What makes the Russians so Russian

As Russia continues its mad fast-forward acquisition of the attributes of Western life shopping malls, coffee shops, cocktails, European fashion, TV shows, and so on foreigners may be forgiven for thinking of Russia as another European country and Russians as like us. The large cities look, smell and taste like other European capitals; business etiquette is within a familiar range (at least on the surface); and people look, dress and act pretty much the way they do back home. Except when unexpectedly - they dont. A friend, or colleague or spouse expresses an opinion you think inexplicable (if not heinous). Or does something you find puzzling (if not unethical). Or accuses you of the same (if not worse). And you wonder if its true, after all, that Russians are enigmatic, mysterious, puzzling human beings whom we foreigners can never understand.

They arent. Its just that behind the familiar façade of daily life and manners, Russians do not share all of the historical, cultural, and religious experiences and premises of Westerners. What seems on the surface as illogical behavior isnt illogical at all it is behavior that has been learned to be effective over the millennia, through their culture, upbringing, religion, history and interpretations of history. To understand Russians, you need to know something of their history and institutions.

Physical Russia: History of a Place and the Place of History

At least once every foreigner should travel across the country, preferably by train. That is the only way to truly appreciate the two single most important facts about Russia: the country is huge and situated far to the north. The climate is brutal almost everywhere; the growing season is short; and natural disasters (floods, frosts, droughts, early or late snow) occur with lamentable frequency. Ancient Russians lived in communities (called mir now the word used for world) that to some extent worked together, shared tools and seeds, and were willing to help -- and expected to be helped - in time of trouble. The kollektiv wasnt a construct imposed by the Soviet period; its the only way, in Russian historical experience, human beings can survive.

Invasion as a way of life

It is also worth remembering that the vast Russian landmass about one fifth of all the land on earth is a barely defensible plain. There are few natural barriers to invasion from the West or the East, and over the ages Russia has been attacked from both directions. When not being attacked, the Russian Empire has gone to war against the nations surrounding it and incorporated their lands into their empire.

The first significant invasion occurred in 1224. A Russian chronicler wrote: For our sins, unknown tribes came. No one knows who they are, nor whence they came, nor what their faith is, but they call them Tatars. These horsemen from the East called Tatars in Russia and Mongols in the West -- appeared like a bolt from the blue, pillaged and plundered, and then reigned over Russia for nearly 250 years.

Over the centuries, Russia was attacked numerous times by the Mongol-Tartars, Lithuania and Poland, Sweden, France (the Patriotic War of 1812); and Germany in 1941 (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War). Russia fought Great Britain and France in the Crimean War, in 1905 against Japan, and in World War I against Germany. Russia launched wars against Poland, Sweden, and Turkey and annexed Central Asia and the Far East. Its territory expanded to eventually include Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Crimea, the northern and southern Caucasus (including Georgia, Armenia and present-day Azerbaijan). The Soviet Union invaded Finland, regained the Baltic States and Eastern Poland, sent tanks into Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and started a war in Afghanistan.

In about 800 years, through invasions, treaties, and annexations the tiny city-state of Moscow grew enormously to stretch eleven time zones, gaining territories, nations, new religions and vast natural wealth. But in the national psyche, the devastation of the major incursions against Russia (the Mongol-Tartars, the Poles and Swedes, the French in 1812 and Germans in 1941) have overshadowed Russias own territorial expansion. Today it is not unusual to hear Russians assert that the country has never invaded another land or to invoke the specter of enemy encirclement. Certainly this is partially the result of political manipulation. But even in this age of terrorist attacks and nuclear weapons, when natural boundaries or even conventional armies provide little protection or deterrence, the sense of being a people of the plains, vulnerable to land attack, has remained a part of the Russian collective consciousness.

Autocracy and democracy

If the Russian path from autocracy to democracy was plotted as a line graph, it might look like this: a slow rise towards autocracy from the beginning of recorded history peaking in 1547 when Ivan the Terrible crowned himself Tsar (the Russian word for Caesar) of All Russia, and then jaggedly descending towards democracy over the centuries with dramatic peaks up to one-man totalitarian control and valleys down to short periods of democratic rule. Russians did not experience a gradual evolution from autocracy to democracy; nor have they ever experienced long and secure periods of majority rule.

However, their history of governance has been, in some ways, remarkably stable: an autocratic leader (called, at various times, the Grand Prince, Tsar, Emperor or Empress, General Secretary of the Communist Party, President) surrounded by a group of powerful men (boyars, princes, noblemen, Politburo, cabinet/oligarchs) who have used their privileged position to usurp the nations wealth, sometimes fighting among each other or unseating the ruler. Power has been secured by troops loyal to the ruler (the black-clad oprichniki of Ivan the Terrible, the musketeers and guards units of the tsars, the secret police of the emperors, the various security agencies of the Soviet leaders, the FSB and siloviki of today). Power has been shared formally with advisory or elected bodies (Boyars Duma, land assemblies, councils of state, Duma, Congress of Peoples Deputies, Federation Council) that in reality have had little real authority. Over the ages, the names have changed, but the functions have remained remarkably the same.

Meanwhile, the centralized power has been challenged from below by boyars, by peasant-led rebellions, by noblemen, by workers, by professional revolutionaries, by lone dissidents, by angry crowds, and by small groups of oppositional parties. This opposition has always tried to mitigate the central hold on power and wealth. Oppositional forces and violence grew greatly in the periods leading up to the Revolution of 1917, which led to the creation of the Soviet Union, and once again towards the second revolution of 1991, which broke it apart.

In all of Russian history, there were only three short periods when the country was not tightly ruled by a leader vested with nearly limitless power. Sadly for Russian historical memory, none of those periods was happy.

The first was after Ivan the Terribles son Fyodor died without heirs in 1598. The council of boyars elected Boris Godunov, whose reign was marred by crop failures and famines. Rumors swept the populace: Boris Godunov was responsible for the death of Ivans first son, Dmitry, and the crop failures were a sign of Gods disfavor. The Poles decided to profit from the instability in Moscow and sent a young man claiming to be Dmitry (called the False Dmitry) to lead an invasion. From 1605 until 1613, Russia was in chaos: waves of incursions from Poland destroyed the countrys land and wealth; no less than three False Dmitrys took up residence in the Kremlin; and armed bandits roamed the countryside. Cities were burned and pillaged, villages and crops destroyed. A third of the population died in fighting, from famine and disease. It wasnt until the volunteer army led by the merchant Minin and Prince Pozharsky (whose statue stands before St Basils Cathedral) drove the Polish invaders from the Kremlin that peace reigned once more. (This is now celebrated on November 4, Russian National Unity Day.) This period of chaos and lawlessness, called the Time of Troubles, has remained a haunting memory for Russians. It is still invoked today to support a strong, even autocratic leader, for the Time of Troubles showed that a strong hand is better than no hand at all.

The second period of something approaching democratic rule lasted all of eight months. After the last tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated, in February 1917, the Provisional Government was nominally in charge until October 25 when Vladimir Lenin and his followers successfully carried out a coup détat. The country was at war, the economy in ruins, cities plagued by looting and roaming bands of marauders. Workers rioted in the poverty-stricken cities and peasants burned down estates in the countryside. There were no mechanisms for governance. Every attempt to exert control was challenged by rival Soviets (left-wing councils). This short period was not an advertisement for the superiority of democratic rule.

Like the two previous periods, the third period followed the collapse of the government, this time the Soviet Union. By the end of the 1980s, the USSR was literally bankrupt, unable to compete economically and technologically on world markets, and rent by simmering ethnic tensions. The country had ceased to exist de facto by September 1991, when virtually all the republics voted to secede from the Union. It ended de jure in December of that year when the three leaders of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia the three republics that had founded the USSR -- signed papers to codify its dissolution.

Like the Provisional Government, Boris Yeltsin inherited a bankrupt country and wildly dissatisfied population. But unlike the post-tsarist rulers, Yeltsin had the mandate to change both the political and economic structures. There were no bodies of governance in place, no procedures, no traditions; there were, however, stridently and even violently opposed parties to the left and right. On the economic front, there were no wholesale or retail distribution systems or infrastructure, no financial institutions, insufficient transportation and communications systems, no advertising and marketing resources, few office buildings and commercial space. Regulatory laws were contradictory or simply nonexistent. Oil was less than $20 a barrel. But time was of the essence, for the increasingly impatient population was demanding change (in the form of food and consumer goods). The process of transforming a poor and backward socialist state into a prosperous democratic and capitalist society was chaotic, unfair, and cruel. Whether or not it could have been done differently (more fairly, less traumatically) is moot right now. The national memory of those years to some extent a cultivated, selective memory is of personal and national financial ruin; endless, futile political battles; the degradation of culture, education, medical care, the armed forces, and national reputation; the criminalization of society; the transfer of the nations wealth into a few hands. In short, the first post-Soviet experience of democracy was synonymous with instability and decline.

Michele A. Berdy