Understanding Russia
Russia And Its Violent Society
The odd mix between the greatness of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky and the fear of appearances
Russia is part of Europe, at least the Western part, although one could argue whether this is a purely geographical term that has very little to do with “European values” such as democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, pluralism, willingness to reach consensus, etc. Anyone who met with dissidents in the former Eastern Bloc states or Ukrainians a few years ago always heard: “We want to go to Europe.”
In order to understand what is happening in Russia today, the question must also be clarified to what extent the Russian population is participating, and to what extent they tolerate or perhaps approve of the massive violence against Ukraine, but also against the opposition in their own country. A French-German political scientist, Florence Gaub, who works for an EU strategy think tank in Paris, caused outrage a few months ago when she said: “Even if Russians look European, they are not European, among other things because they have a different connection to violence.” She added that there is a different cultural attitude to violence in Russia than in Western Europe (e.g. marital violence remains an unpunishable offense in Russia), and that is one reason why the country is too approving or apathetic to take a closer look at what is going on in Ukraine.
Is this true? If so, why?
The Russian social philosopher Alexander Zipko provided an explanation for this in an interview with Der Spiegel. Asked why he believes that human life is not valued in Russia, he explained: “Valuing the human life has to do with spiritual culture. This attitude only exists in countries associated with the Greek philosophers, who experienced the Renaissance and Enlightenment, influenced by Napoleon and his system of justice. None of this existed in Russia. Not a single country in Europe has sacrificed as many human lives for senseless ideas in its history as Russia has: Lenin’s October Revolution cost at least 50 million lives.”
The Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin added in an interview a year ago: “Russia, with its entire culture, is responsible for what is happening now. But the mentality is not culture. When Russians kill Ukrainians and are violent against them — that is not culture. And the mentality bears witness to the fact that after twenty years of Putin’s propaganda, people have become zombies. It’s not the influence of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff — they are far away. It’s the influence of TV .”
The times when Europe was a violent continent were not that long ago. But violence is fundamentally shunned today. The United States is undoubtedly a violent society, but there are sturdy corrective democratic forces.
“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!” Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
I’ve yet to understand how a country, a people, can produce so many works of world significance in the span of one lifetime (literary works between 1830–1910) and be so fearful of appearances. Whether approval, fear, or indifference: Russian society’s attitude to Putin’s tyranny is a problem.