The Russians in self-esteem
When studying the self-esteem of Russians, one immediately notices their polarized nature. This phenomenon emerged as early as the 19th century, when two opposing currents emerged among Russian intellectuals: "Westernizers" and "Slavophiles." At the core of this division was the question of Russia's future development prospects. The influence of these opponents on public consciousness was minimal due to the widespread illiteracy of the masses, who were developing along their own path. It was precisely this natural path that the Slavophiles championed, while Westernizers insisted on Russia's integration with Europe. Over time, the Westernizers' influence on public sentiment increased, but the subsequent revolution interrupted this process. With the collapse of the communist system, Russian intellectuals returned to the previous dichotomy, but Russian society itself was divided along a completely different principle, discovered by the Russian psychologist L.E. Dushatsky. While examining the topic of Russian self-esteem, he put it this way:
As for modern Russians, they have learned from personal experience that being rich and powerful is better than being poor and disenfranchised. For one, very small, segment of the population, this is the experience of acquiring and using the material and power resources necessary for a full, if not luxurious, life; for another, it is the negative experience of living at the bottom of society, or "at the bottom." N. Rimashevskaya notes in this regard that "two worlds, two Russias, with their own sociocultural values, lifestyles, and behaviors (cultures) are emerging in the country: the world of the richest and wealthiest classes and the world of the poorest (outsiders)." Moreover, power is usually associated with wealth. This was the case during the recent socialist past, when the ruling party elite, trying to at least superficially conform to the communist ideal, skillfully concealed its wealth from the people. This is also the case today, when far from poor, government officials and businessmen are striving for power. Душацкий Л.Е. 2004.
Meanwhile, national character is a category that is independent of either socio-political or socio-economic conditions. This has long been noted:
The past of the tsars and the present of the Bolsheviks.
What changed? Signs and symbols.
The same hurricane on all roads:
In the commissars – the folly of autocracy,
Explosions of revolution in the tsars (Maximilian Voloshin. "Northeast").
Nevertheless, both Westernizers and Slavophiles remain in Russia to this day, but thanks to the current government, the latter are shaping public consciousness. Keeping in mind the stability of national character, we can draw on the self-assessment of Russians from more than a century ago. It is unethical to discuss opposing assessments, especially since they cannot predict the future of these people. However, it will be useful to become familiar with them. The quotes are taken from the internet without links to the original; I tried to find one, but it wasn't always possible. It's normal for people to characterize their nation positively and view its future with optimism. Let's begin with this:
Are we to blame if your skeleton crunches in our heavy, tender paws? (ALEXANDER BLOK. "Scythians").
Russian society, already quite egalitarian in its habits, will rush even faster than any other along the mortal path of all-confusion… – and we… from our state depths, first classless, and then churchless or already weakly churchly, will give birth to that very Antichrist (KONSTANTIN LEONTIEV).
Why do you threaten Russia with anathema?…
Or is the Russian Tsar's word already powerless?
Or is it a new argument between us and Europe?
Has the Russian lost the habit of victory?
Or are there not enough of us? Or from Perm to Taurida,
From the cold Finnish cliffs to fiery Colchis,
From the shaken Kremlin
To the walls of motionless China,
Gleaming with steel bristles,
Will the Russian land not rise?.. (A.S. PUSHKIN. "To the Slanderers of Russia").
I believed then, and I believe now, that Russia, destined to become the head of some new Eastern statehood, must give the world a new culture, and replace the declining civilization of Romano-Germanic Europe with this new Slavic-Eastern civilization”… (KONSTANTIN LEONTIEV. "Addition to two articles on Pan-Slavism").
And when, above this enormous collapse, we see this even more enormous empire rising like a holy ark, then who will dare to doubt its calling, and should we, its sons, show ourselves to be unbelievers and fainthearted? (TYUTCHEV F.I.).
Russia's past was brilliant, its present is more than magnificent, and as for its future, it surpasses everything that the boldest imagination can imagine (BENCKENDORF A.Kh).
The West has already said everything it had to say… Now, Russia is called upon to lead the European peoples (BULGAKOV SERGEI) spiritually.
Praise never harms anyone, but the same cannot be said for the boastfulness that permeates some statements. Here's one example: "No people in Europe are capable of the periodic intensity of labor that a Great Russian can develop" (SMIRNOV PETR. 2020). Consequently, despite the great faith in a great future, a negative attitude toward Western culture is quite common in Russia. Dostoevsky was particularly hostile to Europe, and he noted this in his fellow countrymen, despite the high praise his work received from European intellectuals:
..what a bloody disgust, to the point of hatred, Europe has aroused in me (F.M. DOSTOEVSKY).
Why is it that almost nine-tenths of Russians, throughout our century, having cultivated themselves in Europe, have always joined that layer of Europeans that was liberal, the "left side," that is, always the side that itself denied its own culture, its own civilization? … Didn't this fact reflect … the protesting Russian soul, to which European culture has always, since Peter the Great, been hateful and in many ways, too many ways, has proven alien to the Russian soul? That's exactly what I think… For this reason, many Europeans look at us mockingly and condescendingly -… They see us rather as barbarians, wandering around Europe and rejoicing that something, somewhere, can be destroyed – to destroy just for the sake of destruction, just for the pleasure of watching how it all falls apart, like a horde of savages, like the Huns, ready to rush into ancient Rome and destroy the shrine, without even the slightest idea of what a treasure they are destroying (F.M. DOSTOEVSKY. A Writer's Diary).
However, the same Dostoevsky also saw shortcomings in the Russian character:
…the ability of a person to cherish in his soul the highest ideal alongside the highest baseness – and all completely sincerely (F.M. DOSTOEVSKY).
Both Russian poets and intellectuals would like to see their people in a better light, but their characterizations are more often negative than positive:
The Russian government must keep its people in a state of constant amazement… (SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN. "Horace of the Third Rome").
A Russian feels that all his neighbors are insulting him, that they don't sufficiently respect his greatness, and that they are plotting against him in every possible way. He accuses everyone in his own household of trying to harm him, to separate from him, and to join his enemies, and he considers all his neighbors his enemies (VLADIMIR SOLOVYEV).
The whole of Russia has been gripped by the syphilis of patriotism! (A. I. HERZEN. "The Kolokol" newspaper, London.
This great part of Europe and Asia, now called Russia, in its temperate climates was originally inhabited, but by wild peoples, plunged into the depths of ignorance, who did not mark their existence with any historical monuments of their own (N. M. KARAMZIN). "History of the Russian State" Volume I, Chapter I).
We have given nothing to the world, taught it nothing, we continue to live only to serve as some important lesson for future generations (
When and what bureaucrat wasn't convinced that Russia is a pie that one can freely approach and snack on? (SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN. "The New Narcissus, or In Love with Oneself").
In contrast to all the laws of human society, Russia is moving only in the direction of its own enslavement and in the direction of the enslavement of other peoples (A. I. HERZEN).
Our worker knows only one thing: to get drunk like a pig, and ruin everything you give him. He'll drug the horses, tear off good harness, change a studded tire and spend it on drink, and throw a kingpin into the threshing machine to break it. He's sick of seeing anything that's not his way. This is how the entire farm's standard has sunk. (L.N. TOLSTOY. "Anna Karenina." Part III/Chapter XXVII)
We Muscovites have made the Kirghiz, the Chemeris, the Buryats, and others drunk. We have robbed Armenia and Georgia, even banned church services in the Georgian language, and robbed the wealthy Ukraine. We have given Europe anarchists like P. Kropotkin and M. Bunin, and apostles of ruin and butchery like Shigalev, Nechayev, Lenin, and the like. Moral filth, Muscovy—a monster that even hell would disdain and vomit upon the earth (V. ROZANOV).
For a Russian person, honor is just an extra burden… (M.A. BLGAKOV. "The White Guard").
I propose that the name of the country "Russia" be always written exactly like this, in quotation marks. It has so compromised itself over a thousand-year history, in which there has been not a single bright spot, only the oppression of its own dark, savage, and downtrodden people and the suppression of the aspirations for freedom in others. The Russian Empire was not a national Russian state at all. It was a collection of several dozen peoples… united only by the shared exploitation of the landed elite, and united, moreover, by the most brutal violence (M. N. POKROVSKY. "Russian History")./p>
The Russian Empire was called a prison of nations. We now know that not only the Romanov Empire deserved this title, but also its predecessor, the patrimony of Kalita's descendants. The Grand Duchy of Moscow, not only the Tsardom of Moscow, was already a prison of nations. Great Russia was built on the bones of non-Russians, and the latter are hardly consoled by the fact that 80% of their blood flows in the veins of Great Russians. Only the final overthrow of Great Russian oppression by the force that has fought and continues to fight against all forms of oppression could serve as some retribution for all the suffering this oppression inflicted on them. (M. N. POKROVSKY. "Russian History").
Here in Russia, among the intelligentsia, there can be no person who doesn't lie. The vast majority of us lie out of hospitality. In Russia, the truth almost always has a completely fantastical character (F. DOSTOEVSKY. "A Writer's Diary").
We have nothing real, only surrogates, imitations, quasi-ministers, quasi-education, quasi-society, quasi-constitution, and our entire life is just a quasi-fantasy. In other societies, everyone lives, working and partly surviving, partly making a living and developing. In Russian society, some only make a living, others only make a living, and no one lives or works (V. KLYUCHEVSKY. "Diary").
Our society is as despicable as it is stupid; it lacks public opinion and is dominated by indifference to duty, justice, law, truth, and a cynical contempt for thought and human dignity (P. CHAADAEV. "A Philosophical Letter").
We are at least two hundred years behind, we have absolutely nothing yet, no definite attitude towards the past, we only philosophize, complain about boredom or drink vodka (A.P. CHEKHOV).
The Russian spirit is heavy, there is nothing to breathe and it is impossible to fly (A. BLOK).
Russians are a people who hate freedom, deify slavery, love the shackles on their hands and feet, love their bloody despots, feel no beauty, are physically and morally filthy, have lived for centuries in darkness and obscurantism, and have never lifted a finger toward anything human, yet are always ready to enslave and oppress everyone and everything, the entire world. This is not a people, but a historical curse on humanity (I.S. SHMELEV).
If Russia had failed, there would have been no loss or unrest in humanity (IVAN TURGENEV).
When a Russian cannot discover any intelligence within himself, he speaks in inky language, calls on his fellow tribesmen for help, whom he calls brothers in mind, and all of them represent Russia in their own name (L. TOLSTOY).
The Russian mind is most clearly revealed in stupidities (VASILY KLYUCHEVSKY).
For a Russian, lying is like blowing your nose. Their lies stem from their slavish nature. A people who have never known or spoken the truth are a people of spiritual and physical slaves (N.M. KARAMZIN).
If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and am asked what is happening in Russia now, I will answer: they drink and steal (SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN),
He has nothing of his own in terms of convictions and morality, not even a ball. He is a completely empty vessel that can be filled with anything (GLEB USPENSKY).
I believe that the Russian people are uniquely endowed—as uniquely as the English are endowed with a sense of humor—with a particular kind of cruelty, cold-blooded and seemingly testing the limits of human tolerance for pain, as if exploring the tenacity and resilience of life. Russian cruelty has a diabolical sophistication; it possesses something subtle and refined. This quality can hardly be explained by words like "psychosis" or "sadism," words that, in essence, explain nothing at all (MAXIM GORKY. "On the Russian Peasantry". I. P. Ladyzhnikov Publishing House. Berlin, 1922.)
Some of the characteristics are quite harsh, overly emotional, but as already noted, these are all subjective assessments far from scientifically substantiated, and drawing any conclusions from them would be unwise. That's why an attempt is being made to find a somewhat quantitative assessment of the national character structure of Ukrainians and Russians.