounding Arab nations and claimed everything wihtin reach as their own—somehow, it always comes back to food, hummus specifically.

Is this not how culture has always worked?

Must everything be worked out ex nihilo? European settlers razed Native Americans with guns and pathogens hundreds of years ago, and for the rest of those years the new Americans encased them in an economic system which makes it clear that it has nothing for them, and never will, but we cheerfully eat popcorn and have potlucks (despite the anguished moralizing around Colombus Day and Thanksgiving).

People cry blood about the origins of borscht. Ilya Repin was Ukrainian. Andrei Tarkovsky was actually half-Ukrainian! Budaejjigae came out of the US occupation of the Korean Peninsula, where cheap, standard-issue canned meats were combined with cheaper wheat noodles, a meal borne out of the ugly knots, deficits, and suffering of that sordid proxy war, now proudly displayed for millions to see in YouTube mukbangs. Korean curry and Japanese curry are like estranged siblings; to this day the Japanese government pretends that the wide-scale forced prostitution of Korean women by Japanese soldiers-so-called comfort women- was never a thing. Not exaggerated, not even a permutation of the truth. Simply nonexistent. (And perhaps it's worth mentioning, too, that Korean soldiers fighting on the side of America also committed acts of terrible violence against women in Southeast Asia.)

And what's so special about Israel, that one can flippantly say that it deserves to be nuked and be applauded for it?

What's so special about Russia?