I see it as a self-sustaining stereotype only prevalent in what people tend to read. Who wants to read about a normal life of a normal russian, frankly? It’s likely not a snark, but it is nothing more than just a complex sort of klukva^ either. Subj is a completely non-standard story of a single person from early 20th century. You can find similar hopelessness in London, Hemingway, Le Guin. The prevalent dynamics in Russian culture is that you get education, skip draft, go to work, have kids, buy some things and die from bad healthcare at 60-70. Pretty normal shit that is too boring for a narrow-font-magazine headline.

Personally it doesn’t offend me, but it’s just cringe(?) most of the time. Off, odd, klukva. Nothing rings true to me in this subthread, which is just a pile of stereotypes. I think that these “and american, but american” comments come from the fact that people can and get tired of it but cannot express it clearly.

^ en: cranberry, an absurd stereotype about russians