The ROMANOV Archive Manifesto: On the Defense of Russian Culture

By A. Sylazhov

Welcome to ROMANOV: an online constantly-updated archive for all "Russian-Originated Media Archetypes & Narratives in Occidental Videogames."

Here, the Manifesto behind this Archive shall be outlined, the guiding principles behind this project. ROMANOV is not just a catalog of references, but a deliberate attempt to document, analyze, and preserve the many ways in which Russian culture has been represented, borrowed, distorted, or celebrated in gaming. It is a living record that defends the cultural depth of Russia against reduction to clichés, while also recognizing the powerful role these tropes play in shaping how millions of players imagine the country and its people.

Contents

1. Introduction: Why Russia in Games?
2. The ROMANOV Mission
   1. Our Mission Statements
3. Russophobia Under the Gaming Lens
4. Remember: No Russian
5. Ukraine in Gaming: Historical Revisionism, Censorship and Suppression of Language
6. The Case of Tetris
7. Culture as a Weapon of War
8. Agents of Russophobia
9. Conclusion: No Enemy is Eternal
10. References

1. Introduction: Why Russia in Games?

Have you ever wondered what that familiar piece of ballet music in your Sega Genesis game was? Or why levels set in Russia are always full of snow? What those Russian gangsters were yelling at you? Why is St. Basil's Cathedral called a mosque? Why are Western games, from alternate-history fantasies to modern military shooters so fixated on a Russian invasion?

Don't worry, we've got you covered. Whatever the reference, motif, trope, stereotype, or recurring image, it will be catalogued and explained here. ROMANOV exists to trace these patterns—musical, political, social, cultural, narrative, linguistic, and visual alike—and to show how they have shaped our collective image of Russia in gaming.

All across media, Russians have long been a source of fascination, mystery, fear, admiration, hostility, and caricature. From the Cold War era onward, Hollywood and other entertainment industries developed a habit of portraying Russia through a specific set of familiar images: snow-covered landscapes, spies, oligarchs, gangsters, invading armies, rogue generals, Soviet weapons, brutalist architecture, secret laboratories, and ominous military music. Videogames are no exception.

New to the Archive? A good place to start is our growing catalogue of Most Recurring Tropes and Stereotypes About Russia in Video Games, where we document some of the medium's most persistent patterns. Why are Russian gangsters so often the go-to villain? Why are Russian weapons so often portrayed as inferior to their Western counterparts? And why does the Russian Army keep invading the United States? By examining these recurring motifs across hundreds of games, we can better understand how certain images of Russia became so familiar to generations of players.

One popular all-encompassing stereotype—what Russians themselves call клюква or "cranberry"—represents an idealized, sometimes laughable, version of Russia, complete with eternally snowy landscapes, fierce bears, heavy accents and stoic, vodka-loving characters, who are almost invariably guaranteed to be street thugs, terrorists and spies, ruthless gangsters, totalitarian communists, idealistic revolutionaries, corrupt government officials, religious fanatics, billionaire oligarchs, disillusioned or mad scientists, decadent prostitutes or lethal femme fatales. These stereotypes are a staple in movies and videogames, painting an image that can be more folklore than fact, but, like all stereotypes, always created with a shred of truth. Through my analysis, we'll look at how this idea persists in videogames, examining the broader impact and underlying themes that shape these portrayals.

2. The ROMANOV Mission

Having stated these facts and building on these contexts—and how they connect to the broader mission of this Archive—this series will ultimately examine the complex layers of representation and misrepresentation, allowing readers to form a more nuanced view of how Russian culture usually appears in videogames. This archive exists to catalog and analyze, but also defend Russian culture against erasure, distortion, and the lazy reliance on caricature. The purpose here is not political, and this must be emphasized: ROMANOV does not seek justifications of the actions of particular governments or politicians, and it insists that culture must remain separate from politics. Russian art, language, and memory are now under siege, not only through Western sanctions and boycotts, but also through deliberate campaigns to dismantle monuments, ban literature, and erase an entire cultural legacy. For the sake of videogame preservation, as we will explore later, ROMANOV also exists to catalog, document and denounce historical revisionism and erasure in videogames. This archive itself is living proof of that endurance. Furthermore, by analyzing and denouncing stereotypes, vilification, and historical fictions, ROMANOV stands as a reminder that no amount of propaganda can succeed in making an entire people or their culture simply vanish.

It should be noted, that for the sake of analytical coherence and also simplicity, Japanese-developed videogames are also included, as their representations frequently align with Western cultural perspectives and stereotypes regarding Russians, not to mention, many of them are directed to a Western audience or reference Hollywood stereotypes directly. Moreover, native Russian videogames, especially those that have made an impact abroad in Western audiences or have reached international audiences broadly, will be featured here, noting that the developers are native Russians.

No game is excluded here. American, British, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian—or from any other country—all titles that feature Western tropes and clichés are welcome and will be examined through the same lens, (although the focus will be on Western-developed games). Their biases, agendas, stereotypes, and prejudices will be noted, regardless of origin. As surprising as it may seem, even Russian developers can be highly critical of their own country, culture, and government, and sometimes they too adopt or replicate Western prejudices about themselves. In fact, Russian games can be just as shaped by these tropes as they are capable of influencing Western audiences in return. For that reason, it is equally important to feature Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and other post-Soviet games here, not only to highlight how they engage with these archetypes, but also to contrast them directly with their Western counterparts. Localization is just as important as design or narrative, and this archive will also explore how Russian culture appears through language itself: from Russian dubs of Western games to the way Russian dialogue is written and spoken in English titles—sometimes authentic, sometimes riddled with errors or clichés—revealing yet another layer of how culture is filtered, misrepresented, or reimagined in gaming, through language, transcreation and localization.

Our Mission Statements

• To catalog and analyze: every Western game that features Russian or Soviet characters, settings, language, or themes—as well as Russian-developed games that gained recognition in the West. We provide context-rich interpretations that go beyond surface-level stereotypes.
• To preserve and spotlight: lesser-known, forgotten, or overlooked games that deserve renewed attention for their artistic, cultural, or historical value.
• To support game developers: by promoting creators who engage thoughtfully with Russian themes or come from Russian-speaking backgrounds.
• To foster cultural understanding: by using games as a bridge to the Russian language, history, and identity—making these accessible and engaging to non-Russian speakers and the curious alike.

Cataloguing Criteria and Inclusion Standards

ROMANOV does not catalog videogames merely because a Russian or Soviet character appears in them. Inclusion is determined by the significance of Russian cultural, linguistic, historical, political, or geographic elements within the work.

Primary Inclusion Criteria

A game will generally qualify for inclusion if it satisfies one or more of the following conditions:

A. Russian Language Presence

• Russian dialogue is spoken by characters.
• Russian text, signage, documents, radio broadcasts, or written material appear in-game.
• The use, accuracy, translation, or localization of Russian language can be meaningfully analyzed.

B. Russian/Soviet Setting and Geography

• The game takes place wholly or partially within Russia or the Soviet Union.
• Russian or Soviet cities, regions, landmarks, architecture, landscapes, or cultural spaces form a significant part of the game's setting.
• Russia or the Soviet Union serve as an important artistic, atmospheric, or narrative backdrop.

C. Russian/Soviet Narrative Relevance

• Russia or the Soviet Union play a significant role in the plot.
• Russia or Soviet institutions, organizations, governments, military forces, or historical events are central to the narrative.
• Russian/Soviet culture, folklore, religion, politics, society, or history are discussed or represented in substantial ways.

D. Russian Archetypes and Cultural Motifs

• The game employs recognizable Russian/Soviet stereotypes, tropes, or archetypes.
• The portrayal contributes to broader Western perceptions of Russia or the Soviet Union.
• The representation is sufficiently developed to warrant cultural analysis.

Exclusion Criteria

The following factors alone are generally insufficient for inclusion:

• The presence of a Russian or Soviet character from a pre-existing franchise (i.e. IP established or well-known characters) does not automatically qualify a title for inclusion. Such characters are considered relevant only when their Russian identity is actively represented through language, setting, cultural references, political themes, historical context, characterization, or narrative significance.
• A Russian or Soviet nationality listed only in character biographies or supplementary materials outside of the game.
• Brief references to Russia with no meaningful narrative, cultural, linguistic, or visual significance that hardly merit creating an entire dedicated article.
• Incidental Russian-themed cosmetics, skins, flags, weapons, or easter eggs are generally insufficient for inclusion. A cosmetic Soviet ushanka, a lone AK-pattern rifle, or a similarly isolated reference does not by itself constitute meaningful Russian or Soviet representation. As a general rule, inclusion requires multiple relevant references or a substantial connection to Russian culture, language, history, geography, politics, or narrative themes.
For example, the appearance of X-Men's Colossus in a game would not automatically qualify that title for inclusion. His presence becomes relevant only when his Russian identity is actively expressed through language, setting, characterization, narrative themes, or cultural references.

Geographic Scope

The archive focuses primarily on videogames developed within the Western cultural sphere, including:
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Western Europe
• Australia and New Zealand
These regions have historically produced the most influential portrayals of Russia for Western audiences.

Special Inclusion Categories

Japanese Games

Japanese-developed games are included when relevant because:
• They possess significant influence within Western gaming culture.
• Many have shaped Western perceptions of Russia as strongly as Western-developed titles.
• They frequently draw inspiration from Hollywood films and Western media.
• They often reproduce, reinterpret, or expand upon existing Western Russian archetypes.
Examples include Metal Gear and numerous other internationally successful Japanese franchises.

Post-Soviet Games

Games developed in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other former Soviet republics may also be included.

These titles are relevant because:
• They frequently reach large Western audiences.
• Many receive English localizations and worldwide releases.
• They often influence Western perceptions of Russian and post-Soviet culture.
• They provide opportunities to compare internal and external portrayals of Russia.
Representative examples include Atomic Heart, Metro, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Analytical Categories

Each entry in the ROMANOV Archive may be classified under one or more of the following categories. These categories are intended to identify the main area of representation being studied: character, language, setting, history, ideology, gameplay, or cultural authenticity.
• Russian Characters
• Russian Language
• Russian Setting
• Russian Military and Weapons
• Soviet Themes
• Imperial Russian Themes
• Cold War Narratives
• Post-Soviet Society
• Organized Crime
• Intelligence Services
• Orthodox Christianity
• Russian Folklore
• Science Fiction Russia
• Post-Apocalyptic Russia
• Historical Russia
• Localization and Translation
• Gameplay Representation
• Visual Stereotypes and Клюква
• Cultural Authenticity

Most Recurring Tropes and Stereotypes About Russia in Video Games

Some entries may also be linked to recurring tropes or stereotypes documented across multiple games. These patterns include repeated character types, enemy roles, visual motifs, military clichés, localization habits, and gameplay mechanics through which Russia, Russians, the Soviet Union, or the Russian-speaking world are represented.


• The Russian Invasion Scenario
• The Soviet Remnant
• The Soviet Utopia
• The Disposable Russian Enemy
• Nuclear Russia: The Enduring Image of the Atomic Threat
• The Soviet Mafia
• The "Good" and "Bad" Russians
• The Russian Gangster
• The New Russian
• The Russian Oligarch
• The Evil Russian General
• The KGB Agent
• The Russian Mad Scientist
• Russian Women in Video Games: A Typology of Archetypes
• Russia as a Frozen Wasteland
• Abandoned Soviet Factories and Secret Bunkers
• The Gulag
• The AK-47: Russia's Weapon of Choice by Default
• AK-47 vs M16: The Myth of Soviet Inferiority
• AN-94: The "Official Rifle" of the Russian Army
• The AK-12: A Hyped Early Prototype
• The Mil Mi-24 'Hind': The Villain's Helicopter
• The Helicopters That Never Were
• Russian Weapons as Enemy Weapons
• Russian Military Equipment as Obsolete
• Faux Cyrillic: When Backwards Letters Pretend to Be Russian
• Broken English and the Russian Accent
• Random Russian Words
• Mistranslated or Fake Russian
• The Gopnik: Shanson, Vodka, Tracksuits, Gold Chains, and Criminal Excess
• Russia as Technologically Backward
• Russia as Permanent Geopolitical Threat

This methodology ensures that ROMANOV functions not merely as a collection of Russian appearances in videogames, but as a structured archive of meaningful representations of Russia and Russian culture across the medium.

Building Bridges Through Language: Translations and Localization of Game Russian Texts

Lastly, ROMANOV also seeks to serve as an educational resource for those interested in learning Russian and understanding how language functions within videogames. Throughout the archive, entries frequently transcribe, translate, and analyze Russian voice lines, written texts, signs, documents, billboards, user interfaces, environmental details, and other linguistic elements that often remain untranslated or only partially localized in Western releases. By preserving and explaining these materials, ROMANOV aims to provide readers with direct exposure to authentic Russian language usage while offering the cultural and historical context necessary to understand it. In doing so, the archive embraces a principle fundamental to translation and localization itself: language is not merely a tool for communication, but a bridge between cultures. Understanding Russian words, expressions, and cultural references allows players to engage more deeply with the worlds they explore, fostering a richer appreciation of the people, history, and traditions that those games seek to represent.



3. Russophobia Under the Gaming Lens

We must also confront the fact that this exploration inevitably touches on Russophobia—the fear, distrust, or disparagement of Russia and Russians. While the archive's purpose is not to excuse or justify any country's geopolitical actions, it aims to understand the cultural underpinnings of these portrayals. By doing so, it shall hopefully reveal how certain narratives become ingrained, for better or for worse, and how they contribute to our perceptions of Russia in the gaming world. Russophobia has resurfaced in different forms, finding its way into cultural expressions, including videogames. Instead, my goal is to explore how and why these representations persist in Western games and to examine what they reveal about our collective perceptions.

The relevance of Russophobia to videogames should be self-evident. Aside from German Nazis in WW2 or sci-fi settings (or, most recently, North Koreans) few nationalities have occupied the role of recurring antagonist in gaming as consistently as Russians and Soviets. For decades, developers have returned to the same well of imagery: Russian invasions of the United States, Soviet attempts at world conquest, rogue generals seeking nuclear war, ruthless secret police, corrupt oligarchs, organized crime syndicates, biological weapons programs, terrorist cells, and endless armies of disposable Russian soldiers to be gunned down by the player.

Entire franchises have been built upon these assumptions. From Call of Duty and Battlefield to Command & Conquer, World in Conflict, Homefront, Red Alert, Freedom Fighters, Hitman and countless others, Russia frequently appears not as a nation with a culture, history, and people, but as a convenient geopolitical villain. The specific ideology may change—from communism to nationalism, from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation—but the narrative function remains remarkably consistent: Russia serves as the threatening Other against which Western heroism defines itself.

Particularly revealing is the sheer obsession with invasion narratives. Across decades of games, players have defended New York, Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and countless fictional Western cities from Russian or Soviet attack. One could be forgiven for thinking that invading Manhattan was the primary objective of Russian foreign policy throughout modern history. These scenarios persist despite their often fantastical premises because they tap into deeper cultural anxieties inherited from the Cold War and reproduced through entertainment long after the political conditions that created them disappeared.

This does not mean every game featuring Russian villains is automatically Russophobic, nor that Russia must only be portrayed positively. Villains, conflicts, and political antagonists are legitimate subjects for fiction. The issue emerges when one particular nation repeatedly occupies the same narrative role across hundreds of works, while alternative portrayals remain comparatively rare. When Russians appear primarily as gangsters, invaders, terrorists, extremists, war criminals, or authoritarian caricatures, the cumulative effect becomes difficult to ignore. Over time, repetition itself creates expectation, and expectation gradually hardens into stereotype.



4. Remember: No Russian

Since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, questions of language, culture, memory, and national identity have become inseparable from politics. Across Ukraine and much of the West, Russian cultural symbols, institutions, media outlets, historical figures, and even the Russian language itself have increasingly become subjects of controversy, restriction, or outright removal. Whatever one's views of the conflict itself, these developments have had significant consequences for the way Russian culture is perceived, discussed, and represented internationally.

For ROMANOV, this matters because videogames do not exist in isolation from broader cultural trends. The same political and ideological currents that shape public discourse, media coverage, education, and cultural policy inevitably influence game development, localization, preservation, and reception. Before examining specific examples within the gaming industry, it is therefore necessary to understand the wider cultural environment from which many of these attitudes emerge.

Thus, we shall now address the elephant in the room of this website: Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine (SMO), referred to in the West as the "Russo-Ukrainian War" and "Russia's invasion of Ukraine", or, in more explicitly political language, "Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine" and similar formulations such as "Russia's unprovoked" or "illegal invasion of Ukraine". These terms are commonplace in both Western media style guides and official EU statements. Yet other modern conflicts, including some later revealed to have been fought under false pretexts, are rarely described in similarly moralistic terms.

The conflict has often been presented as a stark struggle between good and evil, leaving little room for nuance or competing interpretations. Within this framework, attempts to discuss the role of Western policy, NATO expansion, or the broader historical context are frequently dismissed as apologism or "Russian propaganda." Such framing is precisely the sort of cultural phenomenon that the ROMANOV Archive seeks to examine.

If I were to use terms such as "Special Military Operation" or "SMO," some readers would immediately dismiss the archive as repeating Russian state narratives. Yet the debate over language itself has become part of the conflict. This archive has no intention of adjudicating the wider geopolitical dispute between the position advanced by Russia and many advocates of a multipolar world order and the position adopted by the Western world. Such debates lie beyond its scope. For the sake of neutrality, consistency, and simplicity, this archive will therefore refer to these events as the Russo-Ukrainian conflict (2022). The purpose of this section is not to determine who is right or wrong, but to examine how the conflict has shaped cultural perceptions, historical narratives, and representations of Russia, Ukraine, and the wider Russian-speaking world.

Thus, it is essential to emphasize this archive makes no claim that Ukrainians as a people are automatically inherently hostile to Russian culture, nor does it deny the suffering inflicted by war. Its criticism is directed instead at the contemporary political, cultural, and ideological framework promoted by significant parts of the Ukrainian state, media, and cultural establishment since 2014 and especially since 2022. It is, unfortunately, this xenophobic, fanatical, aggressive and fascist framework that has increasingly treated Russian language, history, symbols, literature, and cultural expression as objects of suspicion, removal, or outright hostility.

One particularly controversial example of contemporary anti-Russian activism is the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets ("Peacemaker"), a public database that catalogues individuals deemed hostile to Ukraine, including journalists, politicians, academics, artists, and public figures from around the world. Criticized by numerous human rights organizations, journalists, and international institutions for publishing personal information and fostering an atmosphere of intimidation, the project illustrates how political conflict can spill beyond governments and armies into the realms of culture, media, and public discourse. Among those listed have been figures such as Roger Waters, foreign politicians, academics, and cultural figures whose only offense was expressing views at odds with official Ukrainian narratives. The controversy has extended internationally: in Bulgaria, journalists, politicians, and even members of the European Parliament were added to the database, prompting public criticism from media organizations and political figures. Despite repeated concerns raised by institutions including the United Nations, OSCE, European Parliament, and Human Rights Watch, the website continues to operate and expand, adding names ranging from former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder to Henry Kissinger, Israeli singer Eden Golan, and even Ukrainian historians like Marta Havryshko — herself a Holocaust scholar accused of “Russian propaganda” for her nuanced academic work. Whatever one's position on the broader conflict, the existence of such a database demonstrates how political polarization can increasingly transform dissenting voices into perceived enemies, and disagreement into a form of disloyalty. The macabre character of this project is not accidental. It was conceived during wartime hysteria and has since become a moral litmus test of loyalty to the state.

And speaking of litmus tests: one phenomenon that has become increasingly visible since 2022 is the tendency for discussions surrounding Russian-developed videogames to quickly shift away from the games themselves and toward the political views of their creators. Across Steam discussion boards, social media, gaming forums, and comment sections, questions regarding gameplay, artistic merit, or technical quality are often overshadowed by demands that Russian developers publicly declare their position on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

This trend can be observed across a wide variety of games regardless of genre. In discussions surrounding No, I'm Not a Human, users asked whether the developers supported Russia's actions in Ukraine, since this should influence their purchasing decision. Similar debates appear regularly in discussions surrounding unrelated Russian-developed titles, where conversations about mechanics, story, or design are frequently interrupted by arguments concerning geopolitics, sanctions, national identity, and collective responsibility.

In some cases, hostility emerges even before a game is released. Under Steam posts highlighting upcoming Russian-developed games, users have openly declared that such titles should be ignored solely because of their country of origin. One discussion promoting Russian games scheduled for release in 2025 quickly attracted comments arguing that the games should be boycotted regardless of their content or quality. Other participants rejected this reasoning, producing lengthy debates over whether individual developers should be held accountable for the actions of governments, whether nationality should affect consumer decisions, and whether similar standards are applied consistently to creators from other countries involved in military interventions or armed conflicts.

These exchanges often develop into recurring "flame wars" that have become familiar to anyone following Russian-produced games on Steam. Questions about gameplay are replaced by demands for political declarations. Discussions about graphics, writing, or mechanics give way to arguments over foreign policy. In many instances, developers themselves are expected to publicly condemn, justify, explain, or distance themselves from geopolitical events entirely unrelated to the games they are producing.

From the perspective of cultural analysis, the significance of these discussions lies not in any particular political position expressed by participants, but in what they reveal about the contemporary reception of Russian cultural products. Russian-developed videogames increasingly enter international markets carrying political associations that audiences may project onto them regardless of the content of the games themselves. Horror games, puzzle games, indie projects, retro shooters, and visual novels alike often find themselves evaluated not only as works of entertainment, but also as perceived extensions of broader geopolitical conflicts.

Whether one views this phenomenon as understandable, unfair, inevitable, or necessary, it illustrates the extent to which nationality has become a factor in the reception of contemporary Russian media. The result is that Russian developers frequently encounter expectations rarely imposed upon creators from many other countries: before their work can be discussed on its own merits, they are often expected to pass a political litmus test concerning events far removed from the games themselves.

For that reason, Ukraine serves as an especially important case study for ROMANOV, especially today. Few countries have pursued the systematic removal of Russian cultural influence as aggressively in recent years, and few have exerted comparable influence on the contemporary gaming industry. Examining these developments is therefore not an attack on Ukraine by itself as a nation, but a necessary examination of how political ideology can shape the production, localization, preservation, and interpretation of videogames.

One measure of how far contemporary Russophobia has advanced is that Russia is now often treated more harshly in cultural terms than even Israel, despite the latter facing ongoing accusations of genocide and other grave violations of international law. Russia was banned from international sporting competitions, excluded from Eurovision, suspended from major international sporting bodies, and subjected to widespread cultural boycotts, transforming it into a global pariah with a speed rarely seen in modern history. Meanwhile, many of the same organizations that rushed to isolate Russia have displayed remarkable caution, hesitation, or outright resistance when confronted with calls to apply comparable measures against Israel. This contrast became particularly visible during repeated controversies surrounding Israel's participation in Eurovision, where organizers explicitly rejected comparisons with Russia's exclusion despite mounting international criticism and boycott campaigns. Opposition to Russian state policy has increasingly evolved into hostility toward Russian civilization itself, with its language, literature, historical figures, and cultural heritage all deemed legitimate targets for exclusion, erasure, or condemnation.

Considering all of the above we must thus first establish Ukraine's recent approach to gaming in order to directly see how this worldview shapes what we analyze here: the gaming industry—how games are made, censored, and received. We shall use Ukraine as a case study because it has adopted one of the most assertive anti-Russian policy orientations in Europe in recent years. This broader political and cultural repositioning has not been limited to diplomacy or memory politics; it has extended into media, language policy, and cultural production.

The same forces that tear down monuments, burn or destroy books, rename institutions, and police language all across society inevitably reach into the gaming sphere, where Russian culture is erased or rewritten to fit current political narratives.

Just so you can appreciate how badly things have deteriorated, consider that Western media now publishes human-interest stories (such as the article by The Guardian above) romanticizing the destruction of Pushkin's works, "feeding Pushkin to the flames" as "not some grandiose gesture of hate. It was an artist’s private and exploratory act." The reader is invited to empathize with the act, reflect upon its symbolism, and admire its supposed moral significance. That the target is Russia's most celebrated poet, a foundational figure of world literature whose only offense was being Russian and writing in Russian, is treated not as a warning sign of cultural fanaticism, but as a perfectly understandable response to current politics. Book burning, it need not be said, is one of the most ancient and barbaric forms of censorship and repression, acts tied in historical memory to the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazis. I have not come across records of Russians ever doing the same with Ukrainian books. As we shall see later, these are very questionable actions for a 'democracy,' yet Western media, like The Guardian in this case, seem to promote such stories of cultural destruction as noble, humane stories of resilience in the face of war.

In a widely circulated Ukrainian investigation titled "The Germs of the Russian World", Russian cultural centers, churches, language organizations, schools, immigrant associations, media outlets, and civic groups across Europe are catalogued through the metaphor of a spreading contagion. The article repeatedly describes such institutions as vectors of influence, mechanisms of infiltration, and potential threats to European societies, framing manifestations of Russian cultural presence through a language normally associated with disease and containment.

Interestingly enough, the article references my own alma mater, the University of Granada, and its associated Russian Center (renamed Center of Slavic Studies after 2022) as one such example of a supposed vector of infection. This is particularly revealing because the center had already severed all ties with the Russkiy Mir Foundation, abandoned Russian state funding, and incorporated Ukrainian language courses, Ukrainian guests, and Ukrainian cultural activities into its program. Nor was Granada alone. The article itself acknowledges that Russian centers across Europe cut cooperation with Russian institutions, switched to university funding, organized fundraisers for Ukraine, displayed anti-war slogans, or closed altogether. The Russian Center in Durham followed a similar path. Pushkin House in London organized fundraising events for Ukrainian refugees. Russian cultural centers in Amsterdam and Madrid publicly displayed "Stop the War" and "Say No to War" banners. Other institutions redirected their activities toward Ukraine-related events and academic programs.

Yet even this was not enough.

Despite these acts of accommodation, the authors continue to catalogue such institutions within a broader network of suspected Russian influence. Granada itself remains suspect despite having abandoned Russian funding and distanced itself from Moscow. Its lingering offense was not political activism or loyalty to the Russian state, but the fact that it once screened Oliver Stone's documentary Ukraine on Fire (Stone himself is called "a propagandist") as part of a conference intended to present a "balanced view" of the conflict. The link they referenced to the Granada center is no longer available, proving they probably had to delete it after being shamed like this.

I contributed to this center on numerous occasions and can attest that it was never a propaganda outlet, political organization, or instrument of indoctrination. Its activities revolved around language learning, literature, translation, and cultural exchange. Yet even after renouncing Russian funding and adapting itself to the new political climate, it remained suspect simply because it continued to preserve some connection to Russian culture. The message could hardly be clearer: for the most zealous advocates of de-Russification, no amount of accommodation is ever sufficient. The issue is no longer Russian state influence, but the continued existence of Russian cultural presence itself. Thus, the objective is the outright elimination of Russia as a whole.

The cultural response to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict also illustrates the extent to which Russian perspectives have been marginalized within Western media spaces. While Russian state-affiliated outlets such as RT and Sputnik were rapidly removed or restricted across much of the Western media landscape on the grounds of combating disinformation and propaganda, Ukrainian media initiatives received unprecedented levels of institutional support. New 24-hour Ukrainian television channels were launched in several European countries, while entertainment companies developed programming specifically aimed at Ukrainian audiences displaced by the conflict.

One particularly striking example was the launch of a Ukrainian-language version of Nickelodeon, later followed by broader efforts to localize the channel for Ukrainian audiences. Whatever one's position on the conflict itself, the contrast is noteworthy. At the same time that Russian media outlets were being removed from Western platforms, entirely new media ecosystems were being created to amplify Ukrainian perspectives. Comparable initiatives were not established during conflicts in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, or Gaza, nor were dedicated children's television networks and 24-hour news services launched internationally on behalf of those populations. The result was an unusual media environment in which one side of the conflict experienced widespread cultural exclusion while the other received significant visibility and institutional support across news, entertainment, and children's programming.

It does not stop there, sadly. other articles openly promote the dehumanizing notion that Russians are essentially the Orcs of The Lord of the Rings. In a piece published by the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, the tone is unapologetically hostile toward Russians, explicitly comparing them to Tolkien's evil, subhuman race. Russians are portrayed not merely as military adversaries or representatives of a hostile state, but as inherently cruel, barbaric, and morally irredeemable. Rather than treating the "orc" label as wartime rhetoric or exaggeration, the article ultimately presents it as an accurate reflection of Russian character and behavior. Needless to say, there is nothing similar in Russian media mainstream that equates Ukrainians to some kind of subhuman race, as they are still considered a brotherly nation by the majority of Russians.

A separate article published by RUSI adopts a more academic tone but arrives at a remarkably similar conclusion. Rather than challenging the metaphor, it analyzes and largely validates it as an effective "tactical narrative," arguing that it helps mobilize Ukrainian society, strengthen morale, and simplify the conflict into a readily understandable struggle between good and evil. Although the article acknowledges historical parallels with other dehumanizing wartime labels, such as the depiction of Germans as "Huns" during the First World War, it nevertheless presents the "orc" narrative as a useful and even necessary instrument of wartime communication.

Taken together, these examples illustrate how the dehumanization of Russians has increasingly become normalized within sections of both Ukrainian and Western-aligned discourse. Russians are no longer portrayed simply as citizens of an opposing state or supporters of a rival government, but as a fundamentally alien and hostile collective. The language employed frequently reduces them to monsters, hordes, or fictional creatures, with little acknowledgment of individual humanity or moral complexity. In this sense, anti-Russian sentiment extends beyond opposition to the Russian state and increasingly encompasses Russian identity itself, including its language, culture, and people. The widespread acceptance of the "orc" metaphor demonstrates how easily wartime narratives can move from condemning a government's actions to depicting an entire nation as something less than fully human.



5. Ukraine in Gaming: Historical Revisionism, Censorship and Suppression of Language

In the gaming sector—where Ukraine holds a visible and influential position—questions of symbolism, localization, and historical framing have become particularly significant, especially in high-profile and heavily promoted projects such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

We have laid out these preexisting cultural patterns of Russophobia because they matter when we turn to, for example, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise—a series whose recent remasters were stripped of Russian voices and Soviet-era relics, not for artistic reasons, but as part of a broader cultural campaign. Establishing Ukraine's recent approach to gaming allows us to observe how this worldview concretely shapes the industry: how games are produced, localized, censored, and publicly received, and how historical and linguistic elements are minimized, altered, or reframed to align with prevailing narratives.

Since 2022, companies like CD Projekt RED, Microsoft, Amazon, and EA suspended sales or even canceled Russian localizations, leaving countless players cut off from their own language despite having no responsibility for their government's actions. Amazon went as far as halting the Russian localization of New World, while EA removed Russian teams from FIFA. The irony is that Russian studios themselves, even under immense political pressure, often continue to include Ukrainian as a playable language in their releases, proving that art and accessibility need not be held hostage to geopolitics. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is one of the starkest examples. The remastered trilogy released in 2025 launched to "Mostly Negative" reviews not because of gameplay but because GSC Game World removed the original Russian voice tracks and deleted Soviet-era monuments from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. As many gamers noted, what once functioned as a "museum of time"—a reminder of Soviet negligence and the catastrophe it produced—was stripped of its historical markers, not to glorify Moscow, but to maintain immersion in a setting bound to 1986. Ironically, this undermines the traditional Ukrainian anti-Soviet narrative further. Fans thus argued that this was not propaganda, but revisionism: the Zone's cultural and historical texture gutted in the name of contemporary politics. In censoring language and revising relics, the developers inadvertently proved the point that history and culture are not immune to war—they become its first casualties.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl became one of the most politicized game releases of recent years, shaped as much by war as by design. Developed under bombardment, with parts of the team evacuated to Prague and others fighting at the front, the studio GSC Game World openly tied its sequel to Ukraine's survival, dedicating it to fallen developers and soldiers, and lacing the game with Ukrainian songs, imagery, and the newly adopted spelling "Chornobyl." At the same time, it severed ties with its largest historic fanbase: Russia. The game was pulled from Russian platforms, Russian dubbing was scrapped, and hackers demanding its reinstatement were rebuffed. Western, Middle-Eastern and Ukrainian media framed these choices as defiant acts of cultural resilience, praising a "victory" for Ukraine as sales hit a million in 48 hours and Xbox executives championed it as a symbol of endurance.

But this celebration revealed a double standard. Russian fans — who had carried the franchise since its 2007 debut — were written off as expendable, while forums filled with complaints about the absence of Russian localization were dismissed as petty or malicious. When Russian state officials in turn threatened to ban the game as "extremist" because of its explicit support for the Ukrainian military, Western coverage decried it as censorship and propaganda, even citing disinformation campaigns. In effect, barring Russians from access was lauded as principle, while Russia reciprocating was condemned as dictatorship. The narrative around Stalker 2 thus became less about the Zone and more about the conflict itself: a cultural front where the exclusion of Russians was justified as moral necessity, and the game's very existence was cast in the West as proof that Ukraine could not be broken. Everything ceased to be about the game and gained a political connotation. The game itself became yet another cultural and political symbol.

A similar contradiction emerged around Atomic Heart, a 2023 retrofuturistic first-person shooter developed by the Russian-founded studio Mundfish. Ukrainian officials not only sought to ban the game domestically but also called on Sony, Microsoft, and Valve to restrict its sale internationally, arguing that its success could indirectly benefit Russia and that user data might be exposed to Russian interests. NBC News, however, reported that it was unable to find evidence that revenue from the game was being used to fund the war. The irony was difficult to miss: while S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was celebrated despite its developers' open support for Ukraine's war effort, Atomic Heart was treated as politically toxic largely because of its Russian origins. The message seemed clear: supporting one side through gaming was admirable, while merely belonging to the other side was grounds for suspicion, exclusion, and attempted deplatforming.

Years later, Ukrainian state-backed media continued to cite Atomic Heart as an example of a title players should avoid because of its alleged links to Russia, while simultaneously presenting S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 as the ethical alternative. One such article grouped Atomic Heart alongside titles such as Escape from Tarkov, War Thunder, and even the openly pro-war Squad 22: ZOV, arguing that consumers should consider whether their purchases might ultimately benefit Russia's war effort. Although the article acknowledged that no evidence had emerged showing that Atomic Heart directly funded the Russian military, it nevertheless portrayed the game as problematic due to its Soviet aesthetics, alleged Russian business connections, and perceived romanticization of the USSR. In contrast, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was presented as a morally preferable choice and celebrated as a Ukrainian cultural achievement produced under wartime conditions. Whatever one's position on the conflict, the contrast was revealing: one game's national origin was treated as grounds for suspicion, while another's was celebrated as a virtue.

The controversy surrounding Russian-developed games after 2022 often extended beyond the games themselves. In many cases, developers who attempted to remain publicly neutral found themselves subjected to intense scrutiny from players, journalists, and online communities seeking evidence of their political views. Steam discussions frequently featured questions about a studio's nationality, whether purchasing a game might indirectly support Russia, or whether developers had made statements regarding the war. In some instances, communities examined years-old photographs, social media activity, personal acquaintances, business relationships, or even in-game references in an effort to determine whether a developer secretly supported the Russian government. The case of Battlestate Games and Escape from Tarkov became one of the most prominent examples, with prolonged debates over the significance of the studio's associations despite the absence of an explicit public endorsement of the war by the company itself.

The cultural and historical controversies surrounding contemporary Ukraine extend beyond language policy and decommunization, however. They also touch upon longstanding disputes regarding the rehabilitation of nationalist movements and historical figures associated with Nazi collaboration during the Second World War. Organizations such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), celebrated by some as anti-Soviet independence movements, remain highly controversial due to documented involvement by elements of these organizations in ethnic violence, antisemitism, and massacres of Polish civilians.

These debates continue into the present day. In June 2026, Ukrainian authorities faced criticism in Poland after a military unit was named after a formation linked to the Volhynia massacres, prompting diplomatic concerns and calls for dialogue. Israel also heavily condemned the burial of Nazi collaborator Andriy Melnyk, buried with full state honors as a Hero of Ukraine. At the same time, international observers and journalists have periodically raised concerns regarding the continued presence of Nazi and Waffen-SS symbolism among some Ukrainian military formations and volunteer units, despite official government efforts to distance itself from such imagery. The whitewashing phenomenon is real. The BBC was reporting on it as far as 2014. However, as the Responsible Statecraft piece by Marta Havryshko mentions, such concerns began being whitewashed after the invasion, and have reached a level of being outright denied and dismissed as mere Russian propaganda, as is often the case. The controversy has also highlighted growing strains in Polish-Ukrainian relations. Despite Poland being one of Ukraine's strongest supporters since 2022, disputes over the legacy of the UPA and the Volhynia massacres continue to resurface, with some Polish politicians warning that the glorification of nationalist formations associated with anti-Polish violence risks undermining the historical reconciliation efforts that have underpinned the alliance between the two countries, resulting in threats over even stripping Zelensky of awards given to him by Poland. Even before the Russo-Ukrainian conflict escalated in 2022, Ukraine was already telling countries like Israel to not meddle in its celebration of Nazi figures regarded as national heroes, like Stepan Bandera. Poland and Israel have had this debate with Ukraine since before the conflict erupted, and many times at that.

The references to Ukrainian celebration of fascists they regard as heroes is absurdly numerous to list here, and well documented in the media. But to this day, few incidents better capture the sheer absurdity of contemporary historical revisionism than the Yaroslav Hunka scandal, in which a veteran of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division was publicly applauded in the Canadian Parliament. The episode revealed how anti-Russian fervor can become so intense that even individuals associated with formations that fought alongside Nazi Germany are recast as heroes rather than remembered for what they actually were.

It should also be noted that, while relations with Israel have been more tense, Poland continued giving unrelenting support to Ukraine despite all these past slights. Having lived in Poland for a year during 2023–2024, I witnessed firsthand the scale of that support. Ukrainian flags were a common sight, public demonstrations in support of Ukraine took place regularly in cities such as Kraków, fundraising campaigns were visible in public spaces, and the presence of Ukrainian refugees was evident throughout daily life. Similar displays of solidarity could also be observed elsewhere in Europe, including Dublin in 2023 and Madrid in 2026, where Ukrainian flags, fundraising initiatives, and public expressions of support remained highly visible. At the same time, however, I also encountered a very different undercurrent of opinion. While support for Ukraine as a state was widespread, negative views toward Ukrainian nationalism, the legacy of the UPA, and the memory of the Volhynia massacres remained common among some Poles. Criticism of Russia and sympathy for Ukraine often coexisted alongside deep resentment toward those aspects of Ukrainian historical memory associated with wartime collaboration and anti-Polish violence. My impression was therefore not of a society united around a single narrative, but rather of one balancing solidarity with Ukraine against longstanding historical grievances that had never fully disappeared.

Based on the evidence presented above, on the evidence easily found online in general, as well as repeated objections from countries such as Israel, Poland and others regarding the rehabilitation of wartime Nazi-linked nationalist figures and organizations, it is the official position of this archive that elements of the contemporary Ukrainian state have embraced a form of neo-Nazi historical revisionism. Thus, this site fully accepts the official position of the Russian government with regards to Ukraine's glorification of fascist symbols. The continued glorification of movements and individuals associated with collaborationism, ethnic violence, and antisemitism cannot be dismissed as isolated incidents, but forms part of a broader ideological trend that increasingly influences Ukrainian politics, culture, and public memory.



6. The Case of Tetris

When people talk about how culture and politics don't matter in games, we need look no further than the phenomenon that was Tetris. Born in 1984 behind the Iron Curtain, at the height of the Cold War, it should have been the least marketable product imaginable in the West: a Soviet puzzle game from a communist state. And yet the opposite happened—its origin became part of its mystique.

From the moment Tetris crossed the border, Western marketing leaned heavily on Russian imagery to brand it as exotic and unmistakably Soviet. Box art featured Moscow skylines, the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral, red banners, hammers and sickles, cosmonauts in space stations, even stylized Cyrillic lettering to remind players that this wasn't just another puzzle—it was a cultural export from the USSR. The soundtrack cemented the association with "Korobeiniki," a 19th-century Russian folk tune that instantly stamped the game as foreign and distinctive. Its creator, Alexey Pajitnov, famously felt embarrassed by it, saying it would undermine Russian culture, as children would associate the folk song to the game. Despite communism being taboo in Western consumer culture, and despite political antagonism defining East–West relations, publishers made sure players knew they were buying a Soviet creation. Russianness was not hidden but highlighted, because it gave the game a unique aura that no Western competitor could imitate.

This Soviet branding wasn't limited to just Tetris itself. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, numerous officially licensed sequels and spin-offs enthusiastically embraced the same visual language. Titles such as Welltris (1989), Faces...tris III (1990), and BreakThru! (1994), among others, frequently featured Soviet and Russian imagery on their packaging, promotional artwork, and advertising materials. St. Basil's Cathedral became a recurring motif, often accompanied by Kremlin silhouettes, red stars, hammers and sickles, onion domes, stylized Cyrillic typography, and other instantly recognizable symbols associated with the USSR. Publishers clearly understood that the "Sovietness" of Tetris had commercial value and deliberately cultivated it as part of the franchise's identity. These games were not marketed as culturally neutral abstract puzzle experiences; they were presented as products emerging from a mysterious and fascinating world behind the former Iron Curtain. The result was that, for an entire generation of players, Tetris became inseparable from a broader visual mythology of Russia and the Soviet Union, demonstrating once again that cultural identity was not incidental to the franchise's success but one of its defining selling points.

This is why Tetris remains such a revealing case study. If culture didn't matter, its packaging and promotion would have downplayed national origin. Instead, the Soviet frame was used as a selling point. Now, decades later, imagine trying to market Tetris for the first time: in today's climate, Russian flags, Moscow landmarks, or Cyrillic stylization would almost certainly be stripped out in favor of neutral neon minimalism or global retro aesthetics. The gameplay would be the same, but the cultural frame would be erased. And perhaps most sadly, even Tetris's own creator has recently distanced himself from Russia, openly siding against his homeland in the ongoing conflict. It shows how deep the current fracture runs: a game once celebrated as a proud Soviet export is now caught in the same cultural fault lines that this archive seeks to examine. Pajitnov once worried the Western "Russian kitsch" wrapped around Tetris might trivialize his country's culture; his later public positions show how far today's fracture has reached into even the most emblematic Soviet-born game. Tetris proves that games are never "just games"—culture has always been part of the product, and sometimes, it becomes inseparable from it.

As the Cold War receded into history, Russian and Soviet imagery did not disappear from video games; rather, it migrated into a different genre. While Tetris and its derivatives had presented Soviet identity as exotic, colorful, and culturally distinctive, many strategy and action games of the 1990s and 2000s increasingly drew upon the imagery of geopolitical confrontation. Titles such as Soviet Strike (1996), Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996), Red Alert 2 (2000), Red Alert 3 (2008), Freedom Fighters (2003), and World in Conflict (2007) revived Cold War fantasies of Soviet military power, invasions of the West, and global ideological conflict. Their artwork, user interfaces, faction logos, and promotional materials made extensive use of red stars, hammers and sickles, Cyrillic lettering, Soviet banners, onion-domed skylines, military parades, and other visual shorthand associated with the USSR. Whether portrayed as villains, rivals, antiheroes, or simply a distinctive faction, Soviet forces were almost always marked by an instantly recognizable cultural vocabulary. The remarkable consistency of these symbols across decades of game design demonstrates that developers understood something fundamental: players immediately recognized and responded to Soviet and Russian iconography. Far from being irrelevant, cultural identity remained one of the most powerful tools available for creating memorable worlds, factions, and narratives.



7. Culture as a Weapon of War

To truly understand how games portray Russia, we also need to understand the broader historical backdrop that has shaped these images. Stereotypes in media do not emerge in a vacuum; they are the echoes of older political struggles, cultural anxieties, and wartime reflexes. Many games here, as you'll quickly notice, feature very political overtones, taking place in fictionalized Russian invasions of Western countries, or depicting internal Russian politics, coups, organized crime and civil wars. Just as today's localization choices or narrative clichés reflect current geopolitics, earlier moments in history show how quickly art and culture can be conscripted into conflict. This pattern is not unique to Russia—it has repeated itself with German, Japanese, and other cultures before. With that in mind, we can turn to history to see how culture, in times of war, is often treated as just one more front in the war.

History shows that in wartime, culture is invariably conscripted into politics. In 1917, King George V officially changed the surname of the British Royal Family from the German House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor due to strong anti-German sentiment. German-language newspapers in the United States were shuttered, schools dropped German, and even sauerkraut was rechristened "liberty cabbage"; dachshunds "liberty hounds"; and German measles "liberty measles." Germans were called "Huns." Orchestras trimmed Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and Wagner from programs because the composers were German. The Second World War repeated the reflex in harsher ways; Japanese-Americans were interned in camps, Japanese language schools and cultural associations were closed, and Japanese arts were banned or discouraged. Allied repertoires again sidelined German and Austrian composers, while in the Soviet Union German music was suppressed after 1941. The Cold War added suspicion toward Russian and Soviet culture in the West regardless of artistic content. McCarthyism and witch-hunts for communists became commonplace in the West, particularly the United States, and artists and culture in general suffered as a result. Meanwhile, in the Communist East, Western music, art and literature were equally forbidden and discouraged.

Now, teleport yourself from the war-torn wastelands of 1945 Germany and Japan, and come back to the present. Would you ever think of banning or demonizing the culture of present-day Germany or Japan, portraying it as eternally evil and tyrannical? Would you even consider people from those countries as enemies because of their past actions, so greatly vilified during their time to the point of attacking and suppressing their cultures? Such is the recurring pattern that this archive seeks to document in gaming: the conscription of culture into conflict, and the slow, difficult road back to treating art as art, made impossibly difficult by such rampant fanaticism and bigoted extremism, like those exhibited by the current Ukrainian regime and its supporters.

The following are but some examples of this massive trend.

Across Europe and Ukraine since 2022, Soviet-era monuments have been dismantled or boxed; statues of Pushkin and Catherine the Great removed or vandalized; Lenin toppled, and symbols recoded or renamed. Daily life and the most mundane aspects of culture, they are all valid targets.

In Lithuania, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker was suspended as part of what officials called a “mental quarantine” from Russian culture, with the national opera house replacing it for two seasons. When a new culture minister later suggested there was no danger in enjoying a Christmas fairy tale and that watching Tchaikovsky would not somehow turn audiences into Kremlin supporters, the remark sparked outrage from the most fanatical supporters of Ukraine.

Across the pond, in New York City’s Brighton Beach, the politics of a distant war reshaped cultural life almost overnight. The longtime grocery store Taste of Russia dropped its name within days of the invasion and rebranded as International Food, signaling how even a shop sign could become politically charged in just a matter of days. Local community groups followed the same pattern, with the Russian Parents Network renaming itself the Russian-speaking Parents Network to distance itself from the word “Russian” and to include Ukrainians and others from the former Soviet Union. On the boardwalk, anti-war activists introduced a new white-and-blue flag (designed by a Berlin-based Russian dissident artist, Kai Katonina) as an alternative to the tricolor to protest Russia (the flag has gone on to be used by anti-Putin demonstrators and the Ukraine-aligned anti-Russian Freedom of Russia Legion militia). It should also be noted, this flag fulfills a similar role to the Belarus opposition flag, which is identical but with a red stripe, except this flag is historical, whereas the new anti-Russian flag is made up.

Meanwhile restaurants across Manhattan erased “Russian” from their branding or menus in response to boycotts and vandalism. At the same time, the arts faced their own wave of cancellations: orchestras quietly removed Tchaikovsky from their repertoires, university courses on Dostoevsky were suspended or “balanced” with Ukrainian authors, and international theaters canceled Bolshoi Ballet performances even when individual artists had spoken out against their country's military actions. Each of these acts—renaming, rebranding, or canceling—illustrates how culture is caught in the crossfire of geopolitics, where language, music, and symbols cease to be neutral and instead become proxies for state policy. The cost is a narrowing of cultural expression and a diaspora community pressured to reframe its identity simply to remain visible and accepted.

Once again, we see an interesting connection to gaming: Grand Theft Auto IV, a true time capsule of 2008, whose fictional Brighton Beach district, Hove Beach, serves as one of the most detailed videogame recreations of the neighborhood ever produced. The game captures Brighton Beach before the transformations brought about by the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Since 2014, and especially after 2022, businesses that once openly emphasized Russian identity have increasingly adopted more neutral branding, while Ukrainian symbols have become more visible throughout the district. As a result, the Brighton Beach preserved in GTA IV now functions as an unintended historical snapshot of a Russian-speaking enclave whose public cultural character has undergone significant change. One wonders what longtime Brighton Beach residents make of this today: a videogame created in 2008 may now preserve memories, symbols, and atmospheres that have become increasingly uncommon in the neighborhood itself.

Moreover, Hove Beach's local Russian radio, Vladivostok FM, is of particular interest, because of its inclusion of Ukrainian singer Ruslana as the host. Although the station is explicitly marketed around Russian and post-Soviet culture, as in in fact called "the Russian radio", by many characters, Ruslana frequently references her Ukrainian identity in ways that might seem forced in hindsight, introducing a heavy-handed Ukrainian presence into what might otherwise be perceived as a predominantly Russian cultural space. She even sings songs associated to the 2004 Orange Revolution, seemingly out of nowhere. In retrospect, this creates an intriguing dynamic foreshadowing what was since then becoming Ukrainian ultranationalism. Released in 2008, years before the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the game presents Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and other post-Soviet peoples as part of a shared immigrant milieu in Brighton Beach. Yet Ruslana's prominent role also highlights the distinct national identities that coexisted within that broader Russian-speaking world. She's pretty much the only Ukrainian presence in the entire game, and if it weren't for her, Hove Beach would remain exclusively a Russian-only neighborhood in the minds of players. Modern players may therefore find it striking that one of the most visible cultural voices on the game's "Russian" radio station is, in fact, Ukrainian, and odd choice for a predominantly-Russian radio station, even back then. The choice becomes even more noteworthy in hindsight given that Ruslana would later emerge as one of the most recognizable public faces of the Euromaidan protests, speaking and performing on Kyiv's Independence Square during the events that helped bring about the fall of President Viktor Yanukovych and profoundly reshaped relations between Russia and Ukraine, triggering a huge and instrumental escalation in the future conflict. In many respects, it almost appears as though the developers felt compelled to remind players that Ruslana was Ukrainian (or Ruslana herself pushed for this representation) because of the uncomfortable position of putting a Ukrainian in charge of a Russian station, rather than simply allowing her to exist as one voice among many within the wider post-Soviet milieu. Her pushy references to Ukraine, and to some things considered Ukrainian nationalism referencing the 2004 Orange Revolution, create the impression that the character is carrying the burden of representing an entire national identity largely absent elsewhere in the game. As a result, she stands out not because Ukraine occupies a major role in the game, but because she is virtually the only significant Ukrainian cultural presence within a setting otherwise dominated by Russian characters, Russian language, Russian organized crime, and Russian immigrant life.

This example also illustrates one of the central reasons why ROMANOV exists. Videogames are often treated as static cultural products, frozen in the moment of their release. Yet history does not stand still. Political events, social transformations, wars, migrations, and cultural shifts constantly reshape the way we interpret older works. Elements that seemed incidental or unremarkable to players in 2008 may acquire entirely new meanings when viewed through the lens of later developments. The case of Ruslana, Vladivostok FM, and Hove Beach demonstrates how contemporary events can fundamentally alter our reading of a game's cultural landscape. ROMANOV therefore seeks not only to document how Russia and the post-Soviet world were represented in videogames at the time they were created, but also how subsequent history continues to transform our understanding of those representations. In this sense, games are not merely entertainment products; they are cultural artifacts whose meanings evolve alongside the societies that interpret them.



8. Agents of Russophobia

By now, a reasonable question emerges: if these representations are so widespread, where do they originate? Cultural stereotypes do not reproduce themselves. They are reinforced through institutions, media, academia, think tanks, publishers, journalists, filmmakers, and political commentators who shape public understanding of Russia. It is clear that most major Western outlets do have a Russophobia problem.

Just as videogames inherit narratives from films, newspapers, and popular history, they also inherit the assumptions embedded within them. To understand how certain images of Russia become normalized in gaming, we must first examine the intellectual and media ecosystems that produce, disseminate, and legitimize them.

The outright dismissal of Russophobia itself has become one of the defining features of contemporary Western discourse regarding Russia. While Western media and academic institutions routinely recognize and condemn prejudice directed at virtually every other national, ethnic, or religious group, anti-Russian sentiment is frequently treated as either non-existent, exaggerated, or merely a propaganda invention of the Kremlin. Some outlets even go as far as to describe this very real phenomenon as a "joke". Others conclude it's simply a self-victimization tactic or a justification for war crimes. Could you imagine these patronizing and dismissive reactions to other real phenomena such as antisemitism or homophobia in the West?

Major newspapers, think tanks, government-funded initiatives, policy journals, and political commentators have spent years portraying the very concept of Russophobia as a myth, a conspiracy theory, or a cynical rhetorical device designed to deflect criticism of Russian state policy. In these accounts, hostility toward Russia is almost always presented as a rational response to the actions of the Russian government, while the possibility that such hostility might spill over into broader cultural, ethnic, or civilizational prejudice is often dismissed out of hand.

This tendency is remarkably consistent across the contemporary media landscape. Whether in opinion columns, policy papers, government statements, or anti-disinformation initiatives, one repeatedly encounters the same underlying assumption: Russophobia is not a legitimate social phenomenon but rather a narrative manufactured by Russia itself. The result is a peculiar double standard. While the existence of prejudice against other groups is generally taken seriously and examined critically, anti-Russian bias is frequently redefined, minimized, or denied altogether. Before examining specific figures who have contributed to the construction and dissemination of Russophobic narratives, it is worth noting that many of the institutions promoting these narratives simultaneously reject the notion that Russophobia exists in any meaningful form. In this sense, the denial of Russophobia has become an important component of modern Russophobia itself.

The persistence of these narratives is not merely the result of popular prejudice or historical memory. Over decades, a network of commentators, historians, policy analysts, journalists, advocacy organizations, and media institutions has helped cultivate and reinforce particular ways of viewing Russia and its people. Whether consciously or unconsciously, these actors function as agents in the production and circulation of Russophobic narratives, transforming political hostility into cultural common sense and ensuring that specific assumptions about Russia are continually reproduced across literature, journalism, entertainment, and ultimately videogames themselves.

In other words, this recent post-Ukraine modern crusade against Russia is not a spontaneous moral awakening; it is the work of tried-and-true professional ideologues and state-aligned propagandists who have made careers out of pathologizing an entire nation.

Figures such as Anne Applebaum are among the most visible examples of this phenomenon, packaging long-standing Cold War assumptions into contemporary moral narratives for Western audiences. Let's focus on her and her work, especially recent pieces, to understand how such figures operate.

Anne Applebaum's piece in The Atlantic, The Russian Empire Must Die is little more than Cold War propaganda dressed up as liberal commentary. Taking a look at such articles, it becomes clear that these so-called "expert" historians, who apparently know so much about Russia, even more so than Russians themselves, know better than you or me what needs to be done with the country too. Please note the aggressive and violent language being used as well. The Russian "empire" mustn't just "disappear": it needs to DIE.

A lifelong, well-paid anticommunist and mouthpiece for Western capital, Applebaum recycles the same narrative that has sustained her career: Russia and socialism are inherently "barbaric" and must be civilized through total submission to Western neoliberalism. Even historians like Mark Tauger have called out her earlier books (Red Famine, Gulag) for distortions, hearsay, and ideological bias. A fixture of the Council on Foreign Relations and the NED—both extensions of U.S. soft power—Applebaum operates less as a historian than as a propagandist, laundering Cold War talking points into moralistic prose. Her sanctimonious defense of "democracy" masks an uncritical faith in NATO expansion, capitalist privatization, and Western hegemony, reducing complex histories to a sermon on why capitalism must always prevail.

"Imperial" is also a good indicator of how lost these people are when it comes to word choices. Anne Applebaum hails from the "Empire" of the United States of America. There are no 750 Russian bases spread across 80 nations, to my understanding.

It is remarkable that we still need to remind people which country actually embodies global empire today. The United States remains the most expansive and aggressive power on Earth, projecting dominance through hundreds of foreign military bases and economic coercion on a planetary scale. Against this backdrop, the claim that Russia harbors "imperial ambitions" rings hollow. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow's behavior in its own borderlands pales in comparison to Washington's long history of conquest and annexation—one might recall how California, Texas, and New Mexico were "integrated" into the American map. Yet these moral arbiters never call for those lands to be returned to their original owners.

Applebaum is hardly alone in this hypocrisy. A whole class of Western Sovietologists and popular historians—Robert Service, Simon Sebag Montefiore, the late Richard Pipes, Orlando Figes—has built its prestige on pathologizing Russia while glorifying the West. Applebaum is merely the loudest of them. Their work, dressed up as scholarship, oozes ideological bias and cultural superiority. British authors in particular tend to speak with an almost ecclesiastical certainty, as if their worldview were the measure of civilization itself. Robert Service's declaration that "the future does not lie with Leninism" is a telling example: not a historian's conclusion, but a politician's slogan masquerading as academic judgment.

Not all Russophobic agents are Western, however; some are Russian or post-Soviet figures who have also built entire careers catering to Western hostility toward Russia, setting up shop comfortably in a West all too eager to receive Russia haters. The usual suspects are already well-known: the vocal but relatively small anti-Putin opposition, including Aleksei Navalny, Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Masha Gessen, Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, as well as Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich.

These figures occupy different niches within the same broader ecosystem. Kasparov, once celebrated primarily as a chess champion, reinvented himself in the West as one of the most outspoken opponents of the modern Russian state; Khodorkovsky was transformed from oligarch to dissident icon; Masha Gessen became a prominent interpreter of Russian affairs for Western liberal audiences; Pussy Riot's Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina turned political performance art into an internationally marketable symbol of anti-Putin punk resistance; Navalny, meanwhile, evolved from anti-corruption activist into perhaps the most recognizable face of the Russian opposition abroad, despite a political past that often sat uneasily with the liberal image later projected onto him by Western media. Indeed, while many in the West elevated him into a democratic martyr, critics noted his earlier nationalist positions, while many Ukrainians simultaneously regarded him as insufficiently anti-Russian and unwilling to fully abandon traditional Russian assumptions regarding Crimea and Ukraine. Such contradictions reveal how complex these figures often are beneath the simplified images presented to foreign audiences.

Despite their differences, all have been elevated by Western media as authentic Russian voices capable of explaining Russia to the outside world, often through narratives centered on authoritarianism, repression, corruption, imperialism, and national guilt. To their admirers, they are courageous dissidents and defenders of democracy; to their critics, they are foreign agents against their own country whose prominence rests largely on telling Western audiences precisely what those audiences already expect to hear about Russia.

But of particular note, however, is Alexievich, due to the impact of her writings in popular culture and the grim picture of the Soviet Union she painted, one apparently entirely based on "suffering." She helped bring about this vision in a new generation of Western readers in need of a new retelling of Soviet grim tales straight from the horse's dissident mouth, even popularizing it through pop culture phenomenons such as HBO's hit series Chernobyl (2019), mind you, a series so blatantly inaccurate in regards to how the Soviet Union actually worked that even Masha Gessen herself made an entire article criticizing how the changes from reality made the anti-Soviet messagging weaker (according to her). Just like HBO did, there is something darker at play here, something very dishonest when it comes to portraying the Soviet Union in the way Alexievich does. Unlike traditional russophobes like Applebaum, who put on the label of "expert" but still hail from the West and lack the "native" legitimacy, Alexievich can claim to have experienced the Soviet Union and all its horrors firsthand, and enhances it through her "voices," interviews and testimonies with other Soviet victims of any atrocity she encounters, be it Chernobyl, the War in Afghanistan, etc. But these convenient voices are practically made up as she goes along. As The New Republic once noted in its review Witness Tampering, Alexievich's supposedly "documentary" works such as Secondhand Time and Voices from Chernobyl are not genuine oral histories but heavily edited ideological constructions, reshaping testimonies to fit Western expectations of Soviet tragedy and Russian moral failure. Even her French translators have exposed how she rewrote interviews, altered facts, and inserted scenes to make her books align with liberal, anti-Soviet sensibilities more palatable to Western audiences. It is precisely this narrative engineering that made her the perfect Nobel laureate for a "new Cold War," as the article observed—a post-Soviet voice reciting the Western script of repentance and guilt, painted on the bloody canvas of the Soviet Union's greatest hits of "suffering".

It is noteworthy to add that Svetlana Alexievich herself was also included in the Myrotvorets list, despite her consistently anti-Soviet positions, suggesting that, within certain Ukrainian nationalist information frameworks, even broadly anti-Soviet cultural figures are not exempt from classification as adversarial.

In this sense, Applebaum and Alexievich belong to the same ideological continuum: one speaks about Russia from without, the other against it from within. Both have mastered the art of turning Russophobia into a moral credential, a marketable export for Western consumption. Thus, we must bear in mind that criticisms of figures such as Applebaum, Alexievich and others are not confined to a handful of Russian nationalists or fringe commentators. Over the years, they have attracted sustained criticism from historians, journalists, left-wing intellectuals, communists, and even former admirers, many of whom argue that their work reduces the complexity of Russian and Soviet history to a single moral narrative centered on oppression, suffering, and guilt. Critics of Applebaum frequently accuse her of approaching Russia not as a civilization to be understood, but as a political problem to be solved, filtering centuries of history through a Cold War lens that leaves little room for nuance or contradiction. Alexievich's detractors, meanwhile, argue that her books transform selective memories and edited testimonies into a universal portrait of Soviet life, elevating tragedy into the defining feature of an entire civilization while marginalizing experiences that do not fit this framework. Whether these criticisms are accepted or rejected, they point to a broader concern: that certain depictions of Russia have become so culturally dominant in the West that they are no longer treated as interpretations, but as unquestionable truths. In this sense, the debate surrounding figures such as Applebaum and Alexievich is not merely about history, but about who possesses the authority to define Russia's past, present, and future. In the Western Hemisphere, there is simply no doubt about it: look up opinion pieces, book reviews, forum talks and public perception of Alexievich, and you really won't find criticism unless you really do look hard. And that's precisely the point. The media loves her, precisely, because the media must hate Russia.

The West, so intent in its hyperbolic and fanatically moralistic defense of what is nowadays pejoratively referred to as "wokism," "social justice" and "political correctness" (the supposed defense of minorities and the oppressed), scoffs however at the very real social phenomenon of Russophobia, dismissing it as mere Russian propaganda or cheap victimization tactic at worst, piggybacking on actual social justice causes. And it's very telling that this easily-dismissed phenomenon, hand-waved by politicians, academics, institutions and journalists, has, however, been brilliantly portrayed and explored in videogames like Hotline Miami (2012) and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015), which unironically treat it as a real and disturbing social malaise in a fictional yet realistic Cold War setting in 1980s and 1990s Miami, in which openly russophobic characters, civilians, radicalized vigilantes, organized terrorists and even government agencies, foment and support waves of russophobic attacks against Russian immigrants in the US, after a bitter war between both superpowers results in an uneasy peace. In a brilliant twist using both metanarrative and metagameplay elements, it is revealed the ruthless Russian gangsters we gleefully massacre and our murderous campaign of terror throughout the game are the work of a russophobic US terrorist conspiracy to sow war against Russia. This actually succeeds, and by the end of the second game in the series, the world is soon ravaged by nuclear war, endowing the game with a heavy anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons message (reminiscent of Metal Gear). The game franchise even goes as far as to humanize the Russian enemy gangster faction further, by not only letting us play as them and uncover their motivations, but also portraying very real human drama associated to the life of organized crime, including work fatigue, friendship, love, loss, betrayal and ambition, with no prejudice. The Russians stop being the nameless army of faceless goons we massacre in the first game and are now just one more faction in the game's ecosystem we can play as, humanizing it further. Other characters, US American vigilantes bloodthirsty for Russian blood, are portrayed much more grossly and negatively, as actual bigots. The makers of this videogame are from Sweden, a traditionally russophobic country and now a NATO member since 2024. In other words, an indie piece of modern gaming by two then relatively unknown young men, from a not-particularly friendly neighbor to Russia, covers the topic of Russophobia much more humanely, maturely and efficiently than many of these pieces of media that have regurgitated the same anti-Russian talking points since the McCarthy era, the same talking points people like Applebaum keep shamelessly spouting.

Iron Meat (2024) offers an interesting counterpoint to many contemporary Western portrayals of Russia: despite being developed by a Russian studio during a period of intense geopolitical tension, the game presents humanity's struggle against the extradimensional cosmic horror Iron Meat as a shared endeavor. Visual elements suggest an ambiguous alliance between Western and Russian forces (judging by the juxtaposition of Latin and Cyrillic characters), fighting side by side against a common threat. In doing so, Iron Meat implicitly preserves the possibility of cooperation and solidarity between peoples who, in much contemporary media, are increasingly portrayed as irreconcilable adversaries.

This also reflects a broader historical tendency. Throughout much of the modern era, Western popular culture has generally portrayed Russia as an adversary with far greater frequency and intensity than Russian culture has portrayed the West in similar terms. One need only compare the vast number of Hollywood films featuring Russian or Soviet villains with the comparatively limited number of Soviet or Russian productions centered on US American antagonists. A similar asymmetry can be observed in videogames, where Russians have occupied the role of recurring enemy for decades, while Westerners appear far less often as equivalent antagonists in Russian-developed titles. Whatever one makes of the political realities behind these portrayals, the imbalance itself proves difficult to ignore.



9. Conclusion: No Enemy is Eternal

In confronting the ugliness and hatred now poisoning relations between Russians and Ukrainians in all aspects of life—including gaming and cultural production—it is worth recalling the words of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater's The Boss:

"Is there such a thing as an absolute, timeless enemy? There is no such thing, and never has been. And the reason is that our enemies are human beings like us. They can only be our enemies in relative terms. The world must be made whole again."

This truth echoes an older maxim from British statesman Viscount Palmerston, who declared in 1848: "We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."

Few lines in gaming capture so directly the truth that enmity is never eternal, that the lines we draw in moments of war are fragile and contingent. To forget this is to accept division as inevitable and eternal, when it is anything but. Any rogue, repressive or enemy state in history, be it the US Confederacy, the Russian, British or French Empires, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, Francoist Spain, the Soviet Union, Apartheid South Africa, any political regime, no matter their ideology, left or right, democratic or not, inevitably falls, relations normalize as wars come to an end and people come together. To remember it is to keep alive the possibility of reconciliation, and to affirm that culture—whether Russian, Ukrainian, or any other—must outlast politics, propaganda, and conflict. Always.

Lastly, I would like to mention and promote the authors Dominic Basulto, Glenn Diesen, Guillaume Faye, Scott Horton, Guy Mettan and Andrei Tsygankov, who have written extensively for Western audiences on the subject of Russophobia, and I recommend their books wholeheartedly, considering them absolutely essential reads when it comes to understanding how Russia is often portrayed as the sum of all evils in Western media and across Western society and culture in general.

As a stark contrast to the many russophobes distorting the image of Russia, mainly hailing from the US and Europe (and many of them Russian dissidents themselves), I'd also like to mention the input of Genrietta Churbanova, whose 2022 article in The Daily Princetonian argued that Russophobia remains a real and persistent feature of Western political discourse. At a time when many commentators preferred to dismiss anti-Russian prejudice as a myth or propaganda construct, Churbanova displayed the intellectual courage to challenge prevailing assumptions. Her academic accomplishments later culminated in her selection as Princeton University's Class Day Valedictorian in 2024. After I contacted her to express my appreciation for her article, she responded warmly and acknowledged that concern about Russophobia is often treated as a marginal issue, making it all the more encouraging to encounter others willing to discuss it seriously and openly. In an environment where hostility toward Russia is frequently normalized and dissenting perspectives are often dismissed, voices such as Churbanova's serve as a reminder that intellectual honesty and genuine curiosity have not entirely disappeared. Whatever one's position on contemporary politics, her willingness to approach the subject with nuance and independence demonstrates that meaningful dialogue remains possible, and that not every Russian voice is willing to conform either to fashionable hostility or to simplistic narratives.

And thus, we finally reach the conclusion of this manifesto. Without further ado, join me in exploring these cultural aspects with curiosity and enjoyment, as we look at Russia through the lens of art, gaming, and translation!

The ROMANOV Archive is ongoing and entries shall be constantly added, as well as edited and updated when needed.




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