Russian Pride
May 28, 2015
MARK JAWS writes:
I spent my first seven years in the Army as a Russian linguist. Later on, I earned a Master’s Degree in Russian Area Studies from the Defense Intelligence College. Compared to the average American, I know Russia and its people pretty well, and while Russia is facing challenging problems today, I think it will prevail, while we will fail. Why? Because even throughout the 75 years or so of Communist tyranny, the Russian people endured, as they endured through 300 years of Mongol rule and countless other invasions and tragedies which have struck throughout the centuries.
The reason is simple. Russians have something that most white Europeans lack – pride. Pride in being Russian, pride in being European, and pride in being white. And instead of mocking and ignoring the heroes from their past as our pop culture does, the Russians still hold them in high esteem.
For example, I am enclosing a clip of a song I viewed on Youtube, a performance by Elena Vaenga, a popular Russian actress and singer. The subject of the song is Nickolas Shchors, a Communist hero of the Russian Civil War. It even moved me. I have come across other performances of the older songs which are still popular today with young people. For example, this one, which describes the desperation the Russian people faced in the early days of World War 2 in face of the Nazi onslaught. Notice how the entire audience knows the lyrics. Evidently, the Russians are doing something correctly.
— Comments —
Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:
My life has been strangely intertwined with things Russian. Even in my teens, when, having read Phyllis Schlafly, I was strongly anti-communist, I nevertheless maintained a subscription to Soviet Life, a propaganda monthly of the USSR. Although I flunked Russian in college, shortly before the Administration kicked me out for academic delinquency, I have remained fascinated by Russia and have read heavily in Russian literature and in the history of Russia; I have watched Russian, including Soviet, film, and listened to Russian, including Soviet, music.
Over the years, I have been thrown into social situations with Russians. In the early 1980s, when I had just begun graduate school, I received through an in-law connection an invitation to a dinner-party for visiting Soviet writers sponsored by Pepperdine University. I met and corresponded with Yevgen Zhassoursky who at the time was dean of the Journalism Program at Moscow University. In Michigan in the 1990s I became friendly with a visiting professor from Moscow, Michael Kovalchuk, who shared my interest in science fiction.
There is a small community of Russian expatriates in my corner of the woods in Upstate New York. I say “Russian,” but the group includes people of Baltic and Ukrainian background who grew up and were educated under the USSR, which they roundly repudiate. I come to my point, which has to do with Russian patriotism.
The Oswego Opera Association tries to put on a fully staged performance every two years. In the off-year they sponsor chamber music and recitals. Recently they brought a young Russian soprano and her accompanist to give a program of songs in a local church. Most of the audience showed up in typically American casual clothing. My Russian friends came in respectful habit and sat up front.
In Russia, the custom at concerts is that the performer should receive bouquets of flowers at the end of the show. My friend Kestas noticed at the intermission that no provision had been made to present flowers to the lovely young singer. Mind you, Kestas had no association with the organizers of the concert. Nevertheless, at intermission, he took it on himself to rush out to the local supermarket, buy some lots of brilliant carnations, and, during the ovation, to present them to the talented young lady.
People in the audience, including those who were officially in charge of the event, gawked as a perfect stranger strode to the front to bestow the floral admiration on behalf of everyone, but entirely at his own expense. The gesture made an enormous impression on the singer and on her accompanist. There was an animated Russian conversation for a half an hour after the event.
My wife and I have been dinner-guests of these Russian friends and acquaintances. The meals are lavish. They are always accompanied by enthusiastic explanations of Slavic and Baltic cuisine. These phenomena are proof to me of the assertion that Russian – and Lithuanian and Ukrainian – culture survived the USSR. I second Mark Jaws for his encomium of Russian pride.
John Purdy writes:
I agree with Mark Jaws. While no one who subscribes to traditional Western values can like Putin, Russian culture remains strong, unlike our own. I have known many Russian immigrants to Canada and as much as they like having private homes, cars and access to a broad range of information, none of them has ever truly renounced the Motherland. The Russians have plenty of problems to be sure. I’m not quick to say their circumstances overall are better than ours, their birthrate is very low for one example, but their culture is unquestionably more intact than ours. The tension between the U.S. and the Russians is largely unnecessary. Russians were very pro-Western after the collapse of the Soviet Union but repeated provocations from the West have changed that.
A. Kern writes from Toronto:
Yes, the Russians have pride – but what about those pictures we keep seeing of tens of thousands of Muslims praying on Moscow streets? It’s a bit hard to ignore such numbers.
May 29, 2015
Sage McLaughlin writes:
Mark Jaws observes that Russians possess a kind of national and ethnic pride not found in most of the West, but I find I am inclined to take A. Kern’s corrective very seriously. Pride, shmide.
There is a tendency among Rusophiles (I do not use the term in a pejorative way) to regard that country in strict contrast with America, but the two countries always have been radically different and there is no special reason to take America as your point of departure when sizing up the prospects for a glorious Russian future. Yes, I would tend to agree that America, and the “Anglosphere” in general, is quite doomed, for reasons that are only too familiar to readers of this site (and to Mr. Jaws, who is no Eloi). This should not fool us into looking longingly across the Urals and imagining that Russian “pride” will save them from annihilation, any more than the oft-rehearsed American expressions of patriotism will rescue it from its sins.
In short, Russians’ pride in their history and culture is a fine thing, but it isn’t enough. The place is as spiritually desolate as any society on earth, with more abortions per annum than live births, alcohol and drug abuse rampant, a blighted political life, a near-universal absence of religious belief, and the nihilistic adoration of power as ensconced as ever it was in the hearts of Russia’s social elite. Most of the reasons for the endurance of Russian particularism are actually geographical, not cultural, and surely not spiritual. Russia is guarded by a flank of such awesome distances–the arid steppe is thousands of miles across–that it has developed a very peculiar and resilient society (similar in a way to the enduring intricacy of England and Japan, which are both island countries that have been better able to resists outside influence than have, say, the Persians).
But the world-historical movement of peoples we are now witnessing is changing all this, and while the Russian people still are able to go through some of the traditional motions that are rooted in their ancient status as the Defender of Orthodoxy, they are like a body whose head has been severed–it was severed in 1917–and which flops about from the shock. Yes, it moves, but it does not live. The thing which once animated its body has been surgically removed. These assertions of national pride, deliberately instigated by a Kremlin whose job it is to keep 140 million people from overthrowing it, should not be confused with the natural effusions of a living national culture.
Russian Churches are utterly empty. Russian schools are not very good, certainly by Western standards. Russian industry is almost non-existent. Russians themselves are very proud, but are completely incapable of facing the reasons for their national decline, and there is no real prospect of any spiritual revival in Russia. They will allow themselves to be supplanted, and eventually ruled, by the children of Allah, and their ability to defend their massive imperial frontier will wither dramatically over the next 50 years. They would deny this furiously, of course, just as proud but clueless French and Italians will deny it now. But the massive Russian frontier is no longer any protection from the influx of foreigners who actually fear their God, and still posses the normal human hope of large families. All the weepy operas in the world won’t change that (and neither will this grotesque nostalgia for the Soviet Red Star, the insignia of the very regime that slew Russia’s cultural patrimony!). Similarly, all the sentimental performances of The Star Spangled Banner we can muster will not save America from its reckoning with God, whose law cannot be mocked forever.
Laura writes:
You write:
In short, Russians’ pride in their history and culture is a fine thing, but it isn’t enough. The place is as spiritually desolate as any society on earth, with more abortions per annum than live births, alcohol and drug abuse rampant, a blighted political life, a near-universal absence of religious belief, and the nihilistic adoration of power as ensconced as ever it was in the hearts of Russia’s social elite.
Exactly.
That’s exactly why the consecration of Russia, so long overdue, is desired by Catholics. Although pride in their identity as a people is important, nationalism cannot save the Russians. Nationalism is not enough for Russia or any nation on earth.
You write:
All the weepy operas in the world won’t change that (and neither will this grotesque nostalgia for the Soviet Red Star, the insignia of the very regime that slew Russia’s cultural patrimony!).
Elena Vaenga is a moving performer, but it’s disturbing, scary actually, that Russians find Communist militarism so inspiring.
Mr. Jaws writes:
Sage was right in describing me as a Russophile. As he well knows, I am a realist, and as such I do not harbor any illusions about the Russia he so thoroughly described. However, I do admire the Russian people very much for their tenacity, toughness, and resourcefulness, and for those reasons I am pretty confident Russia will survive and not succumb to Islamization. The Russians differ from us in another regard. They are not delusional deniers of demographics. They see the Arab writing on the wall, and are much more likely than the West to take the appropriate steps to reverse course.
One option they are considering is one about which I wrote of 25 years ago for the Defense Intelligence Agency – immigration of Western Europeans (refugees fleeing Islamization) to Russia. Before you naysayers shoot me down, consider the historical precedent. Large numbers of Germans settled in Russia as early as the 18th century. And to this day, despite the Nazi genocidal war, Russians and Germans have an enduring mutual respect for each other. This is something I witnessed firsthand when I was an liaison officer to the German Army years ago. Second, it is actually happening now. The Russian technical work force is aging and the infrastructure is nearly obsolete. The Russian government is having to send many of its young tech workers to western Europe for advanced training. Evidently, the Russians have thought of an alternative approach and they are now paying young, technically adept Western Europeans as much as $8,000 a year to settle there. The article in which I read this did not discuss the details of this venture, but at least the Russians have the right idea. And even though 2/3 of Russia is absolutely no-go terrain regarding human settlement, the inhabitable portion is still vast and is being depopulated by declining birth rates and relatively short life spans of Russian men.
While Russian authoritarianism may rub some Western Europeans the wrong way, it is a lot better than living under Sharia. And Russians would rather have Germans, Swedes and Finns moving into the dacha next door, as opposed to Mohammedans.
James P. writes:
Mark Jaws’ notion of Western Europeans moving to Russia might have some viability if Western European fertility rates were not dramatically sub-replacement. But the Western Europeans don’t have enough people to populate their own countries, let alone Russia. The demographic pie is shrinking, and Europe doesn’t have any extra slices to hand to Russia.
Is it even possible to assimilate and “become Russian?” If not, then the good things Mark Jaws identifies about Russian culture – the pride and patriotism – will not apply to any Western European immigrants to Russia or their descendants. They will simply be isolated islands of Germans, Swedes and Finns in the vastness of Russia, who will be all the more demoralized for having given up on their own homelands.
Mr. Jaws writes:
Let me answer the concerns of James P. First, the Western Europeans who would flee their lands for the vast and more European spaces of The Great Russian Plain are more likely not to be The Mindless and Meek Eloi. Russia will offer schools which do not impose the “fruits of diversity” as in France, Germany, the U.K. and elsewhere. Second, there is a pan-European movement taking place in Russia today among the nationalist young people. Consequently, European migrants from the West are more likely to be viewed as brethren, rather than foreign intruders. Third, a large influx of Westerners would help transform Russia. In what ways, I am not certain, but I do know Westerners are far less tolerant of corruption than Russians are. Finally, and most importantly, Russia will likely be the lone government on the Continent to establish measures – some perhaps even Draconian – to boost the European birth rate. To me it is very simple – confiscatory tax rates to reverse La Dolce Vita. In other words, the huge tax burden decreases substantially with each child born. A family of four or more children would pay no national tax, other than sales tax and user fees. Now, having lived in Germany for eight years, I know all about so-called “Kinder Geld”, allowances for mothers to help take care of her children. Concept good, but in practice it was fatally flawed, because the amount was not much and foreigners got the money as well. Big mistake. I propose taxing young people to near poverty UNLESS they have children. Such are the times in which we live.
Laura writes:
I cannot imagine what you are suggesting given the distinctiveness of Russia. Even learning the language would be a barrier for Western Europeans.
Mr. Jaws writes:
I will send out this last parting shot, and let this thread run its course, hopefully without having left the impression of my being a terminal romantic.
First, the Russians are targeting YOUNG Europeans, and not middle-aged Americans. Europeans are much more willing and adept in learning other languages. Second, Russians are not so distinct from the West. After all, millions of Russians have migrated to western Europe, Canada, and America and quickly assimilated. I think the reverse can occur. And finally, try putting yourself in the shoes of a Scandinavian or Frenchmen who sees his country in the grips of mind-numbing and cultural killing PC while he sees one city after another turn foreign and more foreboding. The Russians are many things, but they are not PC, which is why I am holding out some hope for them and for our civilization.
