Yes, this is like the "Paris is not France" and "New York City is not America" axioms.

My fiance is Armenian American, and we have this discussion often re: Turkey. In Istanbul (where her parents are from), Armenians had the best chance of survival, in rural areas not good. We've been to Istanbul and it seems like any European capital with cosmopolitan people, yet maybe half the Turks are apparently carrying some dark, Medieval thoughts (and some Armenians still feel their lives are threatend). It appears Iran and Russia may have similar dynamics, and I'm not so naive to think these dark forces don't exist here. You end up with a sort of "half the _____s are thinking modern/egalitarian thoughts, and the other half of the _____s are trying to figure out how to suppress or destroy the first half" (there's a Medium article in there somewhere).

In any case, one son's g.f. is Malaysian American, the other Russian American (nice girls), so I'd better get busy and figure all of this out!

PS-My Dad was one of the guys bombing those German factories, spent one year in Stalag Luft III...he though the Luftwaffe running the camp were the "better half" of the Germans and had some gratitude (he wrote that some liberated GIs were hired by German families after the war to protect against the crazed Russians, who were on a pillage & raping frenzy)