ХН: первый в космосе; последний в балете ))

"HN is the first in space but last at the ballet"

Insane.

Is it possible that Chekhov and Dostoevsky were just really good writers? That maybe we liked them long before Putin started Putin-ing?

But no, everyone else apart from you is an easily led sheep and Putin or whoever else is the shepherd.

How many really good writers not from colonialist regimes are there? How often do they make to the front page of HN?

writers not from colonialist regimes don't make it to HN because most of us never heard of them at school, which focuses on western writers. are you aware that most wealthy countries are or have been colonialist regimes? this includes much of Europe, North America, Japan and China.

Exactly.

P.S. Also Russia, which is not really Europe.

Russia is (or at least was, during Grand Duchy of Moscow times) a part of Eastern Europe.

Now, its eastern\southern\northen parts\colonies - are not (except for the north and south -west of course)

Writers of old usually came from aristocracy. So, few.

The argument is not that everyone who likes old russian writers is a shill. It's that people bringing them up at current time can't read a room at least, give in to their own imperialist tendencies probably and it only goes worse from there.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529215.

This is misguided neutrality, I think. At some point even HN would need to pick a side.