Russians Can’t Organize Themselves Even in the West, Highlighting Their Anti-State Nature, Pryanikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 9 – The inability of new emigres from Russia to organize themselves show that not even the educated and well-off and not even under Western conditions where the kind of restrictions which exist in Russia don’t highlights a broader and apparently insoluble problem with Russian culture, Pavel Pryanikov says.

            The Russian blogger who is behind the Interpreter website which became a telegram channel argues that if you consider what Russians abroad are now doing, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the only way any organizations they form will survive is if some outside agency comes in and takes control (polit.ru/news/2023/03/09/pryanikov/).

            If that doesn’t happen, the groups will soon split up and disappear. But that is far from a problem of the Russian emigration, Pryanikov says. It is a problem of Russian culture. According to the blogger, “the Russia is by nature an anti-state person, a spontaneous anarcho-capitalist and a libertarian” who acts on his own until some outside comes and imposes order.

            Throughout history, Russians have viewed everything outside “a large family” of only a few dozen people as alien and an enemy. They cannot organize on their own, Pryanikov says; and when someone does try to impose order, they flee either to the borderlands as in past centuries or abroad as has been more recently the case.

            In short, the lament in the Russian Primary Chronicle that “our land is great and rich, but there‘s no order in it. Come rule and reign over us" remains valid – and not just for the country but for Russians in whatever country they find themselves.