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Screenshot from "Eli from Russia" YouTube channel.
Opinion

How Soviet nostalgia and silence enable wartime complicity on Russian YouTube

by Melanie Gottdenger

"Everyone was equal," the kerchiefed babushka of Eli from Russia — a YouTuber who documents everyday life and regional culture across the Russian Federation — tells her granddaughter wistfully, recalling life in the Soviet Union. "There were no rich and poor." And as Russian missiles strike Ukrainian cities, Eli's grandmother remembers something else with longing: "We worked for our country. And it was united." The Russian public's complicity in the war of aggression against Ukraine is confoun

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