Western social studies show that the mentality of the Russians is similar to the North Europeans. However, during the years of Putin's rule, most of them fell back into "traditionalism". There are still significant differences in the culture of Russians and Europeans ...
What is the Russian mentality is shown in the book “The Impact of Western Socio-Cultural Models on Social Practices in Russia” (Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2009, Circulation 500 copies). Its definition is described by several experiments.
For several centuries now, the main enemy of the Russian people has been considered the state in the form of a serving-punitive estate. “The source of good in the Russian mentality is the community, today it is relatives and friends (Gemeinshaft), and evil is projected onto the state in the form of bureaucracy (previously - a gentleman, a policeman, etc.); the way of action is “everything will work out”, and we think the triumph of good is undeniable, but ... in the future (“not we, so our children ...”),” sociologists write.
The Russian mentality is characterized by extremes and contradictions. Russians are characterized by extreme coldness and warmth, laziness and bursts of energy. The geographical location combines the features of Europe and Asia in Russians: despotism - anarchism; cruelty - compassion; collectivism - individualism; religiosity - godlessness; blind obedience is rebellion.
A distinctive feature of the Russians has always been the predominance of intuition over logic (“maybe”).
Orthodoxy - Russians have always had one faith, pluralism of opinions is unusual for them. In Germany, there is such an opinion about Russians: they say that your problems are in the orthodoxy of your Orthodox Church. For us, it’s as if the earthly things are unimportant, we don’t have a home, give us the Universe. Take Russian philosophy. There is only about the life of the Spirit. The flesh is completely humiliated, everything material is humiliated. Human life immediately depreciates. And a Russian person says: "If I live there, then everything here is quite inexpensive for me."
Refusal to actively transform the surrounding world, patience for the sake of reward in the afterlife, accepted in Orthodox ethics, is fundamentally different from the norms of Western Protestant ethics.
The question is natural: what are the pros and cons of the Russian mentality in the implementation of "pro-Western" reforms? Sociologists answer this question: “The German does not rely on “maybe it will cost”, the Englishman or American seeks justice in the courts that protect human rights, which are fixed in the Constitution on the basis of a “sacred” contract between citizens and their elected authorities. As for the victory of good over evil, in Western culture it depends on the activities of the parties, their ideas about what is good and what is evil, and, most importantly, on the personal efforts of each citizen.
The core of the German mentality is the concept of professional duty. The main norm of Protestantism is rational management, focused on increasing productivity and multiplying capital. America's ideal: "a creditworthy good man whose duty it is to regard the increase of his capital as an end in itself."
The Protestant norm “earning money is my duty, this is my virtue and the source of my pride and respect from my fellow citizens” differs from the norm “I will earn money, and it doesn’t matter what others think about it.” This is a calling “from God”, and the most diligent fulfillment of this role is a sacred duty.
In Germany, as indeed in other Western European countries, the rational organization of one's own business is the salvation of one's own soul. Therefore, in Germany it is customary to count money, save and increase it. A German, English or American capitalist is pleasing to God not because he is rich and can rest, taste worldly fruits. He is pleasing because he cannot afford it, tk. performs the sacred duty of increasing capital, denying himself everything.
A characteristic feature of Protestant morality, which M. Weber called worldly asceticism, is the impossibility of rest, the high intensity of the fulfillment of labor duty due to the rejection of earthly joys.
Well, then sociologists move from theory to practice. Statistical data are available using psychological tests in cross-cultural studies. K. Kasyanova applied the MMPI test on Russian students and a control group of pilots, comparing her data with the results obtained by other psychologists from many countries. She found that the Russians go off scale in "cycloid". This concept from the language of psychoanalysts means that Russians are not inclined to systematically performed activities that do not depend on mood, unlike, for example, punctual Germans.
The most interesting results of intercultural studies were obtained by E. Danilova, E. Dubitskaya and M. Tararukhina. They used the psychological test of the Dutch sociopsychologist Gerd Hofstaed, developed by him in the 60s and actively used to this day. The test is designed to measure the parameters of organizational culture. Hofstede revealed the ethno-national features of labor relations and refuted the belief in their universal rationality. It turned out that the Germans and, for example, the Japanese act rationally in the same way, but they evaluate the balance of the resources expended and the results achieved differently.
According to the Hofstede test, 70 peoples were studied. In recent years, mass testing of Russians has been carried out: 1,700 respondents from among employees of energy companies in 23 regions of Russia and 518 employees of large machine-building enterprises in Moscow, the Volga region, and the Vladimir region. Power engineers are distinguished by the fact that managers and specialists of the new formation are sufficiently represented in their composition, and the latter (machine builders) are 90% ordinary Russian workers.
The authors have come to the following conclusions. According to the index "personal achievement - solidarity" Swedes, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians and Finns form one cluster. Dubitskaya and Tararukhina called it the "Northern European Solidarity Syndrome". The British, Americans, Irish, as well as Germans, Austrians, Italians and Swiss formed another statistical cluster, which was called the "Romano-Germanic achievement syndrome".
Russia, on the other hand, fell into the group of North Europeans (by the way, based on these results, it is clear what could take root in Russia as a political and economic formation - liberalism of the Anglo-Saxon type, South European paternalism or Scandinavian socialism).
The researchers defined another scale in the vocabulary of management as "loyalty to the company in exchange for guarantees", and in a broad sense, this is the mentality of dependence on the external environment or, on the contrary, tuned to the social subject's own resource. In the logic of management, the first is the mentality of the employee, and the second is the partner. According to this index, Russians are among those who value the guarantees from the organization more.
In general, they conclude that the Russian cultural matrix (let us recall, the matrix of labor relations) is far from the Romano-Germanic one, and again closer to the mentality of employees in the Nordic countries. The organizational culture of Russia is built on two pillars: solidarity between employees and subordination of the organization. In Hofstede's scales, this refers to the culture of "femininity" on test items: caring for each other, intuition, the value of free time. The opposite pole of "masculinity" is assertiveness, rationalism, perseverance in achieving goals, money.
“The subordination of the organization in the culture of labor relations is associated with a well-known feature of the Russian mentality - etatism, the attitude towards the state in the role of its subjects, not free citizens. In practice, this means loyalty to the existing order in exchange for guarantees from the state,” the sociologists conclude.
The system of values in Russia, in comparison with the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, is quite close to the Western European one, "but more conservative, traditional, more prone to order, hierarchy, and less - to the rights and freedoms of the individual." In general, Western and Russian sociologists have not made any discoveries here. Another thing is more interesting: has there been a transformation of values in Russia in the last 20 years? There are also studies on this topic.
In the 1990s, there was a marked shift towards the values of the "modern personality" (intellectual autonomy, the value of mastery), especially among young people. However, in the period 2000-2005. an increase in hedonism was recorded instead of the values of the development of creative abilities. In the most important areas, there has been a rollback ... the cultural preconditions for modernization have deteriorated. According to monitoring surveys carried out in 1998, 2004 and 2007. employees of the Institute of Sociology, in the period from 2004 to 2007. the share of the so-called modernists decreased from 26% to 20%, and the share of traditionalists increased from 41% to 47%, while maintaining the share of "intermediate" (33%).
The authors considered the acceptance of the values of individual freedom as signs of modernity, which is “completely unacceptable” for traditionalists and intermediates in this matter (80% of the sample!). “For them,” writes M.K. Gorshkov, “the optimal model of development, traditional for Russia, is based on the omnipotence of the state, which, in the ideal of this model, serves as the spokesman for the interests of society as a whole and ensures the security of both each individual citizen and the community. Moreover, such a model is perceived more as a chaotic community, where everyone performs their own function, than as a community of free individuals who consciously build a variety of life strategies, guided by human rights, recognized as basic by both the state and society.
So, the above evidence suggests that the value system of Russians is “quite close” to the North European one, but is more inclined towards order, hierarchy, and less towards the rights and freedoms of the individual. In addition, in recent years, the proportion of traditionalists has increased.
However, the "cultural component" of the Russian mentality is still far from the European one.
The cultural parameters of the attitude towards exclusion in modern Russia are considered in the works of S.S. Yaroshenko (attitude towards the poor) and I.N. Tartakovskaya (gender stereotypes and lifestyles). The study by T.A. Dobrovolskaya and N.B. Shabalina noted the intolerance of Russian respondents in relation to the very idea of coexistence with atypical people. Respondents expressed a negative attitude to the fact that a disabled person was their relative (39%), flatmate (37%), boss (29%), representative of authorities (27%), subordinate (22%), teacher of the child (20% ).
Other studies show that patience as a component of mercy and humanism is less and less valued in post-Soviet Russia. Thus, the studies of N.I. Lapin demonstrate changes in the structure of the basic values of Russians over the period from 1990 to 2006: if in 1990 the traditional value of self-sacrifice was in 8th place among the fourteen basic values, then in 1994 it dropped to 11th place, and by 2006 she had fallen even lower in this list, more and more yielding to such modernist values as independence and initiative.
The situation is different in European countries. A survey was conducted of 135 Russian and 98 foreign (USA, Canada, Austria, Germany) respondents - students, teachers and university staff.
An intercultural study by S.A. Zavrazhin showed that only half of Russian respondents spoke in favor of providing assistance to mentally handicapped people (44% believe that such people should be isolated, 2% should be liquidated, 2% should be ignored), while among foreign respondents no one supported the idea of eliminating, isolating or ignoring people with disabilities, and 98% were in favor of helping them. Let's pay attention - this is a survey among the intelligentsia, and what can we say about the common people ...
What conclusions can be drawn from this study? On the whole, under a “favorable environment” (democratic rule, respect for individual rights, integration into the Western world), Russians are potentially ready to become “Northern Europeans” (at the level of the same Finns, who a hundred years ago were the same Russians, and who made the transformation into Europeans). in a very short period of time by the standards of world history).
But for now, it's all pie in the sky. And the "tit in the hands", the realities of today's life are shattered by the tactics of survival in an environment hostile to the average Russian - where only the highest power with its exclusive right to the "only European" acts as the only savior.
based on materials ttolk.ru
Original entry and comments on
Nadezhda SuvorovaIt is sad, but the inhabitants of the country. Favorite phrase of Russians: "It will pass by itself!". It is not customary for us to trust doctors, but it is customary to use traditional medicine recipes. Some even treat cancer with herbs and magical devices.
This happens because for such a long period of existence of the country, we have not focused on health. We are not educated in this area and misunderstand the meaning of the saying: "What does not kill us makes us stronger." Love for an idle lifestyle leads Russian people to.
Fortunately, today the younger generation is beginning to take an interest in their health, is fond of sports, goes to the gym to gain a beautiful figure. But this is only the beginning of a long journey after realizing that Russia was going downhill.
Another established distinctive feature of the Russian people is bribery. 200 years ago in Russia it was customary to pay officials for services, but even when this right was abolished, the habit remained.
Officials have taken root in comfortable conditions so much that they never wanted to lose financial injections from the people. Therefore, issues are still being resolved not according to the law, but “by pull”.
It is impossible to eradicate this feature at this historical stage of Russia, since there are other global problems, but the struggle has already begun and is bringing success.
Historical events such as uprisings, wars, blockades and constant change of rulers have led to the trouble of the Russian people. This made it possible to cultivate endurance, patience and the ability to withstand adversity in people.
Russian people are only recently getting used to comfort. Previously, we spent a lot of time in the fields to feed our families, often the years were lean, so we had to work without sleep and rest.
Weather conditions also influenced the formation of the Russian mentality. Foreigners are terribly afraid of the cold. For them, 0 degrees is already a reason to wear a sheepskin coat. The Russian people are accustomed to such temperatures and tolerate them well. One has only to remember the tradition of dipping into the hole at Christmas. Some Russians even practice winter swimming all winter.
Today Russia is coming out of the crisis, the people are facing new tasks. Therefore, the mentality is gradually changing, acquiring new features. But some of them will forever remain in Russian souls and will help to remain invincible and fearless in the face of dangerous enemies.
February 26, 2014, 17:36The time has come to define the main, in my opinion, features of the Russian mentality.
Among the primary properties of the Russian people is its kindness. Kindness in all its layers is expressed in the absence of vindictiveness. Often a Russian person, being passionate and prone to maximalism, experiences a strong feeling of repulsion from another person, however, when meeting with him, if specific communication is necessary, his heart softens, and he somehow involuntarily begins to show his spiritual softness towards him, even sometimes condemning himself for it, if he believes that this person does not deserve a good attitude towards him.
“Life according to one’s heart” creates the openness of the soul of a Russian person and the ease of communication with people, the simplicity of communication, without conventions, without outward instilled politeness, but with those virtues of politeness that flow from a sensitive natural delicacy ...
However, positive qualities often have negative sides. The kindness of a Russian person sometimes prompts him to lie due to his unwillingness to offend his interlocutor, due to the desire for peace and good relations with people at all costs.
Russian people are striking in the versatility of their abilities. He is characterized by high religious talent, ability to the highest forms of experience, observation, theoretical and practical mind, creative perceptiveness, ingenuity, subtle perception of beauty and associated aristocracy, expressed both in everyday life and in the creation of great works of art.
Among the especially valuable properties of the Russian people is a sensitive perception of other people's mental states. This results in live communication even between unfamiliar people with each other. “... The Russian people have highly developed individual personal and family communication. In Russia there is no excessive replacement of individual relations by social ones, there is no personal and family isolationism. Therefore, even a foreigner, once in Russia, feels: “I am not alone here” (of course, I am talking about normal Russia, and not about life under the Bolshevik regime). Perhaps it is these properties that are the main source of recognition of the charm of the Russian people, so often expressed by foreigners who know Russia well ... ”.
Passion and powerful willpower can be considered as belonging to the number of basic properties of the Russian people. The strength of the will of the Russian people is revealed in the fact that a Russian person, noticing any shortcoming of his own and morally condemning it, obeying a sense of duty, overcomes it and develops a quality that is completely opposite to it. Passion is a combination of a strong feeling and an effort of will directed towards a loved or hated value. Naturally, the higher the value, the stronger feelings and energetic activity it causes in people with a strong will. From this one can understand the passion of the Russian people, manifested in political life, and even greater passion in religious life. Maximalism, extremism and fanatical intolerance are the products of this passion.
Freedom. Among the primary properties of the Russian people, along with religiosity, the search for absolute goodness and willpower, one can also include love for freedom, and its highest expression - freedom of the spirit. He who possesses the freedom of the spirit is inclined to put every value to the test, not only by thought, but even by experience. Due to the free search for truth, it is difficult for Russian people to come to terms with each other. Therefore, in public life, the love of freedom of Russians is expressed in a propensity for anarchy, in repulsion from the state.
Cruelty. Kindness is the predominant feature of the Russian people. But at the same time, it cannot be denied that there are also many manifestations of cruelty in Russian life. There are many types of cruelty, and some of them can occur, paradoxically, even in the behavior of people who are not at all evil in nature. Cruelty can be explained by the prevalence of poverty in Russia, many grievances and oppressions. Until the last quarter of the 19th century, the structure of the family life of the merchants, philistines and peasants was patriarchal. The despotism of the head of the family was often expressed in acts close to cruelty.
Laziness, "Oblomovism". Russian man is characterized by a desire for an absolutely perfect kingdom of being and, at the same time, an excessive sensitivity to all the shortcomings of his own and other people's activities. From this arises a cooling towards the work begun and aversion to its continuation; the idea and general outline of it is often very valuable, but its incompleteness and therefore the inevitable imperfections repel a Russian person, and he is too lazy to continue finishing trifles. Thus, "Oblomovism" is in many cases the reverse side of the high qualities of a Russian person - the desire for complete perfection and sensitivity to the shortcomings of our reality.
135 years ago, the French psychologist and neuropsychiatrist Henri Vallon was born, who, relying on the works of the famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, introduced the concept of mentality.
"Russia is America in reverse..."
In general, many Russian psychologists believe that every nation has a mentality, and it is expressed in patterns of perception and behavior that affect the political and economic life of the country. Moreover, the national character is based on historical experience. For example, Russians and Americans can see the same event from a different angle, just because of their mentality. Each nation will have its own truth, and it will be very difficult to convince each other. This is because values are transpersonal in nature. For example, the English-speaking literary critic Van Wyck Brooks, studying Russian literature, said: “America is just Russia in reverse ...”
Like everyone else
They also study the mentality of the nation in order to understand with whom they will have to deal, or even wage war. For example, the Germans have always been keenly interested in the Russian people. The first detailed description of Russia was made by the German ethnographer Johann Gottlieb Georgi back in 1776. The work was called “Description of all the peoples of the Russian state, their way of life, religion, customs, dwellings, clothing and other differences.”
“... There is no such state on earth as the Russian State, which contained such a great variety of different peoples,” wrote Johann Georgi. - These are the Russians, with their tribes, like the Lapps, the Semoyads, the Yukaghirs, the Chukchi, the Yakuts, (there is a list of nationalities on the whole page). ... And also immigrants, like Indians, Germans, Persians, Armenians, Georgians, ... and new Slavs - the estate of the Cossacks.
In general, the ethnographer Johann Georgi noted that it is not unusual for Russians to see strangers. All this, of course, affected the mentality of the Russians. Already today, psychiatrist Igor Vasilievich Reverchuk, exploring the significance of ethnic self-consciousness in the clinical dynamics of various borderline mental disorders, found that 96.2% of Slavs living in Russia regard their nation as “equal among others”, while 93% - demonstrate a friendly attitude towards other ethnic groups.
Children of their land
Doctor of Philosophical Sciences Valery Kirillovich Trofimov, who specializes in the Russian mentality, noted that in the past, “Russia is a country of risky agriculture, where every third or fifth year there were crop failures. A short agricultural cycle - 4-5 months - forced the farmer to constantly rush. Sowing and reaping turned into real suffering, a battle for the harvest. That is why our people tend to work urgently when it is critically important, and the rest of the time - to react to circumstances.
The Russian historian Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky at one time also singled out this characteristic feature of the Russians. “Nowhere in Europe will we find such an unaccustomed to even, moderate and measured, constant work, as in the same Great Russia,” he noted. According to Professor of Philosophy Arseny Vladimirovich Gulyga, “rushing from one extreme to another is a typical Russian trait: from rebellion to humility, from passivity to heroism, from prudence to extravagance.”
reverie
Most of our ancestors rarely left their native village. This is because Boris Godunov enslaved the peasants by law in 1592. The Russian historian V.N. Tatishchev was sure of this. All this injustice, multiplied by a poor life, led to collective fantasies and dreams of universal justice, goodness, beauty and goodness. “Russian people in general had a habit of living with dreams about the future,” Professor Vladimir Nikolaevich Dudenkov is convinced. - It seemed to them that the everyday, harsh and dull life of today is, in fact, a temporary delay in the onset of true life, but soon everything will change, a true, reasonable and happy life will open. The whole meaning of life is in this future, and today does not count for life.
The mentality of a Russian official
It is known that in 1727 state salaries were no longer paid to petty officials in exchange for accidents. Later, this rule was abolished, but the habit of the sovereign's servants to live off "feeding" remained, and was not actually pursued. As a result, in the first half of the 19th century, bribery became the norm. For example, “solving a case” in the Senate cost 50,000 rubles. For comparison, a far from poor county judge had a salary of 300 rubles. Theophile Gauthier, a well-known writer from France, who visited St. Petersburg in 1858, wrote: “It is believed that people of a certain level do not walk on foot, it does not fit. A Russian official without a carriage is like an Arab without a horse.
It turns out that this part of our history can also be related to the mentality, however, of a certain group of Russian people. So, in the dictionary "Social Psychology" edited by M.Yu. Kondratiev, the term "mentality" was prescribed as "the specifics of the mental life of people (a group of people), determined by economic and political circumstances and having a supraconscious character."
Endurance and patience
American mentality experts are convinced that national character traits are influenced, among other things, by genetics, in which the behavior patterns of our ancestors are programmed. For example, if the family tree is represented by convinced monarchists, then the person will subconsciously feel sympathy for this form of government or its representatives. Perhaps this is the neutral, and even loyal attitude of the Russian people towards the political leaders who have ruled the country for many years.
This also has to do with such a mental trait of our people as patience. In particular, the historian N.I. Kostomarov noted that “the Russian people amazed foreigners with their patience, firmness, indifference to all deprivations of the comforts of life, which are difficult for a European ... From childhood, Russians were taught to endure hunger and cold. Children were weaned after two months and fed on roughage; the children ran in nothing but shirts without hats, barefoot in the snow in bitter cold.
Many Russian and foreign mentality experts believe that patience is our response to external and internal challenges, the basis of the Russian person.
Famous foreigners about Russians
Foreign politicians and journalists love to talk about the Russian mentality. Most often, our compatriots are called drunkards. Thus, the French journalist Benoit Raisky wrote that "rude Russians are known for their addiction to vodka." And on October 14, 2011, the englishrussia portal published the article “50 Facts About Russia In The Eyes Of Foreigners”, it gained a huge number of views. It says, in particular, “A non-drinking Russian is a fact out of the ordinary. Most likely, he has some kind of tragedy associated with alcohol.
However, there are other opinions about the Russians. For example, Otto von Bismarck considered Russians to be a cohesive nation. He argued: “Even the most favorable outcome of the war will never lead to the decomposition of the main force of Russia, which is based on millions of Russians ... These latter, even if they are dissected by international treatises, just as quickly reconnect with each other, like particles of a cut piece of mercury ... " . However, history teaches nothing even to pragmatic Germans. Franz Halder, chief of staff of the Wehrmacht (1938-1942) was forced to state in 1941: “The peculiarity of the country and the originality of the character of the Russians gives the campaign a special specificity. The first serious adversary.
Expert opinion
Modern social psychology does not confirm the thesis about the immutability of the mentality, - notes Vladimir Rimsky, head of the sociology department of the INDEM Foundation. - The conditions in which people live, social relations are changing - and with them the mentality is changing. - It should hardly be considered that people have not changed their mentality since the Middle Ages. This is exactly an illusion. For example, in the Middle Ages, the mass consciousness completely lacked the desire to become famous. Is this true in today's society? Therefore, I would be careful not to say that the features of the modern Russian mentality were formed in Peter the Great or pre-Petrine times.
In Russia, the attitude to the mentality as something unchanging often leads to one purely practical consequence: we do not really try to do something to become different. And this is wrong.
You can, of course, say that the problem is in the mentality. But the point is rather that the conditions for the implementation of civil initiatives are simply not created in Russian society.
Or let's take the problem of corruption - it is really widely represented in Russia. It is believed that this is also a feature of our mentality. But I think we need to give people the opportunity to change their social practices. And then, quite possibly, the mentality will also change.
I should note that on a historical scale, the mentality can change rather quickly - in two or three decades. This, in particular, is evidenced by the examples of South Korea or Singapore - states that have changed dramatically over the course of one generation.
Or take a purely Russian example. The reforms of Alexander II affected, in particular, the judiciary. As a result, quite a lot of lawyers working on jury trials have appeared in Russia. These jurors were ordinary citizens, I assure you, they perfectly understood what kind of decisions the authorities needed - but often they made the exact opposite verdicts. As a result, a completely different attitude towards the court appeared in the Russian Empire - as a fair institution in which one can really defend one's rights. Before Alexander II, there was no such attitude to the judiciary.
I think that people, of course, have national and ethnic characteristics. But still, it should not be denied that a lot is determined by social relations and the social environment in which we live. If we were ready to change the environment, the mentality would also change. I'll give you another example.
It is customary for us to believe that in Russia from time immemorial they have not observed the laws, and there is nothing to be done about it. But I have talked more than once with Germans and Americans who came to Moscow to live and work. So, after a short stay in the Russian capital, almost all of them began to violate traffic rules when driving a car, and give bribes to traffic cops. One lady, an American, to my question why she does this, replied that in America it would never have occurred to her to give a bribe to a policeman, but in Moscow “it’s impossible to do it any other way.”
As you can see, the mentality in the head of a particular American changes elementarily - as soon as he adapts to the Russian environment. But this example tells a different story. In America and the same Germany, without exception, they began to “live according to the law” relatively recently - about a hundred years ago. We can go the same way, and much faster...
In general, the mentality is the prevailing schemes, stereotypes and thought patterns. Russians are not necessarily Russians. An individual may be proud to be a "Cossack", "Bashkir" or "Jew" within Russia, but outside of it all Russians (former and present) are traditionally called (regardless of origin) Russians. There are good reasons for this: as a rule, they all have similarities in their mentality and stereotypes of behavior.
The Russians have something to be proud of, we have a huge and strong country, we have talented people and deep literature, while we ourselves know our weaknesses. If we want to become better, we must know them.
So, let's look at ourselves from the side, namely from the side of strictly scientific research. What do cultural researchers note as specific features of the Russian mentality?
1. Conciliarity, the primacy of the common over the personal: "we are all our own", we have everything in common and "what will people say." Sobornost turns into a lack of privacy and the opportunity for any neighbor grandmother to intervene and tell you everything she thinks about your clothes, manners and upbringing of your children.
From the same opera, the concepts of "public", "collective" that are absent in the West. “The opinion of the collective”, “not to separate from the collective”, “what will people say?” - conciliarity in its purest form. On the other hand, they will tell you if your tag is sticking out, your drawstring is untied, your pants are splashed, or your grocery bag is torn. And also - flashing headlights on the road to warn about the traffic police and save from a fine.
2. The desire to live in truth. The term "pravda", often found in ancient Russian sources, means legal regulations, on the basis of which the court was decided (hence the expressions “to judge the right” or “to judge in truth”, that is, objectively, fairly). The sources of codification are the norms of customary law, princely judicial practice, as well as borrowed norms from authoritative sources - primarily the Holy Scriptures.
Outside of Russian culture, more often people talk about obedience to the law, the rules of decency, or the observance of religious precepts. The Eastern mentality does not speak of the Truth, in China it is important to live according to the precepts left by Confucius.
3. In the choice between reason and feeling, Russians choose feeling: sincerity and sincerity. In the Russian mentality, “expediency” is practically a synonym for selfish, selfish behavior and is not honored, like something “American”. It is difficult for the average Russian layman to imagine that one can reasonably and consciously act not only for oneself, but also for someone else, so selfless actions are identified with actions “from the heart”, based on feelings, without a head.
Russian - dislike for discipline and method, life according to the soul and mood, change of mood from peacefulness, forgiveness and humility to a merciless rebellion to complete annihilation - and vice versa. The Russian mentality lives more like a female model: feeling, gentleness, forgiveness, reacting with crying and rage to the consequences of such a life strategy.
4. A certain amount of negativism: most Russians tend to see themselves as shortcomings rather than virtues. Abroad, if a person on the street accidentally touches another person, the stereotyped reaction of almost anyone is: “Sorry”, an apology and a smile. They are so brought up. It is sad that in Russia such patterns are more negative, here you can hear “Well, where are you looking?”, And something more harsh. The Russians understand well what longing is, despite the fact that this word is untranslatable into other European languages. On the streets, it is not customary for us to smile, look into the faces of others, indecently get to know each other and just talk.
5. A smile in Russian communication is not a mandatory attribute of politeness. In the West, the more a person smiles, the more polite he is. In traditional Russian communication, the priority is the requirement of sincerity. A smile in Russians demonstrates a personal disposition towards another person, which, of course, does not apply to everyone. Therefore, if a person smiles not from the heart, it causes rejection.
You can ask for help - most likely they will help. It is normal to beg - and a cigarette, and money. A person with a constantly good mood arouses suspicion - whether sick, or insincere. The one who usually smiles kindly at others - if not a foreigner, then, of course, a toady. Of course, insincere. Says "Yes", agrees - a hypocrite. Because a sincere Russian person will definitely disagree and object. And in general, the real sincerity is when obscene! That's when you believe the man!
6. Love for disputes. In Russian communication, disputes traditionally occupy a large place. A Russian person loves to argue on a variety of issues, both private and general. Love for disputes on global, philosophical issues is a striking feature of Russian communicative behavior.
A Russian person is often interested in a dispute not as a means of finding the truth, but as a mental exercise, as a form of emotional, sincere communication with each other. That is why, in Russian communicative culture, those who argue so often lose the thread of the dispute, easily deviate from the original topic.
At the same time, the desire for compromise or for allowing the interlocutor to save face is completely uncharacteristic. Uncompromisingness, conflict manifests itself very clearly: our person is uncomfortable if he did not argue, could not prove his case. “As the English teacher formulated this quality: "The Russian always argues to win." And vice versa, the characteristic "conflict-free", rather, has a disapproving connotation, like "spineless", "unprincipled".
7. A Russian person lives by faith in the good that will one day descend from heaven.(or simply from above) to the long-suffering Russian land: "Good will definitely defeat evil, but then, someday." At the same time, his personal position is irresponsible: “Someone will bring us the truth, but not me personally. I can't do anything myself, and I won't." For several centuries now, the main enemy of the Russian people has been considered the state in the form of a serving-punitive estate.
8. The principle of "keep your head down." In the Russian mentality, there is a disdainful attitude towards politics and democracy as a form of political system, in which the people act as the source and controller of the activities of power. Characteristic is the conviction that in reality people do not decide anything anywhere and democracy is a lie and hypocrisy. At the same time, tolerance and the habit of lying and hypocrisy of one's power because of the conviction that it is impossible otherwise.
9. Habit of theft, bribery and deceit. The conviction that they steal everywhere and everything, and it is impossible to earn big money in an honest way. The principle is “if you don’t steal, you won’t live”. Alexander I: “There is such theft in Russia that I’m afraid to go to the dentist - I’ll sit in a chair and steal my jaw ...” Dahl: “A Russian person is not afraid of the cross, but is afraid of the pestle.”
At the same time, Russians are characterized by a protest attitude towards punishments: punishing minor violations is not good, somehow petty, you need to “forgive!”, And when against this background people get used to disrespect laws and move from minor violations to major ones - here is a Russian person will sigh for a long time until he gets angry and arranges a pogrom.
10. A characteristic feature of the Russian mentality that follows from the previous paragraph is love for freebies. Movies need to be downloaded via torrent, pay for licensed programs - zapadlo, the dream is the joy of Leni Golubkov in the MMM pyramid. Our fairy tales depict heroes who lie on the stove and eventually receive a kingdom and a sexy queen. Ivan the Fool is strong not in hard work, but in quick wit, when Pike, Sivki-Burki, Humpbacked Skates and other wolves, fish and firebirds will do everything for him.
11. Taking care of health is not a value, sports are strange, getting sick is normal, but it is categorically not allowed to leave the poor, including it is considered morally unacceptable to leave those who did not care about their health and as a result became, in fact, a helpless invalid. Women are looking for the rich and successful, but they love the poor and sick. "How is he without me?" - hence codependency as a norm of life.
12. The place of humanism with us is occupied by pity. If humanism welcomes concern for a person, placing a free, developed, strong person on a pedestal, then pity directs care to the unfortunate and sick. According to Mail.ru and VTsIOM statistics, helping adults is in fifth place in popularity after helping children, the elderly, animals, and helping environmental problems. People feel more sorry for dogs than people, and out of a sense of pity, it is more important to support unviable children, rather than adults who could still live and work.
In the comments to the article, someone agrees with such a portrait, someone accuses the author of Russophobia. No, the author loves Russia and believes in it, having been engaged in enlightenment and educational activities for his country for a decade. There are no enemies here and there is no need to look for them here, our task is different: namely, to think about how we can raise our country and raise children - our new citizens.
