After the Mongols invaded in the mid-thirteenth century they extracted obeisance , financial tribute , and military assistance from the princes of Rus' lands for at least the next century and a half. As the Mongols lost their grip, the Muscovite state expanded, its tsar enforcing unrestricted despotic rule over all citizens.
By degrees, starting roughly at the end of the fifteenth century, Russian peasants became more and more obliged to their landowning masters. From the late sixteenth century, they—that is, the vast majority of the rural Russia n population—were bound from cradle to grave as serfs to their masters (or to the state directly), and they were not released from this form of involuntary servitude until 1861.
The Russia n Orthodox Church, since the time of Peter the Great, was under the thumb of tsarist authority, and after the 1917 Revolution has endured periods of anti-religious persecution. Russian women of all historical periods have been victimized by their men, whether they were being beaten for disobedience in accordance with the principles of the sixteenth-century Domostroi, or were holding down full-time jobs while at the same time being responsible for the bulk of household labor in the twentieth-century Soviet state.
Hudson Hernandez
For nearly three decades during the Soviet period of Russian history, forced labor was a way of life for the millions of inhabitants of the so-called gulag or system of concentration camps. Both Western and Soviet historians have acknowledged that this was outright slavery. With the onset of collectivization in the 1930s an aspect of serfdom was rein - stated, for a large portion of the Soviet population was restricted by means of an internal passport system to living in designated agricultural areas.
To this day ordinary Russian citizens, who often have difficulty obtaining the minimum goods and services necessary for subsistence, contribute to the production of certain goods and services which only an elite class, formerly known as the nomenklatura, has access to.
These facts are very diverse, and they are of course somewhat over - simplified. But a general picture emerges which is accurate—and appalling. The sheer quantity and diversity of suffering that has gone on in Russia, and still goes on there, boggles the Western mind.
The American psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler treated a class of masochistic neurotics whom he termed "injustice collectors." I know of no nation which has collected more injustices for itself than has Russia. What are the causes of the great suffering that goes on in Russia ? Whence the Russia n "need to suffer " ("potrebnost ' stradaniia") 2 —as Dostoevsky put it? Who is to blame?—to ask the perennial Russian question.
Connor Smith
tl, dr this is not how you start a thread
Wyatt Evans
Everyone knows the Russkies hate freedom.
Gabriel Lopez
Russia is customarily characterized as an "authoritarian " or "patriarchal" culture. This is no doubt true, but the very terms tend to attract blame toward those exercising "authority," and draw analytic attention away from those over whom "authority " is exercised, that is, away from those who do the suffering and who might possibly be complicitous in the "authoritarianism. "
In the political and historical spheres, for example, this means (or has meant in the past) undue attention to leaders and inadequate attention to the servile psychology of subordinates and ordinary Russians. I am inclined to agree with Nicholas Vakar: "historians who have written that the tyranny of the Tsars conditioned the nation to accept the tyranny of the Communists have missed the fact that Russian habits of obedience have been the cause, not the result, of political autocracy. "
In the gender sphere exaggerated attention to authority has meant a certain kind of male chauvinism, even among those feminist critic s of Russia who are so busy blaming the pampered Russian male ego for female oppression that the female psyche goes unexamined.
Henry Gray
Analogous statements could be made for other spheres of Russian life. Little effort has been made to understand just how the Russians manage to consistently get themselves into situations where they appear to have no choice but to submit and to suffer. How did Russians come to acquire their well-deserved epithet of "long-suffering people " ("terpelivyi narod") ? Or , to utilize an alliterative epithet recently invented by poet Andrei Voznesenskii, why has Russia always been a "country of suffering" ("stran a stradan'ia")?
The Soviet prose writer Vasilii Grossman proffered hi s controversial notion that the "Russian soul" is by nature a "slave" ("raba"). This is a metaphorical characterizatio n o f the phenomenon in question, not an explanation of it . But, frankly, literary artists have exerted more effort in this are a than anyone else , and their explorations have been very fruitful. Grossman is hardly alone. All of Dostoevsky's major novels, for example, offer insights into masochism . The poetry of Blok is filled with suffering welcomed by the sufferer. Much of Solzhenitsyn's writing glorifies suffering behind prison walls. And so on. The literary imagery of Russian self-abnegation can be wide-ranging, even flamboyant. It is hardly falsifiable (in the Popperian sense), but at the same time it is highly interesting. Take, for example , the Russia n Symbolist poet Viacheslav Ivanov , who in his essay on "the Russian Idea," declares : "our mos t attractive , most noble aspirations are imprinted with a thirst for self-destruction [zapechatlen y zhazhdoiu samor - azrusheniia]." "We " (Russians) , Ivanov says , act a s though other peoples are terribly stingy, and we try to prove ourselves a selfless people, a "self-immolating people, " a "butterfly-Psyche " longing for a fiery death.
Jaxon Wood
Ivanov uses the imagery of downward movement in an attempt to convey what he means. Russians have a “love for descent,” they are inclined to voluntary subordination of the will to another (as in the religious practice of washing another’s feet, or in the sectarian’s utterance “You are greater than I”). The “law of descent” (“zakon niskhozh-deniia”) is the essence of “Russian soul,” and the lowly, humiliated, but enlightening Christ is the perfect model for this Russian tendency. It is as if the words “imitation of Christ” (“upodoblenie Khristu”) were inscribed on the forehead of the Russian nation. It is as if Russians were born Christian: “Hic populus natus est christianus.” 7 These very heterogeneous images explain nothing, but they offer a treasure trove to the scholar seeking explanations. They make it easier to go about asking blunt questions: How do Russians endure their pain? What mental processes permit them to go on living even as they perceive themselves as victims? Might there be a widespread mentality which encourages their victimization? Do they have some secret need or wish to suffer, or even to destroy themselves? If so, what is the ontogenetic background to the wish in individual Russians? Why is the wish so difficult to dislodge?
These are psychological questions, and they have not been answered in any substantive fashion in the past. They are of particular interest to the psychoanalytically oriented scholar. Of course other scholars, too, have taken an indirect interest. Considerable historical, philosophical, political, anthropological, and sociological research has been devoted to patterns of exploitation, subjugation, and even self-destruction in Russia. But psychological, and in particular, psychoanalytic study has been very scarce.
Ryder Ross
One thing should be emphasized: in no way is the term “Russian slave mentality” (or the more poetic “slave soul of Russia,” or the more clinical “Russian masochism”) meant to imply that only Russians have such a mentality, or that all Russians have such a mentality, or even that the slave mentality is the most important psychological feature shared by significant numbers of Russians.
But there is a consensus among highly diverse observers—native Russians as well as foreign visitors, impressionistic literary artists as well as rigorous scholars, historians as well as commentators on the current scene—that there exists a widespread attitude of submissiveness toward authority and a tendency toward self-defeating and self-destructive behavior in individual Russians. Russians do not merely suffer. They have concocted for themselves a veritable cult of suffering.
It may be objected that masochistic attitudes and behaviors have simply been unavoidable in Russia, for reasons quite outside of the individual’s control, and that it is therefore unfair to tag them with the derogatory-sounding epithets “slavish” or “masochistic.” Why blame the victim? Why require heroism from an individual in an unbearable situation?
This objection is certainly valid when a victimized individual plays no role whatsoever in his or her victimization. An upstanding Soviet citizen who is suddenly and unexpectedly arrested by the KGB, for example, is not necessarily a masochist. But even a social system which is oriented toward victimizing individuals requires a certain amount of cooperation from those individuals, and to the extent that individuals do cooperate they are behaving more or less masochistically.
Jace Gutierrez
Russian dissident V. Gorskii observed: “The rejection of freedom does not leave man unpunished. It turns him into a slave of necessity.”11 But (and I am sure Gorskii would agree) a slave of necessity is no less a slave. In other words, the easiest or most adaptive solution in a specific situation may well be the masochistic one, but that does not make it any less masochistic. Medical researcher V. D. Topolianskii emphasizes this important point in a recent interview with Literaturnaia gazeta:
In the context of a totalitarian government the nontraditional choice requires courage. Here an essential question arises: what do you call those people who attempted to fight the system? Were they people who behaved self-destructively (after all they knew they were in danger of being repressed), or were they persons who were trying to preserve their integrity amidst the general collapse? Official [Soviet] psychiatry insisted that the actions of Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, and Gri-gorenko fell under the category of paranoia insofar as these individuals were characterized by an inability to make compromises. But I am strongly inclined, on the contrary, to label those who opted for compromise as the ones with self-destructive behavior. For, in a situation of unfreedom, compromise is always a betrayal of the self [predatel’stvo samogo sebia]. It has always seemed to me that a readiness to compromise and, consequently, to carry out assignments handed down from on high, is itself self-destruction [samorazrushenie].12
This is an essentially psychoanalytic insight. If in place of every occurrence of the word “self-destructive” we read instead “masochistic,” then the passage would sound like a straightforward psychoanalytic interpretation of individuals acquiescing to the authoritarianism of the Soviet regime.
Jordan Walker
Masochism, like the heroic resistance Topolianskii speaks of, is an individual matter. Masochism is not a phenomenon of the faceless masses—although the self-destructive behavior of groups is itself an observable phenomenon in Russia, and a legitimate object of sociological study. Russians may sometimes seem to resemble a herd of lemmings headed into the sea, but that does not make the individual lemming any less interesting. Psychoanalysis is, quite literally, analysis of the individual psyche. The collective is something else again. Many Russians feel that the collective is the most important thing in the world, but in psychoanalysis the individual reigns supreme. This is certainly one reason why there was a long history of hostility to psychoanalysis in Soviet Russia.
In any case, psychoanalysis understands that the individual who knuckles under to the collective is betraying himself or herself. The psychoanalyst cannot but observe that such submission, however understandable in context, is a form of masochism.
Lincoln Turner
>Russian women of all historical periods have been victimized by their men, whether they were being beaten for disobedience in accordance with the principles of the sixteenth-century Domostroi, or were holding down full-time jobs while at the same time being responsible for the bulk of household labor in the twentieth-century Soviet state. I'm sorry people in pisspoor country couldn't afford to give all their women upper middle class lifestyle.
Tyler Gonzalez
[...]The poetic versus the literal meanings of the very word “slave” offer an instructive example. Every person in traditional tsarist Russia was supposed to be a “slave of God” (“rab bozhii,” as in the old proverb “Vse my raby Bozh’i [We are all slaves of God]”). 23 This metaphor was very ancient and very ordinary. The Academy dictionary of Russian defines the expression not only as “a Christian,” but also as “a human being generally (from the religious notion of the total dependence of a person on God).”24 The corresponding feminine form, “female slave of God” (“raba bozhiia”) referred not only to a woman Christian, but to a woman generally.
The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin was thus only expressing a tautolo-gous conclusion from ordinary Russian linguistic usage when he declared: “If God exists, the human being is a slave [Esli Bog est’, chelo-vek—rab].”26 Maksim Gor’kii, on the other hand, didn’t mind God’s existing as long as humans—Russian humans in particular—didn’t have to be slaves into the bargain. Referring to the condescending generosity of God described in chapter 40 of the book of Job, Gor’kii exclaims: “Whenever I read this chapter, I shout out in my mind to my own fellow-Russians: just stop being slaves of God [da perestan’te zhe vy byt’ rabami bozh’imi]!”27
Carter Bell
The use of the word “slave” in these contexts is metaphorical and is intended to convey a certain psychological attitude of dependence and submissiveness before God. The metaphor is presumably based on intuitions concerning the attitudes and feelings that real slaves experience with respect to their real masters. As it turns out, these intuitions are quite accurate. Real slaves existed in Russia well into our own century. There has been much variation over time and geographic location, of course, in the extent to which Russians have been enslaved. Technically, Russia has had both slavery (until 1723, then renewed in the Soviet period as forced labor) and serfdom (until 1861). Some scholars see little difference between true slavery and serfdom as it existed in Russia after the mid-eighteenth century. Under different sociopolitical conditions the Russian slave has been variously referred to as “rab,” “kholop,” “krepostnoi” (serf), and “zek” (convict, slave laborer). Curiously, the first two of these terms were also applied to Russian nobles in their relationship to the tsar during certain historical periods. The multifarious technical ways in which all these terms differ from one another will not be a concern of this book, nor will the socioeconomic, political, and demographic factors contributing to various enslavement practices in Russia. 28 Rather, my concern will be the masochism of Russians generally, many of whom happen to be literal slaves.
Logan Martinez
For the most part the Russian slave was indeed slavish. But the slave could also be defiant. This can be seen, for example, in various cultural practices, such as satirical folklore in which the peasant turns the tables on the landowner.29 Defiance could also be manifested in criminal activity, such as stealing grain or timber from the landowner. Or there were more serious manifestations, such as the large uprisings (e.g., the famous one led by Emelian Pugachev in 1773-74), or smaller disturbances (so-called “volneniia”), or escapes. Sometimes rebellious peasants proffered the cunning excuse that the “tsar-father” was on their side.30 But direct resistance to enslavement was, in any case, the exception, not the rule. As Peter Kolchin has pointed out, for example, most Russian serfs did not engage in “volneniia,” otherwise serfdom could not have been maintained.31
istorians are understandably attracted to the various uprisings and rebellions which took place over the centuries in Russia. These are “events” which left extensive paper trails, while the ordinary, everyday slavishness of Russians constituted a distinct nonevent. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, however, the rule is no less interesting than the exception.32 Much evidence is available on slavish attitudes in Russia, some of it going back centuries. In the mid-seventeenth century Adam Olearius, who had traveled in Russia, summed up his observations on Russian servility as follows:
Nathaniel Adams
They are all serfs and slaves. It is their custom and manner to be servile and to make a show of their slavish disposition. They bow to the ground to notables, and even throw themselves at their feet. They give thanks for beatings and punishments. All subjects, whether of high or low condition, call themselves and must count themselves the Tsar’s kholopi, that is slaves and serfs. Just as the magnates and nobles have their own slaves, serfs, and peasants, the princes and the magnates are obliged to acknowledge their slavery and their insignificance in relation to the Tsar. They sign their letters and petitions with the diminutive form, such as Ivashka instead of Ivan, or “ Petrushka, tvoi kholop[Petrushka, your slave].” 33
Nathaniel Butler
About half a century earlier another traveler, Giles Fletcher, made rather similar observations:
Into what seruile condition their libertie is brought, not onely to the Prince, but to the Nobles, and Gentlemen of the Countrie (who themselues also are but seruile, specially of late yeares) it may farther appeare by their owne acknowledgments in their supplications, and other writings to any of the Nobles or chiefe officers of the Emperours. Wherein they name and subscribe themselues Kolophey , that is, their villaines, or bondslaues: as they of the Nobilitie doo vnder the Emperour. This may truely be saide of them, that there is no seruant nor bond slaue more awed by his Maister, nor kept downe in more seruile subjection, then the poore people are & that vniuersally, not only by the Emperour, but by his Nobilitie, chief officers, and souldiers. So that when a poore Moujick meeteth with any of them upon the high way, he must turne himselfe about, as not daring to looke him on the face, and fall downe with knocking of his head to the very ground, as he doth unto his Idoll.34
This behavior obviously signifies a masochistic psychological attitude in the slave who performs it. The kowtowing Fletcher describes was called “chelobitie” in Russian, literally “beating the forehead.” Nowadays the word has acquired the metaphorical meaning of “petition” or “request.” But it was originally—and in some contexts still is—a literal, physical bowing down, so low that the forehead would strike against the ground and possibly be injured.
Dominic Scott
Other travelers’ accounts from the sixteenth century, as Ronald Hingley points out, report that Russians “would happily exhibit the bumps on their foreheads raised through excess of zeal in executing the kowtow.”35 During the late Soviet period I actually observed athletic old women hammering a stone floor with their foreheads as they prayed before icons in one of the churches of Zagorsk. The Russian fool, according to a proverb, will go to extremes in this matter: “Make a fool pray to God, and he will break his forehead” (“Zastav’ duraka Bogu molit’sia, on i lob razob’et”). 36
A particularly rich source of evidence about the masochistic attitudes of real slaves comes from Russian folklore gathered before 1861, for much of the peasantry before that date belonged to the serf category. The proverb just mentioned, for example, comes from the classic collection of Vladimir Dahl (1801-72), published originally in 1862. Here are some other lessons in slavishness from that copious work:
Say you are guilty and bow down (or: lie down) (Govori vinovat, da poklonis’ [ili: da lozhis’]).
He submitted and fell at his feet as well (Pokorilsia da v nozhki poklonilsia).
Keep your head bowed and your heart submissive (Derzhi golovu uklonnu, a serdtse pokorno).
Beat with your forehead lower: the sky is too high and the face of the earth is nearer (Bei chelom nizhe: do neba vysoko, do litsa zemli blizhe).
Be quieter than water, and lower than grass (Tishe vody, nizhe travy).
Crawl and grovel face down before him (Polzkom pered nim da nichkom).
When they beat you, say thank you for the lesson (Pob’iut, tak skazhi spasibo za nauku).
Do the work of seven, but obey one (Delai svoe delo za semerykh, a slushaisia odnogo).37
Jack Harris
These utterances attempt to teach the peasant a sense of absolute sub-missiveness before authority. In pre-emancipation Russia this meant not only submissiveness before the peasant’s landlord (“barin”), but servility before anyone powerful generally, such as a government bureaucrat, a military superior, and so on. Note that some of the items are in two parts, the second part being a reinforcement of the first. In effect: one act of submission may not be enough, two are needed to convince the dominant party of the slave’s true servility, a servility of the heart as well as of gesture. Note also the “vertical” orientation of many of the sayings, the submissive party being well “below” the dominant party in the spatial configuration. Perhaps this is what Ivanov had in the back of his mind when he spoke of a Russian “law of descent.”
Some of the proverbs describe masochism of a slightly different sort, that is, outright self-destructive behavior: He offers up the rod to be used against himself (On sam na sebia palku podaet).
He is braiding a whip (or: a rope) to be used against himself (On sam na sebia plet’ [ili: verevku] v’et).
The slave is beating herself if she does a poor job of reaping (Sama sebia raba b’et, koli ne chisto zhnet).
He covered his own beard with his spittle (Sam svoiu borodu opleval).
He stepped on the teeth of the rake and hit himself in the head (Nastupil na zub’ia—grabliami v lob).38
Such evidence for masochistic attitudes in the Russian peasant would of course have to be matched with evidence for sadistic inclinations (“It’s fun to beat someone who is crying”) or rebellious feelings (“A judge’s pocket is like a priest’s belly”) in a balanced study of Russian proverbs.
Colton Ross
Russians tend to think of their country as a collective representation of themselves, as a person. Numerous common epithets indicate that Russia belongs to this category: “Mother Russia” (“Rossiia mat’,” “Matushka Rus’ “), “Holy Russia” (“Sviataia Rus’ “), “Motherland” (“Rodina”), “Fatherland” (“Otechestvo”), and many others which will appear in the following pages. Less common epithets are constantly being invented by Russian poets, but they have the same personifying effect, for example, Blok’s “Beggarly Russia” (“Nishchaia Rossiia”), Belyi’s “Deaf Russia” (“Glukhaia Rossiia”), Andreev’s “Shabby Russia” (“Ubogaia Rus’”), and so forth.42 Nowadays especially “sick Russia” is frequently encountered in the post-Soviet media.
The personification of Russia is a trope that is often extended, as when Russian soldiers are customarily referred to as “sons of the Fatherland,” or “true sons of Russia.” The poets especially are prone to take liberties in extending the personification. For example, Russia is a “female slave” (“raba”) in the following stanzas from a somewhat sadistic poem titled “Russia” (1915) by Maksimilian Voloshin:
Люблю тeбя в ликe paбьeм, Кoгдa в тишинe пoлeй Пpичитaeшь гoлocoм бaбьим Haд тpyпaми cынoвeй.
I love you in the person of a slave, When in the quietness of fields You wail in a woman’s voice Over the bodies of your sons. How the heart droops and shines When, having bound your feet, The master lashes wildly At your humble eyes.43
Isaiah Howard
The poets are not alone here. Respected scholars too will extend the personification of Russia to considerable lengths. Literary historian Dmi-trii Likhachev, for example, likes to dwell on the generosity and goodness (“dobrota”) of a person called Russia:
Russian culture did not copy, but creatively dealt with the riches of world culture. This huge country was always in possession of a huge cultural heritage, and managed it with the generosity of a free and rich person [s shchedrost’iu svobodnoi i bogatoi lichnosti]. Yes, namely a person, for Russian culture and all of Russia with it constitute a person, an individual [iavliaiutsia lichnost’iu, individual’nost’iu].44
Some authors, especially those with a nationalistic or Slavophile bent, extend the personification while at the same time refusing to recognize the poetics of the extension. Vadim Borisov, for example, speaks of the nation’s person or personality (“lichnost’ “), which is somehow distinct from the empirical and rationally analyzable manifestations of national life. In this view Russia is very much a literal human being:
This sense of the nation as a personality, which has been expressed by individuals, corresponds with and confirms the people’s awareness of its identity as embodied in folklore. Its image covertly governs our speech, for when we speak of the “dignity” of the people, its “duty,” its “sins” or its “responsibility,” we are making concrete, that is to say, unmetaphorical, use of terms that are applicable only to the moral life of a person . 45
Angel Gonzalez
On the contrary, such usage is highly metaphorical, or, to be rhetorically precise, such usage constitutes the device of personification (Greek prosopopoeia, literally “face making”). A nation is not literally a person. A population of persons in a specific geographical area is not itself a person or a personality. It merely acquires some attributes of a person in the minds of its citizens (and the attributes it acquires reveal much about these minds). In the opinion of Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev, anyone who actually falls for the idea that a given nation is a person (“lichnost’”) is a nationalist, and is in some sense enslaved by that nation.46
The personification of a nation occurs in other countries besides Russia, of course, and is generally familiar to psychoanalysts: We tend to regard our native land as a great mother who brings into being, nourishes, protects and cherishes her sons and daughters and inspires them with love and respect for herself and her traditions, customs, beliefs and institutions; in return for which her children are prepared to work and fight for her—and above all to protect her from her enemies; a good deal of the horror and disgust which is inspired by the idea of an invasion of one’s native land by a hostile army being due to an unconscious tendency to regard such an invasion as a desecration and violation of the mother.
Nolan Reyes
Is this a book?
Hudson Peterson
Reminds me of the film director Tarkovsky and how he hated happy people. There's a quote out there somewhere about how the point of existence is to suffer or something to that effect.
Poor Russia :(
Colton Lopez
...
Jaxson Martin
We may return now to the Slavophile notion of "freedom." It is a remarkable fact that, despite all their emphasis on submission to the collective, the Slavophiles still believed the individual member of the collective to be "free." For example, according to Khomiakov only the individual Christian has authority. Even God does not have authority.
Participation in Christian life must come freely, from within. It can never be coerced in any way. The true Christian is not a slave, says Khomiakov repeatedly. The true Christian is free.
Of course if an individual Christian decided not to exercise the option to submit freely to the will of the collective, then a problem could conceivably arise. That is, an individual, without necessarily becoming the "slave" of some external authority, might still reject unanimity and sobornosf as well. Khomiakov does not consider this possibility. Indeed, there is no room for dissidence in Khomiakov's Christianity. The true Christian is free only to go along with the collective.
This can be best characterized as a masochist's idea of freedom. It fits in with the general Russian tendency to characterize freedom in a paradoxical way. Dostoevsky's famous character Kirilov, for example, asserts that the highest form of free will is suicide. Or, there is philosopher Nikolai Fedorov's idea that the Russian tradition of obligatory state service actually fosters freedom. George Young comments: "While Westerners may look upon the Russians as a weak, slavish people who allow themselves to be herded like cattle by dictators who for some reason are best loved when most oppressive, Fedorov interprets the Russian lack of self-assertion as a subtler and more advanced understanding of freedom."
Gavin Jenkins
The Russian folkloric fool tends to be strongly attached to his family, especially his mother. Altruism in Russia, as everywhere else,37 is learned on mother’s knee. But the foolishness as well as the altruism should be characterized as “motherly,” or at least as having to do with the mother. In many variants the problem is that the fool cannot seem to make a break with his mother. He is often the youngest child, which means he is the last one to have emerged from his mother’s body, and no one else has since occupied his position as mother’s little boy.38 He is very passive and dependent on his mother. His closeness to her is part of what makes him laughable. He is an adult, but is developmentally retarded. Sometimes he is speechless, like an infant. He is a lazybones, a stay-at-home, usually remaining in his mother’s hut and lying on (or behind) the stove. Sometimes even his name suggests the stove to which he is so attached: “Ivan Zapechnik” (“Ivan Behind-the-Stove”) or “Kniaz’ Pechurinskii” (“Prince Stovish”).39 The image of the stove (“pech’,” a feminine noun) is decidedly maternal, and reinforces the idea of the fool’s continuing dependence on his mother (“The stove is our dear mother,” says a peasant proverb).40 Like a little child, the fool is often without britches, he is dirty,41 does not clean himself, has a runny nose, and so forth. His mother is more or less forced to take care of him.42 When he does get up the energy to go out and do some daring, stupid deed, he often follows this with a return home to his mother and a reversion to his former passivity and nearly symbiotic union with his mother. The behavior of the Russian folkloric fool thus exemplifies that grade of masochism in which the individual, when behaving masochistically, is attempting to move away from the mother (see clinical discussion, above, 109). In any case, the boundary of the foolish self with the mother is at issue.
Ian Barnes
“What if the Russian idea is Russian insanity?” asks Merezhkovskii. This is not a very precise diagnosis, clinically speaking. But Merezhkovskii clearly wants us to understand that there is something wrong, something pathological in the slavish attitude of Russian intellectuals toward authority. Russia is like a man being buried alive. He screams in protest, but the dirt just piles up on the coffin, a cross is placed there, and the great Russian thinkers do nothing but find ways to justify what is happening:
Dostoevsky writes on the cross: “Resign yourself, proud man [Smiris’, gordyi chelovek]!” L. Tolstoy writes: “non-resistance to evil [Neprotivlenie zlu].” Vl[ adimir] Solovyev writes: “This is not the point [Delo ne v etom].” Viach[ eslav] Ivanov writes: “Through the Holy Spirit we rise from the dead [Dukhom Sv. voskresaem].”
Russia was condemned to sin and to suffer immense pain for her sins (here Rozanov is, as Lisa Crone says, a “prophet of doom”). Because Mother-Russia is a sinner one is obliged to love her:
It’s no great accomplishment to love a fortunate and grand motherland. It is when she is weak, small, humbled, even stupid, even depraved— that we should love her. Precisely, exactly when our “mother” is drunk, when she tells lies, when she gets all tangled up in sinfulness— that is when we are obliged not to leave her. But this is not all: when finally she dies and is picked at by the Jews until nothing but her bones are left, then that person who weeps by her useless, spat-upon skeleton will be a real Russian.
With this thoroughly disgusting imagery Rozanov not only idealizes Russian masochism, but reveals his own necrophilic and anti-Semitic tendencies.
Andrew Wood
I'm not saying it's entirely untrue but it misses most important aspects of the processes that "enslave" Russia over and over again
Basically Russian economy is historically a gigantic mess which results in underdevelopment. Underdeveloped countries always look for a strong organiser who can get them out of this mess as said underdevelopment always coexists with corruption, crime and so forth. This organiser happened many, many times before - be it Peter the Great or Lenin and his NEP(and many more). Sometimes, indeed a centralised solution can be the best but that's really beyond the point. The problem is that none of those "reformers" lived long enough or was concerned about actual development of the country(in case of Ivan the Great or Stalin it was clearly more of "strengthening the state" than legitimate will to fix Russia) so as a result after his death they've looked for another great organiser. And another. And so forth. The quality of their policies didn't actually matter, what mattered was the mentality that only big guy 4u can fix the country
Carson Evans
So far so good.
Jonathan White
Fuck off
Good thread op
Tyler Torres
According to Aksakov, Russians are essentially apolitical people who accede to authoritarian rule only because they have better things to do, namely, to develop their inner spiritual life: “And so the Russian people, having renounced political matters and having entrusted all authority in the political sphere to the government, reserved for themselves life— moral and communal freedom, the highest aim of which is to achieve a Christian society.”
Wyatt Martinez
All of it resulted in the country always being 3 steps behind the "west" in some aspects which backfires. It is painfully visible in case of how serfdom was handled - not only it was heavily enforced at the time when western Europe was slowly giving it up(that being said - it's understandable seeing as the closest western neighbour of Russia was also serfdom-heavy) but the peasant reform was handled in a way that gave the peasant communities more power than it gave to individual peasants. There was obviously very good reason for it - at the time when Russian serf was freed, the perfidious bureaucrats, small scale businessmen were all eager for easy profit from illiterate serfs(who they've screwed in various ways). Had they done it by the beginning of 19th century(like many other countries did) and the effect of it would be lessened by the fact that the townsfolk itself was less literate and "aware" of such occasions. As it was however the serfs either lost all their shit anyway or were living the same life as before, except now they were officially free men.
Currently the oil-gas heavy economy that nobody wants to reform will result in similar catastrophe until another bigguy4u appears and fixes it, then he'll die or disappear and the country will be again, 3 steps behind the world. Because Russians always wait for bigguy4u to do everything instead of doing it themselves.
Henry Thompson
The prevalent mentality among Russians could be summed up, as a constant party life.. Politics? "Lol who cares(until it gets really bad), OLGA DAVAII RZOPA". Economy? "Lol who cares(until it gets really bad) SASHA!! VODKA!!!!". And so on and so forth. It's all not their problem, civil unrest is usually very low regardless of situations(well, if there's no vodka on shelves then they get angry but - yeah), something on scale of watergate would be gone, forgotten in 3 hours. They ignore the law wherever it's possible and all they expect from the administration is to let the "great organiser" do whatever they want, don't hurt them directly too much and let them do more or less whatever they want. Other than that' they're absolutely apolitical.
Andrew Ward
that's cool and all but it doesn't tell us how the Soviet Union, an atheist state that was set to replace a slave state bound by religious cultism, ended up as a slave state bound by ideologist cultism
