It is a long-standing tradition to characterize Russia as an "unintelligible country" or, to quote the famous dictum of Winston Churchill, "a riddle enshrined in a mystery and wrapped in an enigma." At the core of this riddle is, no doubt, the Russian national character--the so-called mysterious Slavic soul--which, in the view of both Western and Russian observers, is such a bizarre combination of opposites that it hardly lends itself to any rationally plausible interpretation. Indeed, it is difficult to construe a social-psychological frame of reference within which one could adequately account for the existence in one people, let alone in one and the same individual, of such contradictory features as cruelty and warm heartedness, curiosity and dogmatism, anarchism and adherence to social order, laziness and bursts of energy, erratic behavior and great patience, disorderliness and a passion for meticulous planning, and cautious aversion to risk-taking and foolhardiness.
This is not to say that scholars have not attempted to elaborate theories explaining such contradictions; in fact, quite a few theories have been offered. From one, we learn that the explanation of the Russian character lies in geography: the vast expanse of territory without natural boundaries or access to warm seas, the absence of convenient trade routes, monotonous forest plains devoid of inspiring diversity, inexhaustible supplies of wood as the staple building material, and so on. In another, the climate, with its multiple effects of long, cruel winters and short, hot summers, has been singled out as the key for understanding the Russians. Other candidates for this role of demystification of the Russian character include: the rigidity of the Russian Orthodox God, who invoked fear rather than love; the tradition of swaddling babies; or even, latent homosexual tendencies. Although most of these theories have fallen into oblivion after their initial moment of glory, they, and any others, have at least a grain of truth. Though incapable of individually providing an adequate conceptual framework, these theories give some insight when combined into a pattern. The problem then is not in finding a single, completely accurate theory, but in integrating all the possible concepts into a single coherent structure. It seems to me that this problem could be best solved by employing the concept of mentality.
Patterns of Perception
Mentality, in my view, is largely determined by the basic perception of the environment, life, and time--seemingly genetically based,--which develop in very early childhood and persist throughout life. Experiences in adolescence and adulthood shape the specific and varying religious, political, cultural, and habitual preferences. However, while they modify and develop the basic perceptions to some extent, in the end they are assimilated into the more general mentality. That is to say, the basic perceptions are the primary and determining traits of mentality, whereas all of its other acquired elements are secondary features that exist within and are shaped by the pattern of the basic perceptions. It seems then that by exploring these first perceptions, we may arrive at a consistent explanation of the Russian mentality that comprehends the national character with all its contradictions. And because these basic perceptions are stable enough to pass from generation to generation without fundamental change, they are the common denominator for such diverse Russian personalities as Dostoyevski and Lenin, Stalin and Solzhenitsyn, Gorbachev and Arkady Shevchenko.
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