>>Some of these feelings against Russians, and the language, are not new.

I had a good friend who, as a teen was part of the '45 Czech uprising that was brutally put down (deleting what happened to her as I don't want to trigger any victims of sexual violence). She was my boss in a little 'head' shop in Wellesley MA - and I got that story in bits and pieces, as we became friends. In '68, she brought me along on a purchasing trip to an international trade fair in NYC - and I watched her use Russian to sweet talk the folks at the Russian booth into selling her a not-for-sale balalaika. Before that, I'd never heard a word of Russian from her - and haven't in the years since.

I'd expect that there were quite a few people in the Warsaw-block nations that stopped speaking Russian almost immediately post collapse - that that they saw not passing it on to their kids as a positive thing. My friend's kids have multiple languages - but not Russian.