All I can say is My God!

I can also say anyone who can not, or will not, judge another, even himself, has not the prerogative to tell me what's right and what's wrong!

Good one. Another way of putting it is that competition becomes an end in itself.

You might ask then why kill the prey, if it's only about the game. The answer is, that in this way the prey, because his very survival is at stake, will use all wits at his command, and unrelentingly. Sorta like the Courtarena duel in "The Dosadi Experiment" by Frank Herbert.

Zaroff had no motive, no objective for his hunt, other than to play the "game".

There was a quote in one of my cipher puzzle books, can't remember the author, but he says pretty soon, it becomes all about the game, and not necessarily about the object.
It could work for anything: a business, a football game, politics...

Just read the Wikipedia synopsis. In the same vein, except the tribesmen had a motive for their pursuit; it wasn't just about the game. I think it might be called revenge.
I believe Connell's story is about the "game" itself. Maybe that's why it interested me more than just a tale of men after men.

Think as if you were the hunter, not the hunted, that's what you mean, isn't it.
"The Naked Prey" sounds interesting. I'll look up the synopsis.

I live in Colorado Springs. Use your imagination! I hear it is being marketed here---alcohol with an infusion of marijuana. Actually, they're putting weed in everything now.

Interesting, isn't it, that an ideology (Leftist/Liberal) that embraces relative morality, chooses to instruct the young in morals?
I'm pretty sure the kids are taught that as long as it is for "the greater good" then it is moral.

You're right, and I was waiting for someone to bring that up. Nevertheless, he could be symbolic of what may have been (erroneously) perceived as a Russian view of the world. You do know that Cossacks fought on both sides in World War II? Some for Hitler, some for Stalin, depending I think on whose ideology seemed the more pernicious to each of them.
I didn't see the "normalizing" --whatever that means--of brutality and cruelty. On the one side, there was a man, a human, bored with hunting prey that were no longer challenging. In a way, for him, the sport was no longer satisfying, so to improve the risk-taking, perhaps, he could feel he had only accomplished his end (the pleasure of the hunt and outwitting the prey) by pursuing an animal on his own level.
On the other side, there is a man whose only end was in surviving. So the question becomes, who is more likely to expend energy in using the most efficient means of "winning." Whose drives, whose ability to reason is going to outwit the other's?
I didn't see "brutality" as such. It was all about the game for Zaroff. The game became the end, not vanquishing the prey.
There are men who play the game for the "play" itself, as well as for its objective. The fulfillment of those drives evolved of necessity.

I tried to get my husband to read "The Cowboy and The Cossack" because I liked it so much, but the author's name turned him off. He was sure it would be effeminate.

Infused with what? Marijuana? Doesn't sound good/

I apologize. I did jump to the wrong conclusion, I think. I forever feel that the Russians, ALL of the Russians, need defending as they have been so much maligned by the West, even though they have been through so much sorrow, and yet have overcome debilitating oppression.
A book you might enjoy is "The Cowboy and the Cossack" by Claire Huffaker.

Well, I hope you haven't characterized all Cossacks by what you read in this short story. Don't take me wrong here, but I wonder if you have a certain naivete as regards what you read and how you allow that to characterize a person or a people.

Except that mathematics doesn't give you much insight into human nature. And it is knowledge of that nature that is the deciding factor.