[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans O. (1997), Russians about
Russians - A sample of views on cultural traits, http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/970501.htm]
Russians about Russians
A sample of views on cultural traits
by Hans O. Melberg
Introduction
In my article The Cultural Approach to Russian Politics, I collected a number of
statements made by foreigners about the Russian national character. In this article I want
to present a few samples of what Russians write about their own national character.
Gogol : Get-rich-quick schemes and rent-seeking
In the article Russian literature: Love and Fear of Capitalism Vladimir Kantor
argues that it is typically Russian to want to get rich quick. Moreover, the typical
Russian seeks wealth by rent-seeking rather than productive activities. Together this
explains why "the gentry was not capable of civilizing and transforming Russia"
(p. 107).
To support his argument Kantor examines Gogol's Dead Souls. A main theme in this
work, according to Kantor, is that "the gentry came to possess their property, their
wealth, not through hard work, not by saving kopeck by kopeck, but instantly, by
government decree or the Empress's grant" (p. 107). In other words, the way to earn
money was not to engage in productive work, but by rent-reeking.
As for the first trait - that of wanting to get rich quickly - Kantor examines how
Gogol compares German and Russian attitudes to work and wealth accumulation. The Russian
attitude is that "I shall get rich right away" and this attitude leads him to
poverty. In this respect the Russian is "... not like a German " who gets rich
by "saving up kopeck by kopeck" (p. 109).
These statements would be of little interest if they were unsupported prejudices.
However, Gogol supports his characterizations with detailed discussions of the mechanisms
whereby these traits come about and what the consequences are. The source of the traits is
not too original. Gogol simply points to historical experience - that the long period of
Mongol rule taught the Russians that wealth is acquired by political service, not
entrepreneurial activity. More interesting, and maybe more reliable, is the explanation of
why a "get rich quick" attitude is a probable road to poverty.
Exactly how does a "get rich quick" attitude lead to ruin? In Dead Souls
Gogol makes Chichikov tell the following story to Maxim Telyatnikov:
"Yes, I know you, my good fellow: if you like I'll tell your whole story; you were
apprenticed to a German, who used to feed all his lads together, beating you with a
leather strap across the back for slipshod work and not allowing you out of the house to
gad about in the streets, and you would have made a marvel of a cobbler, and your German
couldn't praise you too highly when talking to his wife or Kamerad. And I know how your
apprenticeship ended: 'See if I don't start my own little business,' you said to yourself,
'and not like a German, saving up kopeck by kopeck; I shall get rich right away.'
So you paid a big quit-rent to your landlord, set yourself up in a shop, got a lot of
orders and plunged into work. You'd managed to get some half-rotten leather three times as
cheap and had a double profit on each boot, for sure, but two weeks later all your boots
split and your customers gave you a piece of their minds good and proper. Then your shop
went through the mill and you took to drinking, collapsing under the table and muttering
to yourself: 'What a rotten world! There's no way a Russian can win with all those Germans
around everywhere.'" (p. 109)
One need not agree with all of Gogol's reasoning in this paragraph, but he is at least
suggesting a plausible mechanism whereby a strong desire to get rich quickly may lead to
poverty. The big question, of course, is whether the Russians really are more impatient
than the Germans or other peoples. For example, another Russian - Shlapentokh - has
suggested that the Russians are more patient than other people.
The above argument is only one of several which describes
the evils of a "get rich quick" attitude. A second mechanism, also described by
Gogol, is that the way people earn money affects how they spend their money - or more
generally: it affects your personality which in turn affects how you spend your money. In
the words of Kantor:
"Through the entire novel Gogol illustrates two opposed principles: on the
one hand, a kopeck as a symbol of work and transformation, and on the other, "a
hundred thousand roubles" received without effort and, therefore serving no useful
purpose either to the recipient or the state." (p. 107, boldface added).
This argument is unconventional, and rich on interesting implications. It is
unconventional in the sense that it is not compatible with traditional economic theories
(Permanent Income Hypothesis, Life-cycle hypothesis). First, in these theories the source
of your income does not affect which goods you want to buy with your income. Second, the
speed of how you acquire your income is not a large determinant of the speed by which you
spend your money. An example might clarify the issues. First, Gogol would argue that if
you received $100 000 from a lottery, you would spend the money on different goods than if
you made $100 000 by hard work. Second, receiving $100 000 suddenly affects you
consumption-pattern differently than receiving $10 000 in ten yearly instalments. (In fact
the relationship between income and consumption is a bit more complex: We have two
variables: the time profile of you income and its source. Using these variables we want to
explain the time profile of consumption and the boundle of goods consumed. Now, the source
of income may affect both the time profile of consumption and the consumption
boundle. In the same way a change in the time profile of income may affect both the
boundle consumed and the speed by which you spend your money.)
The implications of the argument above are striking. A system of government - in this
case one which is relatively open to rent-seeking - encourages an activity (rent-seeking).
Income from this activity, Gogol argues, is not spent the same way as income from hard
work. Instead of investing the income in entrepreneurial activities, it is spent mainly on
luxury and even more rent-seeking activities. Thus, we have an evil circle: rent seeking
creates ever more rent-seeking and wasteful consumption. This is interesting for at least
two reasons. First, the circle may be used to explain why some countries fail to produce
economic growth. Second, it suggests a cure: To create a system of government which
minimizes the possibilities for rent-seeking activities (by, for example,
non-discretionary rules and constitutional provisions).
Altogether Gogol presents a complicated web of circles: Sudden income create impatient
consumers and impatient people are not good entrepreneurs. Rent-seeking may produce quick
incomes, but they also create a type of personality which engage in luxury consumption and
more rent-seeking. Together this suggests (but in no way proves) how a society may be
locked in a sub-optimal equilibrium. One may also add that whether one blames the system
or the culture depends on how far back one wants to go in the causal chain (remember
Gogol's famous question: Who is to blame? We ourselves or the government? (p. 196)). The
culture of impatience and rent-seeking is created by the system, thus the immediate cause
is culture, but the ultimate cause is the system.
The Russian Mentality
In the Social Sciences Quarterly Review number three (1994), there is a discussion
between several Russian academics about the "Russian Mentality." One of the
central questions being whether "the former Russian mentality" is
"compatible with the present-day road of reforms" (p. 105). Here is an extract
of some of the views presented.
I. Pantin argues that "the mentality of a particular nation derives from its
historical experience" and that this mentality is "a psychological determinant
of the behaviour of millions upon millions of people who are loyal to their historically
formed 'code' under any circumstances ..." (p.106). Given the historical experiences
of the Russian people he is not surprised that "the Russian 'man in the street' lacks
the deep feeling of his independence and responsibility, that he has neither proper notion
of freedom [... associating it with supreme state authority ...], nor the seeing of the
boundaries of the competence of the state and the competence of civil society ..."
(p. 106) Moreover "the idea of civil society, the value of personal freedom, the
liberty of the speech are still alien to many Russians ..." (p. 106) In short,
"Involvement of supreme power - be it tsarist, Party or Presidential - still,
unfortunately, meets the psychological requirements of Russians." (p. 107)
I am deeply sceptical of these arguments. First, I do not believe the Russians value
the freedom of speech less than people in the West unless I am given hard evidence to this
effect. Second, the argument is characterized by overdeterminism. Is the Russian people
trapped by their culture to forever remain a totalitarian society? Third, one should not
treat the Russians over time as a unified group, ignoring the obvious fact that the
Russians today are not the same Russians that experience the Mongol rule.
Although I am sceptical, I do not exclude the possibility that the arguments could be
made more sound. One might, for example, point to several psychological experiments which
show that people more easily internalize norms when they are not subject to great external
sanctions or rewards. To be concrete, if the punishment for theft is very strong, there
seems to be less internalization of the norm that "theft is wrong." Or, if the
reward for one type of behaviour is large (say you are paid to vote), there is less
internalization of the norm that "It is your duty to vote." If asked why this is
so one might point to a the deep psychological desire to have good reasons for your
actions. Rewards and sanctions represent convenient "reasons" to justify our
actions. When these are lacking, people might have a tendency to "invent"
justifications in order to rationalize their actions (inventing norms like "it is the
only proper thing to do" etc.). Consider, for example, Kantor's argument that
"No efforts are made to coerce to work, and we are still to learn how to work without
coercion" (p. 114). If I used to work simply because I would be coerced unless I did
not work, I will develop very weak internal norms about the importance of work - and when
coercion no longer exist, the country will be thrown into turmoil. In this way one might
make more sense of the argument that the Russian experience have made it difficult to
create a market economy. Yet, I am still sceptical about the overall reliability of this
argument since I have not seen factual evidence that the theory really conforms to the
Soviet case. A theoretical possibility is one thing, what actually happens is another. (As
a side-line: If I remember correctly, Richard Pipes also discusses the difference between
internal and external motivation in one of his books on the Russian Revolution).
A. Panarin argues in his contribution that "the market economy, parliamentary
democracy, the law-governed state ... rest on deep socio-cultural foundations which the
modernizers have to disclose before they take a decision to transplant them to the soil of
their own culture." (p. 108). These socio-cultural foundations are "cultural
invariants" and they are "reproduced subconsciously in each new generation"
(p. 109). What are these cultural invariants?
According to Panarin, "Modern Western people have a double identity, a national
one ('I am a Frenchman', 'I am a German', etc.) and a civilizational one ('I am a
European')" (p. 110). This double identity creates "durable civilizational
links" but "Russia does not have such metanational guarantees" and this
creates instability (p. 110).
To me this is distinctly unsatisfactory. The causal links are not spelled out in any
detail and the claims are not backed by hard evidence. Maybe my insistence on hard
evidence rules out some intuitive source of knowledge. A Erygin, another contributor in
the same discussion, writes about "the general Russian specificity of philosophy
which gravitated to ... thinking inaccessible to pure reason." (p. 116). While I do
not deny that these sources may exist, their workings have remained mysterious to me. (See
Stepin's article for a more convincing attempt to describe the cultural prerequisites to a
working market economy).
In his concluding remarks, A. Ogurtsov summarizes the components of Russian mentality.
These include "an excessive obsession with the future, the absence of individual
conscience, and, consequently, irresponsibility in taking decisions in risky and
indefinite situations, the desire to don Messianic garments, the openness and highly
responsive nature of Russian mentality ..." (p. 119/20). However, he also sensibly
discusses the problems involved in any debate about cultural traits. For example,
"Can we generally speak of Russian mentality?" (p. 121); and, the need to
"distinguish between the aims of broad popular masses and those of the elite."
(p. 122).
Western and Eastern stereotypes
In a book trying to reveal Western and Eastern stereotypes of each other, A. Pavlovskaya
writes that "The distinguishing feature of the Russian national character is the
tendency to self-analysis and often to self-criticism." (p. 190, no.1, 1996). In a
review of the book this statement is critizised since "Pavlovskaya does not submit
any proof that these features are distinguishing traits of the Russian national
character" (p. 190)
Another contribution, by V. Shestakov and A. Zabrovsky, claims that the Russian people
is especially devoted to the "feeling of fraternity, solidarity, and the absence of
individualism and rejection by men of letters the spirit of consumerism" (p. 191).
Once again one could argue that the authors are the victims of the same prejudices they
are trying to reveal in Russian attitudes toward the West. There is at least nothing
surprising about the above claim.
Russian culture and the market economy
What are the "spiritual prerequisites" of a market economy? V. Stepin (1996)
tries to answer this question. In his words:
"The system rests on the law-governed state and the unified legal space as a sine
qua non of contract relationships among the market subjects; on justice and equality
as first and foremost equal possibilities; on the value of life as an urge to constantly
and boldly improve the conditions of existence" (p. 26).
There is little to disagree with here, except that one might distinguish between the
pre-requisites for making the market work (laws - and a functioning legal system - to
enforce contractual agreements, and the profit motive) and the requirements for making the
market morally appealing (some degree of equal opportunities).
Obviously these prerequisites do not exist to a satisfactory degree in Russia, and
Stepin concludes that "Devoid of traditional roots the ideas were nothing more than
utopias" (p. 27). As he writes, "The ideals of individualism have never been a
priority in the Russian cultural tradition ..." instead the idea of sobornost and
communal life was at the center of spiritual life (p. 27). Moreover, the Russian idea of
freedom "is oriented not so much at individual freedom as at its collective
forms", and "The categories of 'law' and 'right' are interpreted in a special
way by the archetypes of Russian mentality. They are not values by themselves if not
described as just. justice has always been higher than the law." (p. 29). The typical
Russian is also viewed as loving a strong state and Klyuchevsky is interpreted to have
argued that "typical features of Russian mentality" include "its bias to
random and irrational actions" (p. 30). Lastly, Stepin writes that "Russians
often act irrationally in the market games, they are too trusting, support all sorts of
pyramids, risk their money, entrusting everything they have to people that have already
cheated them, etc." (p. 30).
Despite the existence of these traits Stepin surprisingly concludes that "Only a
superficial observer can describe many of our traditions as conservative and ill suited
for a civilised market" (p. 32). There are two reasons for this. First, "the
archetype of Russian consciousness has a vast potential for change and extension" (p.
32). Hence, some of the traits incompatible with a market economy may change. Second,
Russian "collectivism ... should not be taken as an obstacle on the road to the
market. In fact, they might prove useful" (p. 31). For example Japan also has a
strong collectivist culture, but this does not seem to prevent the existence of an
effective capitalist economy.
One might disagree with the argument that the Russian culture has a vast potential for
change - at least in the short run. However, it is important to discuss the issue of
change. One might, for example, argue that the Russian culture will slowly change as a
result of its experience with the market economy. This implies that one should not count
an existing cultural trait as an obstacle to a market economy - or talk about spiritual
prerequisites to a market economy. The point is that the market culture comes after
the free market. Alternatively one might adopt a more complex model in which the culture
and the economy interact with each other - sometimes the economy affects the culture, and
sometimes the culture affect the working of the economy. Obviously, in this kind of joint
causation it would be difficult to distinguish between the isolated effects of the
variables.
Conclusion
The Russian picture of themselves coincides very much with Western views on Russia.
Collectivism, Messianic attitudes, irrationality, the desire for justice, the
authoritarian attitudes - these are all traits claimed to be typically Russian both by
Eastern and Western authors. Still, I am reluctant to base an explanation of Russian
totalitarianism on these traits. Nor do I want to use the traits to predict the failure of
democracy and capitalism in Russia. In short, I am unimpressed by the evidence used to
support the argument that the Russians have a certain trait. I am also unimpressed by the
plausibility of the connection between the traits and its claimed consequences. I am,
frankly, unimpressed by most writings - Eastern or Western - dealing with culture as an
explanatory variable. Too often they convey the feeling of arm-chair theory without proper
concern for empirical evidence.
References
Kantor, Vladimir (translated by N. Perova) (1996), Russian Literature: Love and Fear of
Capitalism, Social Sciences Quarterly Review, no. 3, pp. 90-113.
Pantin I., A. Panarin, V. Kantor, A. Erygin, V. Makarenko, A. Ogurtsov (translated by
V. Podkolzin), Rusian Mentality (1994), Discussion on the Russian Mentality, Social
Sciences Quarterly Review, no. 3, pp. 105-123.
Shubin A. (translated by V. Yasinsky), (1996), Review of Russia and the West: a
Dialogue of Cultures, Social Sciences Quarterly Review, no. 1, pp. 189-192.
Stepin, Vyacheslav (translated by V. Levina) (1996), Culture and the Emerging Civilised
Market in Russia, Social Sciences Quarterly Review, no. 2, pp. 23-32.
See also: V. Kudryavtzev and H. Lukasheva's article "Individualism or
Collectivism?" in Social Sciences Quarterly Review, 1996 (no. 3), pp. 6-18.
[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans O. (1997), Russians about Russians -
A sample of views on cultural traits, http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/970501.htm]