What they admire is a spontaneous gesture. They are generous to a fault. What is more, an endearing quality of the Russians is their extraordinarily warm hospitality, their love of bestowing gifts on each other and on people whom they choose to befriend. To foreign travellers who have found Russians in the street to be brusque and impersonal, who remember Soviet officials to be cold and rigid and Soviet waiters exasperating in their imperious and surly indifference, this side of the Russian character often comes as a surprise.
However, the Russian character is made up of both coldness and warmth. Although Russians are justly known for their friendliness within a trusted circle, and for their hospitality toward guests, they often show a churlish spite toward people outside their circle.
While the kind-hearted impulses of Russians make private life tolerable, other less charitable qualities in the Russian character tend to make public life intractable and pose formidable obstacles to all sorts of reforms: their escapism, their impracticality, their lackadaisical attitude toward work and their vicious envy of people who try to get ahead.
The flip side of Russian generosity and sentimentality is Russian irresponsibility and impracticality. Their admiration for human warmth tends to slip over the line, turning commendable traits into a justification for avoiding initiative and for a slack attitude toward work. In Russian folk stories and fairy tales the hero Ivan Durachok triumphs because of his foolishness and simplicity. He is always asleep under a haystack when disaster befalls his cleverer and more ambitious brothers.
The Russians are prone to escapism whether it be the “lazy, dreamy” philosophizing of the intelligentsia or the brutal often self-destructive mass alcoholism of workers and peasants. But foreigners don’t blame the Russians for all these features of their national character. They observe that the government not only encourages, but nourishes such behaviour. Why, if the future offers little hope, plan for the long term?
The Russians are not career-driven people; their primary touchstones are not success, getting ahead, making deals, accumulating material possessions. If you look at the Russian nation you’ll see a nation of poor people. Materialistically poor, that is. It might even look that Russians work for their loaf of bread and are pretty much happy with it. But most of the Russians think that Americans work for their loaf of bread, meaning working for the materialistic matters. Russians work for other food, food for thought. Work doesn’t take the first place on the Russian scale of values. The Russians dislike scrupulous and cold workaholics. It is the Stalinist command economy and rigid central control that are considered to be blamed for molding an obedient, passive labour force that is plagued by heavy absenteeism, idleness on the job, poor-quality work, low morale and serious alcoholism. Apathy, indifference, pilfering and a lack of respect for honest work have become rampant as has aggressive envy of those who earn a lot, even if they earn it honestly. Slack work ethic is a national Achilles’ heel. It’s almost impossible to fight the indolent torpor of the Russian people. Russian workers themselves have a saying that expresses their open cynicism: “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Russians often make up for poor pay by stealing from the state.
The Russians’ casual attitude toward work takes root during their youth. Russians are too soft on their children, spoiling them, trying to protect them from hardship; they keep them living at home after university and often support them financially during those years. It allows children to develop an easy dependence on their parents. So, Russian youth lacks initiative and self-reliance. Dependence on parents is a prelude to dependence on the state, which is also nurtured by subsidies for the essentials of living – housing, health care, education.
Russians also have a widespread aversion to risk-taking. As a people, they are cautious and conservative. People tend to settle for a meager wage and miserable living standards – and continue to complain about these shortcomings – rather than quit their jobs and take the plunge. They are fearful of competition. They stick to their guaranteed salaries and are unhappy at the prospect of being unemployed. Psychological dependence on state paternalism leads to mass inertia. Russian people are accustomed to freeloading. Freeloading has eaten into their pores and their life. And the Russian people won’t break through that, if a person doesn’t accept some inner freedom and initiative and responsibility. People don’t feel like taking responsibility.
The great mass of Russian people are protagonists in the culture of envy – corrosive animosity that took root under the czars in the deep-seated collectivism in Russian life and then was accentuated by Soviet ideology. Now, it has turned rancid under the misery of everyday living. But what is ominous is that this free-floating anger often settles on anyone who rises above the crowd. This hostility freezes the vast majority into the immobility of conforming to group attitudes. Russians resent seeing others do well. This hostility toward those who rise above the herd reflects the collective ethic of the obshchina, the commune of villagers who in czarist times lived in a small huddle of homes, close by each other. The villagers grew accustomed to a common fate and they reacted warily against anyone who tried to advance beyond his peers. Russian people want equal distribution of money, whether that means wealth or poverty. They are so jealous of other people that they want others to be worse off, if need be, to keep things equal. This urge for levelling the fate of all, for sharing misfortune and spreading misery has been called the syndrome of “equal poverty for all.”
Besides, Russians possess the built-in caution of their daily greetings. For example when two Americans meet, they ask each other, “How are things?” and they tell each other, “Fine”. An American will say ’fine’ even if his mother died yesterday. By contrast, when two Russians meet and ask each other how they are, they will say, ‘Normal’, or ‘So-so.’ Even if things are good – especially if things are good! They don’t want to tempt the devil. They don’t want people to think things are great, because they might be envious. And if they’re envious, there’s no telling what they might do.
In addition, the Russians are accomplished and habitual liars. This is something that has to be taken into account in business dealings and in affairs of the heart. They conceal the truth because they feel that it might be impolite to show the shabby reality. Thus for many years, gullible Western believers in the socialist paradise were led by the nose to view examples of “Russian hospitals” (i.e the one well-equipped hospital in the whole country used only by the Politburo), “Russian schools” (the same story), “Russian workers’ flats” and so forth. The habit of concealing the modest, not to say shameful, truth behind a bit of stage scenery was started by Catherine The Great’s favourite general, Potemkin, who once lined the route of one of her royal progresses with “villages” which were, in reality, mere painted facades.
No matter how many negative qualities foreigners find in the Russian character, they agree completely in one very important item: No matter how unpatriotic one is, feeling of a Russian self is the strongest feeling that is ever in a Russian.
