The Candy It Gives Is Real, and So Is the Noose Around My Neck

Russian love never says "hello." It only asks, "Are you hungry?"

This nation has left the world nuclear bombs, tanks, and a poker-faced president, but also Dostoevsky's tears, the hospitality of black bread with salt, and the words "Beauty will save the world." Its tenderness never appears with a smile. It grows out of hardship, wrapped in the Orthodox sense of penance and warmed by the communal spirit of village life, until it becomes an embrace so tight it leaves neighboring countries breathless.

This book is not about geopolitics or great-power rivalry. It is about one thing: how Russians love.

How they take off their coats on snowy nights and give them to others, how they hold strangers and weep after drinking, how they threaten to cut off your gas and then feed you cheap natural gas, how they turn "You're my brother" into the sweetest and most terrifying endearment.

Possessiveness is what their fear of being abandoned looks like. Love is the one thing they never know how to disguise.