National character in the dialogue of cultures. Our national character
In the Russian philosophical and cultural tradition, in all known typologies, Russia is usually considered separately. At the same time, they proceed from the recognition of its exclusivity, the impossibility of reducing it to either the Western or the Eastern type, and from here they draw a conclusion about its special path of development and special mission in the history and culture of mankind. Mostly Russian philosophers wrote about this, starting with the Slavophiles. The topic of the “Russian idea” was very important for and. The result of these reflections on the fate of Russia was summed up in philosophical and historical concepts of Eurasianism.
Prerequisites for the formation of Russian national character
Typically, Eurasians proceed from Russia’s middle position between Europe and Asia, which they consider to be the reason for the combination of features of Eastern and Western civilizations in Russian culture. A similar idea was once expressed by V.O. Klyuchevsky. In the “Course of Russian History” he argued that the character of the Russian people was shaped by the location of Rus' on the border of forest and steppe - elements that are opposite in all respects. This dichotomy between the forest and the steppe was overcome by the Russian people’s love for the river, which was both a nurse, a road, and a teacher of a sense of order and public spirit among the people. The spirit of entrepreneurship and the habit of joint action were cultivated on the river, scattered parts of the population came closer together, people learned to feel part of society.
The opposite effect was exerted by the endless Russian plain, characterized by desolation and monotony. The man on the plain was overcome by a feeling of imperturbable peace, loneliness and sad contemplation. According to many researchers, this is the reason for such properties of Russian spirituality as spiritual gentleness and modesty, semantic uncertainty and timidity, imperturbable calm and painful despondency, lack of clear thought and a predisposition to spiritual sleep, asceticism of desert living and pointlessness of creativity.
The economic and everyday life of Russian people became an indirect reflection of the Russian landscape. Klyuchevsky also noted that Russian peasant settlements, with their primitiveness and lack of the simplest amenities of life, give the impression of temporary, random sites of nomads. This is due both to the long period of nomadic life in ancient times and to the numerous fires that destroyed Russian villages and cities. The result was the rootlessness of the Russian person, manifested in indifference to home improvement and everyday amenities. It also led to a careless and careless attitude towards nature and its riches.
Developing Klyuchevsky's ideas, Berdyaev wrote that the landscape of the Russian soul corresponds to the landscape of the Russian land. Therefore, despite all the complexities of the relationship between Russian people and Russian nature, its cult was so important that it found a very unique reflection in the ethnonym (self-name) of the Russian ethnos. Representatives of various countries and peoples are called by nouns in Russian - Frenchman, German, Georgian, Mongolian, etc., and only Russians call themselves by adjectives. This can be interpreted as the embodiment of one’s belonging to something higher and more valuable than people (people). This is the highest for a Russian person - Rus', the Russian land, and every person is a part of this whole. Rus' (land) is primary, people are secondary.
Its eastern (Byzantine) version played a huge role in the formation of Russian mentality and culture. The result of the baptism of Rus' was not only its entry into the then civilized world, the growth of international authority, the strengthening of diplomatic, trade, political and cultural ties with other Christian countries, not only the creation of the artistic culture of Kievan Rus. From this moment on, the geopolitical position of Russia between the West and the East, its enemies and allies, and its orientation to the East were determined, and therefore the further expansion of the Russian state took place in an eastern direction.
However, this choice also had a downside: the adoption of Byzantine Christianity contributed to the alienation of Russia from Western Europe. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 cemented in the Russian consciousness the idea of its own specialness, the idea of the Russian people as God-bearers, the only bearer of the true Orthodox faith, which predetermined the historical path of Russia. This is largely due to the ideal of Orthodoxy, which combines unity and freedom, embodied in the conciliar unity of people. Moreover, each person is an individual, but not self-sufficient, but manifested only in a conciliar unity, the interests of which are higher than the interests of the individual.
This combination of opposites gave rise to instability and could explode into conflict at any moment. In particular, the basis of all Russian culture lies a number of insoluble contradictions: collectivity and authoritarianism, universal consent and despotic arbitrariness, self-government of peasant communities and strict centralization of power associated with the Asian mode of production.
The inconsistency of Russian culture was also generated by specific for Russia mobilization type of development, when material and human resources are used through their over-concentration and over-tension, in conditions of a shortage of necessary resources (financial, intellectual, time, foreign policy, etc.), often with the immaturity of internal development factors. As a result, the idea of priority of political factors of development over all other and a contradiction arose between the tasks of the state and the capabilities of the population according to their decision, when the security and development of the state was ensured by any means, at the expense of the interests and goals of individual people through non-economic, forceful coercion, as a result of which the state became authoritarian, even totalitarian, the repressive apparatus was disproportionately strengthened as an instrument of coercion and violence. This largely explains the Russian people’s dislike for and at the same time awareness of the need to protect him and, accordingly, the endless patience of the people and their almost resigned submission to power.
Another consequence of the mobilization type of development in Russia was the primacy of the social, communal principle, which is expressed in the tradition of subordinating personal interest to the tasks of society. Slavery was dictated not by the whim of the rulers, but by a new national task - the creation of an empire on a meager economic basis.
All these features formed such features of Russian culture, as the absence of a solid core, led to its ambiguity, binary, duality, constant desire to combine incongruous things - European and Asian, pagan and Christian, nomadic and sedentary, freedom and despotism. Therefore, the main form of the dynamics of Russian culture has become inversion - a change like a pendulum swing - from one pole of cultural meaning to another.
Due to the constant desire to keep up with their neighbors, to jump above their heads, old and new elements coexisted in Russian culture all the time, the future came when there were no conditions for it yet, and the past was in no hurry to leave, clinging to traditions and customs. At the same time, something new often appeared as a result of a leap, an explosion. This feature of historical development explains the catastrophic type of development of Russia, which consists in the constant violent destruction of the old in order to make way for the new, and then find out that this new is not at all as good as it seemed.
At the same time, the dichotomy and binary nature of Russian culture has become the reason for its exceptional flexibility and ability to adapt to extremely difficult conditions of survival during periods of national catastrophes and socio-historical upheavals, comparable in scale to natural disasters and geological disasters.
Main features of the Russian national character
All these moments formed a specific Russian national character, which cannot be assessed unambiguously.
Among positive qualities usually called kindness and its manifestation in relation to people - goodwill, cordiality, sincerity, responsiveness, cordiality, mercy, generosity, compassion and empathy. They also note simplicity, openness, honesty, and tolerance. But this list does not include pride and self-confidence - qualities that reflect a person’s attitude towards himself, which indicates the characteristic attitude of Russians towards “others”, their collectivism.
Russian attitude to work very peculiar. Russian people are hardworking, efficient and resilient, but much more often they are lazy, careless, careless and irresponsible, they are characterized by disregard and sloppiness. The hard work of Russians is manifested in the honest and responsible performance of their work duties, but does not imply initiative, independence, or the desire to stand out from the team. Sloppiness and carelessness are associated with the vast expanses of the Russian land, the inexhaustibility of its riches, which will be enough not only for us, but also for our descendants. And since we have a lot of everything, we don’t feel sorry for anything.
"Faith in a good king" - a mental feature of Russians, reflecting the long-standing attitude of the Russian person who did not want to deal with officials or landowners, but preferred to write petitions to the tsar (general secretary, president), sincerely believing that evil officials are deceiving the good tsar, but as soon as you tell him the truth, how the weight will immediately become good. The excitement around the presidential elections over the past 20 years proves that the belief is still alive that if you choose a good president, Russia will immediately become a prosperous state.
Passion for political myths - another characteristic feature of the Russian person, inextricably linked with the Russian idea, the idea of the special mission of Russia and the Russian people in history. The belief that the Russian people are destined to show the whole world the right path (regardless of what this path should be - true Orthodoxy, the communist or Eurasian idea) was combined with the desire to make any sacrifices (including their own death) in the name of achieving set goal. In search of an idea, people easily rushed to extremes: they went to the people, made a world revolution, built communism, socialism “with a human face,” and restored previously destroyed churches. Myths may change, but the morbid fascination with them remains. Therefore, among the typical national qualities is gullibility.
Calculation on the chance - a very Russian trait. It permeates the national character, the life of the Russian person, and manifests itself in politics and economics. “Maybe” is expressed in the fact that inaction, passivity and lack of will (also named among the characteristics of the Russian character) are replaced by reckless behavior. Moreover, it will come to this at the very last moment: “Until the thunder strikes, the man will not cross himself.”
The flip side of the Russian “maybe” is the breadth of the Russian soul. As noted by F.M. Dostoevsky, “the Russian soul is bruised by the vastness,” but behind its breadth, generated by the vast spaces of our country, hide both prowess, youth, merchant scope, and the absence of a deep rational calculation of the everyday or political situation.
Values of Russian culture
The Russian peasant community played the most important role in the history of our country and in the formation of Russian culture, and the values of Russian culture are to a large extent the values of the Russian community.
Herself community, "world" as the basis and prerequisite for the existence of any individual, it is the most ancient and most important value. For the sake of “peace” he must sacrifice everything, including his life. This is explained by the fact that Russia lived a significant part of its history in conditions of a besieged military camp, when only the subordination of the interests of the individual to the interests of the community allowed the Russian people to survive as an independent ethnic group.
Interests of the team In Russian culture, the interests of the individual are always higher, which is why personal plans, goals and interests are so easily suppressed. But in return, the Russian person counts on the support of the “world” when he has to face everyday adversity (a kind of mutual responsibility). As a result, the Russian person puts aside his personal affairs without displeasure for the sake of some common cause from which he will not benefit, and this is where his attractiveness lies. The Russian person is firmly convinced that he must first arrange the affairs of the social whole, more important than his own, and then this whole will begin to act in his favor at its own discretion. The Russian people are collectivists who can only exist together with society. He suits him, worries about him, for which he, in turn, surrounds him with warmth, attention and support. To become, a Russian person must become a conciliar personality.
Justice- another value of Russian culture, important for life in a team. It was originally understood as the social equality of people and was based on economic equality (of men) in relation to the land. This value is instrumental, but in the Russian community it has become a target value. Members of the community had the right to their own, equal to everyone else, share of the land and all its wealth that the “world” owned. Such justice was the Truth for which the Russian people lived and strived. In the famous dispute between truth-truth and truth-justice, it was justice that prevailed. For a Russian person, it is not so important how it actually was or is; much more important is what should be. The nominal positions of eternal truths (for Russia these truths were truth and justice) were assessed by the thoughts and actions of people. Only they are important, otherwise no result, no benefit can justify them. If nothing comes of what was planned, don’t worry, because the goal was good.
Lack of individual freedom was determined by the fact that in the Russian community, with its equal allotments, periodically carried out redistribution of land, striping, it was simply impossible for individualism to manifest itself. Man was not the owner of the land, did not have the right to sell it, and was not even free in the timing of sowing, harvesting, or in choosing what could be cultivated on the land. In such a situation, it was impossible to demonstrate individual skill. which in Rus' was not valued at all. It is no coincidence that they were ready to accept Lefty in England, but he died in complete poverty in Russia.
The habit of emergency mass activity(suffering) was brought up by the same lack of individual freedom. Here, hard work and a festive mood were combined in a strange way. Perhaps the festive atmosphere was a kind of compensatory means, which made it easier to transfer a heavy load and give up excellent freedom in economic activity.
Wealth could not become a value in a situation of dominance of the idea of equality and justice. It is no coincidence that the proverb is so well known in Russia: “You cannot make stone chambers with righteous labor.” The desire to increase wealth was considered a sin. So, in the Russian northern village, merchants were respected, who artificially slowed down the trade turnover.
Labor itself was also not a value in Rus' (unlike, for example, in Protestant countries). Of course, work is not rejected, its usefulness is recognized everywhere, but it is not considered a means that automatically ensures the fulfillment of a person’s earthly calling and the correct structure of his soul. Therefore, in the system of Russian values, labor occupies a subordinate place: “Work is not a wolf, it will not run away into the forest.”
Life, not oriented towards work, gave the Russian person freedom of spirit (partly illusory). This has always stimulated creativity in a person. It could not be expressed in constant, painstaking work aimed at accumulating wealth, but was easily transformed into eccentricity or work that surprised others (the invention of wings, a wooden bicycle, a perpetual motion machine, etc.), i.e. actions were taken that had no meaning for the economy. On the contrary, the economy often turned out to be subordinate to this idea.
Community respect could not be earned simply by becoming rich. But only a feat, a sacrifice in the name of “peace” could bring glory.
Patience and suffering in the name of “peace”(but not personal heroism) is another value of Russian culture, in other words, the goal of the feat being performed could not be personal, it must always be outside the person. The Russian proverb is widely known: “God endured, and He commanded us too.” It is no coincidence that the first canonized Russian saints were princes Boris and Gleb; They accepted martyrdom, but did not resist their brother, Prince Svyatopolk, who wanted to kill them. Death for the Motherland, death “for one’s friends” brought immortal glory to the hero. It is no coincidence that in Tsarist Russia the words were minted on awards (medals): “Not for us, not for us, but for Your name.”
Patience and suffering- the most important fundamental values for a Russian person, along with consistent abstinence, self-restraint, and constant sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of another. Without this, there is no personality, no status, no respect from others. From here stems the eternal desire for Russian people to suffer - this is the desire for self-actualization, to win the inner freedom necessary to do good in the world, to win freedom of spirit. In general, the world exists and moves only through sacrifice, patience, and self-restraint. This is the reason for the long-suffering characteristic of Russian people. He can endure a lot (especially material difficulties) if he knows why it is necessary.
The values of Russian culture constantly point to its aspiration towards some higher, transcendental meaning. For a Russian person there is nothing more exciting than the search for this meaning. For this, you can leave home, family, become a hermit or holy fool (both of them were highly revered in Rus').
On the day of Russian culture as a whole, this meaning becomes the Russian idea, to the implementation of which the Russian person subordinates his entire way of life. Therefore, researchers talk about the inherent features of religious fundamentalism in the consciousness of Russian people. The idea could change (Moscow is the third Rome, the imperial idea, communist, Eurasian, etc.), but its place in the structure of values remained unchanged. The crisis that Russia is experiencing today is largely due to the fact that the idea that united the Russian people has disappeared; it has become unclear in the name of what we should suffer and humiliate ourselves. The key to Russia's exit from the crisis is the acquisition of a new fundamental idea.
The listed values are contradictory. Therefore, a Russian could simultaneously be a brave man on the battlefield and a coward in civilian life, he could be personally devoted to the sovereign and at the same time rob the royal treasury (like Prince Menshikov in the era of Peter the Great), leave his home and go to war to free the Balkan Slavs. High patriotism and mercy were manifested as sacrifice or beneficence (but it could well become a “disservice”). Obviously, this allowed all researchers to talk about the “mysterious Russian soul”, the breadth of Russian character, that “ You can't understand Russia with your mind».
We are Russians...
What a delight!
A.V. Suvorov
Reflections on the character of the Russian people lead us to the conclusion that the character of the people and the character of an individual do not have a direct correlation. The people are a conciliar, symphonic personality, therefore it is hardly possible to detect in every Russian person all the features and properties of the Russian national character. In general, in the Russian character one can see the qualities of Peter the Great, Prince Myshkin, Oblomov and Khlestakov, i.e. both positive and negative properties. There are no peoples on earth who have only positive or only negative character traits. In reality, there is a known relationship between both. Only in the assessment of some peoples by others does a false idea arise, giving rise to stereotypes and myths, that another (not our) people has mainly negative character traits. And, on the contrary, there is a desire to attribute all sorts of positive characteristics to the superlative degree to one’s own people.
In the character of the Russian people, such properties as patience, national fortitude, conciliarity, generosity, immensity (breadth of soul), and talent are often noted. BUT. Lossky, in his book “The Character of the Russian People,” begins his study with such a trait of the Russian character as religiosity. “The main, deepest character trait of the Russian people is their religiosity, and the search for absolute good associated with it... which is feasible only in the Kingdom of God,” he writes. “Perfect good without any admixture of evil and imperfections exists in the Kingdom of God because it consists of individuals who fully implement in their behavior the two commandments of Jesus Christ: to love God more than yourself, and your neighbor as yourself. Members of the Kingdom of God are completely free from selfishness and therefore they create only absolute values - moral goodness, beauty, knowledge of truth, benefits that are indivisible and indestructible, serving the whole world" [ 1 ].
Lossky puts emphasis on the word “search” for absolute good, thereby he does not absolutize the properties of the Russian people, but seeks to designate their spiritual aspirations. Therefore, in the history of Russia, thanks to the influence of the great holy ascetics, the ideal of the people became not powerful, not rich, but “Holy Rus'”. Lossky cites the insightful remark of I.V. Kireevsky, that in comparison with the businesslike, almost theatrical behavior of Europeans, one is surprised by the humility, calmness, restraint, dignity and inner harmony of people who grew up in the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church. Even many generations of Russian atheists, instead of Christian religiosity, showed formal religiosity, a fanatical desire to realize on earth a kind of kingdom of God without God, on the basis of scientific knowledge and universal equality. “Considering that the main property of the Russian people is Christian religiosity and the search for absolute good associated with it,” wrote Lossky, “in the following chapters I will try to explain some other properties of the Russian people in connection with this essential feature of their character” [ 2 ].
Lossky calls such derived traits of the Russian character the ability to higher forms of experience, feeling and will (powerful willpower, passion, maximalism), love of freedom, kindness, giftedness, messianism and missionism. At the same time, he also names negative traits associated with the lack of the middle area of culture - fanaticism, extremism, which manifested themselves in the Old Believers, nihilism and hooliganism. It should be noted that Lossky, when analyzing the features of the Russian national character, has in mind the thousand-year experience of the existence of the Russian people and in fact does not give assessments related to the trends characteristic of the Russian character in the 20th century. For us, what is important in Lossky’s works is the basic feature of the national character, the dominant that determines all other properties and sets the vector for the analysis of the problem posed.
Modern researchers of this topic take more into account the trends in the development of the Russian national character of the 20th century, without denying the tradition that, over the course of the thousand-year history of Russia and the Russian people, has shaped these properties. So, V.K. Trofimov in the book “The Soul of the Russian People” writes: “Acquaintance with the national-physical and spiritual determinants of the psychological properties of the Russian people allows us to identify the fundamental internal qualities of national psychology. These fundamental qualities, which constitute the essence of national psychology and the national character of the Russian people, can be designated as the essential forces of the Russian souls" [ 3 ].
Among the essential forces he considers the paradoxical nature of mental manifestations (the inconsistency of the Russian soul), contemplation with the heart (the primacy of feeling and contemplation over reason and reason), the immensity of life's impulse (the breadth of the Russian soul), the religious desire for the absolute, national resilience, “We-psychology” and love of freedom. “The essential forces inherent in the deep foundations of the Russian soul are extremely contradictory in the possible consequences of their practical implementation. They can become a source of creation in economics, politics and culture. In the hands of a wise national elite, for centuries the emerging features of national psychology served prosperity, strengthening of power and Russia's authority in the world" [ 4 ].
F.M. Dostoevsky, long before Berdyaev and Lossky, showed how the character of the Russian people combines the base and the sublime, the holy and the sinful, the “ideal of Madonna” and the “ideal of Sodom,” and the battlefield of these principles is the human heart. In Dmitry Karamazov’s monologue, the extremes and boundless breadth of the Russian soul are expressed with exceptional force: “Moreover, I cannot bear that another person, even higher in heart and with a lofty mind, begins with the ideal of the Madonna, and ends with the ideal of Sodom. It is even more terrible who is already with "The ideal of Sodom in his soul does not deny the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart burns from it and truly, truly burns, as in his young, blameless years. No, the man is broad, too broad, I would narrow it" [ 5 ].
The consciousness of their sinfulness gives the Russian people the ideal of spiritual ascent. Characterizing Russian literature, Dostoevsky emphasizes that all the timeless and beautiful images in the works of Pushkin, Goncharov and Turgenev were borrowed from the Russian people. They took from him innocence, purity, meekness, intelligence and gentleness, in contrast to everything broken, false, superficial and slavishly borrowed. And this contact with the people gave them extraordinary strength.
Dostoevsky identifies another fundamental need of the Russian people - the need for constant and insatiable suffering, everywhere and in everything. He has been infected with this thirst for suffering from time immemorial; a stream of suffering runs through its entire history, not only from external misfortunes and disasters, but bubbles up from the very heart of the people. The Russian people, even in happiness, certainly have a part of suffering, otherwise happiness for them is incomplete. Never, even in the most solemn moments of his history, does he have a proud and triumphant look, and only a look touched to the point of suffering; he sighs and lifts up his glory to the mercy of the Lord. This idea of Dostoevsky found a precise expression in his formula: "He who does not understand Orthodoxy will never understand Russia."
Truly, our shortcomings are a continuation of our strengths. The polarities of the Russian national character can be represented as a whole series of antinomies expressing positive and negative properties.
1. breadth of soul - absence of form;
2. generosity - wastefulness;
3. love of freedom - weak discipline (anarchism);
4. prowess - revelry;
5. patriotism - national egoism.
These parallels can be increased many times over. I.A. Bunin gives a significant parable in “Cursed Days”. The peasant says: the people are like a tree, you can make both an icon and a club out of it, depending on who processes this tree - Sergius of Radonezh or Emelka Pugachev [ 6 ].
Many Russian poets tried to express the total immensity of the Russian national character, but A.K. Tolstoy:
If you love, so without reason,
If you threaten, it’s not a joke,
If you scold, so rashly,
If you chop, it’s too bad!
If it's too bold to argue,
If you punish, that's the point,
If you forgive, then with all your heart,
If there is a feast, then there is a feast!
I.A. Ilyin focuses attention on the fact that for the Russian man immensity is a living, concrete reality, his object, his starting point, his task. "Such is the Russian soul: passion and power have been given to it; form, character, and transformation are its historical tasks in life." Among Western analysts of the Russian national character, these features were most successfully expressed by the German thinker W. Schubart. The greatest interest in contrasting two diametrically opposed types of worldview - Western (Promethean) and Russian (Johnnian) - is a number of positions proposed by Schubart for comparison, which are saturated with diverse specific material. Let's reproduce one of them. The culture of the middle and the culture of the end. Western culture is the culture of the middle. Socially it rests on the middle class, psychologically on the mental state of the middle, balance. Her virtues are self-control, good manners, efficiency, discipline. “The European is a decent and diligent, skilled worker, a flawlessly functioning cog in a large mechanism. Outside his profession, he is hardly taken into account. He prefers the path of the golden mean, and this is usually the path to gold.” Materialism and philistinism are the goal and result of Western culture.
The Russian moves within the framework of a peripheral culture. Hence the breadth and immensity of the Russian soul, the feeling of freedom right up to anarchism and nihilism; feelings of guilt and sinfulness; an apocalyptic worldview and, finally, sacrifice as the central idea of Russian religious morality. “Foreigners who came to Russia for the first time,” wrote Schubart, “could not get rid of the impression that they found themselves in a sacred place, set foot on holy land... The expression “Holy Russia” is not an empty phrase. A traveler in Europe is immediately carried away by the noisy rhythm its active forces; the high melody of labor reaches his ears, but this - with all its greatness and power - is a song about the earth" [ 7 ].
However, a simple listing of certain qualities of the Russian national character will be very incomplete or haphazardly redundant. Therefore, in further analysis, one should take a different path: to determine sufficient grounds (criteria) according to which it is possible to summarize the characteristics of the Russian character. In modern scientific literature, there has long been a discussion about what is the determining principle in the study of national identity: “blood and soil”, or “language and culture”. And, although most researchers pay attention to language and culture, nevertheless, the national genotype and natural and climatic conditions are directly related to the formation of the qualities and properties of the national character.
In my opinion, the following basic factors should be considered as the initial formative foundations of the Russian national character:
1. Nature and climate;
2. Ethnic origins;
3. The historical existence of the people and the geopolitical position of Russia;
4. Social factors (monarchy, community, multi-ethnicity);
5. Russian language and Russian culture;
6. Orthodoxy.
This order is not at all accidental. The analysis of factors should begin with external, material, physical and climatic ones, and end with spiritual, deep ones, defining the dominant character of the national character. It is the religiosity of the Russian people (N.O. Lossky), rooted in Orthodox Christianity, that most researchers of this issue consider as the deep basis of the Russian character. Consequently, the order of importance of these factors is arranged in an ascending line.
Threats and challenges to the existence of national identity and Russian character undoubtedly exist. As a rule, they have objective and subjective content and greatly increase their negative impact during periods of unrest, revolutions, social breakdowns and crisis situations. The first objective trend leading to a threat to the existence of Russian national identity is associated with the collapse of the USSR (historical Russia) at the end of the 20th century; it was this tendency that called into question the very existence of the Russian people, and, consequently, their national identity. The second objective trend is associated with the “reform” of the economy, which, in fact, was a complete collapse of the economy of the entire country, the destruction of the military-industrial complex, a huge number of research institutes that had been providing priority directions for the country’s development for a number of decades. As a result, the economy of post-Soviet Russia has acquired an ugly, one-sided character - it is entirely based on the production and export of hydrocarbons (oil and gas), as well as on the export of other types of raw materials - ferrous and non-ferrous metals, wood, etc.
The third objective trend is the depopulation of the Russian people, associated with a low birth rate, a high number of abortions, low life expectancy, high mortality from road accidents, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide and other accidents. Over the past 15 years, the population of Russia has been declining by 700-800 thousand people annually. The depopulation of the Russian people is a consequence of the above objective trends and leads to a sharp increase in migration flows, often uncontrolled, from the Caucasus, Central Asia and China. Already today, 12.5% of students in Moscow schools are Azerbaijanis. If migration policy is not strictly controlled, then in the future this process will lead to the replacement of the Russian people by migrants, to the displacement and extinction of Russian national identity. Depopulation is largely a consequence of the crisis processes of the 90s. XX century.
Subjective tendencies leading to threats to the existence of Russian national identity can be summed up as a loss of identity. However, this provision requires decoding and detailing. The loss of identity is associated with the invasion of the world of Russian national self-awareness by external influences alien to the Russian person, aimed at transforming national self-awareness and Russian character according to the Western model: in the field of education - accession to the Bologna Charter; in the field of culture - replacing traditional examples of Russian culture with pop culture, pseudoculture; in the field of religion - the introduction of various sectarian movements associated with Protestantism, occult and other anti-Christian sects; in the field of art - the invasion of various avant-garde movements, emasculating the content of art; in the field of philosophy - the frontal offensive of postmodernism, which denies the originality and specificity of national thinking and tradition.
We see how diverse the ways of denying national identity are every day in various media programs. The most dangerous among them is Russophobia - denial and contempt for Russian culture, national identity and the Russian people themselves. It can be assumed that if the Russian national identity is replaced by the Western mentality that has been introduced in our country for a decade and a half, then the Russian people will turn into a “population”, into ethnographic material, and the Russian language and Russian culture, in the future, may share the fate of dead languages ( ancient Greek and Latin). The denationalization of culture, the suppression of national consciousness, its transformation into a comic-clip consciousness, the distortion of Russian history, the desecration of our Victory, the lulling of defense consciousness is becoming an everyday phenomenon.
The country's unfavorable economic situation, the permanent political crisis of the late 20th century, and the crime situation led to a "brain drain" - the mass emigration of scientists to other, more prosperous countries. Scientists who went abroad filled research centers and universities in the USA, Canada, Germany and other Western countries. According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, over 15 years, about 200 thousand scientists have left the country, including 130 thousand candidates of science and about 20 thousand doctors of science. In fact, this is a disaster, an almost complete loss of the country's intellectual property. Talented graduates of the best universities in Russia tend to go to rich business corporations or go abroad. This led to the loss of the middle-aged level of RAS research workers. Today, the average age of doctors of science at the Russian Academy of Sciences is 61 years. There is a “brain drain”, the steady aging and impossibility of replenishing scientific personnel, the disappearance of a number of leading scientific schools, and the degradation of scientific research topics [ 8 ].
How can we counteract these negative trends leading to the erosion of Russian national identity?
Firstly, we need a balanced program (ideology) for a long-term historical perspective, which must correspond to the national interests of Russia, take into account the limits of national security in the development of Russian culture, school and university education, science, and the protection of the moral, religious, and ethnic values of the people. At the same time, such an ideological program should outline the prospects for the development of the economy, agriculture, military-industrial complex and other spheres of production that could ensure the independence of our country at the proper level. The so-called “national projects” developed and implemented by the administration of President D.A. Medvedev, are very fragmented and do not have the character of a universal national program. As I.A. wrote Ilyin, Russia does not need class hatred or party struggle, tearing apart its single body, it needs a responsible idea for the long term. Moreover, the idea is not destructive, but positive, state-owned. This is the idea of cultivating a national spiritual character in the Russian people. “This idea must be state-historical, state-national, state-patriotic, state-religious. This idea must come from the very fabric of the Russian soul and Russian history, from their spiritual integrity. This idea must speak about the main thing in Russian destinies - and past and future; it should shine for entire generations of Russian people, making sense of their lives, pouring cheerfulness into them" [ 9 ]. Today there is already experience in developing such promising programs [ 10 ].
Secondly, it is necessary to educate the Russian national elite, whose aspirations would correspond to the national interests of Russia and the Russian people. The foreign and heterodox elite will always push the country either to another revolution (in essence, to a redistribution of power and property), or, in the words of F.M. Dostoevsky, will once every few decades “let go of a convulsion,” i.e. carry out the next crisis situation. As the experience of the tragic 90s for Russia shows. XX century, such an elite - the "Chicago boys" - was directed and controlled by external forces hostile to Russia, contrary to the national interests of the country.
Thirdly, it is necessary to educate new generations of Russian people in the spirit of love for the Motherland, in the spirit of patriotism, and this requires a fundamental restructuring of the entire system of education and upbringing. Only in this case can the negative consequences of modern national nihilism and Russophobia be overcome. “The Pepsi generation”, brought up under the motto - “Take everything from life!” is a social product of the destructive processes of the 90s.
Fourthly, it is necessary to fight the negative features of the Russian national character - anarchism and extremism, disorganization and “hoping for chance”, lack of formality and hooliganism, apathy and loss of the habit of systematic work, which was largely the result of the crisis of the last year and a half decades. This struggle should not be waged through “outbursts of revolutionary spirit,” but through the development of persistent self-discipline, continuous self-control, patience and endurance, spiritual sobriety and obedience. S.N. Bulgakov spoke about Christian asceticism, which is continuous self-control, the fight against the lower sinful sides of one’s self, asceticism of the spirit. Only on this path can the negative tendencies of the Russian national character be neutralized to some extent, which in an era of historical unrest lead to the destruction of the essential forces of the people, when the “underground of the human soul” comes to the fore. When a people is on the verge (and even beyond) of physical existence, it is difficult to demand adherence to highly moral behavior from them. This requires measures of a social, political, economic nature, but, above all, spiritual ones. Only in this case is there hope for a successful, positive result in the development of Russia, the Russian people and their national identity.
If the Russian people have sufficient national and social immunity, then they will again return to their own national identity. Historical experience gives us sufficient grounds for an optimistic scenario for the development of events. Russia and the Russian people overcame the most difficult situations and found a worthy Answer to the Challenge of History. Such an analysis of the Russian national character by Dostoevsky, who revealed the deepest contradictions, gives hope that the abyss of fall in which the Russian people find themselves today will sober them up, and they will overcome the stage of yet another self-destruction, going through repentance and suffering.
Here the question involuntarily arises: how did the Russian people, who have positive qualities along with negative ones, become seduced at the beginning of the 20th century? ideas of the revolutionary reorganization of Russia and atheism, which resulted in regicide, destruction of churches, renunciation of the faith of their ancestors and impoverishment of the people's soul. We find the answer to this question in Dostoevsky. For a Russian person, in his opinion, it is typical to forget every measure in everything. Whether it is love, wine, revelry, pride, envy - here some Russian people give themselves up almost selflessly, ready to break everything, renounce everything, family, custom, God. “This is the need to reach over the edge, the need for a frozen sensation, having reached the abyss, hanging halfway into it, looking into the very abyss and - in special cases, but very often - throwing yourself into it like a crazy person upside down.
This is the need for denial in a person, sometimes the most non-denying and reverent, the denial of everything, the most important shrine of his heart, the most complete ideal of his, the entire people's shrine in all its fullness, which now he was only in awe of and which suddenly seemed to have become unbearable to him somehow a burden, - this is how Dostoevsky characterizes the traits of self-denial and self-destruction characteristic of the Russian folk character. - But with the same strength, the same swiftness, with the same thirst for self-preservation and repentance, the Russian man, as well as the entire people, saves himself, and usually when he reaches the last line, that is, when there is nowhere else to go. But what is especially characteristic is that the reverse impulse, the impulse of self-restoration and self-salvation, is always more serious than the previous impulse - the impulse of self-denial and self-destruction. That is, it always happens on the account of petty cowardice; whereas the Russian person goes into restoration with the most enormous and serious effort, and looks at the negative previous movement with contempt for himself" [ 11 ].
In conclusion, let us once again turn to the listing of the main features of the Russian national character. The natural and climatic conditions of Russia have formed such traits in the character of the Russian people as patience, endurance, generous nature, and hard work. This is where the passionarity and “native” character of the people come from. The multi-ethnicity and multi-confessional nature of Russia have instilled in the Russian people brotherhood, patience (tolerance) towards other languages and cultures, selflessness, and the absence of violence. The historical existence of the Russian people and the geopolitical position of Russia forged in its character such properties as national resilience, love of freedom, sacrifice, and patriotism. The social conditions of existence of the Russian people - the monarchy, the community - contributed to the formation of a monarchical sense of justice, conciliarity, collectivism, and mutual assistance. Orthodoxy, as the main dominant of Russian national identity, formed in the Russian people religiosity, the desire for absolute goodness, love for one’s neighbor (brotherhood), humility, meekness, awareness of one’s sinfulness and imperfection, sacrifice (readiness to give one’s life for one’s friends), conciliarity and patriotism. These qualities were formed in accordance with the gospel ideals of goodness, truth, mercy and compassion. In this we must see the religious source of Russian fortitude and patience, endurance and strength of sacrifice of the Russian people.
Every Russian person should clearly know the negative properties of his national character. The breadth and immensity of the Russian soul is often associated with maximalism - either everything or nothing. Weak discipline leads to revelry and anarchism; from here lies a dangerous path to extremism, rebellion, hooliganism, and terrorism. The immensity of the soul becomes the source of a daring test of values - atheism, denial of tradition, national nihilism. The lack of ethnic solidarity in everyday life, the weakness of the “tribal instinct”, disunity in front of “outsiders” makes the Russian person defenseless in relation to migrants, who are characterized by cohesion, arrogance, and cruelty. Therefore, migrants in Russia today feel like masters to a greater extent than Russians. Lack of self-discipline often leads to the inability to work systematically and achieve your goal. The above-mentioned shortcomings increase many times during periods of unrest, revolutions and other crisis social phenomena. Gullibility, a tendency to temptation, makes the Russian people a toy in the hands of political adventurers and impostors of all stripes, leads to the loss of the immune forces of sovereignty, turns them into a mob, into an electorate, into a crowd led by a herd mentality. This is the root of all social unrest and disasters.
However, negative properties do not represent the fundamental, dominant traits of the Russian character, but rather are the flip side of positive qualities, their perversion. A clear vision of the weak traits of national character will allow every Russian person to fight them, eradicate or neutralize their influence in himself.
Today, the topic related to the study of Russian national character is extremely relevant. In the conditions of a permanent social crisis at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, when the Russian people are humiliated, slandered, and have largely lost their vital forces, they need confirmation of their merits, including at the level of research into the Russian national character. Only on this path can the connection of times be realized by turning to tradition, to the deeds of our great ancestors - heroes, leaders, prophets, scientists and thinkers, to our national shrines, values and symbols. Turning to the national tradition is like touching a healing source from which everyone can draw faith, hope, love, willpower and an example for serving the Motherland - Holy Rus'.
Kopalov Vitaly Ilyich, Professor of the Department of Philosophy, IPPC at USU. A.M. Gorky, Doctor of Philosophy
Notes:
1 - Lossky N.O. The character of the Russian people. Sowing. 1957. Book. 1. P.5.
2 - Ibid. P.21.
3 - Trofimov V.K. The soul of the Russian people: Natural-historical conditioning and essential forces. - Ekaterinburg, 1998. P.90.
4 - Ibid. P.134-135.
5 - Dostoevsky F.M. Brothers Karamazov // Dostoevsky F.M. Full collection op. In 30 volumes. T. XIV. - L., 1976. P.100.
6 - Bunin I.A. Damned days. - M., 1991. P.54.
7 - Schubart V. Europe and the soul of the East. - M., 1997. P.78.
8 - Fourteen knives in the body of Russia // Tomorrow. - 2007. - No. 18 (702).
9 - Ilyin I.A. Creative idea of our future // Ilyin I.A. Collection op. V. 10 vol. T. 7. - M., 1998. P.457-458.
10 - See: Russian Doctrine ("Sergius Project"). Under the general editorship. A.B. Kobyakov and V.V. Averyanova. - M., 2005. - 363 p.
11 - Dostoevsky F.M. Writer's Diary. Featured Pages. - M., 1989. P.60-61.
FEDERAL AGENCY FOR EDUCATION FEDERAL STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
"RUSSIAN STATE UNIVERSITY OF TOURISM AND SERVICE"
(FSOUVPO "RGUTiS")
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
TEST
Russian national character
Part-time student(s)
Usanova Svetlana
Record book number Ps-19204-010
group PsZ 04-1
Specialty Psychology
Completed____________________
1. National identity of Russian culture
2. National character
3. Features of the Russian national character
Bibliography
1. National identity of Russian culture
Demythologization is necessary to study, understand and measure. And to do this, it is necessary to separate from each other two different-order, but closely intertwined phenomena, the joint silhouette of which looks so strange.
As a rule, the main explanations come down to Russia’s border position between East and West, Europe and Asia - from “Eurasianism” to “Asiaopism” (the latter term is by no means an invention of the author). At the same time, they forget that almost all cultures that formed in the contact zone of civilizations have a similar Euro-Eastern binary - Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Turkish and others belonging to the Mediterranean, not to mention Latin American or Christian cultures Caucasus. It turns out that the binary nature of Russian culture is a typical phenomenon, therefore it does little to explain the uniqueness of the “Russian centaur” and to clarify his real origin.
When characterizing Russia and the Russian people, reference to their youth quickly became commonplace. Young Russia and the aged, decrepit West were matched and opposed by a variety of trends in culture and social thought. The list of only big names of authors who paid tribute to Russian youth and the old age of the West would be very long. It is clear that Russian people’s feeling of belonging to a young nation is not accidental. But something else is just as obvious: our people do not differ significantly in age from other Western peoples. If there are differences, they are always in favor of our youth. The Russian person’s sense of the importance of his people cannot be understood literally chronologically. Behind such a concept is something other than the age of the ethnic community.
Not only the dialectic of Russian/Russian is contradictory, but also the polar - from nihilism to apology - interpretation of the Russian people from the point of view of understanding it as a cultural and historical subject, the creator of spiritual values. “Russia,” Berdyaev wrote, “is least of all a country of average wealth, average culture... At its lowest levels, Russia is full of savagery and barbarism. At its peaks, Russia is super-cultural, the historical task of Russian self-awareness is to distinguish and separate Russian super-culture and Russian pre-culture, the logos of culture in the Russian peaks and the wild chaos in the Russian lowlands.” This is the elite version of Russian culture - its identification with the logos of superculture in contrast to the precultural chaos, in essence, not of the people, but of the mass of people. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between the ancient Russian people and the people of Russia of the New Age - the era of the formation of the Russian nation - state.
The presence of Russian culture with its own periodization and typologization, which is not covered by the general Western periodization and typologization, is not at all connected with some of our national identity and uniqueness of Rus'. At one time, Rus' successfully entered one of these communities and successfully developed within its composition. This entry was the baptism of Rus' in 989. It is well known that Rus' adopted Christianity from Byzantium. As a result of baptism, in ecclesiastical terms it became one of the numerous, although the largest in terms of population, not to mention territory, metropolis of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Rus' found itself in a situation not experienced by any Western national culture. This situation can be called cultural loneliness. Of course, it was not as complete as Robinson Crusoe's on the desert island. But loneliness in this case is not a metaphor or an exaggeration. The remaining Orthodox cultures did not disappear from the face of the earth after the conquest of Orthodox countries. However, they could not develop in a normal rhythm. Lazarev notes that Ancient Rus' “immediately adopted the Byzantine technique of stone construction with a complex system of domed and cross vaults, as well as Christian iconography, new to it, embodied by means of mosaics, frescoes and icon painting. This distinguishes its development from the Romanesque West, where the formation of stone architecture proceeded along a different path - the path of gradual internal evolution.
The Renaissance is undoubtedly a purely urban phenomenon. Speaking about the Russian pre-renaissance, Likhachev also connects it with the city: “The best currents of the pre-renaissance movement captured all of Western Europe, Byzantium, but also Pskov, Novgorod, Moscow, Tver, the entire Caucasus and part of Asia Minor. Throughout this colossal territory we encounter homogeneous phenomena caused by the development of democratic life in cities and increased cultural communication between countries. Many features of this pre-Renaissance movement affected Rus' with greater force than anywhere else” Likhachev, 1962, p. 35. At the time of independence of the Russian Slavs, civil justice was based on the conscience and ancient customs of each tribe in particular; but the Varangians brought with them general civil laws to Russia, known to us from the treaties of the great princes with the Greeks and in everything agreeing with the ancient Scandinavian laws” Karamzin, 1990, p. 173.
One of the features of the development of Russian medieval culture was that Byzantium served for Rus' at the same time as antiquity and a modern model. Likhachev notes that ““its own antiquity” - the period of the pre-Mongol heyday of ancient Russian culture - with all its attractiveness for Rus' at the end of the 14th-15th centuries, could not replace real antiquity - the antiquity of Greece and Rome with their high culture of the slave-owning formation." If Western Europe were to go through the thousand-year path of the Middle Ages through such milestones as the Great Migration, the formation of barbarian states, the emergence of feudalism and the liberation of cities, and if Western culture was to “survive” the “Carolingian Renaissance”, Romanesque style, Gothic and complete it era of the Renaissance, then Russia, being a younger state, avoided such a long path of “gradual internal evolution” and cultural-historical “maturation”, using the ready-made Byzantine model, which served both antiquity and modernity. “The charm of Byzantine culture and Byzantine art was so great that it was difficult not to succumb to it. This explains the widespread penetration of Byzantine culture into Russian feudal society” (Lazarev, 1970, p. 218). N. Berdyaev also spoke in his article about the fact that Byzantinism predetermined “eastern” priorities in the historical choice of the path of development of Russia and its immanent opposition to the West , dedicated to Leontyev: “Russia in all its originality and greatness is held together not by national bonds, not by Russian national self-determination, but by Byzantine Orthodoxy and autocracy, objective church and state ideas. These principles organized Russia into a great and unique world - the world of the East, opposite to the West” (Berdyaev, 1995, p. 133).
Byzantinism opposed any form of democratic change in Russian society. Western concepts of free personality, individualism and democracy remained alien and unacceptable for the overwhelming majority of Russian society - a “Western contagion” - and therefore harmful and dangerous. Leontyev spoke about the dangers threatening Russia with the introduction of Western values: “I even dare, without hesitation, to say that no Polish uprising and no Pugachevism can harm Russia the way a very peaceful, very legal democratic constitution could harm it.” And this is because “Russian people are not created for freedom. Without fear and violence, everything will go to dust for them ”(quoted from:). He obviously had no illusions about the myth of Russia’s “special historical mission,” widely propagated by a certain part of the Russian intelligentsia of the 19th century. Speaking about Leontyev, Berdyaev argued that “he believed not in Russia and not in the Russian people, but in Byzantine principles, church and state. If he believed in any mission, then in the mission of Byzantium, and not Russia” (quoted from:).
There are many concepts that consider the development of culture and history from the point of view of one fundamental factor, from the position of a single substantial basis. And then, taken in its fundamentals, the history of culture appears as a monologue of one single principle, be it the world spirit or matter. And very few thinkers reveal the dialogical nature of the life of spirit and culture. Among these thinkers, one should first of all name N.A. Berdyaev (Berdyaev N.A. The meaning of history. M., 1990. P. 30; Berdyaev N.A. Philosophy of the free spirit. M., 1994. P. 370,458) and M. Buber (Buber M.Ya and You. M ., 1993). Toynbee's merit lies in the fact that he revealed the dialogical essence of cultural development in his concept of “Challenge and Response” (See: Toynbee A.J. Comprehension of history: Collection. M., 1991. pp. 106-142).
If we ignore the figurative style of presentation, Toynbee’s concept provides the key to understanding the creative nature and possible alternativeness of the cultural-historical process. The development of culture is carried out as a series of Answers given by the creative human spirit to the Challenges that nature, society and the inner infinity of man himself throw to him. At the same time, different development options are always possible, because different responses to the same challenge are possible. The enduring significance of Toynbee's concept lies in the awareness of this fundamental circumstance. A unique concept of culture was developed by the largest Russian sociologist and culturologist, who lived most of his life in exile in the USA, Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1899-1968). Methodologically, the concept of P.A. Sorokina echoes the doctrine of cultural-historical types by O. Spengler and A. Toynbee. However, P. A. Sorokin’s theory of cultural-historical types is fundamentally different from the theory of O. Spengler and A. Toynbee in that Sorokin assumed the existence of progress in social development. Recognizing the existence of a deep crisis that Western culture is currently experiencing, he assessed this crisis not as the “Decline of Europe,” but as a necessary phase in the formation of a new emerging civilization uniting all of humanity.
In accordance with his methodological guidelines, P. Sorokin presented the historical process as a process of cultural development. According to Sorokin, culture in the broadest sense of the word is the totality of everything created or recognized by a given society at one or another stage of its development. During this development, society creates various cultural systems: cognitive, religious, ethical, aesthetic, legal, etc. The main property of all these cultural systems is the tendency to unite them into a system of higher ranks. As a result of the development of this trend, cultural supersystems are formed. Each of these cultural supersystems, according to Sorokin, “has its own mentality, its own system of truth and knowledge, its own philosophy and worldview, its own religion and model of “holiness,” its own ideas of what is right and proper, its own forms of fine literature and art, its own rights , laws, code of conduct.
2. National character
The Russian people are the recognized creators of one of the “axial” cultures. In the conditions of the great “change of milestones” and the formation of Russian civilization of the 21st century, solving the problem of continuity with cultural heritage and its renewal has become a condition for the spiritual revival of Russia. “Do not divide, do not fragment Russian history, follow the connection of phenomena, do not separate the beginnings, but consider them in interaction.”
The enormity of these problems is due to the enduring uniqueness, the stable stereotype of their mystical, irrational nature. For many Westerners, the soul of the Russian person remains a mystery. To determine the character, the soul of a Russian person, let's consider mentality. So what is mentality? Mentality is a deep layer of social consciousness. M.A. Borg writes that mentality is “a set of symbols that are necessarily formed within the framework of each given cultural and historical era and are fixed in the minds of people in the process of communicating with their own kind, i.e. repetitions."
The basic characteristics of mentality are its collectivity, unconsciousness, and stability. Since mentality expresses the everyday appearance of the collective consciousness of a certain socio-cultural community, its “hidden” layer, independent of the individual’s own life, it appears as the reality of the collective order. Mentality as a way of expressing knowledge about the world and the person in it serves in everyday life as an ontological and functional explanation and contains answers to the questions What is this? How? Why is this?
The structure of mentality is a stable system of hidden deep attitudes and value orientations of consciousness, its automatic skills that determine stable stereotypes of consciousness.
Reasons that contribute to the formation of mentality: 1) racial and ethnic qualities of the community; 2) natural-geographical conditions of its existence; 3) the results of the interaction of a given community and the sociocultural conditions of its residence. Among the racial and ethnic differences of a sociocultural community that affect mentality, it should be noted its numbers, temperament, and level of development.
The basic features of the Russian mentality are: the predominance of moral components. And, above all, a sense of responsibility and conscience, as well as a special understanding of the relationship between the individual and society. This is due to a number of reasons, primarily by the fact that from century to century our concern was not about how to get a better job or how to live easier, but only about how to somehow survive, hold out, get out of the next trouble, overcome another danger,” writes Ilyin I.A. So the question is: what to live for? is more important than the question of daily bread, wrote F.M. Dostoevsky.
The influence of the religious factor, primarily Orthodoxy as one of the sources of the Russian mentality, is also significant. The specifics of the Russian mentality are influenced by the social organization of society, which is manifested in the active role of the state; the result is the dominance in the mentality of Russians of the belief in the need for strong power. As mentioned above, the Russian mentality leaves a significant imprint on the character of the Russian community and changes along with it. As Rozanov wrote: “If there is a nation, there is also a culture, because culture is the answer to a nation, it is the flavor of its character, heartfelt structure, mind. “The Russian spirit,” no matter how you bury it or how much you ridicule it, still exists. This is not necessarily genius, poetry, poetry, prose, mind-blowing philosophy. No, this is a way of living, i.e. something much simpler and, perhaps, wiser.”
The Russian person is characterized by a thirst for justice and distrust of the legal methods of achieving it, an indispensable love for the distant and selective for the near, faith in absolute good without evil and the dubious value of relative good, passive expectation of the latter and passionary activism of the “decisive battle” for the final triumph of good, loftiness in goals and indiscriminateness in their achievements, etc.
In Y. Lotman's opinion, Russian culture is characterized by a binary structure. The binary nature of the Russian soul is not its unique feature. It is, to one degree or another, inherent in the mentality of other peoples. The main problem is the immensity of the Russian character.
According to G. Florovsky: “The history of Russian culture is all in interruptions, in attacks. There is less direct integrity in it. Incommensurable and different-time mental formations somehow combine and grow together by themselves. But a fusion is not a synthesis. It was the synthesis that failed.”
Therefore, from here, comprehension of the deep foundations of Russian existence takes place on intuition, i.e. there is a reproduction of an irrational archetype, rather than a rational one, which is clearly expressed in the Western mentality.
3. Features of the Russian national character
According to the definition of some studies: national character is genotype plus culture.
Since the genotype is what each person receives from nature, culture is what a person is introduced to from birth, therefore national character, in addition to unconscious cultural archetypes, also includes the natural ethnopsychological traits of individuals.
When Dostoevsky's character learns about "Russian real life," he concludes that "all of Russia is a play of nature." According to F. Tyutchev, “Russia cannot be understood with the mind, // it cannot be measured with a common yardstick. // She has become special. // You can only believe in Russia.” B. Pascal noted: “Nothing is more in agreement with reason than its distrust of itself.” In the awareness of uniqueness, uniqueness, the impossibility of measuring Russia by a “common yardstick” is the key to comprehending both the obvious - with the mind, and the hidden - with faith in Russia.
As mentioned above, the national character of a Russian person includes unconscious cultural archetypes and natural ethnopsychological traits of individuals.
The period of paganism of the East Slavic tribes is not included in the history of culture. Rather, it is the prehistory of Russian culture, some of its initial state, which continued and could continue for a very long time, without undergoing significant changes, without experiencing any significant events.
Since times marked by constant contacts and confrontations with neighboring nomadic peoples, the factor of chance and unpredictability has been deeply rooted in Russian culture and national self-awareness (hence the famous Russian “maybe yes, I suppose” and other similar judgments of ordinary folk consciousness). This factor largely predetermined the properties of the Russian national character - recklessness, daring, desperate courage, recklessness, spontaneity, arbitrariness, etc., which are associated with the special ideological role of riddles in ancient Russian folklore and fortune-telling in everyday life; the tendency to make fateful decisions by casting lots and other characteristic features of a mentality based on an unstable balance of mutually exclusive tendencies, where any uncontrollable combination of circumstances can be decisive. This is where the tradition of making difficult decisions arises in conditions of a tough and sometimes cruel choice between extremes, when “there is no third option” (and it is impossible), when the choice itself between mutually exclusive poles is sometimes unrealistic or impossible, or equally destructive for the “voter” , - a choice that occurs literally at a civilizational crossroads of forces beyond his control (fate, fate, happiness), about the reality and certainty of the past (traditions, “legends”) - in comparison with the unreal and uncertain, dramatically variable and unpredictable future. As a rule, a worldview that develops with an orientation toward factors of chance and spontaneity is gradually imbued with pessimism, fatalism, and uncertainty (including in the strictly religious sense - as unbelief that constantly tempts faith).
In these or similar conditions, other qualities of the Russian people were formed, which became their distinctive features, fused with the national-cultural mentality - patience, passivity in relation to circumstances, which are thereby recognized as having a leading role in the development of events, perseverance in enduring the hardships and hardships of life , suffering, reconciliation with losses and losses as inevitable or even predetermined from above, perseverance in confronting fate.
Dependence on the “whims” of harsh nature and climatic instability, on the unbridled aggressiveness of the nomadic peoples who make up the immediate environment, uncertainty about the future (harvest or shortage, war or peace, home or a trip to foreign lands, freedom or bondage, rebellion or obedience, hunting or captivity, etc.) - all this accumulated in popular ideas about the constancy of variability.
As we know, the adoption in the 10th century had a great influence on the formation of the Russian cultural archetype. Christianity, which came to Rus' from Byzantium in the Orthodox form. Russian people were initially prepared to accept Orthodoxy (through the entire course of their own development).
Orthodoxy, although it included the entire society, did not capture the whole person. Orthodoxy governed only the religious and moral life of the Russian people, that is, it regulated church holidays, family relationships, and pastime, while the ordinary everyday life of the Russian person was not affected by it. This state of affairs provided free space for original national creativity.
In Eastern Christian culture, a person’s earthly existence had no value, so the main task was to prepare a person for death, and life was seen as a small segment on the path to eternity. Spiritual aspirations for humility and piety, asceticism and a sense of one’s own sinfulness were recognized as the meaning of earthly existence.
Hence, in the Orthodox culture, a disdain for earthly goods appeared, since they are fleeting and insignificant, the attitude towards work not as a creative process, but as a way of self-abasement. Hence the common expressions. You won’t earn all the money, you won’t take it with you to the grave, etc.
Vl. Solovyov was especially fond of such a trait of a Russian person as the awareness of his sinfulness - imperfection, incompleteness in achieving the ideal.
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Concepts of man, creativity and culture in the works of N. Berdyaev: “On slavery and human freedom. Experience of personalistic metaphysics”, “On creative freedom and the fabrication of souls”, “Self-knowledge: Works”, “The meaning of creativity: Experience of justification of man”.
Analysis of culture from a historical perspective. Assessment of countries and historical eras according to the level of their cultural development. Characteristics and features of new political thinking and vandalization of culture. The essence of the internal laws of the development of social consciousness.
Throughout all the centuries of its formation, domestic culture is inextricably linked with the history of Russia. Our cultural heritage has been constantly enriched by our own and world cultural experience.
Russian culture, stages of development and sociodynamics. National culture as a form of self-expression of the people. Three main approaches when considering the cultural-historical process. Two opposing trends - Western and Eastern. People and intelligentsia.
A few words about the philosophy of culture. P.Ya. Chaadaev: ideas of Eurocentrism. The concept of cultural and historical types N.Ya. Danilevsky. K.N. Leontyev. ON THE. Berdyaev is a philosopher of freedom and creativity. Yu.M. Lotman: semiotics and structuralism.
Contradictions of Russian culture. Forest as a natural factor in the formation of culture. The steppe is one of the elements of Russian nature. Russian scientists about the role of natural factors.
The concept of a picture of the world. Mentality as a system of stereotypes of a speech community. Foreign concepts of the essence of mentality. Mentality as the irrational subconscious of a person. Mentality is like faith. Domestic research on mentality.
The mentality of Russian culture is not only a national-Russian mentality, it is also an interethnic or supranational mentality, i.e. The mentality of Russian culture is “a set of cultures united in the unity of civilization.”
Mentality, mentality and mental characteristics of culture: a general theoretical approach. The concept of mentality and mentality: features of the definition. Mental characteristics of culture. The influence of Orthodoxy on the mental characteristics of Russian culture.
Culturological thought of P.Ya.Chaadaev. Views on the culture of N.Ya. Danilevsky, V.S. Solovyov and N.A. Berdyaev. Philosophers who contributed to the development of cultural thought. Slavophilism and Westernism as the main spiritual directions.
A cultural archetype is a basic element of culture. Traditional attitudes of Russian culture. Formation, development, features of the formation of Russian culture. Development of the culture of Ancient Rus'. Icon paintings by Russian masters and Christianity, stone structures.
Mentality as a deep structure of culture. Peculiarities of the attitude of Russian citizens to their state. Factors influencing the development of the Russian mentality. Mental foundations as a statement by a famous writer. Mentality as the structure of civilization.
Christianity as the basis of a worldview, its emergence, the main idea. Acceptance and dissemination of teachings in Rus'. Orthodoxy is the cultural and historical choice of Russian society, the motives for making the decision. His influence on the formation of Russian culture.
Cultural ideas in Russia as a form of national consciousness. The problem of antagonism between Russia and the West in the teachings of Chaadaev and Khomyakov. Slavophilism, Westernism, cultural theories of Danilevsky, Solovyov. "Russian idea" in Berdyaev's views.
General concepts of the course. Pilgrimage. Heritage. Stages of the formation of Russian culture. (Formation of Russian culture as a continuous synthesis)
Interaction of factors in the formation of the culture of Ancient Rus'. Architecture of Ancient Rus'. Art instead of culture. As for the objective type of Russian culture, it will most likely gravitate toward the ritualism of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Russia's place in world history, the specifics of its own culture and history. The concept of "east-west" and the definition of the attitude of philosophers-historians to it. Consideration by scientists of the East-West-Russia problem in the dialogue of world cultures at the present stage.
The origins of Christianity in Rus'. The influence of Christianity on the culture of Ancient Rus'. Philosophy of Russian religious art. History of Russian art. For a long time, until the 19th century, Christianity would remain the dominant culture.
Characteristics of an ideational culture based on a religious worldview. The emergence of a sensual mentality, subordinate to life's pleasures and pleasures. Features of an idealistic culture focused on positive values.
The culture of Russian civilization, its formation and stages of development. Essential features of Russian national culture. Russian national character, features of the Russian ethnic group and mentality: passivity and patience, conservatism and harmony.
FEDERAL AGENCY FOR EDUCATION FEDERAL STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
"RUSSIAN STATE UNIVERSITY OF TOURISM AND SERVICE"
(FSOUVPO "RGUTiS")
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
TEST
Russian national character
Part-time student(s)
Usanova Svetlana
Record book number Ps-19204-010
group PsZ 04-1
Specialty Psychology
Completed____________________
1. National identity of Russian culture
2. National character
3. Features of the Russian national character
Bibliography
1. National identity of Russian culture
Demythologization is necessary to study, understand and measure. And to do this, it is necessary to separate from each other two different-order, but closely intertwined phenomena, the joint silhouette of which looks so strange.
As a rule, the main explanations come down to Russia’s border position between East and West, Europe and Asia - from “Eurasianism” to “Asiaopism” (the latter term is by no means an invention of the author). At the same time, they forget that almost all cultures that formed in the contact zone of civilizations have a similar Euro-Eastern binary - Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Turkish and others belonging to the Mediterranean, not to mention Latin American or Christian cultures Caucasus. It turns out that the binary nature of Russian culture is a typical phenomenon, therefore it does little to explain the uniqueness of the “Russian centaur” and to clarify his real origin.
When characterizing Russia and the Russian people, reference to their youth quickly became commonplace. Young Russia and the aged, decrepit West were matched and opposed by a variety of trends in culture and social thought. The list of only big names of authors who paid tribute to Russian youth and the old age of the West would be very long. It is clear that Russian people’s feeling of belonging to a young nation is not accidental. But something else is just as obvious: our people do not differ significantly in age from other Western peoples. If there are differences, they are always in favor of our youth. The Russian person’s sense of the importance of his people cannot be understood literally chronologically. Behind such a concept is something other than the age of the ethnic community.
Not only the dialectic of Russian/Russian is contradictory, but also the polar - from nihilism to apology - interpretation of the Russian people from the point of view of understanding it as a cultural and historical subject, the creator of spiritual values. “Russia,” Berdyaev wrote, “is least of all a country of average wealth, average culture... At its base, Russia is full of savagery and barbarism. At its peaks, Russia is super-cultural, the historical task of Russian self-awareness is to distinguish and separate Russian super-culture and Russian pre-culture, the logos of culture in the Russian peaks and the wild chaos in the Russian lowlands.” This is the elite version of Russian culture - its identification with the logos of superculture in contrast to the precultural chaos, in essence, not of the people, but of the mass of people. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between the ancient Russian people and the people of Russia of the New Age - the era of the formation of the Russian nation - state.
The presence of Russian culture with its own periodization and typologization, which is not covered by the general Western periodization and typologization, is not at all connected with some of our national identity and uniqueness of Rus'. At one time, Rus' successfully entered one of these communities and successfully developed within its composition. This entry was the baptism of Rus' in 989. It is well known that Rus' adopted Christianity from Byzantium. As a result of baptism, in ecclesiastical terms it became one of the numerous, although the largest in terms of population, not to mention territory, metropolis of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Rus' found itself in a situation not experienced by any Western national culture. This situation can be called cultural loneliness. Of course, it was not as complete as Robinson Crusoe's on the desert island. But loneliness in this case is not a metaphor or an exaggeration. The remaining Orthodox cultures did not disappear from the face of the earth after the conquest of Orthodox countries. However, they could not develop in a normal rhythm. Lazarev notes that Ancient Rus' “immediately adopted the Byzantine technique of stone construction with a complex system of domed and cross vaults, as well as Christian iconography, new to it, embodied by means of mosaics, frescoes and icon painting. This distinguishes its development from the Romanesque West, where the formation of stone architecture proceeded along a different path - the path of gradual internal evolution.
The Renaissance is undoubtedly a purely urban phenomenon. Speaking about the Russian pre-renaissance, Likhachev also connects it with the city: “The best currents of the pre-renaissance movement captured all of Western Europe, Byzantium, but also Pskov, Novgorod, Moscow, Tver, the entire Caucasus and part of Asia Minor. Throughout this colossal territory we encounter homogeneous phenomena caused by the development of democratic life in cities and increased cultural communication between countries. Many features of this pre-Renaissance movement affected Rus' with greater force than anywhere else” Likhachev, 1962, p. 35. At the time of independence of the Russian Slavs, civil justice was based on the conscience and ancient customs of each tribe in particular; but the Varangians brought with them general civil laws to Russia, known to us from the treaties of the great princes with the Greeks and in everything agreeing with the ancient Scandinavian laws” Karamzin, 1990, p. 173.
One of the features of the development of Russian medieval culture was that Byzantium served for Rus' at the same time as antiquity and a modern model. Likhachev notes that ““its own antiquity” - the period of the pre-Mongol heyday of ancient Russian culture - with all its attractiveness for Rus' at the end of the 14th-15th centuries, could not replace real antiquity - the antiquity of Greece and Rome with their high culture of the slave-owning formation." If Western Europe were to go through the thousand-year path of the Middle Ages through such milestones as the Great Migration, the formation of barbarian states, the emergence of feudalism and the liberation of cities, and if Western culture was to “survive” the “Carolingian Renaissance”, Romanesque style, Gothic and complete it era of the Renaissance, then Russia, being a younger state, avoided such a long path of “gradual internal evolution” and cultural-historical “maturation”, using the ready-made Byzantine model, which served both antiquity and modernity. “The charm of Byzantine culture and Byzantine art was so great that it was difficult not to succumb to it. This explains the widespread penetration of Byzantine culture into Russian feudal society” (Lazarev, 1970, p. 218). N. Berdyaev also spoke in his article about the fact that Byzantinism predetermined “eastern” priorities in the historical choice of the path of development of Russia and its immanent opposition to the West , dedicated to Leontyev: “Russia in all its originality and greatness is held together not by national bonds, not by Russian national self-determination, but by Byzantine Orthodoxy and autocracy, objective church and state ideas. These principles organized Russia into a great and unique world - the world of the East, opposite to the West” (Berdyaev, 1995, p. 133).
Byzantinism opposed any form of democratic change in Russian society. Western concepts of free personality, individualism and democracy remained alien and unacceptable for the overwhelming majority of Russian society - a “Western contagion” - and therefore harmful and dangerous. Leontyev spoke about the dangers threatening Russia with the introduction of Western values: “I even dare, without hesitation, to say that no Polish uprising and no Pugachevism can harm Russia the way a very peaceful, very legal democratic constitution could harm it.” And this is because “Russian people are not created for freedom. Without fear and violence, everything will go to dust for them ”(quoted from:). He obviously had no illusions about the myth of Russia’s “special historical mission,” widely propagated by a certain part of the Russian intelligentsia of the 19th century. Speaking about Leontyev, Berdyaev argued that “he believed not in Russia and not in the Russian people, but in Byzantine principles, church and state. If he believed in any mission, then in the mission of Byzantium, and not Russia” (quoted from:).
There are many concepts that consider the development of culture and history from the point of view of one fundamental factor, from the position of a single substantial basis. And then, taken in its fundamentals, the history of culture appears as a monologue of one single principle, be it the world spirit or matter. And very few thinkers reveal the dialogical nature of the life of spirit and culture. Among these thinkers, one should first of all name N.A. Berdyaev (Berdyaev N.A. The meaning of history. M., 1990. P. 30; Berdyaev N.A. Philosophy of the free spirit. M., 1994. P. 370,458) and M. Buber (Buber M.Ya and You. M ., 1993). Toynbee's merit lies in the fact that he revealed the dialogical essence of cultural development in his concept of “Challenge and Response” (See: Toynbee A.J. Comprehension of history: Collection. M., 1991. pp. 106-142).
If we ignore the figurative style of presentation, Toynbee’s concept provides the key to understanding the creative nature and possible alternativeness of the cultural-historical process. The development of culture is carried out as a series of Answers given by the creative human spirit to the Challenges that nature, society and the inner infinity of man himself throw to him. At the same time, different development options are always possible, because different responses to the same challenge are possible. The enduring significance of Toynbee's concept lies in the awareness of this fundamental circumstance. A unique concept of culture was developed by the largest Russian sociologist and culturologist, who lived most of his life in exile in the USA, Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1899-1968). Methodologically, the concept of P.A. Sorokina echoes the doctrine of cultural-historical types by O. Spengler and A. Toynbee. However, P. A. Sorokin’s theory of cultural-historical types is fundamentally different from the theory of O. Spengler and A. Toynbee in that Sorokin assumed the existence of progress in social development. Recognizing the existence of a deep crisis that Western culture is currently experiencing, he assessed this crisis not as the “Decline of Europe,” but as a necessary phase in the formation of a new emerging civilization uniting all of humanity.
In accordance with his methodological guidelines, P. Sorokin presented the historical process as a process of cultural development. According to Sorokin, culture in the broadest sense of the word is the totality of everything created or recognized by a given society at one or another stage of its development. During this development, society creates various cultural systems: cognitive, religious, ethical, aesthetic, legal, etc. The main property of all these cultural systems is the tendency to unite them into a system of higher ranks. As a result of the development of this trend, cultural supersystems are formed. Each of these cultural supersystems, according to Sorokin, “has its own mentality, its own system of truth and knowledge, its own philosophy and worldview, its own religion and model of “holiness,” its own ideas of what is right and proper, its own forms of fine literature and art, its own rights , laws, code of conduct.
2. National character
The Russian people are the recognized creators of one of the “axial” cultures. In the conditions of the great “change of milestones” and the formation of Russian civilization of the 21st century, solving the problem of continuity with cultural heritage and its renewal has become a condition for the spiritual revival of Russia. “Do not divide, do not fragment Russian history, follow the connection of phenomena, do not separate the beginnings, but consider them in interaction.”
The enormity of these problems is due to the enduring uniqueness, the stable stereotype of their mystical, irrational nature. For many Westerners, the soul of the Russian person remains a mystery. To determine the character, the soul of a Russian person, let's consider mentality. So what is mentality? Mentality is a deep layer of social consciousness. M.A. Borg writes that mentality is “a set of symbols that are necessarily formed within the framework of each given cultural and historical era and are fixed in the minds of people in the process of communicating with their own kind, i.e. repetitions."
The basic characteristics of mentality are its collectivity, unconsciousness, and stability. Since mentality expresses the everyday appearance of the collective consciousness of a certain socio-cultural community, its “hidden” layer, independent of the individual’s own life, it appears as the reality of the collective order. Mentality as a way of expressing knowledge about the world and the person in it serves in everyday life as an ontological and functional explanation and contains answers to the questions What is this? How? Why is this?
The structure of mentality is a stable system of hidden deep attitudes and value orientations of consciousness, its automatic skills that determine stable stereotypes of consciousness.
Reasons that contribute to the formation of mentality: 1) racial and ethnic qualities of the community; 2) natural-geographical conditions of its existence; 3) the results of the interaction of a given community and the sociocultural conditions of its residence. Among the racial and ethnic differences of a sociocultural community that affect mentality, it should be noted its numbers, temperament, and level of development.
The basic features of the Russian mentality are: the predominance of moral components. And, above all, a sense of responsibility and conscience, as well as a special understanding of the relationship between the individual and society. This is due to a number of reasons, primarily by the fact that from century to century our concern was not about how to get a better job or how to live easier, but only about how to somehow survive, hold out, get out of the next trouble, overcome another danger,” writes Ilyin I.A. So the question is: what to live for? is more important than the question of daily bread, wrote F.M. Dostoevsky.
The influence of the religious factor, primarily Orthodoxy as one of the sources of the Russian mentality, is also significant. The specifics of the Russian mentality are influenced by the social organization of society, which is manifested in the active role of the state; the result is the dominance in the mentality of Russians of the belief in the need for strong power. As mentioned above, the Russian mentality leaves a significant imprint on the character of the Russian community and changes along with it. As Rozanov wrote: “If there is a nation, there is also a culture, because culture is the answer to a nation, it is the flavor of its character, heartfelt structure, mind. “The Russian spirit,” no matter how you bury it or how much you ridicule it, still exists. This is not necessarily genius, poetry, poetry, prose, mind-blowing philosophy. No, this is a way of living, i.e. something much simpler and, perhaps, wiser.”
The Russian person is characterized by a thirst for justice and distrust of the legal methods of achieving it, an indispensable love for the distant and selective for the near, faith in absolute good without evil and the dubious value of relative good, passive expectation of the latter and passionary activism of the “decisive battle” for the final triumph of good, loftiness in goals and indiscriminateness in their achievements, etc.
In Y. Lotman's opinion, Russian culture is characterized by a binary structure. The binary nature of the Russian soul is not its unique feature. It is, to one degree or another, inherent in the mentality of other peoples. The main problem is the immensity of the Russian character.
According to G. Florovsky: “The history of Russian culture is all in interruptions, in attacks. There is less direct integrity in it. Incommensurable and different-time mental formations somehow combine and grow together by themselves. But a fusion is not a synthesis. It was the synthesis that failed.”
Therefore, from here, comprehension of the deep foundations of Russian existence takes place on intuition, i.e. there is a reproduction of an irrational archetype, rather than a rational one, which is clearly expressed in the Western mentality.
3. Features of the Russian national character
According to the definition of some studies: national character is genotype plus culture.
Since the genotype is what each person receives from nature, culture is what a person is introduced to from birth, therefore national character, in addition to unconscious cultural archetypes, also includes the natural ethnopsychological traits of individuals.
When Dostoevsky's character learns about "Russian real life," he concludes that "all of Russia is a play of nature." According to F. Tyutchev, “Russia cannot be understood with the mind, // it cannot be measured with a common yardstick. // She has become special. // You can only believe in Russia.” B. Pascal noted: “Nothing is more in agreement with reason than its distrust of itself.” In the awareness of uniqueness, uniqueness, the impossibility of measuring Russia by a “common yardstick” is the key to comprehending both the obvious - with the mind, and the hidden - with faith in Russia.
As mentioned above, the national character of a Russian person includes unconscious cultural archetypes and natural ethnopsychological traits of individuals.
The period of paganism of the East Slavic tribes is not included in the history of culture. Rather, it is the prehistory of Russian culture, some of its initial state, which continued and could continue for a very long time, without undergoing significant changes, without experiencing any significant events.
Since times marked by constant contacts and confrontations with neighboring nomadic peoples, the factor of chance and unpredictability has been deeply rooted in Russian culture and national self-awareness (hence the famous Russian “maybe yes, I suppose” and other similar judgments of ordinary folk consciousness). This factor largely predetermined the properties of the Russian national character - recklessness, daring, desperate courage, recklessness, spontaneity, arbitrariness, etc., which are associated with the special ideological role of riddles in ancient Russian folklore and fortune-telling in everyday life; the tendency to make fateful decisions by casting lots and other characteristic features of a mentality based on an unstable balance of mutually exclusive tendencies, where any uncontrollable combination of circumstances can be decisive. This is where the tradition of making difficult decisions arises in conditions of a tough and sometimes cruel choice between extremes, when “there is no third option” (and it is impossible), when the choice itself between mutually exclusive poles is sometimes unrealistic or impossible, or equally destructive for the “voter” , - a choice that occurs literally at a civilizational crossroads of forces beyond his control (fate, fate, happiness), about the reality and certainty of the past (traditions, “legends”) - in comparison with the unreal and uncertain, dramatically variable and unpredictable future. As a rule, a worldview that develops with an orientation toward factors of chance and spontaneity is gradually imbued with pessimism, fatalism, and uncertainty (including in the strictly religious sense - as unbelief that constantly tempts faith).
In these or similar conditions, other qualities of the Russian people were formed, which became their distinctive features, fused with the national-cultural mentality - patience, passivity in relation to circumstances, which are thereby recognized as having a leading role in the development of events, perseverance in enduring the hardships and hardships of life , suffering, reconciliation with losses and losses as inevitable or even predetermined from above, perseverance in confronting fate.
Dependence on the “whims” of harsh nature and climatic instability, on the unbridled aggressiveness of the nomadic peoples who make up the immediate environment, uncertainty about the future (harvest or shortage, war or peace, home or a trip to foreign lands, freedom or bondage, rebellion or obedience, hunting or captivity, etc.) - all this accumulated in popular ideas about the constancy of variability.
As we know, the adoption in the 10th century had a great influence on the formation of the Russian cultural archetype. Christianity, which came to Rus' from Byzantium in the Orthodox form. Russian people were initially prepared to accept Orthodoxy (through the entire course of their own development).
Orthodoxy, although it included the entire society, did not capture the whole person. Orthodoxy governed only the religious and moral life of the Russian people, that is, it regulated church holidays, family relationships, and pastime, while the ordinary everyday life of the Russian person was not affected by it. This state of affairs provided free space for original national creativity.
In Eastern Christian culture, a person’s earthly existence had no value, so the main task was to prepare a person for death, and life was seen as a small segment on the path to eternity. Spiritual aspirations for humility and piety, asceticism and a sense of one’s own sinfulness were recognized as the meaning of earthly existence.
Hence, in the Orthodox culture, a disdain for earthly goods appeared, since they are fleeting and insignificant, the attitude towards work not as a creative process, but as a way of self-abasement. Hence the common expressions. You won’t earn all the money, you won’t take it with you to the grave, etc.
Vl. Solovyov was especially fond of such a trait of a Russian person as the awareness of his sinfulness - imperfection, incompleteness in achieving the ideal.
Bibliography
1. Arutyunyan A. Russia and the Renaissance: History of Russian culture (was there a Renaissance in Russia?; On the influence of Byzantium on Russian culture) // Societies, sciences and modernity. - 2001. - No. 3. - P. 89-101.
2. Babakov V. National cultures in the social development of Russia // Socio-political journal. - 1995. - No. 5. - P. 29-42.
3. Berdyaev N.A. About culture; The fate of Russia // Anthology of cultural thought. - 1996. - Incl. briefly about the author.
4. Guzevich D.Yu. Centaur, or to the question of the binarity of Russian culture: Formation of culture in Russia // Zvezda. - 2001. - No. 5. - P. 186-197.
5. Ivanova T.V. Mentality, culture, art // Society, science and modernity. - 2002. - No. 6. - P. 168-177. – Culture.
6. Kondakov I. Architectonics of Russian culture // Society, science and modernity. - 1999. - No. 1. - P. 159-172. - On the logic of the historical development of Russian culture.
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8. Korobeynikova L.A. The evolution of ideas about culture in cultural studies // Socis. - 1996. - No. 7. - P. 79-85.
9. Kravchenko A.I. Culturology. - M.: Academician. project, 2001. - 496 p.
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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
ACADEMIC COLLEGE
LAZAREVSKY BUILDING
DISCIPLINE: Intercultural communication
TOPIC: Russian national character
folk mentality character fairy tale
1. Russian cultural archetype. Russian mentality. Inertia of mentality: Russian folk tale as a paradigm of consciousness and cultural code of our time. Russian national character. Antinomies of the Russian soul
1.1 Russian cultural archetype
The nature of Russian culture was greatly influenced by the peculiarities of the nature of Russia. The harsh climate of the Russian plain, forests, rivers, steppes, endless open spaces - all this formed the foundations of Russian culture (the worldview of the people, the nature of their settlement, connections with other lands, the type of economic activity, attitudes towards work, the organization of social life, folklore images, folk philosophy ).
Nature has accustomed Russian people to excessively intense short-term work. Therefore, no people could work so hard. The fight against nature required joint efforts from the Russian people. Therefore, stable concepts have become: to pile on with the whole world and rush. Nature evoked in people. admiration is an actual attitude. The fatalism of the Russian person was combined with a spontaneously realistic attitude to life.
1.2 Russian mentality
F.I. Tyutchev said about Russia:
You can't understand Russia with your mind,
The general arshin cannot be measured.
She's going to be special...
You can only believe in Russia.
S.N. Bulgakov wrote that the continentality of the climate (the temperature amplitude in Oymyakon reaches 104 °C) is probably to blame for the fact that the Russian character is so contradictory, the thirst for absolute freedom and slave obedience, religiosity and atheism - these properties of the Russian mentality are incomprehensible to Europeans , create in Russia an aura of mystery, mystery, and incomprehensibility. For us ourselves, Russia remains an unsolved mystery.
The “natural” calmness, good nature and generosity of the Russians amazingly coincided with the dogmas of Orthodox Christian morality. Humility in the Russian people and from the church. Christian morality, which for centuries supported the entire Russian statehood, greatly influenced the people's character. Orthodoxy has fostered spirituality, all-forgiving love, responsiveness, sacrifice, and kindness in Great Russians. The unity of Church and state, the feeling of being not only a subject of the country, but also a part of a huge cultural community, has fostered extraordinary patriotism among Russians, reaching the point of sacrificial heroism. A.I. Herzen wrote: “Every Russian recognizes himself as a part of the entire state, is aware of his kinship with the entire population.”
Dependence of the mentality of the Russian people on natural factors.
|
Factors influencing mentality |
National Character Traits |
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Geographical location, vastness of the territory. |
Breadth of soul Liberty Spiritual freedom Depression Mismanagement Lack of initiative Laziness (Oblomovism) |
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(climate severity, long winter, low temperatures) |
Melancholy Slowness Underestimating your work Hospitality Patience Obedience Collectivism Sobornost Elbow feeling Controversy Unrestrained |
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Landscape |
Contemplation Daydreaming Observation Thoughtfulness Nature tracking (keep your eyes open) Discussion of the path traveled |
The problem of overcoming Russian spaces and distances has always been one of the most important for the Russian people. Even Nicholas I said: “Distances are the misfortune of Russia.”
1.3 Inertia of mentality: Russian folk tale as a paradigm of consciousness and cultural code of our time
THE TALE IS A LIE, BUT IT HAS A HINT...
Fairy tales in folk life are currently used for fun and pastime. The people do not treat them with the seriousness that is manifested in their relationship to the song. This difference in attitudes towards these types of oral creativity is expressed by the people themselves with the words: “a fairy tale is a fold, a song is a true story.” With these words, the people draw a sharp line between both types of creativity: a fairy tale, in their opinion, is a product of fantasy, a song is a reflection of the past, what the people actually experienced.
Fairy tales very early turned into a source of amusement for us. The “Tale of the Rich Man and the Poor Man” (12th century) describes how the ancient Russian rich man amuses himself as he goes to sleep: the household and servants “stroke his feet... they hum and sing (implying fairy tales) to him...”. This means that already in ancient times what we know from the later era of serfdom in the 18th-19th centuries happened.
But fairy tales, contrary to popular belief, do not constitute a product of pure fantasy: they reflect the life and views of very ancient origin, but subsequently forgotten by the people. Thus, in fairy tales there is a reflection of features that characterize the rudeness of ancient life: cannibalism (Baba Yaga), chopping the body into small parts, taking out the heart and liver, gouging out eyes, throwing out old people, newborns, the sick and the weak to starvation, executing convicts with tying them to the tails of horses released into the field, burying them alive in the ground, above-ground burial (on high pillars), swearing in the earth.
Precisely, as a product of the creativity of very ancient, predominantly pagan, times, fairy tales, like other types of oral creativity, are subject to persecution by the clergy very early on. In the 11th century, it was forbidden to “bad fairy tales, blaspheme” (tell funny things), fairy tale tellers, “idle talkers”, “laugh talkers” were censured. Even in the 12th century it was forbidden to tell fables, etc. In the 17th century, those who “tell unprecedented tales” are condemned. Despite these prohibitions, fairy tales in the mouths of the people have survived, of course, in a modified form, to this day. Fairy tales conceal the meaning of relationships between people, their different worldviews. Fairy tales describe life events with elements of the past. Read fairy tales, reflect on them, and they will help you find the way to naturally acquired freedom, love for yourself, for animals, for the earth, for children... K.P. Estes.
1.4 Russian national character
National character is a set of the most significant defining features of an ethnic group and a nation, by which it is possible to distinguish representatives of one nation from another. A Chinese proverb says: “As the land and river are, so is the character of man.” Each nation has its own special character. Much has been said and written about the secrets of the Russian soul, about the Russian national character. And this is not accidental, because Russia, having a long history, experiencing a lot of suffering and changes, occupying a special geographical position, having absorbed the features of both Western and Eastern civilizations, has the right to be the object of close attention and targeted study. Especially today, at the turn of the third millennium, when, in connection with the profound changes that have occurred in Russia, interest in it is increasingly increasing. The character of the people and the fate of the country are closely interconnected and influence each other throughout the entire historical path, so there is a noticeable increased interest in the national character of the Russian people. As the Russian proverb says: “When you sow character, you reap destiny.”
National character is reflected both in fiction, philosophy, journalism, art, and in language. For language is a mirror of culture, it reflects not only the real world surrounding a person, not only the real conditions of his life, but also the social consciousness of the people, their mentality, national character, way of life, traditions, customs, morality, value system, attitude, vision of the world. Therefore, a language must be studied in inextricable unity with the world and culture of the people speaking the given language. Proverbs and sayings are a reflection of folk wisdom; they contain the people’s idea of themselves, and therefore the secrets of the Russian national character can be tried to be comprehended through Russian proverbs and sayings.
Limiting the scope of the essay, I will not list all the features of the Russian people, but will focus only on typical positive features.
Hard work, talent.
Russian people are gifted and hardworking. He has many talents and abilities in almost all areas of public life. He is characterized by observation, theoretical and practical intelligence, natural ingenuity, ingenuity, and creativity. The Russian people are great workers, creators and creators, and have enriched the world with great cultural achievements. It is difficult to list even a small part of what has become the property of Russia itself.
Love of freedom.
Love of freedom is one of the main, deep-seated properties of the Russian people. The history of Russia is the history of the struggle of the Russian people for their freedom and independence. For the Russian people, freedom is above all.
Willpower, courage and bravery.
Possessing a freedom-loving character, the Russian people repeatedly defeated invaders and achieved great success in peaceful construction. Proverbs reflect the traits of Russian soldiers: “Better death in battle than shame in the ranks,” “Either a colonel or a dead man.” These same traits also manifest themselves in the lives of peaceful people. “He who doesn’t take risks doesn’t drink champagne” - about the fact that the Russian people love to take risks. “It’s either hit or miss” - about the determination to do something, to take risks, despite possible failure, death. The proverbs are similar in meaning: “Either your chest is in the crosses, or your head is in the bushes,” “Either your foot is in the stirrup, or your head is in the stump,” “Either you eat a fish or run aground.”
The proverb “If you are afraid of wolves, do not go into the forest” says that there is no point in getting down to business if you are afraid of the difficulties ahead. And luck always accompanies the brave: “Luck is the companion of the brave,” “He who dares eats.”
Patience and perseverance.
This is perhaps one of the most characteristic features of the Russian people, which has become literally legendary. Russians seem to have limitless patience, an amazing ability to endure difficulties, hardships and suffering. In Russian culture, patience and the ability to endure suffering are the ability to exist, the ability to respond to external circumstances, this is the basis of personality.
Hospitality, generosity and generosity of nature.
Russian hospitality is well known: “Even though you’re not rich, you’re welcome.” The best treat is always ready for the guest: “When there is something in the oven, it’s all swords on the table!”, “Don’t feel sorry for the guest, but pour it thicker.”
Russian people greet a guest on the threshold of their home. The custom of presenting guests with bread and salt comes from time immemorial and is still preserved in Russia. Bread and salt is at the same time a greeting, an expression of cordiality, and a wish for good and prosperity to the guest: “Eat bread and salt, and listen to good people.” Without bread there is no life, there is no true Russian table.
Responsiveness.
A distinctive feature of the Russian people is their responsiveness, the ability to understand another person, a sensitive attitude to someone else’s state of mind, the ability to integrate with the culture of other peoples and respect it. Amazing ethnic tolerance, as well as an exceptional ability to empathize, the ability to understand and accept other peoples allowed the Russian nation to create an empire unprecedented in history.
Religiosity.
One of the deepest traits of the Russian character is religiosity. The religious worldview played an important role in the formation of both the nation as a whole and the Russian personality individually. This characteristic deep feature of the Russian national personality has been reflected since ancient times in folklore, in proverbs: “To live is to serve God,” “God’s hand is strong,” “God’s hand is master,” “No one can, so God will help,” “With God.” If you go, you will reach good things" - these proverbs say that God is omnipotent and helps believers in everything.
2. National image of the world and “cosmo-psycho-logos” (G. Gachev). The value system of Russian culture: history and modernity
2.1 National image of the world and “cosmo-psycho-logos” (G. Gachev)
The national image of the world, national integrity is defined through Cosmo-Psycho-Logos, as a unique unity of complementary national nature, mentality and thinking. Their correspondence is as follows: “The nature of each country is a text, full of meanings hidden in the Mother and. The people = the spouse of Nature (Nature + Motherland). In the course of work during History, he unravels the call and covenant of Nature and creates Culture, which is the birth of their children family life. Nature and Culture are in dialogue: both in identity and in complementarity; Society and History are called upon to make up for what the country is not given by nature" (Gachev G. National images of the world. Cosmo - Psycho - Logos. M., 1995 . P.11).
2.2 The value system of Russian culture: history and modernity
Russian culture is undoubtedly a great European culture. It is an independent and distinctive national culture, the custodian of national traditions, values, and a reflection of the characteristics of the national character. Russian culture, in the process of its formation and development, was influenced by many cultures, absorbed some elements of these cultures, processed and rethought them, they became part of our culture as its organic component.
Russian culture is neither the culture of the East nor the culture of the West. We can say that it represents an independent type of culture.
The history of Russian culture, its values, role and place in world culture are the subject of reflection by many people who consider themselves part of this culture. The concept of “culture of Russia” includes the history of the formation and development of the culture of the Old Russian state, individual principalities, multinational state associations - the Moscow State, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation. Russian culture acts as the main system-forming element of the culture of a multinational state.
Modern cultural knowledge evolved as an awareness of the crisis of culture, the impossibility of harmony between man and nature. There is a refusal to search for the rational foundations of this harmony and, accordingly, the destruction of the philosophical procedure of self-awareness and reflection as a method of reconstructing a cultural tradition. The “gaps” and “gaps” between nature and culture could not be eliminated on the basis of idealistic historicism. This fact can be viewed both as a failure in the construction of a certain cultural-philosophical theory, and as the collapse of a certain cultural project still associated with the Enlightenment.
3. Search for Russian national identity. "West" and "East" in Russian consciousness. Russia in the dialogue of cultures
3.1 Search for Russian national identity
Today, almost all Slavs throughout almost the entire space called the “Slavic world” are engaged in the search for national identity. Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Bulgarians and other Slavic peoples declare their desire for this with all seriousness and responsibility.
At the same time, the Russians seem to have finally decided on the main course of their search, having undertaken to form their renewed identity on the basis of the Slavic idea and Orthodoxy. There is undoubtedly logic in this, and there is a sense of perspective. This is seen as the key to the revival of both the national spirit and Russian statehood.
3.2 “West” and “East” in Russian consciousness. Russia in the dialogue of cultures
In modern science, the East, West, and Russia are perceived as the most important sociocultural formations in the process of historical development. Traditionally, the time of civilization in history is limited to 5-6 thousand years, starting with the emergence of developed, technogenic societies in the valleys of large rivers (Sumer, Egypt, China, Indian civilization), which laid the socio-economic and spiritual-cultural foundation of the despot states of the Ancient East. These and similar medieval societies (Islamic civilization) are most often associated with the idea of the existence in world history of a special formation - the East, opposite to the West (another fundamental form of global sociocultural experience). East and West are contrasted in the form of the following oppositions: stability - instability, naturalness - artificiality, slavery - freedom, substantiality - personality, spirituality - materiality, sensuality - rationality, order - progress, sustainability - development. In these ideas coming from the philosophy of history, no attention was paid to the fact that the East and West are not the original, and therefore not universal forms of civilizational-historical existence. Hence the criticism of classical historical theories (especially Eurocentrism, the desire to place the West over the East) in the theories of local civilizations, which fundamentally reject the admissibility of using the very concepts of East and West in historical knowledge.
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