IF WE ARE NOT THE WEST, THEN WHO ARE WE?

Bad news for the official authorities, television anchormen, and fascist ideologues: Russian culture became great, only after Russia became Europe

It has already been six months since the victory of the Maidan (Ukrainian Independence Rallies)...

CENSORED. TEXT TEMPORARILY HIDDEN AT THE REQUEST OF ROSKOMNADZOR (Russian FCC) - AWAITING DECISION OF THE COURT.

...In this context: what is this special "Russian culture"?

There certainly is a Russian culture, and it gave the world great works of music, poetry and literature.

The problem is that Russian culture became great, only when Russia became Europe.

Tchaikovsky was not born of the balalaika, and Pushkin was born of the boarding school at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum - not from his beloved nanny’s fairy tales. If Pushkin's cultural baggage consisted only of Arina Rodionovna's nursery rhymes, he would not exist. Actually, he would never have been at all, because his ancestor (Abram Hannibal) was the Blackamoor of Peter the Great.

Russian culture became great, when all of it - Russian science, literature, music and painting, from Lomonosov to Landau, from Pushkin to Tolstoy, from Bryullov to Mussorgsky - became a part of Western culture.

Moreover, had Peter the Great not made Russia a part of the European world, there would not only have been no Tolstoy to Turgenev, there would never been a Russian empire, so beloved by our patriots. It simply would have never existed.

Western observers were shocked in visiting the Principality of Moscow, with its harsh Domostroi domestic rules, xenophobia, technical backwardness, and by the way, homosexuality. It was on the geopolitical world map right next to ancient and backward Persia.

Our patriots would never have lamented the loss of Ukraine, since Ukraine would have been part of Greater Poland or Greater Lithuania. Our patriots would never have suffered for the Crimea, since Tatars would still be living there. Smolensk would belong to the Poles, while the gas deposits in the Urengoy would be being developed by Greater Sweden. Somewhere in the Urals we would border the industrial superpower of Japan, which at the beginning of the 20th century was in the throws of a desperate search for natural resources and violent colonization.

It was Peter the Great who planted European culture in Russian wilderness, or to be exact – re-inoculated it, since the first vaccination had been given us by the Vikings. The Tatars, however, cut that tree down to almost the root. After the Tatars, the tree grew into a land of drunkenness, with the tsar's inquisitors, the Oprichnina, and ignorance. Fedka Basmanov dancing for the Ivan the Terrible, while everyone kisses the royal boots and gets decapitated. And of course, had it not been for Peter the Great, it would be a land of ignorant bigots, confident in their own superiority.

After Peter, we started wearing European dress. After him the woman left their towers, poets began composing odes and epitaphs, high-flown dandies spoke of Venus and Bacchus, and scientists went to study at Western universities. After Peter a Russian nobility was born, and it discovered a word hitherto unknown in Russia, but central to Europe - honor. Because of the “honor” of the nobles, new Ivan the Terribles - such has Peter III and Paul I – instead of directing new Oprichninas, had snuffboxes tossed at their heads.

There is quite a lot I do not like about the modern West, and I often write about it, but I am writing this article because I feel that I am a part of the West. Pushkin wrote an ode to Andre Chenier, Lermontov put forth Heine, because they too felt a part of this culture. Andre Chenier was for them less exotic than a recently conquered Muslim Caucasus. Just as with Pushkin and Lermontov, this is felt by millions of our fellow countrymen who go to the West and easily integrate once there. Pay attention: Russians are not Arabs or Africans - they are a nation that most easily integrates into the United States and Europe. You do not hear of a Russian sitting on welfare for decades, or treating it as a path to a Russian Orthodox jihad.

I like many things about modern China, but I am never going to emigrate to China, just as millions of Russian emigrants are also not leaving for China.

Of course, it is cool to say that we are not "the decadent West", but if we are not the West, then who are we?

Who is more familiar to the Russian reader: beautiful Helen of Troy, or Yang Guifei? Who for us was a great general: Hannibal, or Zhuge Liang? Who for us is the founder of Empire: Julius Caesar, or Qin Shi Huang? Does classical Russian literature refer to Herodotus, or Symyao Qian? To the "Iliad" or "Ramayana"? Which is more often quoted: the Bible, or the Koran? With what did Pushkin compare the moon: a Varangian shield and Dutch cheese, or the Chinese lunar hare? How many expressions in Russian can be traced from the French, and how many from Chinese or Arabic? In secondary schools, do they teach Greek and Latin as a classical language, or the language of the Koran? Do they read "Notes on the Gallic War", or the "Shih Ching"?

Forget grammar school - go out onto the Tverskaya and read the rows of signs: Bar 02 Lounge, The Ritz-Carlton Moscow, Bosco, Evalar, Inkom-real estate, Calzedonia, Balkan Express, BM-estate, Shop Lonsdale, Orthobest Salon, Transmegapolis, Universaltur, Massimo Dutti, TJ collection, Braccialini, Adamas, Rendezvous, Rosbank. Wow! No "Shiva", no "Barakat" no "Guanyin", and what is even quite surprising, an obvious deficiency of "Ilya Muromets", "Sadko" and "Domostroi."

Look at our billboards - these are undeceived with regards to the consciousness of symbols - go and calculate what there are more of: references to the West, to the East, or to the "age-old Russian past"? I have been doing this for a long time, and the results, I assure you, are amazing. We even have villages for our elite that prefer names such as "Greenfield", "Richmond", and "Helvetia". And by the way, in the phrase "elitniy kottedzhniy posyolok" (elite cottage settlement) - how many words are actually Russian?

There is no doubt that we had our own, Russian, culture. There were Perun, Veles and Dazhdbog, but in all honesty: have you ever seen a woman's beauty salon called "Mokosh"? Who among my readers remembers the Frog Princess in the Russian fairy tale, and not for any other reason than the frog Rozhanitsa was a goddess to the ancient Slavs? Yes, the myths and legends of Perun could have developed into their own, original system of the world, no less sophisticated than the ancient Greek or Chinese pantheons - but it never did develop, and now it is too late.

Here, I think, the despondent Russian reader will sigh and ask: "Why are we so unlucky, everyone has a culture, but we only have a borrowed stub of one?"

I must reassure the reader: this is not an exception, but the norm...

CENSORED. TEXT TEMPORARILY HIDDEN AT THE REQUEST OF ROSKOMNADZOR (Russian FCC) - AWAITING DECISION OF THE COURT.

...Japanese and Korean cultures are grafts from China. Roman culture was borrowed from the Greeks, and there is nothing really to discuss as far as European culture in general. It is all continuous borrowing. England is Europe, but what is the "age-old English culture"? Is it the culture of the Norman conquerors? Is it the culture of the conquered Saxons, who, in turn, conquered the Celts of England? Is it the Culture of the Celts, which at the time of the Saxon conquest was borrowed from the Romans? Prussia is European, but what is the "age-old Prussian culture"? Pagan Prussians spoke the Baltic language (as did Lithuanians), not German, and their language and culture were destroyed by the Livonian Order, starting in the 13th century. Will we restore it?

Once again: an "age-old Russian culture" does not exist, there is no ago-old Prussian, age-old British, or even age-old European culture. Just as most cultivated plants do not exist in nature, since they are cultivated, most cultures are not age-old, since they have been cultivated.

All modern, dynamically developing civilizations are centuries-old layers of cultural borrowing, and beginning in the 19th century these cultures have been engaged in the ethnography and anthropology of "age-old cultures". These still exist - take the Papuans. We, thank God, are not Papuans - although we are trying hard to make ourselves into them.

Under the slogan: "a return to the great Russian culture" our society is rapidly assuming a fascist character, and we are supposed to consider rudeness, drunkenness, and incivility to be age-old Russian traditions. We are told that the traditional Russian drinks, chops off heads, and takes bribes. While anything else, they say, is from the decadent West.

Alas, there is nothing "age-old Russian" in cruelty and blood. This is only that primitiveness that is inherent in the origins of any civilization. Henry VIII chopped off the heads of his wives, but it is unlikely that David Cameron will be able to do the same and cite this as an "age-old British tradition." All successful civilizations have passed through bestiality and barbarism, but any successful civilization would never dream of taking bestiality as an example to be followed. Only under fascism would this even come to mind.

Sorry for the crude translation - I'm out of practice.

The best example of Russia - East or West - that Yulia Latynina missed would be: at the end of the year Russians bring little fir trees into their homes, decorate them, have parties, exchange presents, and then put on a nice dress, or a suit and tie, and go watch Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker".

“Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship; but it is not this day! An hour of wolves, and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down; but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!”

I give the Russians major credit for inflicting several key defeats earlier on the Muslim invaders of Europe. Which is not to say that they were as civilized then as they became after the European influence became fashionable.

I’ve never understood why Russia turned to Europe culturally and then became obsessed with controlling it when they have a gigantic expanse of territory to the east they barely developed.

It’s like after the defeat of Napoleon they totally blew all of the goodwill they amassed and promptly spent the next 100 years imploding.

Wasn’t Siberia traditionally a place for exile & punishment? Remote & bitterly cold.

Therefore most Russians looked Westward. They liked what they saw and have been trying to dominate Europe ever since. From Stalin’s tanks to Putin’s Gazprom, the Bear extends a greedy paw.

I very much like Russian literature, 19th century in particular - Tolstoy as an example. East or West. it really doesn’t matter. People, most people, retain their original heritage, one way or another. BOOKMARKED for later.

Please, go ahead with your post. If it improves the point, I’m all for it.

No pride here.

We’ve got to inspire the next generations to be ‘men of the west’.

If anyone reads Russian, the original piece on Novaya Gazeta's site is followed by literally yards of comments, mostly nitpicking trivia of Russian history or ad hominum attacks, but all in all pretty informative, if not outright entertaining.

A little bit like Free Republic, esp. during the Clinton regime ;-)

I'm afraid that I disagree with Ms. Latynina about Russia's status, and agree more with Rudyard Kipling's assessment:

''Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists on being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle.''

Here's what made Yulia Latynina's article more relevant today:

In Novaya Gazeta, 10/10/2014
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/1688061.html

Novaya Gazeta lawyers carefully examine Roskomnadzor's warning

The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Communications issued a warning to Novaya Gazeta against the use of media to carry out extremist activities.

The warning came because of an article by Yulia Latynina, "If we are not the West, then who are we?"

FROM THE EDITOR:

Novaya Gazeta's lawyers are now carefully studying the document. However, if we begin from our initial impression, it is likely that we will have to disagree with the authorities and prove our case with the assistance of highly qualified specialists in the field of linguistics. At the same time I would like to point out a strange imbalance in the views of officials who monitor the media: why are some government stations allowed to make derogatory remarks against certain social groups and peoples and not find themselves subject to any penalties - even when they directly incite war?

Warning to Novaya Gazeta from Russian FCC, page 1.
Warning to Novaya Gazeta from Russian FCC, page 2.

Novaya Gazeta was where the heroic Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya worked until her death on October 7th (Putin's birthday), 2006.

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