I also feel that the picture of post-Soviet society described in the book helps me to understand the attitude of Russian people who have flocked to Donbas to fight, and probably of the local militants as well.
Those examples in the book are exaggerations. In reality, nobody lived in despair, that would be quite clear and being so, relatively simple to get rid of. The problem with the soviet way of thinking is that for the vast majority the system was a norm, it inevitably made people conformists: they either took everything as it was (and they still do with all that ‘‘it has always been this way, I can’t change anything, leave it as it is, it can be even worse if you… etc.’’) or preferred not to thing and question at all, which eventually led to the complete ignorance and total loss of critical thinking. In a result, that’s not a surprise that we have 90% approval rate, or than 60% of those surveyed (with about 20% who are not sure) say that the country is moving in the right direction, though it’s absolutely clear that the economy is collapsing, and it goes on and on…
Sorry if it’s off topic
In reading this book, and judging from what I hear and read, and from Russians I have met, I would compare Russians to Canadians in this way, generalizing of course.
Russians: dramatic, romantic, theoretical, poetic, dogmatic, sensitive, cynical, often negative
Canadians: dull, pragmatic, phlegmatic,willing to compromise,tolerant, superficial, largely positive
I don’t know how true these characterizations are.
Steve, you know, most internet forums and live discussions in my country have lamenting intonations. It’s a way of thinking here, unfortunately. During the last 20+ years almost every news had negative influence on our life. That’s why we suspect any trick even in positive news. It’s easier to blame or lament rather than share your happiness or to tell about something amazing.
It has a very long tradition in Russian literature. Just let me remind Leo Tolstoy:
«Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.»
I like your generalizing, Steve.
But maybe they are very seldom cynical (excepting our oligarchs and some politics) and they always hope for a ‘lucky case’ (=надеются на авось!)
But they are very sensitive and like complainig about the ‘hard life’.
But internet forums are often more negative and unpleasant than the real world. There is something about being with people face to face that forces us to be more pleasant.
A question. I understand that Belarusian is less widely spoken in Belarus than Ukrainian in Ukraine. Is this changing and have events in Ukraine stirred more interest in speaking Belarusian as a sign of national identity?
Maybe cynical is the wrong word. I mean that Russians are less trusting, more suspicious, more given to conspiracy theories, less likely to take things at face value. In any case any generalization is just that, a generalization. We like to make them but know they cannot be accurate in most cases.
As a psychologist, I’m very critical of any attempt to characterize people, nations, etc.
I think these attempts are always simplistic to the point of being plain false.
Which I think happens is that certain cultures value certain traits over others. People, being adaptable creatues, try to comply with what their particular culture encourages, at least in their public behavior. Those who don’t, are typically considered “weird”.
Paul Graham has a nice essay about how different cities send different “messages” and what the impact of those messages are. I think this conceptualization makes much more sense than trying to determine what the personality of such and such country is.
Link to Graham’s essay: Cities and Ambition
No
Perhaps not in the general public, if that’s how Ress perceives it. This article, however, suggests that the Lukashenka regime may be adopting that sort of thinking concerning Belarusian language and national identity. Date March 2015: http://belarusdigest.com/story/belarus-foreign-ministry-toys-belarusian-language-21810 Also on the same site: http://belarusdigest.com/story/soft-belarusization-new-shift-lukashenkas-domestic-policy-22434
I’m also very critical about generalizing nations in their personal life, but I definitely can see common patterns of behavior and thinking when it comes to people’s attitude toward the goverment, authority, regime and the relationship between the state and civil society. Especially when we are talking about the USSR and modern Russia.
I agree, but those attitudes are mostly explainable by particular historical circumstances and shared experiences and they change as events evolve. They’re not related to a particular “national personality”.Besides the “exceptions to the rule” are always much more frequent than most people care to admit
This is another very interesting work on an example of that kind of attitude, how they’re influenced by other cultures, historical developmentes, etc. and how they appear and then disappear:
To use a fancy term: those attitudes are “memetic”, rather than “genetic”.
@ftornay
Events can evolve, but unfortunately (and that’s what I can see now) the history is repeating itself (or being repeated) over and over again, not allowing people to get out of being stuck in the past.
Here’s an example: ‘‘Россияне стали лучше относиться к Сталину’’
(in Russian)
Lukashenko won the elections in 1994 not only because of his populism. There was a candidate Зенон Позняк who was an adherent of Belarusian national ideas. The people did not support him. The Belarusian language was substituted by the Russian one. The Belarusian language was made less prestigious during the Soviet years. Just imagine yourself trying to switch your mind from your mother tongue to another one during the most part of your life. At the end you feel confident in the new prestigious language but someone wants to switch everything back. Do you want to have all your life wasted? I suppose it’s hard to imagine if it was not a part of your biography.
People had a choice to decline using the almost forgotten language. Today it’s even worse for Belarusian than it was in 1994.
We are now straying from the subject, which I don’t object to, but it might be better to start a new thread on language, nationality, (cities) and personal characteristics.
It is pointless, in my view, to deny that there are character traits that are typical of the Japanese, Chinese, Russians, French, Canadians, Americans, or Poles. Some traits are more pronounced, some less, and they do not always apply.
We sense these quite clearly and this influences how we deal with them. I don’t call a Japanese business person I meet for the first time by his first name and make out like we are old friends, which is more common here for example. Instead I breathe in deeply and make like I am carefully studying his name card. and he does the same. My experience with Japanese business people gives me a sense of what to expect in my dealings with him. Generalizations are typical of how our brain works, establishing patterns which help us predict the world around us.
I think the same feelings could exist in Donbass. People did not want to decline Russian.
On the subject of the use of the Belarusian language in Belarus.
http://nn.by/?c=ar&i=108410&mo=fc3f667cf0e8cdf4758ba17bc6c3c479d1411a8e&lang=ru
Yes, it’s probably better to discuss this in a different thread.
For the record, In my view, your example is particularly a clear case of a cultural rule, not personality.