Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 8 – “Under the
conditions of the specific Russian culture of today, the ‘Russian world’
fulfills an important role,” Maksim Goryunov says. “The myth of the ‘Russian
world’ helps people to hold out when they find themselves in complicated and
unbearable circumstances.”
The Russian analyst says that “if an
individual who grows up in the Russian cultural climate is not able to make a
career, keep a family or maintain a business … the myth about the ‘Russian
world’ helps him to avoid throwing up his hands or turning to vodka” (forbes.ru/mneniya-column/tsennosti/306971-russkii-mir-kak-zashchita-ot-otchayaniya).
And thus it is important to
understand that “the ‘Russian world’ is not propaganda” and was not dreamed up
in a Kremlin office. It existed long before pro-Kremlin talking heads mentioned
it. It “exists now, and it will exist tomorrow when the hysteria [about it
finally] settles down.”
Goryunov devotes his article to
explaining why this is so and how the myth of the “Russian world” works. First of all, he says, “the ‘Russian world’
by accusing Jews/Caucasians/Asians for all their misfortunes removes the
feeling of guilt for their own failures.”
Guilt is a destructive emotion, and
people run from it. The “Russian world” is one mechanism that helps them do so.
If a Russian loses his job, he isn’t guilty. The Zionists or the Americans or
someone else is. That isn’t so important; what matters is that the Russian
himself or herself never is. And he or she doesn’t not have to face reality or
take responsibility.
But in this respect, “the ‘Russian
world’ is like opium for the people about which Marx spoke, “an ideological
opium” that may help people get through tough times but that through overuse strips
them of the capacity for action, Goryunov suggests.
A second way that the “Russian world”
performs a psychotherapeutic function has to do with the victims it identifies.
Sometimes, Russians talk about White Russian emigres who were driven into
poverty abroad by the Zionists; more often, they talk about the Russian
Cossacks who have suffered so much.
“As a rule,” Goryunov writes, “Russian
men who have suffered a major failure sooner or later join the Cossacks. A
Russian Cossack is such an amoral government actor and holy thief who by his
theft serves the fatherland and by his amorality God.” Such people thus become romantic heroes
precisely because they are driven to this by oppression.
Not all Russians take refuge in the “Russian
world,” of course. “If someone formed in a Russian milieu is in a situation
where ‘everything is going well,’ he will not think about the ‘Russian world.’
More likely, he will with satisfaction laugh about it” – because he doesn’t
need the kind of therapy it provides.
That in turn means, the analyst
says, that “even if tomorrow Russia was suddenly transformed and became normal,
the ‘Russian world’ would not go anywhere. It would remain very much alive in
the dregs of Russian society.” It would in short return to where it was two
years ago, but it will last 200 years after Russia disappears “if of course it
does disappear.”
There is a “radical” cure for the “Russian
world.” It consists of economic growth and a just distribution of incomes. “The
richer Russian society will be, the less of the ‘Russian world’ there will be
in it.”
Indeed, the connection between the
myth of the “Russian world” and misfortune and a poor quality of life is much
like the connection between those factors and tuberculosis. And the cure is thus much the same.
The myth is thus useful – it provides
a reduction in “discomfort from failure” – but only temporarily. Like any ideological opium, the ‘Russian
world’ destroys if it is used for too long. It is sufficient to look at ‘professional
Russians’ in order to understand how fatal it can be in large doses.”
But even small doses can be
dangerous under some circumstances. It can lead those who take it to avoid
responsibility to meet their ends “in the Ukraine steppe or in the mountains
between Syria and Turkey.”
No comments:
Post a Comment