| International Eurasian Institute for Economic and Political Research |
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Is Russian
Mentality Changing? Present Fears, or A Magic Circle of Theoretical Constructions It is somewhat terrifying to read today's newspapers or listen to our politicians and journalists. Russia has lost itself, they repeat, Russia has imposed an alien system of values, Russia is on the brink of disaster; evil forces are eager to turn Russia into the West while Russian people want to live in their own way - some sort of blind alley. Who are we? Some ask rhetorically. And who should we become to preserve our own selves? This is a matter of our national identity, national mentality, or our "collective frame of mind" as Russian people used to put it before. It is clear that throughout Russia's one-thousand-year history this frame of mind has undergone changes along with the State's social and political systems. However, certain basic elements have remained, playing either a positive or a negative role, depending on the situation. According to our inland romantics (including the Slavophils of the first half of the 19th Century) these elements were: communal living, strong Orthodox faith, and spirituality. In the 1830's, when Russian society had already become strongly "infected" with Europeanism, this romantic view was officially and canonically rephrased in the following way: Orthodoxy, autocracy and a corporate attitude.(1) These are the three foundations on which Russia has stood and will stand steadfastly. This is how we tried to move away from the West at that time. In recent times, however - in the era of the denser iron curtain - this triad seemed to give place to the dyad: Party spirit and corporate attitude. But the essence was the same: a communal-public basis as distinct from the "rotten individualism of the West." Yet if we turn to the exponents of cultural self-criticism (Pyotr Chaadayev and others) who did not deny our idiosyncrasies, we'll see a darker picture which, nevertheless, also rested on concrete facts. Those were, namely: the disposition of our countrymen towards renouncing their legitimate rights, the complete submission of one's personality to the state machinery and, at times of popular insurrection, wild despotism overpowered by an even crueler state tyranny which would reduce people to slaves again. Of course one of the best historical illustrations is the October Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War that followed soon with its slogan "everything is permitted" (as evidenced by Pitirim Sorokin). Then came the Bolshevist tyranny, unheard of even in the Russian history, which has known so many tyrants. In today's environment of "freedom," Russians most often complain about the break-up of communal, collectivist ties, and about the war of everyone against everyone else. Man has moved away from State, and it turns out that he no longer belongs to any community. The only exception is a criminal Mafia community. Otherwise, the social order has collapsed, and the apologists of "neo-spirituality" are capable only of shedding their tears and dreaming of a "strong power" like the one exercised by Stalin who could have promptly brought everyone back to the collective, or, if we proceed from today's ideological realities, - to the "Orthodox-Communist community." So do we have a vicious circle again? Does our "sorrow give birth to liberty, and liberty give birth to thralldom" (Alexander Radishev)? Or how would you like an even more scathing remark of Shigalyov, the main character in Foydor Dostoyevsky's The Possessed: "Overcoming unlimited freedom, I end in unlimited despotism." Or is the sixth part of the world's dry land which our nation controls still a sort of "enchanted ground" (Nikolai Gogol) which you can never escape now matter how hard you try, and where everything will remain as it has been? Will not anything change here? The historical-cultural reasons that caused such a state of things are worthy of noting, however. The majority of Russian historians, philosophers and culture experts (both romanticists and realists) believe that the kind of Russian statehood and social and cultural infrastructure that has lasted until today, took shape on the brink of the 15th and 16th centuries. That was when the Tartars became instrumental in "Muscovization" of Rus (G.Fedotov). Later, as Tartar power grew weak, they were thrust back, allowing for a centralized state to develop, which was quite different from West-European ones, but was formed during the same period. Shaken by the reforms of Peter the Great and the subsequent Europeanization, the Russian state was reanimated by the Bolsheviks. This system was later described as "the State of truth" (M.Shakhmatov), "the totalitarian State" (N.Berdyayev), and "popular monarchy" (I.Solonevich). However, its nature can be reduced to the following characteristics.
The Nightmare of Messianism All rights were held by supreme power, whose subjects had obligations alone. They were compelled to put up with their lot by the two social-psychological circumstances, whose historic role is much greater than we've come to believe.
In the first place, it was the psychology of a besieged fortress: enemies are all around (which was actually the case), and there are no natural barriers. Instead of using stones for building a fortress (S.Solovyev emphasized that unlike Europe, Russia was a wooden country, and wood provides poor protection, since it burns), it could be built from the bodies of its dwellers (F.Nesterov). Therefore, little or no significance was placed on individual personality, with the interests of the State predominant. It was this very factor of popular psychology that the Bolsheviks used so well, having proclaimed that the nation was encircled by the bourgeois siege.
In the second place, it was isolationism and ensuing messianism. Rulers and social structures changed each other, but the feeling of apartness and messianism persisted. This feeling was obviously part of the Byzantine heritage that was rooted in Russia - the only politically independent nation professing the Orthodox faith -through the Balkans (Serbia and Bulgaria, which unsuccessfully claimed the role of the Third Rome). Cut off from Europe by the Tartars, the ideologists of Russian Orthodoxy eagerly accepted the praises of the downtrodden Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs, who tried to persuade Muscovites that they alone could save true Christian godliness. During the liberation from the centuries-old yoke of the Tartar-Mongols, these sentiments fell on very receptive and fertile soil, flattering national pride. Later this messianism underwent various modifications and metamorphoses; yet the main spirit held out: we are lonely (but powerful), because we are bearers of the everlasting truth, and loneliness is a peculiar characteristic of all prophets. It's no accident that the same Bolsheviks so easily renounced the Western European experience of the proletarian movement. At last, they apparently had sound reasons for urging the West to learn from the country of "victorious socialism." Starting from Dostoyevsky, this messianic madness found adherents in a wide circle of Russian intelligentsia. Though not all of them embraced Russian Orthodoxy or revolutionary ideas, they, nevertheless, believed that something prophetic was transpiring in Russia at that time. For instance: Come down, the fiery whirlwind! This is a quotation from the poem Homeland written by Andrey Bely in August of 1917. The said factors gave rise to Russian Utopism, including Futurism and other decadent styles: from Chaadayev and Alexander Herzen to Nikolai Fyodorov, Viktor Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovsky. What does that imply? An aversion to today's and even tomorrow's life in the name of some future, obscure reality. Such was one of the poles: the elevated vision of universal harmony and the craving for it. However, this futurist pole had a different dimension: in reality this enthusiasm for a bright tomorrow gave rise to the idea of social self-sacrifice. You may sacrifice yourself and your children in the name of not even your grandchildren, but your great grandchildren - hoping for their "fathers' posthumous resurrection" (according to Fyodorov). The problem was that "today's" life was so hopeless that it could obviously never lead to a decent "tomorrow." "Tomorrow," in the public-administrative language (which was mastered so well by all Russian residents), meant "never." The prominent French thinker Count de Maistre, who had lived in St. Petersburg for more than ten years (1803-1817), once said: "Having done everything in my power, I plunged into fruitless expectation. 'Zaftra' (tomorrow) - this is a fearful watchword of this country." (2) On the other hand, "the day after tomorrow," looming up in the distance beyond "the hills of time" (Mayakovsky) and perceived as a miraculous transformation, was seen so clearly that it almost evoked hallucinations.
Tomorrow, Tomorrow - Not Today! In the sixth issue of Voices from Russia Herzen published “A letter to the publisher of Kolokol (The Bell)” (the author is unknown). I’d like to quote a passage that characterizes our mentality in the severe tone Chaadaev was known for. “Caring for the future is not our way; by word of mouth we are willing to bear the burden of the whole world, to become Socialists or Democrats, to speculate upon high principles with blood in our eyes. In practice, though, we are afraid of any work, any thought. We live by the present moment; our bureaucrats pilfer in order to booze, or to bribe other bureaucrats and promote their sons. Peasants work in order to get dead drunk. Very few put anything aside for a rainy day; whoever cares for the future becomes an object of ridicule, contempt and intense dislike.”(3) In other words, we see an incredible gap between dream and reality that is not characteristic of any other culture, for here “dreaming of the future” does not mean “caring for the future.” For the sake of a dream one may suffer and fight, become a pawn, a brick, or a tiny screw, taking comfort in such concepts as “common cause.” But caring requires self-dependent activities, meticulousness in building your own home, working for yourself. Accustomed to working for someone else, like the Tartars, the state treasury, for the tsar, or for the Party elite, the majority of Russians could never develop an independent personality pattern. The inability and want of habit to build today’s life arouses the desire to live only “by the moment” (until the earned property is taken away), not to think about the river of time, flowing from today into tomorrow, that is, into the real future. A new master means new orders, if you are not your own master. As a result, ideas spring up about a utopian leap over time into the radiant beyond where today’s meaningless suffering and absurd existence will be vindicated. Such is the Russian “non-Euclidean mathematics:” the aim of overcoming a world where “all contradictions co-exist” (Dostoyevsky), the idea of “the single instance” (also traced in great detail by Dostoyevsky as he depicted the mindset of his characters). The novelist implied that a person is to achieve every measure of success not through consistent, long-standing efforts or through a laborious maturation process, but all at one go - by leaping over the centuries. But such a dream of future universal happiness and equal opportunities may seem comforting only to slaves who know nothing but compulsory, communal egalitarianism. Because of this, any supposedly realized dream would turn into a new modification of thralldom (“all slaves are equal in their bondage”), rooted in collective perception as a mythical reality (“how good it was under Stalin!”), imaginary spirituality, “genuine equality” and collectivism.
On the Possibility of Changes So will we be able to change our attitudes and our lifestyle? Do the processes currently going on in our society testify to a change of our mentality? Or is this another version of the same reiteration of the reforms carried out by Alexander II, a kind of stratification followed by a new explosion? And on the whole, can a nation’s mentality ever change? The question is too complex for a simple answer. But let’s try to reason. Let’s assume that in the 15th century it was next to impossible to conjecture that the genius of such a humane, all-responsive, European poet, (a “Slavic Mozart” according to Thomas Mann) as Alexander Pushkin would show up!.. But it did! And there appeared in the 19th century an entire new stratum, a class of people who lived by the interests of a culture open to all European influences. They began rearing their children on Pushkin’s poetry. And in a certain sense, this is more important than many social reforms. For the reforms, which are deliberate attempts to change life, are the product of the intellectual elite: such was the opinion of Russian Enlighteners, for example. Russian poetry became virtually a second church, replacing the servile, state Orthodoxy and its formal religion. As Christianity had influenced mankind, turning Barbarians into civilized people, so Russian literature, growing out of Christianity, proved to be a humanistic light to the Russian mentality. However, the great self-deception of Russian intellectuals, their attempts to circumvent the laws of history, to skip from the Russian present to the hypothetical European future, led to a disaster: the archaic, aggressive and isolationist aspirations triumphed, obliterating the humanistic features and finding a new historical expression in Stalinism. What has been happening in recent years? The tyranny of compulsory like-mindedness is gone, but many complain about tougher living despite more freedoms. “Spirituality” and creative thinking are vanishing. Political compulsion has given way to economic and social coercion. People no longer think lofty ideas. They’ve become pragmatics and try to live by western standards, “selling their spiritual privileges for a mess of European pottage.” Of course, this argument may be disproved with a trite statement: nothing interferes with those who want to live spiritual lives, for it’s always possible to serve as a night watchman. And generally speaking, it’s necessary to pay for freedom, and nothing is too dear. At any rate, Western intellectuals, writers and artists always show that they are capable of independence. But instead of talking platitudes, it makes sense to look at specific conceptual and ideological shifts that have taken place in our culture for the last thirty years.
An Apology of Private Life as a Step towards Emancipation After the tremendous outburst of creative energy that lasted from 1917 to the Mid-fifties, Russian people have not come out with a single Messianic doctrine, nor have they embraced one. Starting from Khrushchev, the only idea has been the aspiration to the living standards enjoyed by Europeans and Americans (“let’s overtake and outstrip America in terms of meat, milk and butter production!”). There’s no more fear of the state or love of it. As early as in the seventies, advanced intellectuals developed the apology of private life as distinct from the collective and public one. And Russian intellectuals are the ones who set the main trends of the social and public movement. Many assume that the October Revolution resulted from the efforts of Russian intelligentsia and Russian literature. It is for this reason, as they say now, that the Revolution of 1917 was a great impulse and a breakthrough to a bright future, even though it failed to bring about the desired results. And nowadays, the mediocre profiteer without any spiritual demands is triumphant. But one can assume that the present radical turn has to do with the long-standing aspiration of the Russian intelligentsia (the dissident movement and all that secretly printed literature) to get back to the very path of Europeanization from which they themselves pushed Russia away in 1917. This is exactly what is happening right now at a very fast pace. And it is typical that today’s reactionaries - both nationalists and neo-Communists - instead of dreaming of new victories, try to preserve old traditions. The matter does not only concern territorial losses and gains, but also the ideological and spiritual heritage, completely rejected, as they see it. But this is not quite so. “Pure” nationalism has never worked in Russia; it has always taken the form of universality. Only in this case could people possibly see themselves as bearers of the highest truth (whether that truth is the Third Rome or proletarian internationalism) and experience superiority over inconsistent and therefore hostile foreigners. And this basic cultural mentality and personality pattern has not undergone any changes. It remained the same inclination towards borrowings and craving for universality that was interpreted by Dostoyevsky as a capability of the all-embracing perception of the entire European culture. But now we are dealing with a different kind of universal ideas, since the system of values as well as the geopolitical structure of the world have changed. The concepts of a free society and market economy, even if they are in a somewhat wild Russian version, no longer lead to isolationism.” What has this new world idea given us? People indeed talk of money. Instead of advocating faithful service, they are urging their compatriots to work for themselves - for the first time in history. Forgetting “the bright future,” everybody wants to have confidence in tomorrow, not in the day after. On the other hand, they are still living “by the present moment.” The fear of unpredictable moves by the government - which is powerless yet still quite capable of acting for civil society - is too deep-rooted. More precisely, it is powerless to protect human personality, and it has lost the authority and desire to compel citizens to labor. But it is still as powerful as always, as far as interfering with the development of independent economy. Government structures still want to control the economy as they did before in order to exact high taxes and bribes. This uncertainty still causes mayhem in our everyday life, which is no longer restricted by any ideology. Relieved from Communist and Party commitments, Russian boorishness has become more outspoken. Common people are bewildered and overwhelmed, like a patient who has just come to after hypnotic treatment. They are no longer forced to work, but they have not yet learned to live otherwise. This is why there's so much madness and aggressiveness in their eyes, as well as the yearning for the stick that would make them do something…
Repudiation of Myths Paves the Way for a Culture’s Maturity Many features that have so far characterized our mentality are growing pale and becoming obliterated.. The psychology of Troy surrounded by the men of Danae is gradually disappearing, and so are the feelings of detachment, “legitimate pride” and messianism. Popular national myths - most prominently, the myth of spirituality - are being reevaluated. S.S.Khoruzhy aptly remarks that the concept of spirituality, which was first defined by A.S.Khomyakov, had never been identified in his work with the concept of communal living or other similar ideas, for spirituality is not a worldly notion. It is both divine and human and has to do with God’s grace. Says S.S.Khoruzhy: “However, it took [the Russian people] frightfully little time to lose the art of discerning this distinction, and then they learned to deny it. Spirituality was steadily growing more earthen, becoming deprived of its gracious contents and reduced to the mere social and organic principle: in a certain sense this process is the very essence of Slavophilism and its ideological evolution… In this process of degeneration the ways of spirituality would cross the ways of the socialist idea… Therefore, all communal-type variations on the subjects of collectivism, Soviet patriotism and national Bolshevism eventually slide down the same path.”(4) Other myths are also being reconsidered: the myth of a unique path (after the iron curtain had been removed it became evident that every nation has its own peculiar way of escaping from the barbarian structures of impersonal collectivism); a myth of fidelity to the state which is supposedly inherent in the very Russian nature; a myth of communal living, which is nothing else but a state-fiscal way to secure implicit obedience of the people (each is responsible for all, and all are responsible for each): collective farms, work collectives, countless Party cell groups… Alexander Zinovyev remarked somewhere that today’s Russia is becoming and will become as dull as Belgium and Holland. Yet so far there have been no visible signs that it will. Frankly speaking, Russia has never experienced such a boring existence. It seems too amazing, and so this complacent lifestyle will hardly pose any threat to us during the next hundred years. Soberness of mind and prudence are still perceived as something foreign and unusual. But we’d better stop trying to astonish the world with our troubles and tragedies, taking pride in them as though they were our distinguishing characteristic. Russia will certainly remain Russia, and Russian mentality will remain Russian mentality. And neither Russian problems and hardships nor peculiarities will disappear as if with a wave of a magic wand. But hopefully, the protracted infancy and adolescence of Russian culture will soon be over, and maturity will set in… It’s not that easy to be an adult. It not only means greater responsibility, but also maintaining a certain safeguard against the suicidal and savage tendencies unique to adolescence. Notes: (1) A different meaning was put in this triad by Pogodin, who was the first to verbalize it, and by Sergei Uvarov, who attached to it an official-ideological status. (2)Joseph de Maistre, Petersburg Letters. 1803-1817. St. Petersburg, 1995, p.45. (3) Voices from Russia. Book VI. London, 1859, pp. 122-123. (4) Sergey Khoruzhy. Khomyakov and the Principle of Spirituality. // Here and Now. 1992. #2, pp. 80-81.
“Russian Journal”, December 29, 2001 http://english.russ.ru/politics/20011227.html |