White Russians in California — Immigrant Deprogramming with Denis Lavinski (preview)

We continue our Immigrant Deprogramming series by talking to Denis Lavinski, an artist in LA, who was raised in the White Russian/Vlasovite-influenced Russian Orthodox Church in California by his Soviet immigrant parents. Denis’s childhood experience is interesting and relevant today because the ideology he grew up in is basically the ideology that Putin stole and has been repackaging to legitimize his rule. You can see it on full display in Russia right now being used to prop up his regime change war in Ukraine — a mixture of Russian imperialism, nationalism, and Russian Orthodoxy, with Soviet WWII glory moments thrown in to round out the mess. A couple of notes and thoughts…This is a preview of a full episode that is only available to subscribers. To hear the rest, sign up and listen here.Check out our previous Immigrant Deprogramming episodes in the archive. And don’t forget to check out Denis’s art work on Instagram…and follow him on Twitter.—Yasha Levine This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yasha.substack.com/subscribe