Russians are very thoroughly beaten-by-circumstances people, it's very hard to explain their psychology to outsiders, especially Europeans (third-worlders share their grievances to an extent, but they don't really understand them, and vice versa). I would refrain from using the word "subhuman", even if I'm tempted to - this is nazi slang, after all; but the average Russian thinks in terms that look somewhat deficient to us, in the sense that we ("we" as the citizens of an open society) have overcome that mode of thinking, but it's alive and well in there. Hence, they sometimes behave in manners incomprehensible to us.