Criminal romanticism (idealization of criminality and everything lower-class – rude, insolent (for example, it’s also inherent in the majority of hip-hop) is deeply and universally spread in Russia (peak – 90s and post 2000s), because the Russian state and its cultural code are very rotten, started even before the USSR, and became especially stinky after the Bolsheviks’ times, today we can see kinda the same disaster, it’s evolution: neo-stalinism (authoritarian idiot-dictatorship with deep passivity of most people, a highly damaged and corrupted set of values that feeds the people who govern and follow orders) – cannibalistic and absolutely useless
For defense and sense, ordinary people unconsciously look for strength and loyalty in seemingly foolish and absurd criminal romanticism (a light touch of peculiar aesthetics also sweetens it).
As a result, the same people who were resentful of their own state and fed by this romanticism come to power in Russia (in modern societies, it’s still randomness that often decides the scenario: very often accidental people come to power, that’s why we need to establish democracy, it protects against over-powerful, over-confident fools), and the state becomes even worse, losts any bits of ideology, spreading just cheap cynicism everywhere, even more cannibalistic, eats its own people and craps under itself. That is, there is a vicious circle, when it is worse, and then even worse.
There is no way and no future, just as there is no good present without humanism and framing of big, good values; criminal romanticism is a sign of a weak, sick system, rotten cancer-alike values, it’s not Dionysus, it’s just an unhealthy degeneration, a dead-end code.