Who Are We? And Other Russian Stories

In the final installment of her fascinating radio series looking at Russia 20 years on from the Soviet collapse, veteran journalist, critical Russophile (and long-suffering friend of the FPA Russia blog!) Brigid McCarthy looks at a thorny issue: that Russia has still not yet figured out its identity.

Brigid talks to Russian TV host Felix Razumovsky, who leads a popular show called “Who Are We?”. Razumovsky believes that the Russian, and Soviet, Idea has been underpinned by a kind of Orthodox mysticism.

“Psychologically, Razumovsky said, Russians remain profoundly shaped by their Orthodox Christian heritage, and the idea of “Holy Russia.” That heritage can be summed up in a single Biblical verse:

“‘Don’t gather your treasures on earth, but store up your treasures in heaven.’

This very simple phrase is basically what characterizes the Russian soul or spirit,” Razumovksy said.

“Everyone in Russia is still pretty much this way, even if they try to hide it.”

Razumovsky thinks one reason Communist ideology got a foothold in Russia was it offered a modern, secular version of Holy Russia. Soviets were ready to lay down their lives for the sake of a future, workers’ paradise.

“So that’s why Russia took up the call. Excuse me, but no one else in Europe screwed around like this,” he said, with a laugh.”

As a result, Russian people remain attracted to large meta-narratives.

“If you’re a person who needs that bigger force or idea in your life, then it’s easier for you to switch from the Bolshevik/Communist future paradise to the Orthodox Christian future paradise.”

Russians are thus trapped by this idea, unable to lead ‘normal’ democratic lives.

Razumovsky’s idea of the Russian people as self-flagellating religious utopians is a rather Slavophilic concept that seems pretty closely related to Russian messianism.

Its less charitable mirror image is the idea of Russians as hostage to a denial of their history, specifically the crimes of Communism. This seems to be the jist of the latest book by conservative journalist David Satter, the long-time FT correspondent in Moscow,

I’m still in the process of reading Satter’s provocative and compellingly written book, so I’ll reserve hasty judgement, but, according to Owen Matthews, who reviewed the book for the Daily Beast,

“what bothers Satter most is that Putin has returned to the megalomaniacal Soviet assumption that the people exist to serve the state rather than the other way around. “Maintaining the governance of a vast territory … calls for vast sacrifices and privations on the part of our people,” Putin said in 2008. “That has been Russia’s thousand-year history.”

Satter’s message is that Russia cannot hope to reverse its current decline without first coming to terms with the crimes of the Soviet past”.

At the core of both of these stories is a kind of romantic megalomania that supposedly underpins the Russian psyche. For many conservatives in the West, from Richard Pipes to Anne Applebaum to David Satter, it’s a source of fear and frustration. Whereas for some Russians themselves, many of whom also subscribe to this idea, it’s a source of pride – feeling special, tragic, Bigger than other countries. Russia’s failures can thus be explained as resulting from unrealistically, impossibly high aspirations. Russia as Icarus.

I won’t lie: addicted to meta-narratives, I’ve been guilty of flirting with such exceptionalism, but it’s not helpful.

For a start, all countries’ histories and political traditions are cumulative, resulting from layering one thing over another, in ostensibly contradictory ways. If Christmas Day in many European countries used to be a pagan holiday in pre-christian times, and if sauna entrepreneur Peter Kizenko used to be Russia’s top Goldman trader, what’s so strange about Soviet Communism having Russian Orthodox roots?

And, as for historical denialism, Russians are often accused, as Satter seems to have done, of ignoring/whitewashing/denying the crimes of Communism. This is seen as a kind of Freudian foundation for some kind of current psychic pathology. If only we faced up once and for all to the Gulag, then we could finally become a “normal” country! But the truth, unfortunately, seems much more prosaic than that.

Most countries were built on serious slaughter, sometimes outright genocide, and ordinary Russians have the same kind of relationship to Stalinism as ordinary Americans have to slavery or the British have to imperialism – they know about it, they know it was bad, but they want to get on with their lives without being made by some random foreigners to feel constantly guilty or apologetic. It’s that simple.

And, funnily enough, the same crowd of right wing Western writers and analysts who condemn Russians for Soviet amnesia would generally be the last people to call for a similar recognition of the original sins of their own countries.

Catch Brigid’s other thought provoking, wry and engaging episodes on the PRI site.