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Russophilia, or the valoration of the supposed “greatness” and superiority of Russian culture and politics, especially paralleled with purposeful erasure of its engagement in violent ideologies and acts, has been present in “Western” (i.e. external to Russia) accounts, including in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic contributions on Fyodor Dostoyevsky as a “great” literary and allegedly psychologically salubrious figure are illustrative of this tendency. Russophilic filters are evident in how and what works by Dostoyevsky are read in psychoanalysis while Freud’s original appraisals of Dostoyevsky’s social and political sadism are minimized or expunged. These Russophilic tendencies in relation to Dostoyevsky parallel similar processes of continued promotion of Russian and Soviet imperialism, which are used to rationalize current Russian aggression toward Ukraine, including among psychoanalytic intellectuals. This contribution conceptualizes these trends via psychoanalytic theories on group psychology and social defenses against realities of cultural-political sadism, totalitarianism, and ideological intellectualizing.