Your friends...I'm going to save the insult. There is NO general or it would be generalization. So uhm yeah no one can know for sure if someone else likes you or don't, just know there's always going to be people that don't like you and some who do.
I'm not Russian, i'm fully African and I wouldn't be worried going down a street full of Russian people. They either like me or they don't (for whatever particular reason) so I think that's the mentality you should have before going. In short, no Russian people don't hate brown/dark-skinned people, people hate people.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.