Life Under the Tsars

[mr_harrison75]

There was a survey made in Russia a few days ago (published by RIA Novosti). Here are some results:

71% of Russians think they are not Europeans, and 45% believe that a United Europe is a menace for Russia.

80% expect the Russian state to care a little more for them, and 74% that they cannot survive without State control and strong leadership.

67% believe that Vladimir Poutine is the embodiment of the Russian State...

No wonder Russians don't care about the Romanovs, they have Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Tsar of all the Russias! 

Poor Russia! 

[Elisabeth]

I think it's time for a reality check. Russians might - I stress the word "might" - be more inclined toward pollitical passivity and the longing for a strong leader, because of their negative experiences at the hands of the tsars and the Bolsheviks, but modern Russians, the Russians of the twenty-first century, primarily long for a strong leader like Putin for the very reason that the much-anticipated economic reforms of Yeltsin failed spectacularly, on more than one occasion, which resulted in the wiping out of the entire savings of many, indeed most, Russian families, who had placed these savings in Russian banks for the precise reason that they had had faith in the new reforms and the new market economy... It's easy for us in the West, with our cushy jobs and lifestyle, with our secure bank accounts, social security, and Medicare, to sneer at modern-day Russians for their lingering nostalgia for a strong, even authoritarian state. But as long as we take such a condescending attitude (an attitude that somehow always reminds me of the British aristocracy - that innate sense of superiority, which always says we know better, and you poor underclass people know nothing) then there's no hope that Russians and Western Europeans and Americans will ever reach any sort of understanding.

To my mind, it's no wonder that Russians by and large admire Putin. They've spent most of the twentieth century being massacred in the millions, for the sake of nothing. They've seen their once-great and powerful country reduced to practically third-world status. In these circumstances, who wouldn't admire a leader who put Russian national interests first and those of the West last? And whatever (comparatively speaking) mild form of political repression lingers, does so primarily, almost exclusively, at the level of the elites. Tell the average Russian to care that some journalists have been murdered, when they themselves have miraculously escaped being murdered by the state  - say what you want, I can see their point of view - at least the Russian state no longer indulges in mass murder.

Furthermore, what's the alternative to Putin? The liberal parties in Russia are, for a variety of reasons, completely ineffectual. As a result the only real alternative to Putin is the Red-Brown (Communist-Fascist) Coalition. To which I say, thank God for small mercies, thank God then for Putin...

And finally, the idea that Russians are naturally passive because of centuries of tsarist and Bolshevik oppression is a complete myth. You have only to read pre-revolutionary Russian history to realize that peasant rebellions, major and minor, were a constant fact of life under the tsars, even before Peter the Great, and long after his demise, stretching well into the twentieth century. The Russian Revolutions of 1917 did not happen without massive civil unrest among the Russian peasantry. Most importantly, Stalin encountered such large-scale, intense, and prolonged resistance on the part of the peasantry to forced collectivization that he had to order millions to be killed or exiled as a result. He later told Churchill that collectivization had been "worse than the war" - meaning World War II.  Please pause for a moment to consider the implications of that statement. Given that 20 million Russians perished during World War II, it conveys a veritable hell of meaning.

[mr_harrison75]

Elisabeth,

Thank you for your very intelligent post. It's true that we sometimes forget that we have a different outlook on Russia than the Russians themselves.

It's true that Russians had a hard life in the twentieth century, and it's true that they are used to strong leadership, and to be obedient to it. My point is do they have to be blindly obedient to it? That's what the survey tells me!

Riots have been parts of Russian life for many centuries, it's true. Even in 1861, when the Tsar freed the serfs, there was some riots. But in 1917, the riots were in Saint-Petersburg, from the workers, and then, an army regiment joined them, etc. It didn't came from the peasantry.

I agree with you, the Russians are so busy just to make a living that they will welcome anyone who can give them a better life...

[Tsarfan]

. . . modern Russians, the Russians of the twenty-first century, primarily long for a strong leader like Putin for the very reason that the much-anticipated economic reforms of Yeltsin failed spectacularly . . . .

I agree with this, Elisabeth, as far as it goes.  Russians have a clear need for a strong leader and every right to want one.  However, the point I was making spun off the interesting polling datum that only about 5% of Russians desire any say in determining who  that strong leader is.  Leaders can use strength to do good things or to do horrible things.  Ideally, the point of elections is not have the choice of a weak leader over a strong one, but to be able to influence how that strength is used.  Russians seem to view strength as almost the sole criterion for leadership.  Once they're satisfied on the score, they just close their eyes and hope for the best.

It's easy for us in the West, with our cushy jobs and lifestyle, with our secure bank accounts, social security, and Medicare, to sneer at modern-day Russians for their lingering nostalgia for a strong, even authoritarian state.

Yes, they were given a cradle-to-grave social net under the soviets.  However, the grave came very, very early for millions as part of the purchase price.  And, if the productivity and health  data from the soviet era are any indicators, even those who managed to live and work in peace under the soviet regime did so in highly-demoralizing jobs, riddled with alcoholism, and under a stultifying sense that just getting by was about the best most could expect to come of their labors.  I did not live in Russia during the soviet era, but I spent a lot of time in East Berlin.  I know from personal experience how deep the cravings were for things as simple as a new pair of jeans or a pair of well-made sneakers or the ability to have a safe conversation with a westerner in that workers' paradise.

In fact, Stalin's great and demonic genius was in making a tacit trade with the Russian people that gave each side what they desired from the bargain.  Stalin was able to claim and hold a tsar's authority by giving the people the social net the tsars did not.

To me, the issue is not that Russians crave financial security.  The issue is what they have been willing to trade to get it.  Remember that Hitler -- one of those leaders prodigiously blessed with that strength Russians so admire -- rose to power on much the same promise after the economic cyclones of the 1920's:  a steady supply of jobs, a Volkswagen (literally, a "people's car") in every garage, a modern highway network, and the boast that never again would they see their life savings evaporate if they would just put their lives in his strong hands. 

And finally, the idea that Russians are naturally passive because of centuries of tsarist and Bolshevik oppression is a complete myth. You have only to read pre-revolutionary Russian history to realize that peasant rebellions, major and minor, were a constant fact of life under the tsars, even before Peter the Great, and long after his demise, stretching well into the twentieth century. The Russian Revolutions of 1917 did not happen without massive civil unrest among the Russian peasantry. Most importantly, Stalin encountered such large-scale, intense, and prolonged resistance on the part of the peasantry to forced collectivization that he had to order millions to be killed or exiled as a result. He later told Churchill that collectivization had been "worse than the war" - meaning World War II.  Please pause for a moment to consider the implications of that statement. Given that 20 million Russians perished during World War II, it conveys a veritable hell of meaning.

True.  Even Russians will fight for something as tangible as land.  It's the more intangible things like freedom of thought or freedom to decide how you are governed that leave them relatively indifferent today.  Where are the rebellions over people being shipped off to the gulag?  Where are the rebellions over the deaths of millions?  Where are the rebellions because they had no right to travel?  Where are the rebellions because only the party elite had access to even a glimmer of a consumer economy?

As I said in an earlier post, it's not that Russian history is devoid of attempts by the people to seize some control of their fates.  It was the sustained and successful resistance of the government over centuries  and well into the modern era that was unique.  And there were tsars for many, many more years than there were General Secretaries.

[Elisabeth]

In fact, Stalin's great and demonic genius was in making a tacit trade with the Russian people that gave each side what they desired from the bargain.  Stalin was able to claim and hold a tsar's authority by giving the people the social net the tsars did not.

To me, the issue is not that Russians crave financial security.  The issue is what they have been willing to trade to get it.  Remember that Hitler -- one of those leaders prodigiously blessed with that strength Russians so admire -- rose to power on much the same promise after the economic cyclones of the 1920's:  a steady supply of jobs, a Volkswagen (literally, a "people's car") in every garage, a modern highway network, and the boast that never again would they see their life savings evaporate if they would just put their lives in his strong hands.

True.  Even Russians will fight for something as tangible as land.  It's the more intangible things like freedom of thought or freedom to decide how you are governed that leave them relatively indifferent today.  Where are the rebellions over people being shipped off to the gulag?  Where are the rebellions over the deaths of millions?  Where are the rebellions because they had no right to travel?  Where are the rebellions because only the party elite had access to even a glimmer of a consumer economy?  

Your argument about Stalin is shot through with holes, to say the least... I don't think the millions of peasants who died defending their land against the Bolsheviks would agree that they received a social welfare net in return for a strong, authoritarian leader! And hmmm...let us indeed remember Hitler. I don't recall any mass uprisings against that especially "strong" but evil leader by the Germans. Could it be that the German people resemble the Russian people in some way? Or could it be that the infliction of mass terror by a technologically advanced state frightens and stuns the vast majority of a population into obedient silence?

(And yet the Germans have somehow made democracy work these last sixty odd years...)

As regards mass terror, too, I would argue that Lenin and Stalin were actually far worse in this respect than Hitler. Stalin in particular aimed his terror at pretty much the entirety of Soviet society, from the highest class to the lowest - e.g., the army generals and officers, the engineers and other professional specialists left over from the tsarist regime (most of whom were in fact sympathetic to the new Soviet state), the peasantry, etc. In fact I can't think of a single social class left out of Stalin's regime of terror. He even killed off his own minions, his party faithful. Whereas in Nazi Germany, for the most part it was always perfectly clear who the targets of state terror would be - former and current political opponents, and minority groups like Jews and homosexuals. By and large Hitler did not touch the party faithful, unless like Stauffenberg they were no longer faithful and tried to assassinate him. (The only exception to this that I can think of is the murder of Roehm and his followers. But that was a singular event - and one much admired by Stalin, by the way!)

As I said in an earlier post, it's not that Russian history is devoid of attempts by the people to seize some control of their fates.  It was the sustained and successful resistance of the government over centuries  and well into the modern era that was unique.  And there were tsars for many, many more years than there were General Secretaries.

Oh, please, Tsarfan. What about China? There were emperors there for literally THOUSANDS more years than there were tsars in Russia. And it's not as if the Chinese people have exactly distinguished themselves in staging popular rebellions against the Communist regime. Again, I think you are completely underestimating the impact of state-imposed mass terror, not to mention the impact of a new and compelling ideology like Communism. On the latter point, there's a famous story from the Communist era in China, which one of my husband's Chinese students told him was drummed into her head when she was a schoolgirl. It seems that during the Great Leap Forward, a particularly fanatical worker realized that a machine needed lubricating. No oil being on hand, he promptly threw himself bodily into that machine - you see, his blood and other body parts could provide the necessary lubrication... This man was held up as an example to millions of Chinese schoolchildren, much as the shock-worker Stakhanov was held up as a role model to millions of Soviet schoolchildren.

IMHO, Tsarfan, we all need to face the fact that when we talk about the Chinese, Soviet, and other Communist regimes, we're in the equivalent of another universe, where normal rules of human behavior no longer apply.

[Tsarfan]

Your argument about Stalin is shot through with holes, to say the least... I don't think the millions of peasants who died defending their land against the Bolsheviks would agree that they received a social welfare net in return for a strong, authoritarian leader!

This relates back to an argument you made ages ago, Elisabeth, where you asserted that one of the reasons today's Russia is so unable to lift itself up is that Lenin's and Stalin's depredations wiped out large portions of the educated and enterprising citizenry and left the country disproportionately populated with people of more passive dispositions and less-accomplished backgrounds.  I think there is something to that argument.  But the fact remains that the population that is setting the tone of today's political climate in Russia is largely descended from the people who managed to find their own personal accord with the soviet state, not the people who fought the Bolsheviks to the death.

And hmmm...let us indeed remember Hitler. I don't recall any mass uprisings against that especially "strong" but evil leader by the Germans. Could it be that the German people resemble the Russian people in some way? Or could it be that the infliction of mass terror by a technologically advanced state stuns and frightens the vast majority of a population into obedient silence?

Yes, Germans do in some ways resemble Russians on this score.  If you remember some of my long-ago posts, I take a rather dim view of certain strains of German (or, more precisely, Prussian) history and how they fed the monster of Naziism.  However, there were also enough strains of liberalism in German history, particularly centered on their cultural and literary history -- and even some liberal political strains in the non-Prussian states -- that formed the kernel from which a democracy could grow after World War II.  I grant, though, that the more proximate reason German democracy could take root was the massive infusion of U.S. capital into German economic recovery after the war.

But one of the interesting trends in Russia today is the deliberately-engineered hostility to making Russia safe for western investment -- the very means by which the Russian economy could be diversified and put on a path to recovery.  As modern Japan and Germany have made clear, western capital actually comes with far fewer strings attached than is often supposed . . . and that Putin is claiming.  Basically, western investors want a return on their investment, not heavy involvement in political philosophy.

Oh, please, Tsarfan. What about China?

Well, you've got me on this one.  Despite my best intentions, I often slip into a Euro-centric view.  The entire landscape of this debate changes if one brings Asia into the picture.  Which, perhaps, begs the utlimate question.  Did Russia ever really become as European as Peter hoped and as his successors pretended?

IMHO, Tsarfan, we all need to face the fact that when we talk about the Soviet and other Communist regimes, we're in the equivalent of another universe, where normal rules of human behavior no longer apply.

Sigh . . . .  In discussing modern Russia, every time I look beyond soviet history back to tsarist history to find antecedents to modern attitudes, I end up being accused of equating the tsars to the likes of Lenin and Stalin.  Let me say this as clearly as I can:

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and their ilk are horrible stains on the history of humankind.  No tsar -- not even Ivan IV -- neared that status.

What I fault the tsars for (with the qualified exception of Peter the Great) is not for trying to force their nations onto an unnatural path, but for trying to retard the social and political evolution of which Russia was as inherently capable as any western European nation.  If one looks at Kievan Russia and the history of city states such as Nizhny Novgorod, one finds societies that in many particulars put their western contemporaries to shame.

I do not "sneer" at Russians for being incapable of progress.  I question their choice in the 21st century to succumb to the habits of their political past under the Muscovite tsars and their progeny in accepting whatever fate the newest strongman delivers up to them.  To repeat the hackneyed saw:  "those who will not understand their past are doomed to repeat it."

[RichC]

I think it's time for a reality check. Russians might - I stress the word "might" - be more inclined toward pollitical passivity and the longing for a strong leader, because of their negative experiences at the hands of the tsars and the Bolsheviks, but modern Russians, the Russians of the twenty-first century, primarily long for a strong leader like Putin for the very reason that the much-anticipated economic reforms of Yeltsin failed spectacularly, on more than one occasion, which resulted in the wiping out of the entire savings of many, indeed most, Russian families, who had placed these savings in Russian banks for the precise reason that they had had faith in the new reforms and the new market economy... It's easy for us in the West, with our cushy jobs and lifestyle, with our secure bank accounts, social security, and Medicare, to sneer at modern-day Russians for their lingering nostalgia for a strong, even authoritarian state. But as long as we take such a condescending attitude (an attitude that somehow always reminds me of the British aristocracy - that innate sense of superiority, which always says we know better, and you poor underclass people know nothing) then there's no hope that Russians and Western Europeans and Americans will ever reach any sort of understanding.

Sorry, Elisabeth, but you haven't sold me on this.  Not yet, anyway.  Russians have always respected iron-fisted rule, including in the years before the failure of Yeltsin's economic reforms.  As Empress Alexandra famously said, "Russians long to feel the whip" -- yes this is an overly simplified view, but don't you agree there's a kernel of truth in it?  And I'm sorry, but if we are taking a condescending attitude toward Russia, it's no worse than their attitude toward us.  Their own sense of superiority is unmatched!  They are a great people, in their own minds, and the rest of us (Western Europe, U.S.) are just "big children".  Asia, Africa?  Well those people are even human, really.

To my mind, it's no wonder that Russians by and large admire Putin. They've spent most of the twentieth century being massacred in the millions, for the sake of nothing. They've seen their once-great and powerful country reduced to practically third-world status. In these circumstances, who wouldn't admire a leader who put Russian national interests first and those of the West last? And whatever (comparatively speaking) mild form of political repression lingers, does so primarily, almost exclusively, at the level of the elites. Tell the average Russian to care that some journalists have been murdered, when they themselves have miraculously escaped being murdered by the state  - say what you want, I can see their point of view - at least the Russian state no longer indulges in mass murder.

You make it sound as if millions were being massacred right up to 1991.  How many millions of Russians died at the hands of the state after 1953?  The only other thing to point out here is that the "mild form of political repression" you are referring to is "mild" only in relation to what came before in Russia.  It's not "mild" compared to Western standards.

Furthermore, what's the alternative to Putin? The liberal parties in Russia are, for a variety of reasons, completely ineffectual. As a result the only real alternative to Putin is the Red-Brown (Communist-Fascist) Coalition. To which I say, thank God for small mercies, thank God then for Putin...

Yes, the liberal parties in Russia are completely ineffectual -- once again!  When, in Russia's history, have liberal parties ever been effectual?

And finally, the idea that Russians are naturally passive because of centuries of tsarist and Bolshevik oppression is a complete myth. You have only to read pre-revolutionary Russian history to realize that peasant rebellions, major and minor, were a constant fact of life under the tsars, even before Peter the Great, and long after his demise, stretching well into the twentieth century. The Russian Revolutions of 1917 did not happen without massive civil unrest among the Russian peasantry.

But were these rebellions instigated by the peasants or did the peasants merely take advantage of a situation that was already developing?

[Elisabeth]

Sorry, Elisabeth, but you haven't sold me on this.  Not yet, anyway.  Russians have always respected iron-fisted rule, including in the years before the failure of Yeltsin's economic reforms.  As Empress Alexandra famously said, "Russians long to feel the whip" -- yes this is an overly simplified view, but don't you agree there's a kernel of truth in it?

I don't believe that Russians "long to feel the whip" - this is precisely the kind of condescending, insulting attitude evinced in a recent, "scholarly" book by an American self-proclaimed expert in Freudian psychoanalytic theory. The title of this immensely annoying book is The Slave Soul of Russia. Pause for a moment to consider just how insulting that very title is... But I don't think that you honestly believe that any people on this earth, no matter how schooled in abuse, ever longs for the lash of the whip. This is just another case of blaming the victim, the moral equivalent of saying that a rape victim was asking for it because she has a rape fantasy!

You make it sound as if millions were being massacred right up to 1991.  How many millions of Russians died at the hands of the state after 1953?  The only other thing to point out here is that the "mild form of political repression" you are referring to is "mild" only in relation to what came before in Russia.  It's not "mild" compared to Western standards.

Sorry, Rich, while you're right that mass murder by and large ceased in Russia after 1953, nevertheless, that's well within the memory of a large portion of the Russian population, and was even more so twenty years ago, during perestroika and glasnost'. I also should point out that even Russia's great leaders during the 1980s and 1990s had family members who suffered political repression under Stalin - both Gorbachev's maternal and paternal grandfathers were arrested by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, one of them even suffered torture by the KGB; Yeltsin's paternal grandfather was condemned as a "kulak" and sentenced to exile. The Stalinist Terror touched most Soviet families, intimately and unforgettably. This is the legacy that today's Russians still live with.

Of course I'm judging today's Russia by Russian standards - if you judge them by our American ones, they'll never measure up, and we might as well give up in despair, wring our hands, and start mouthing platitudes about how the Russians aren't like us and long for the whip. It's crazy. The West never appreciates what small strides Russia makes toward democracy. We're always saying, "too little, too late," and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

But look at Spain. Who would have thought that the much-vilified Spain of Franco could have ever evolved into the modern, progressive, advanced EU state that it is? The fact of the matter is that while authoritarian states can gradually evolve into democratic ones, I have yet to see a totalitarian one do so successfully.

But were these rebellions instigated by the peasants or did the peasants merely take advantage of a situation that was already developing?

Please remember I was talking about the entirety of peasant rebellions under tsarist and Soviet rule, not merely the civil unrest associated with the Revolution of 1905-1906. I mean, please do let us all recall the many mass rebellions under the tsars. There was Ivan Bolotnikov, there was Stenka Razin, there was Conrad Bulavin, there was Pugachev, and these were all major rebellions that took place before the nineteenth century. While in the nineteenth century itself, according to Riasanovsky's History of Russia, there were between 550 and 1,467 peasant rebellions in the decades leading up to emancipation, depending on which historian you believe. 32 per cent of these uprisings took place in the years immediately preceding emancipation. As Riasonovsky remarks on p. 410, "Interestingly, it was the Third Department, the gendarmerie, that had stressed the danger of serfdom during the reign of Nicholas I. Besides rising in rebellion, serfs ran away from their masters, sometimes by the hundreds and even by the thousands. On occasion large military detachments had to be sent to intercept them. Pathetic mass flights of peasants, for example, would follow rumors that freedom could be obtained somewhere in the Caucasus, while crowds of serfs tried to join the army during the Crimean War, because they mistakenly believed that they would thereby gain their liberty."

All this puts paid to Alexandra Feodorovna's idea that Russians "long to feel the whip," and by the way, also stands in complete contradiction to Tsarfan's assertion that Russian peasants only ever revolted when their ownership of the land was at stake! Apparently, they did prize their own personal liberty after all!

[Tsarfan]

. . . stands in complete contradiction to Tsarfan's assertion that Russian peasants only ever revolted when their ownership of the land was at stake! Apparently, they did prize their own personal liberty after all!

Well, Elisabeth, I've got some research to do into the dozens of peasant rebellions that occurred in Russia, particularly during the particularly vigorous outbreak in the mid-18th century.

However, the promise Pugachev made to those who would follow him was land, grain, salt, and tax relief.  In other words, it was about material gain, not personal freedom.  In fact, here is an excerpt from the ukase Pugachev, posing as Peter III, issued in 1773 in order to attract followers to his cause:

"From me, such reward and investiture will be with money and bread compensation and with promotions: and you, as well as your next of kin will have a place in my government and will be designated to serve a glorious duty on my behalf. If there are those who forget their obligations to their natural ruler Peter III, and dare not carry out the command that my devoted troops are to receive weapons in their hands, then they will see for themselves my righteous anger, and will then be punished harshly."

Odd.  There is talk about money, food, and promotions . . . and harsh consequences to those who do not follow the commands of their "natural ruler".  But I cannot find one word about freedom.

[RichC]

Sorry, Elisabeth, but you haven't sold me on this.  Not yet, anyway.  Russians have always respected iron-fisted rule, including in the years before the failure of Yeltsin's economic reforms.  As Empress Alexandra famously said, "Russians long to feel the whip" -- yes this is an overly simplified view, but don't you agree there's a kernel of truth in it?

I don't believe that Russians "long to feel the whip" - this is precisely the kind of condescending, insulting attitude evinced in a recent, "scholarly" book by an American self-proclaimed expert in Freudian psychoanalytic theory. The title of this immensely annoying book is The Slave Soul of Russia. Pause for a moment to consider just how insulting that very title is... But I don't think that you honestly believe that any people on this earth, no matter how schooled in abuse, ever longs for the lash of the whip. This is just another case of blaming the victim, the moral equivalent of saying that a rape victim was asking for it because she has a rape fantasy!

But I do believe that many people (not just Russians) would rather have at least some of their decisions made for them.  I work with an Indian guy whose wife was chosen for him!  Sorry, but I still believe there's a stong "follow the leader" (or just "follow") streak in Russian culture.  This strain is evident in Russian Orthodoxy as well.

You make it sound as if millions were being massacred right up to 1991.  How many millions of Russians died at the hands of the state after 1953?  The only other thing to point out here is that the "mild form of political repression" you are referring to is "mild" only in relation to what came before in Russia.  It's not "mild" compared to Western standards.

Sorry, Rich, while you're right that mass murder by and large ceased in Russia after 1953, nevertheless, that's well within the memory of a large portion of the Russian population, and was even more so twenty years ago, during perestroika and glasnost'. I also should point out that even Russia's great leaders during the 1980s and 1990s had family members who suffered political repression under Stalin - both Gorbachev's maternal and paternal grandfathers were arrested by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, one of them even suffered torture by the KGB; Yeltsin's paternal grandfather was condemned as a "kulak" and sentenced to exile. The Stalinist Terror touched most Soviet families, intimately and unforgettably. This is the legacy that today's Russians still live with.

Of course I'm judging today's Russia by Russian standards - if you judge them by our American ones, they'll never measure up, and we might as well give up in despair, wring our hands, and start mouthing platitudes about how the Russians aren't like us and long for the whip. It's crazy. The West never appreciates what small strides Russia makes toward democracy. We're always saying, "too little, too late," and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Oh, excuse me!  When I tried to defend strides towards democracy in the Ukraine by mentioning the "Orange Revolution", YOU were the one who chimed in, with your Russian standards, saying that the whole thing was a big joke!

But look at Spain. Who would have thought that the much-vilified Spain of Franco could have ever evolved into the modern, progressive, advanced EU state that it is? The fact of the matter is that while authoritarian states can gradually evolve into democratic ones, I have yet to see a totalitarian one do so successfully.

Well the spirit of Jeane Kirkpatick lives on.

Apparently, they did prize their own personal liberty after all!

Except when the economy goes bad, according to your Russian view.

[Elisabeth]

Rich, imagine for a moment that you were casting such aspersions on African American culture. I mean, I honestly don't think anyone as sensitive and well-intentioned as yourself would do so. And I don't agree that this so-called strain of "follow the leader" is evident in Russian Orthodoxy. Unless you want to say the same strain is evident in all of Christianity itself, but then you're arguing from the point of view of an atheist or an agnostic, which is perfectly acceptable, but you should make the terms of the debate clear from the beginning.

Oh, excuse me!  When I tried to defend strides towards democracy in the Ukraine by mentioning the "Orange Revolution", YOU were the one who chimed in, with your Russian standards, saying that the whole thing was a big joke!

Sorry, I don't remember this exchange of ours, Rich. But it's true that while I welcomed the Orange Revolution initially, it soon turned into a monumental joke, because the new government turned out to be every bit as corrupt as the old one (at least as testified by our Ukrainian friends, who were living in Kiev at the time).

Well the spirit of Jeane Kirkpatick lives on.

That's a fair cop because I misspoke. Ten minutes after I wrote it I realized that plenty of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe transitioned to democracy - Poland and Czechoslovakia, to give but two examples. On the other hand, I think a lot of historians would argue that these particular regimes were no longer totalitarian but authoritarian by this point in time - nevertheless, I'll grant you your point.

Except when the economy goes bad, according to your Russian view.

Not fair at all. Or am I mistaken in my belief that the Russian people are not currently enserfed?

[RichC]

Rich, imagine for a moment that you were casting such aspersions on African American culture. I mean, I honestly don't think anyone as sensitive and well-intentioned as yourself would do so. And I don't agree that this so-called strain of "follow the leader" is evident in Russian Orthodoxy. Unless you want to say the same strain is evident in all of Christianity itself, but then you're arguing from the point of view of an atheist or an agnostic, which is perfectly acceptable, but you should make the terms of the debate clear from the beginning.

Sorry Elisabeth.  But I'm not going to bite.  And I may be sensitive and well-intentioned, but I'm not wearing rose-colored glasses.  I think you need to wake up, perhaps head to the nearest Startbucks for some stong coffee, gulp it down and rethink your position.  (ok, I'm teasing a bit here -- I hope you realize)

Perhaps "follow the leader" was the wrong way to put it.  It's more a passive submission to whatever fate holds in store.  It goes back to the very beginnings of Orthodox Christianity in Russia and the stories of Boris and Gleb.  Perhaps it's a cultural thing with Russians rather than the legacy of constant repression, but it's there!  20th (&21st) century Americans weren't the first to notice.  Read the Marquis de Custine -- he commented on it too.

I don't understand why you feel my comments are so insulting to Russia.  Surely you do not believe that Russian culture has no ills.  I would be among the first to say that Western culture has a number of unadmirable aspects, but I still have great respect for it and its accomplishments.

[Silja]

They want a strong and powerful state with a strong and powerful leader.

So do most Americans.  But somehow Russians have come to believe that they cannot have this without an autocratic form of government and a forgoing of personal liberties.

The Russian "strong state" has however always been characterized by a relatively strong regulation of people's life on the part of the state (as in Germany, if to a much lesser degree). Americans rather seek to defend their rights against the state. This has been rare in Russia, where the state seeks to defend itself against its citizens.

I think it's time to quit feeling sorry for the Russians who lived as serfs, who had their artistic outpourings dogged by tsarist and soviet censors, who died in gulags, and who are trapped in the decaying secret cities of Stalin's Russia.  Given the risk of reliving these experiences or of finally taking responsibility for their own fates, they clearly prefer the former.  So be it.

Absolutely. I've never really felt particularly sorry for the Russians or any people. I still hold the view that every people has the government/system it deserves because the system is a reflection of that people's (political) culture. If the Russians feel fine with their system, fair enough. If not they should try to do somehting about it.

[Silja]

PS: I must add though that I'm speaking in general, structural terms. I certainly pity individuals who perish or suffer as a result of a condition they never had a chance to change or influence. Moreover, you can only judge your own situation if you've had access to at least a basic form of education.

[Tsarfan]

This has been rare in Russia, where the state seeks to defend itself against its citizens.

Very aptly stated.  It brings to mind Nicholas II's remark when the British ambassador warned him in late 1916 that he needed to restore the rapidly-evaporating confidence of the people in his government.  Nicholas sharply corrected him, asking whether he didn't mean that the people needed to restore their tsar's confidence in them.  And Bertolt Brecht repeated the same theme in a poem written in East Berlin some 50 years later where, with tongue in cheek, he suggested that, instead of responding to demands for elections, the government should dissolve the people and elect another.

Frankly, it's a rare leader anywhere who doesn't eventually begin to confuse the relationship between government and the governed in terms of who serves whom.  Lyndon Johnson was once touring the southeast Asian war theater.  He climbed into the wrong helicopter, and the flustered pilot said, "Mr. President, this isn't your helicopter."  Johnson retorted, "son, they're all my helicopters."

This is why I think that, in their rush to solve their immediate problems by putting themselves into the hands of a "strong leader" such as Putin without first -- and at long last -- creating the institutional stops to the abuse of power that tempts almost all leaders, the Russians are at the start of yet another cycle of autocratic government.