Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 3 – Two speakers
at a Moscow conference of Russian psychologists and psychoanalysts say that
Russians today, especially the residents of major cities, resemble a
dehumanized and immature group of orphans who lack broader social ties or core
values and who ever more often display fear, aggression and depression.
The conference, entitled “Ecce Home”
and organized by Elena Gazarova of the Moscow Institute of Human Physiology, attracted
such notable Russian psychologists and psychoanalysts as Tatyana Levi, Elena
Mazur, Tatyana Zadernovskaya, Anna Nikitina, Vladimir Galata and Anatoly
Korsakov (svoboda.org/content/article/27282621.html).
Gazarova told the
group that “the contemporary Russian individual is losing spirituality and
soulfulness and becoming harsh, formal, mechanistic, programmed and unfree,”
all signs she says that speak of a “dehumanization” that has gone so far as to
constitute a threat to the human species there.
Dehumanization, the psychologist
says, is “the washing out of the human from the individual,” a process which
compromises his or her ability to be a member of society and to show concern
about others and reflects a choice of temporary, short-term values over
longer-term eternal ones.
It also keeps people from becoming
mature, Gazarova continues. “The contemporary Russian recalls a youth aged 14”
who has not yet developed the ability to distinguish between truth and
falsehood and who thus acts accordingly, often in an increasing state of
depression about the surrounding world.
The other speaker at the meeting,
Karine Gyulazizova, focused on the consequences of this in demography. She argued that the mental state of Russians
now is one of the reasons for the authorities focus on boosting the birthrate
rather than reducing the death rate, something especially hard to do in a population
uncertain of what the meaning of life is.
The analytic psychologist said that
much of this is the result of the destruction first of the tsarist empire which
destroyed the extended families in which people had been embedded and left them
in the state of graduates of orphanages without normal ties to others. That
shift predetermined, she says, the eventual collapse of the Soviet system.
(Gazarova interjected that in her
view the problem of Russia’s depopulation has its roots in the terror famine
and genocide of peoples in the 1930s, which created a situation in which many
came to believe that such things were not only possible but permissible, a
conclusion the current regime has done little to challenge.)
Gyulazizova continued with the
following observation: Whatever one wants to say about the current rulers, they
“are not fulfilling the parental functions” that the tsar did, something
Russians very much need because for Russians, “the tsar is not on a throne but
inside their heads.”
Instead, Russians have come to feel,
she argued, that no values are fixed and consequently, they “like orphanage
children” can pick and choose whatever is necessary for survival or immediately
attract. “An orphan child has absolutely no sense” of broader connections or
imperatives.”
Consequently, the psychologist said,
“the present-day Russian people are orphans without families and therefore
their choice will always be feverish and always be incorrect.” And that outcome
is even more likely, she suggested, when the government makes the wrong choices
about what to emphasize.
Commemorating World War II is fine,
she continued, but the government has emphasized its glories rather than its
sufferings, thus changing its meaning and making war attractive for young
people. Those who fought in the war did
so in order that their children wouldn’t have to, but the Russian government is
sending a different message.
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