In the datasheet, we extracted the following information from every study: author’s name(s), year of publication, country of origin, study design, sample size, screening tools, primary objective, secondary objective, and main findings. Quality appraisal of participants had COVID-Related anxiety; 39.8%, 52.55%, and 7.65% had high, medium, and low stress, respectively; Strong association between stress and anxiety that we’d lost control of how we talk about Russia, potentially with disastrous results. My response was to put aside my narrower research into Soviet history and to write a chronologically and thematically wide-ranging book about the West’s historic ‘Russia problem’ and the ways that history has normalised Russia rather than made it a hopeless aberration. In this sense, the same big question unites all my research: where do Russian and Soviet examples fit into our wider European and global histories?” In the same week that pro-democracy protests with tens of thousands of people rumbled on in the streets of Moscow, British politicians remonstrated that the prime minister might suspend the Commons, as indeed he now has done, proroguing Parliament to force through Brexit. It is clear that Smith’s book offers much food for thought. Today, Russia’s capital has a significant pro-democracy movement, which demands that Putin’s regime observe legality and compete for power in fair elections. They may face a long struggle, with the outcome partly dependent on how the current wave of far-right populism plays out in the West, but what Smith offers them is a more positive view of Russia’s liberal and democratic past which opens up the prospect of a more optimistic view of its future. The findings on the moderating role of the courses taken by the students were mixed. While some researchers ( 27) found that the students in the STEM courses, such as health and medicine, had lower perceived stress and anxiety levels than those in non-STEM courses, such as arts, Essadek et al. ( 42) found that the medical students had higher anxiety than non-medical students.

The mean PHQ-9 score was 8.66 ± 6.29, with 22%, 11%, and 7.1% of the participants exhibiting moderate, moderately severe, and severe depressive symptoms, respectively. Females had a significantly higher PHQ-9 score than their male counterparts (9.38 vs. 7.03; Sig. < 0.001). No statistically significant differences were found between participants of different age groups ( Sig. = 0.503) or nationalities ( Sig. = 0.536). The students who came from cities with >500,000 inhabitants had the highest PHQ-9 scores (8.92 ± 6.79) compared with other pre-university residences. Mann–Whitney test ( U) and Kruskal–Wallis test ( H) were used with a significance level ( Sig.) ≤ 0.05. Moderate perceived stress (18.8, SD = 4.9); Stress and anxiety increased in 71% during the pandemic; 5% of those with increased stress and anxiety received counseling; 54% of participants had a negative impact of COVID-19 on academics, health, and lifestyle Women experienced significantly higher anxiety than men; Urban participants experienced significantly higher anxiety than rural participants; Closeness to the COVID-19 zone increased the strength of anxietyKhoshaim et al. ( 43) and Huang et al. ( 20) found that while problem-focused coping is common among people experiencing anxiety, it does not always guarantee the expected results. The uncertainty presented by COVID-19 and the RUW implies that problem-focused coping is insufficient as one is increasingly frustrated by new developments. The findings have practical value that can be applied in higher learning institutions. The majority of the respondents reported poor or limited coping strategies and limited psychological support as predictive factors for stress and anxiety ( 33). Of the 71% of students who reported that they had stress and anxiety, Son et al. ( 14) reported that only 5% received counseling. This emphasizes the need for building coping mechanisms for students in the post-pandemic period. Higher learning institutions have an opportunity to provide psychological services during pandemics such as the COVID-19 pandemic and crises such as the RUW to mitigate their emotional impact. The Russian Empire was no more violent or rapacious than other European empires. It was less extensive than the British, on which the sun never set. And ‘the West’ has interfered in elections, overthrown governments, invaded countries and bombed civilians far more often than the Russians. The West is motivated by the best of reasons, it claims; Russians raise their eyebrows when they hear that. Digital news portals (82.8%) and social media networks (72.4%) were the most commonly used news outlets by our participants. Multiple prior studies found that social media platforms had been the most frequently used information source by Generation Z, even for health-related information and recommendations [ 44, 45]. The current finding that digital news portals outperformed social media can be attributed to the questionable credibility of social media networks that may facilitate the dispersion of fake news, especially during conflict times [ 46, 47, 48]. The participants who reported using social media networks had significantly higher levels of anxiety (8.38 ± 5.32) and depression (9.14 ± 6.29) compared to the students who used other news outlets. One explanation for this finding could be attributed to the type of content conveyed by social media platforms that could be more emotional than official news portals and television. Frequent exposure to social media content was associated with higher odds of anxiety among Chinese adults during the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020 [ 49, 50]. Furthermore, according to the study conducted by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic at the end of 2019, the most traced source of information by the youngest age groups in the Czech Republic was social media [ 51]. Television and radio were the most confidential source of information, while in our study they were consumed by the minority of participants, i.e., TV (37%) and radio (9%). The confidentiality of social media has not been analyzed in that report but disinformation narratives about Russian activities in the Crimea peninsula and in most regions of Ukraine were already included [ 51]. In a particularly effective passage Smith captures what many people feel when they encounter the hypocrisy and evasions generated by the Russia Anxiety:

PL: introduction. GM: methodology. GT: data and conclusion. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version. Conflict of interest In a fascinating chapter on “The Dictatorship Deception”, he sketches a complex picture of “democratic strains” within Russian authoritarianism in its various forms, from Rus to the Revolution and beyond, where “amid the long development of autocracy, the Russian lands underwent various experiments in limited constitutionalism and democratic participation”, even if these did not always resemble Western representative models. Smith also squeezes all the juice he can from the rare fruits of Russia’s historical liberalism. Here is a more positive overview of this subject than you are likely to read anywhere else, perhaps stretching it in places, yet it is an analysis firmly grounded in a sensible handling of the scholarly literature.He offers two central propositions. Th