understand what brute power is... Why do people gravitate towards it?
It's two-sided... on the one hand you have adults who want to be fed, taken care of and told what to do.... the idea of having any decision making power terrifies such people and they want to retreat to the safety of infancy..... so many russians (on channels like russia 401 are psychologically infants whether they're 19, 45 or 78....)
On the other hand, I grew up in the segregated south and contrary to popular memory, it wasn't rich and powerful whites who had an interest in maintaining segregation they didn't care or were sympathetic to blacks. The fiercest proponents of segregation were low status whites because segregation kept them one step off the absolute bottom.
That's the whole dynamic of russian expansion.... a pyramid scheme where people excuse or cling to their poverty (not just economic but psychological and social) because they get to imagine themselves as the top of the heap or at least above the latest poor wretches sucked into the pyramid.
There are people like that in Poland but they're a minority... the russian way of life (like dogs subsisting on crumbs that fall from the table of their masters) does not appeal to the majority.