What Russians think about foreigners

The title of this chapter should make the reader assume that Russians, as differing from all other people, have a special “Russian” attitude towards foreigners. This, in turn, dovetails neatly with the general mythology of Russians and Russia being “different” – “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” (Churchill), the mysterious “Slav soul”, etc.

Now I, for one, have always argued that the Russians are not any more different from the English than, say, the Portuguese are from the Swedes, that the so-called Slav soul is not any more mysterious than the German one. I have always insisted that what we have here is a lack of curiosity, a laziness of mind, the absence of any real desire to understand what, for lack of a more sophisticated term, makes the Russian tick.

While this has an ancient history, as testified to, for instance, by the writings of Giles Fletcher the Elder, who visited and wrote about the court of Ivan the Terrible in the 16^th century, it was not always the case. Once upon a time (in the 11^th and 12^th centuries) Russian nobility often married their counterparts from Western Europe, contacts flourished on many levels, specifically trade and culture. But all that came to an abrupt halt with the Tartar-Mongol invasion of Russ in the 13^th century, and for nearly two hundred and fifty years Russia disappeared from the map of Europe. It is almost impossible to assess the extent to which the Tartar-Mongol yoke affected Russia, to what degree it had a formative impact on the Russian character. But what we do know is that when Russia re-emerged, it was no longer regarded as part of what then was considered the “civilized” world, rather, it was seen as a mysterious, threatening, incomprehensible country. Thus, “the foreigner’s” attitude towards Russia was not the same as towards any other country, it was, indeed, special.

Among the many explanations for this, the most convincing, at least in my view, concerns the role played by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). There can be no doubt that the ROC was instrumental in throwing off the Tartar-Mongol yoke and in uniting the warring and splintered Russian duchies into a single force. It could be successfully argued that the ROC was not only a liberating and uniting force, but was the birth-force of the Russian nation, and that gave the ROC unparalleled standing and power.

But it was also the ROC that declared Russia to be “the third Rome”, it was the ROC that determined the Russians as “the God-carrying people” (íàðîä-áîãîíîñåö), thereby staking out Russia’s “special” standing and – without stating it in so many words – its superiority over other countries and peoples. It should also be noted, that the ROC was always (and continues to be) profoundly anti-western and fearful of “western degrading influence”. This fear of “western contamination”, originally religious in character, gradually seeped into Russian society as a whole and led to, among other things, efforts to isolate Russians from visiting foreigners. The first and perhaps most striking examples of this was the creation of the so-called “nemetskaya sloboda” (íåìåöêàÿ ñëîáîäà) in Moscow during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The word “sloboda” is easily translated into English as “settlement”. Getting to the bottom of the word “nemetskaya” is far more difficult, but it is worth the effort.

In modern-day Russian, the word “nemets” (íåìåö) means “German”. However, the root (“nem”) comes from the Russian word “nemoi” (íåìîé) – which means “mute”. According to the most authoritative etymological dictionary of the Russian language, initially the word “nemets” meant “foreigner”. Thus, anyone who could not speak Russian was “mute”.

In my opinion, that equation: Does not speak Russian=Mute=Foreigner provides one of the keys to understanding the Russian attitude toward foreigners.

But let’s get back to the sloboda. That was a designated part of town where all foreigners (nemtsi, in the plural) were required to live. It was not a question of choice on their part, it was the law. Not only were they forced to live in this special, fenced off and guarded area, but no Russians were allowed inside, unless they had a special pass. The idea was clear: keep “the mute” away from the “God-carrying people”, lest they be polluted, infected by some terrible western disease. Mind you, I am speaking of the 15^th and 16^th centuries, but those of us who remember Soviet times, will recall that all foreigners lived in special buildings, areas guarded by the police and carefully watched by the secret police, the K.G.B. (more on this later).

From the outset the “nemetskaya sloboda” was a kind of ghetto, but – and this is important - a privileged one. The homes were more spacious, the buildings nicer, there were flower beds, rose gardens, taverns, where one could enjoy a good beer, a good pipe and good conversation, the “nemtsi” could enjoy the same lifestyle that they had at home, they could pray in their own church (more often than not, Protestant), and live by their own civil code as long as they stayed within the limits of the sloboda. And – just think of this, those who lived there were tax exempt – and that was just one of the many perks offered by the Russian rulers who, while despising and fearing the “nemtsi”, went out of their way to attract them, needing their know-how and contacts.

Question: How would you feel about people who are (a) inferior to you, (b) can’t even speak your language, but (c) enjoy great privileges (don’t pay taxes) and (d) have much nicer homes and a far higher standard of living than you do?

Envious? Angry? Puzzled? Exasperated?

The more one looks into this conundrum, the easier it becomes to understand what I call the Russian schizophrenia in relation to foreigners: they are inferior, but also superior, they are spiritually poor, but wealthy, they don’t envy us, but we envy them, etc., etc., etc.

Vladimir Pozner