Like most people with any taste, I like the odd vodka, I love Crime and Punishment, I enjoy Turgenev and Chekhov, and who doesn’t like to listen to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov? Their national anthem’s not bad either. In other words, Russia’s quite a place, give or take the odd poisoning or country takeover. And as this epochal, joyful, brain-churning World Cup roars into the last lap, let’s look back at what some of Fleet Street’s finest were predicting just a few weeks ago for the land of Dostoevsky and Stravinsky.
Ignoring the admirable advice to steer clear of Nazi references, this was the Observer’s Nick Cohen: ‘If you wonder how you would have reacted to Hitler’s 1936 Olympics, look at how you are reacting to Putin’s 2018 World Cup and learn something about yourself and the nature of sport. Russian abuse will be directly in the fans’ line of vision. Our gaze will not be able to shift from it.
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