sharing comment by @daigakunobaku273

Lterally citing Sergey Sumlenniy as “Eastern Europe expert”

LOL That’s basically all you need to know about the level of “expertise” that went into creating this video.

Since, for some reason, my comment is not yet deleted by the moderators, and somebody appears to have actually read it, I might as well point to the actual factual mistakes and problems with the video.

1. These books are not, to the best of my knowledge (and I tried hard to find any evidence supporting the author’s claim) created, or approved, or distributed, or sponsored by any Russian state agency. They belong to a subgenre of male fantasy fulfillment books which target a specific audience of poorly educated lower middle to lower class males, typically 40+ years old, nostalgic of the Soviet Union (or, rather, of their rose-tinted pseudo-memory thereof).

There are thousands of other “military fiction” books targeting pretty much the same audience, but not having anything to do with “popadantsi”, including tons of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fanfics (yes, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fanfics sell as actual books in Russia, and in a typical book store you’ll find an entire section dedicated to them and to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. epigones, right next to the section dedicated to “popadantsi” literature, that is, if there even is such section. Most of the “popadantsi” books are actually self-published in electronic format, they are not nearly as popular as the author of the video portrays them to be. The other “military fiction” stuff sells much better).

You don’t need “government sponsorship hypothesis” in order to explain the existence of these books. They have their fanbase. That is not to say that the state propaganda has nothing to do with their popularity. The propaganda just exploits the same ressentiment and the same need to compensate for misfortune in one’s life by creating a fantasy world. People who enjoy these books are exactly the same people who sincerely believe the stuff translated by the Russian state TV. That does not mean the books are sponsored by the government.

2. Outside of this relatively small, but substantial and loyal fanbase, the entirety of the Russian society laughs at these books, even the chauvinists and the Putin supporters. These books are a long-running meme in the Russian internet; the author didn’t even find or show the truly deranged and legendary stuff, like “The Popadanets Bee” (the actual title of an actual book; it tells the story of a Russian soldier, “heroically dying on Donbass in 2014”, whose mind is being transferred by the Higher Beings into the body of a bee living in the Emperor’s Garden of WWII Japan. The same book features Soviet pagan communist soldiers worshiping Svarog).

As was said before, most of these books don’t exist outside the Internet; the pool of their authors is relatively small and consists mostly of graphomaniacs, “publsihing” dozens of books each. The author, however, portrays them as a massive influence on the beliefs of Russians (They are not. The state media are. These books are a minor symptom.)

3. Sergey Sumlenniy, whom the author unironically presents as an “Eastern Europe expert” (this phrase alone is a meme in the Russian opposition Twitter) is a Russian journalist and political “expert”, previously working for the Russian pro-Kremlin (and Kremlin-backed) magazine “Эксперт”. Later he worked as an expert that helped the Western companies working in Russia to evade the sanctions imposed on Russia after 2014 (I don’t want to go to jail for reminding you what happened this year).

At the time he gave interviews about his job to Russian federal media. This whole time, from 2014 to 2022, he mostly lived in Berlin off the money he earned by working for a pro-Kremlin magazine and by helping Western companies circumventing sanctions imposed on Russia. He never publically said as much as a word in protest to the Russian policies.

In February 2022 Sumlenniy has suddenly discovered that he is, in fact, a German, and that every single Russian, even the opposition leaders (especially the opposition leaders!) is guilty of Russia invading Ukraine (oh, sorry, I meant, protecting the people of Donbass and fighting nazism). Russians are “much more guilty than Germans in WWII” (direct quote), because any Russian who does not support the war could simply emigrate. The fact that they didn’t simply indicates, per Sumlenniy, that all Russians are brainwashed orcs, and opposition leaders are even worse than Putin, because Navalny is a neo-nazi and had slurred Ukraininans and Georgians, and everyone else is even uglier. But he, Sumlenniy, he is not responsible for the war. He is a German now, remember? (“We, germans” has also become a meme in the Russian emigrant Twitter.)