Europe's tyrannical half- mongol cousin. A nation of slaves and masters. The spiritual successor to the Mongol Empire.
It's easy to see how this nation inspired George Orwell to write 1984 . Russia has never been a " normal" European country" . Whether it is now or when they were a
totalitarian,
Communist country, like North Korea or before that. When for centuries, Russia under the Tsars, was a brutal feudal- style society, with a population comprised almost entirely of serfs ( Basically slaves).
Russia has always been a very extreme country and the Russians have a cultural impulse. Towards adulating all of their "great leaders" (Who for centuries have been perpetually psychotic) to the point of it being weird and creepy. Russia is essentially a 3rd world country with nukes and nobody would care about it, were it not for their
imperialism.
As for centuries s they have pursued an aggressive foreign policy.
Based on brutally oppressing any smaller neighbours. So they may add them them to the
Russian Empire or rule them as puppets. While they impose their backward, poor, corrupt, authoritarian, civilisation model on them. Several hundreds years worth of this sort of behaviour and many other forms of aggression are why this country is so hated.