Russian Culture

Lesson 2: After Communism, Before Democracy

Conclusion

Russia is a place where old meets new, where east meets west, it is a place of harsh winter (yes, in the winter Russians do wear big furry hats), and blistering summers. It is a place were extremes meet. She seems to have a power about her that attracts extremes and then clashes them together. What is left after that collision remains, and what comes apart is swept away. I feel my words from one of my journals which I kept during the time I spent in Russia best sums this section up.

“Why do they kill unwanted kittens here? Because it’s tradition, would you rather have them starve to death in the street?

But why isn’t there another way? Why is “tradition” a catchphrase and scapegoat. I find that “tradition” is used here more than any other place I’ve exposed myself to. Usually people think of culture and try to come up with more positive things to say about their culture, but not here. Here tradition and culture have an equal share of good traits and bad. Here culture has no elevation as ethnic quarks or old wisdom. It is foremost the way things are done, and many times nothing else. The reasons have been lost, or forgotten, or just plain not cared about.

"This creates a strange attitude now when considering which new direction the Russian people will take in the following years. For Russia to continue to try and preserve and follow it’s more ancient and unique traditions, it would have to dig them back up again. Russia would collectively have to try and remember and find unity in that memory. But if Russia chooses to follow a new road, the people may never know exactly what they gave up, or even why they have the certain quarks and philosophies that they do carry from their descendants. For instance, it is my personal opinion that thousands of Western businesses and dollars could arrive in this place and make money for a time, because it’s new. But until they can get the Russian people to believe in the capitalistic future or philosophy, I believe that these business will ultimately fail. The Russian people, as a whole rarely will stick things out for the long haul when it comes to business and politics. Historically they have had too many things fail them, in order to have faith that things can work out to a beautiful future now. Women stay with drunk or abusive husbands because things could get worse if they try to dream for something better. I think for now capitalism is still something outside of the Russian frame of mind, it does not yet apply to the Russian internally, but rather as a passing mode. Maybe it will stay and create change, maybe not. Does anything other than family and friends truly affect the Russian internally, in their closed isolated minds and reserved hearts? Things come and go here. But the winds off the steppe roll in and out continuously. Sometimes things go out with this wind and sometimes things come in. But the Russian people have lived in this wind, in Tzaretzen, Stalingrad, and Volgograd (these were the three names the city I was living in had through out it’s history) for coming close to 500 yrs now. Is there anything that could change the internal Russian?”
Quotes taken from my 2001-2002 journal.

Optional Reading

For further reading, read the stories, Styopka, A Roof Over Your Head, and All by Themselves in Stories from a Siberian Village, by Vasily Shukshin. Also read chapters 1, 3, & 8 in The Russian’s World by Genevra Gerhart.

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