The Russian Character
«Pas de deux»
by
Alex Domokos
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No doubt the Russian soul is enigmatic. Maybe all humans are enigmatic
up to a point, but few nations are so unfathomable, so mysterious as the
Russians are. Although we can say it was shocking to learn that the
nation of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Kant and Hegel could be
as inhuman as the German Nazis, it is equally unbelievable that the
nation of Pushkin, Chekhov, Tolstoi, Vershagin, Gorky, and Dostoevsky
was just as cruel and uninterested in the value of human life as the
Russians were under Stalin. But there is a difference between the
character of the two cruelties. Not that the end result was different,
but the emotions were
. As for German cruelty, it became obvious only after the war that it
was cold and calculated. It was expressed without emotion as a
systematic, frighteningly orderly annihilation of humans. The Russians
were temperamental, capricious, emotional, and almost frenzied
torturers. One would shoot you in the stomach, no questions asked. The
other would offer you a last cigarette before shooting you. That sudden
change of emotion is so obvious in Russian folk music. It begins with a
melancholic slow melody and suddenly erupts into a vivacious rhythm,
only to stop as suddenly, returning to the melody of soul-searching blue
melancholy.
Sudden and unpredictable mood changes were surprising for us at the
beginning of our captivity in Soviet Russia. We needed time to adapt to
it, but after years of incarceration we learned how to deal with it. An
episode that took place in the Caucasus may make this clear.
We, the Hungarian officers, were exempt from compulsory physical
labour by the Geneva Convention. However, being in a cage with nothing
to do between meals was nerve-wracking monotony. When the announcement
came about a new "potato commando", many young officers were eager to
enlist voluntarily. The location of our 'potato commando' camp was high
up on the slope of the Elbrus, the dominant peak of the Caucasus.
At a height of about three thousand metres, there is a plateau where
the virgin volcanic soil yielded a tremendous amount of fist-sized
potatoes. The harvest was preserved in great heaps like burial mounds.
These were covered over with soil to protect the potatoes from freezing.
Now, it was early spring and we had to open up the silos and load the
potatoes into brand new Studebakers, supplied by the United States as
gifts to the Soviet Union. Only those wonderful machines could cope with
that hostile roadless terrain and oxygen-starved atmosphere.
Our reward for volunteering was an unlimited amount of boiled
potatoes, enhancing our diet for the physically strenuous work. We were
lodged in a dugout cabin where the brick oven was fed with logs from the
forest nearby. Being warm and well-fed was heaven on earth for a P.O.W.
in 1949 in the USSR. There was only a six-man detachment of guards under
the command of a Cossack lieutenant. He was a horseman wounded in the
war, and being commander of such an insignificant unit greatly hurt his
self-esteem. He seldom visited us. We saw him in the distance galloping
along the edge of the forest. We were working under the direct
supervision of an agronomist, a clerk of the state farm, who was
crippled in the war. His hostility was obvious at morning briefings when
he ordered which silo should be opened. His contempt grew even further
when he learned that we were volunteers and officers.
On a sunny morning, when the crisp mountain air was still well below
freezing point, he ordered us to take off our cotton padded coats and
work bare-chested. He wanted to force us to work fast. But being old
foxes, we knew our rights and refused to obey. He confronted us with
blazing eyes and attempted to take our coats by force, but we surrounded
him. The shovels in our hands were menacing. When the wretched foreman
realized that he had aroused our ire, he became frightened. He broke
through our ring and ran towards the village guard post. He met the
Cossack and sputtered out his story about the revolt of the prisoners,
then collapsed. The Cossack, knowing nothing about his epileptic
condition and seeing him on the ground foaming at the mouth, assumed
that the man had been beaten. He gave rein to his horse and galloped
towards us, revolver drawn. Seeing our danger, we quickly moved to the
other side of the mound; it was about two metres high and could not be
crossed on horseback. He raced around the silo shouting insults at us,
daring us to face him. He was in a frenzy but we were too wily to accept
his challenge. We just climbed over the top from one side to the other
keeping out of harm's way. The cat and mouse game came to an end when
one of our group shouted back to him that we were Hungarian officers.
"We are officers like you and are voluntarily helping to collect the
crop for the Soviet people."
He stopped as though struck by lightning. "Officers? Da, charsho.
Papirosy?" (Officers, are you? Well then, would you like a smoke?)
With that he took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and
distributed them among us while listening to our explanation of the
commotion.
"What? He ordered you to take off your overcoats? He has no right to
give you orders! He is a nobody! I'll go and teach him a lesson he'll
never forget!"
It took all our persuasion to talk him out of beating the foreman for
his insolence in daring to give orders to officers. His change of mood
from hatred to friendship took only moments, just like balalaika music
which jumps from a peak of exuberance down to the pit of despair. While
in captivity, it was not only dangerous but sometimes fatal for
prisoners to deal with overlords of such mercurial character who might
shoot you first and cry for forgiveness later.
Big Bad Uncle Russ
"«Pas de deux»" <kamou...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:_Fhoe.41489$_r1.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
When was Mr Domokos in Auschwitz or Birkenau, to
compare Russians under Stalin with the Nazis?
What have the personal qualities of a few crippled guards
got to with Stalin's dictatorship, much less with folk music?
It probably gives some folks in DC an erection to read such
*guilty conscience* soothing articles. Maybe it helps justify
their irrational haltered towards the Russians and Slavik people
generally.
Amazing waste of paper.
«Pas de deux»
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911.RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AS
SHOWN IN RUSSIAN FICTIONTHE Japanese war pricked one of the biggest
bubbles in history, and left Russia in a profoundly humiliating
situation. Her navy was practically destroyed, her armies soundly
beaten, her offensive power temporarily reduced to zero, her treasury
exhausted, her pride laid in the dust. If the greatness of a nation
consisted in the number and size of its battleships, in the capacity of
its fighting men, or in its financial prosperity, Russia would be an
object of pity. But in America it is wholesome to remember that the real
greatness of a nation consists in none of these things, but rather in
its intellectual splendour, in the number and importance of the ideas it
gives to the world, in its contributions to literature and art, and to
all things that count in humanity's intellectual advance. When we
Americans swell with pride over our industrial prosperity, we might
profitably reflect for a moment on the comparative value of America's
and Russia's contributions to literature and music.
At the start, we notice a rather curious fact, which sharply
differentiates Russian literature from the literature of England,
France, Spain, Italy, and even from that of Germany. Russia is old; her
literature is new. Russian history goes back to the ninth century;
Russian literature, so far as it interests the world, begins in the
nineteenth. Russian literature and American literature are twins. But
there is this strong contrast, caused partly by the difference in the
age of the two nations. In the early years of the nineteenth century,
American literature sounds like a child learning to talk, and then aping
its elders; Russian literature is the voice of a giant, waking from a
long sleep, and becoming articulate. It is as though the world had
watched this giant's deep slumber for a long time, wondering what he
would say when he awakened. And what he has said has been well worth the
thousand years of waiting.
To an educated native Slav, or to a professor of the Russian language,
twenty or thirty Russian authors would no doubt seem important; but the
general foreign reading public is quite properly mainly interested in
only five standard writers, although contemporary novelists like Gorki,
Artsybashev, Andreev, and others are at this moment deservedly
attracting wide attention. The great five, whose place in the world's
literature seems absolutely secure, are Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev,
Dostoevski, and Tolstoi. The man who killed Pushkin in a duel survived
till 1895, and Tolstoi died in 1910. These figures show in how short a
time Russian literature has had its origin, development, and full
fruition.
Pushkin, who was born in 1799 and died in 1838, is the founder of
Russian literature, and it is difficult to overestimate his influence.
He is the first, and still the most generally beloved, of all their
national poets. The wild enthusiasm that greeted his verse has never
passed away, and he has generally been regarded in Russia as one of the
great poets of the world. Yet Matthew Arnold announced in his Olympian
manner, "The Russians have not yet had a great poet."
The founder of the mighty school of Russian Realism was Gogol. Filled
with enthusiasm for Pushkin, he nevertheless took a different course,
and became Russia's first great novelist. Furthermore, although a
melancholy man, he is the only Russian humorist who has made the world
laugh out loud. Humour is not a salient quality in Russian fiction. Then
came the brilliant follower of Gogol, Ivan Turgenev. In him Russian
literary art reached its climax, and the art of the modern novel as
well. He is not only the greatest master of prose style that Russia has
ever produced; he is the only Russian who has shown genius in
Construction. Perhaps no novels in any language have shown the
impeccable beauty of form attained in the works of Turgenev. George
Moore queries, "Is not Turgenev the greatest artist that has existed
since antiquity?"
Dostoevski, seven years older than Tolstoi, and three years younger than
Turgenev, was not so much a Realist as a Naturalist; his chief interest
was in the psychological processes of the unclassed. His foreign fame is
constantly growing brighter, for his works have an extraordinary
vitality. Finally appeared Leo Tolstoi, whose literary career extended
nearly sixty years. During the last twenty years of his life, he was
generally regarded as the world's greatest living author; his books
enjoyed an enormous circulation, and he probably influenced more
individuals by his pen than any other man of his time.
In the novels of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi we ought to
find all the prominent traits in the Russian character.
The immense size of the country produces an element of largeness in
Russian character that one feels not only in their novels, but almost
invariably in personal contact and conversation with a more or less
educated Russian. This is not imaginary and fantastic; it is a definite
sensation, and immediately apparent. Russians are moulded on a large
scale, and their novels are as wide in interest as the world itself. As
illustrations of this quality of vastness, one has only to recall two
Russian novels--one the longest, and the other very nearly the shortest,
in the whole range of Slavonic fiction. I refer to War and Peace, by
Tolstoi, and to Taras Bulba, by Gogol. Both of these extraordinary works
give us chiefly an impression of Immensity--we feel the boundless
steppes, the illimitable wastes of snow, and the long winter night. It
is particularly interesting to compare Taras Bulba with the trilogy of
the Polish genius, Sienkiewicz. The former is tiny in size, the latter a
leviathan; but the effect produced is the same. It is what we feel in
reading Homer, whose influence, by the way, is as powerful in Taras
Bulba as it is in With Fire and Sword.
To an Englishman or an American, perhaps the most striking trait in the
Russian character is his lack of practical force--the paralysis of his
power of will. The national character among the educated classes is
personified in fiction, in a type peculiarly Russian; and that may be
best defined by calling it the conventional Hamlet. I say the
conventional Hamlet, for I believe Shakespeare's Hamlet is a man of
immense resolution and self-control. The Hamlet of the commentators is
as unlike Shakespeare's Hamlet as systematic theology is unlike the
Sermon on the Mount. The hero of the orthodox Russian novel is a
veritable L'Aiglon. This national type must be clearly understood before
an American can understand Russian novels at all. In order to show that
it is not imaginary, but real, one has only to turn to Sienkiewicz's
powerful work, Without Dogma, the very title expressing the lack of
conviction that destroys the hero.
"Last night, at Count Malatesta's reception, I heard by chance these two
words, 'l'improductivité slave.' I experienced the same relief as does a
nervous patient when the physician tells him that his symptoms are
common enough, and that many others suffer from the same disease. . . .
I thought about that 'improductivité slave' all night. He had his wits
about him who summed the thing up in these two words. There is something
in us,--an incapacity to give forth all that is in us. One might say,
God has given us bow and arrow, but refused us the power to string the
bow and send the arrow straight to its aim. I should like to discuss it
with my father, but am afraid to touch a sore point. Instead of this, I
will discuss it with my diary. Perhaps it will be just the thing to give
it any value. Besides, what can be more natural than to write about what
interests me? Everybody carries within him his tragedy. Mine is this
same 'improductivité slave' of the Ploszowskis. Not long ago, when
romanticism flourished in hearts and poetry, everybody carried his
tragedy draped around him as a picturesque cloak; now it is carried
still, but as a jägervest next to the skin. But with a diary it is
different; with a diary one may be sincere. . . . To begin with, I note
down that my religious belief I carried still intact with me from Metz
did not withstand the study of natural philosophy. It does not follow
that I am an atheist. Oh, no! this was good enough in former times, when
he who did not believe in spirit, said to himself, 'Matter,' and that
settled for him the question. Nowadays only provincial philosophers
cling to that worn-out creed. Philosophy of our times does not pronounce
upon the matter; to all such questions, it says, 'I do not know.' And
that 'I do not know' sinks into and permeates the mind. Nowadays
psychology occupies itself with close analysis and researches of
spiritual manifestations; but when questioned upon the immortality of
the soul it says the same, 'I do not know,' and truly it does not know,
and it cannot know. And now it will be easier to describe the state of
my mind. It all lies in these words: I do not know. In this--in the
acknowledged impotence of the human mind--lies the tragedy. Not to
mention the fact that humanity always has asked, and always will ask,
for an answer, they are truly questions of more importance than anything
else in the world. If there be something on the other side, and that
something an eternal life, then misfortunes and losses on this side are,
as nothing. 'I am content to die,' says Renan, 'but I should like to
know whether death will be of any use to me.' And philosophy replies, 'I
do not know.' And man beats against that blank wall, and like the
bedridden sufferer fancies, if he could lie on this or on that side, he
would feel easier. What is to be done?"Those last five words are often
heard in Russian mouths. It is a favourite question. It is, indeed, the
title of two Russian books.
The description of the Slavonic temperament given by Sienkiewicz tallies
exactly with many prominent characters in Russian novels. Turgenev first
completely realised it in Rudin; he afterwards made it equally clear in
Torrents of Spring, Smoke, and other novels. Raskolnikov, in
Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment, is another illustration; he wishes to
be a Napoleon, and succeeds only in murdering two old women.
Artsybashev, in his terrible novel, Sanin, has given an admirable
analysis of this great Russian type in the character of Jurii, who
finally commits suicide simply because he cannot find a working theory
of life. Writers so different as Tolstoi and Gorki have given plenty of
good examples. Indeed, Gorki, in Varenka Olessova, has put into the
mouth of a sensible girl an excellent sketch of the national
representative. "The Russian hero is always silly and stupid, he is
always sick of something; always thinking of something that cannot be
understood, and is himself so miserable, so m--i--serable! He will
think, think, then talk, then he will go and make a declaration of love,
and after that he thinks, and thinks again, till he marries. . . . And
when he is married, he talks all sorts of nonsense to his wife, and then
abandons her."
Turgenev's Bazarov and Artsybashev's Sanin indicate the ardent revolt
against the national masculine temperament; like true Slavs, they go
clear to the other extreme, and bring resolution to a reductio ad
absurdum; for your true Russian knows no middle course, being entirely
without the healthy moderation of the Anglo-Saxon. The great Turgenev
realised his own likeness to Rudin. Mrs. Ritchie has given a very
pleasant unconscious testimony to this fact.
"Just then my glance fell upon Turgenev leaning against the doorpost at
the far end of the room, and as I looked, I was struck, being
shortsighted, by a certain resemblance to my father [Thackeray], which I
tried to realise to myself. He was very tall, his hair was grey and
abundant, his attitude was quiet and reposeful; I looked again and again
while I pictured to myself the likeness. When Turgenev came up after the
music, he spoke to us with great kindness, spoke of our father, and of
having dined at our house, and he promised kindly and willingly to come
and call next day upon my sister and me in Onslow Gardens. I can
remember that next day still; dull and dark, with a yellow mist in the
air. All the afternoon I sat hoping and expecting that Turgenev might
come, but I waited in vain. Two days later, we met him again at Mrs.
Huth's, where we were all once more assembled. Mr. Turgenev came
straight up to me at once. 'I was so sorry that I could not come and see
you,' he said, 'so very sorry, but I was prevented. Look at my thumbs!'
and he held up both his hands with the palms outwards. I looked at his
thumbs, but I could not understand. 'See how small they are,' he went
on; 'people with such little thumbs can never do what they intend to do,
they always let themselves be prevented;' and he laughed so kindly that
I felt as if his visit had been paid all the time and quite understood
the validity of the excuse."
lora...@cs.com
«Pas de deux» wrote:
> Essay On Russian Novelists by William Lyon PHelps
> New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911.RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AS
> SHOWN IN RUSSIAN FICTIONTHE Japanese war pricked one of the biggest
> bubbles in history, and left Russia in a profoundly humiliating
> situation. Her navy was practically destroyed, her armies soundly
> beaten, her offensive power temporarily reduced to zero, her treasury
> exhausted, her pride laid in the dust. If the greatness of a nation
> consisted in the number and size of its battleships, in the capacity of
> its fighting men, or in its financial prosperity, Russia would be an
> object of pity. But in America it is wholesome to remember that the real
> greatness of a nation consists in none of these things, but rather in
> its intellectual splendour, in the number and importance of the ideas it
> gives to the world
That's for sure..
The russian character is surprisingly malleable.
Previously sporting a largish white french poodle dog, Putin has
recently been seen only with a larger gray dog, thus showing that
changes in decision making are not foreign to all russians - even if
the dogs seem to be.
No report has been received as to the fate of the poodle dog as any
evidence of KGB liquidations are no longer accessable from russian
achives.
Uzi A. Kalashnikov
>
> That's for sure..
> The russian character is surprisingly malleable.
>
> Previously sporting a largish white french poodle dog, Putin has
> recently been seen only with a larger gray dog, thus showing that
> changes in decision making are not foreign to all russians - even if
> the dogs seem to be.
>
> No report has been received as to the fate of the poodle dog as any
> evidence of KGB liquidations are no longer accessable from russian
> achives.
Putin is a germanophile. His is a typical germanic personality. But
with an English sense of humour.
My very best,
Uzi A. Kalashnikov
HW
Whoever is managing his image should suggest a gray wolf.
lora...@cs.com
HW wrote:
> > > Previously sporting a largish white french poodle dog, Putin has
> > > recently been seen only with a larger gray dog, thus showing that
> > > changes in decision making are not foreign to all russians - even if
> > > the dogs seem to be.
> > >
> > > No report has been received as to the fate of the poodle dog as any
> > > evidence of KGB liquidations are no longer accessable from russian
> > > achives.
> Whoever is managing his image should suggest a gray wolf.
You didn't get the joke at all...
Russian chekist... missing dog...liquidated...archives closed...
Pretty funny, if you'd ever think about it.
Vladimir Makarenko
You are not funny when you attempt at joking. You're when you're serious
however.
DO not digress.
VM.