Russians Increasingly Suffering from Russo-Pessimism, Lea and Taskin Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 13 -- A Hong Kong anthropologist argues the Chinese are suffering from “Sinopessimism,” a set of attitudes in which “a society once buoyed by dreams of personal flourishing and upward mobility now finds itself increasingly disenchanted with those unfulfilled promises” (madeinchinajournal.com/2025/08/05/on-sinopessimism-or-junkies-of-futility/).

            Now, Aaron Lea and Borukh Taskin, two Israelis of Russian background, argue that Russians are suffering from something similar, “Russopessimism,” and for much the same reason as their country’s economy has entered into a post-growth period and they cannot expect to achieve what they had expected (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=689CD894AFD73).

            According to the two commentators, “post-Soviet dreams of stability and prosperity have crumbled to dust, faced with fatigue from wars and aggressions of their own country, economic stagnation, and have finally been configured into an ironic detachment, leading to the total atomization of society something entirely consistent with the Kremlin’s model of governance.”

            The situation in this regard is different from that in China, they argue. “Russopessimism arises from total neo-feudal conformism, elite predation, regional militarism and widespread opportunism, which corresponds to the global trends of post-growth but is characterized by the super-cynical behavior of the entire population.”

            And that, Lea and Taskin argues, is in an entirely natural way “undermining the regime from within,” however much the Kremlin thinks it benefits from atomization and the fact that society is so divided that even its outward support for the regime reflects a variety of different calculations rather than the national unity Putin assumes.

            What is happening in Russia now parallels what happened when Peter the Great created his “window on Europe,” an action that he himself said reflected the fact that “we are Asiatics” and that however much they appeared otherwise, they would at best be Asians dressed up in public as European.

            Today’s Russopessimism, the two analysts says, “is not a protest against this dichotomy but its quiet acceptance in a country that prefers to be Asian in its essence but seeks to mimic Europe when that is profitable.” One can perhaps say that what Russia has now is not “a window on Europe” but “a mirror to Asia, in which Russians recognize themselves with pleasure.”