RussiaProfile.Org, an online publication providing in-depth analysis of business, politics, current affairs and culture in Russia, has published an unusual Special Report on the mysterious "Russian soul". Fifteen articles by both Russian and foreign contributors examine this concept, which has been used by Russia watchers for some 150 years, from a contemporary perspective. The following article is part of this collection
Forty-seven year old Alexei Varlamov is one of the most prominent modern Russian writers. He debuted with short stories in the late 1980s and gained fame in 1995 with his semi-autobiographical novel “Lokh” (roughly translated into English as “Dupe”), to be followed by “Rozhdenie” (“Birth”), which won him the prestigious Anti-Booker award.
Given the sharp political division in the post-Soviet Russian literary world into “patriots” and “democrats,” Varlamov is almost exceptionally neutral. His worldview and style were originally closer to that of the Russian “village literature” tradition, but he ended up being published in liberal magazines.
In 2006 Varlamov received the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize for a “nuanced account of power and fragility of the human soul and its fate in the modern world,” as well as for “understanding the path of Russian literature in the 20th century in the genre of writers’ biographies.” In recent years Varlamov has published biographies of Soviet-period Russian writers Mikhail Prishvin, Alexei Tolstoy and Mikhail Bulgakov, as well as of the controversial mystic Grigory Rasputin.
R. P. For you as a Russian writer and a literary historian, is the “Russian soul” a reality, a substance?
A. V.: The soul is definitely a substance. Whether the “Russian soul” is a substance is a big question. I have a feeling that it is more of a myth. I have never operated with this concept. Let’s say it is an instrument that one can use to describe our perception of the world, our history and modernity. But it is not a universal instrument. It’s a metaphor, which says something to someone. To me personally, it doesn’t say much.
I don’t know who invented it—Russians or foreigners. Most likely foreigners. In it I hear something moving, but condescending. Like when Europeans first set foot in Japan, where everything was alien, they had to invent a metaphor to explain it all at once. The same goes for Russia: an alien, self-absorbed entity. The “Russian soul” is probably a handy instrument to dissect this entity.
So for an outsider it is probably not a bad instrument. For someone who lives here and is part of this culture, it is superfluous.
R. P. Russia first met with the West en masse toward the end of the 17th century, during the reign of Peter the Great. Can one speak of the Russian soul as something that drives Russia to be part of European politics?
A. V.: I don’t think so. The Russian soul is a romantic concept. Most likely it originates in the 19th century, when Russia became known not only for its cannons, but when Russian culture started to mean something. The concept of the Russian soul became necessary when it became necessary to explain how these barbarians have such a culture.
R. P. Solzhenitsyn wrote about Russia as a country without an eastern border. Does the Russian soul have something to do with the multiplicity or vagueness of the Russian identity—when Mikhail Bulgakov and the hopeless alcoholic, Muslims and the people of Western European culture are all considered Russians?
A. V.: Of course our large territory plays a role here. Russia has always been a country of explosive, broken-up history. We have constantly been under threat of being divided. That is why Russian society has always been in need of bonds that would keep it together. Such bonds have been the state, the church and culture. To some extent, one can probably speak about the Russian soul as one such bond, however mythical, that can help us say that Bulgakov and the lowliest alcoholic belong to the same people.
But I am always wary of the notion of national exclusivity, primarily because I don’t know very well how it works with other nations. I just assume that with our expanse and our polarization these bonds that keep us together are too obvious. But I have never studied these matters.
R. P. You wrote a biography of Grigory Rasputin. Let’s talk about Rasputin as some extreme manifestation of the Russian soul. A man of the people, a mystic, a hooligan, a Christian, a healer, a passionate man, a friend of the tsar and an anti-establishment figure all at the same time!
A. V.: The myth of Rasputin has clearly overshadowed the real man. If we try to sum up the more or less reliable, moderate data on Rasputin, it is clear that he was an extremely talented man, a unique product of the peasantry.
For me, one of the most reliable sources on Rasputin are the memoirs of Metropolitan Veniamin Fedchenkov, who met Rasputin when he had just come to St. Petersburg, while Veniamin was a graduate student. Rasputin made a very good impression on him by his prayerfulness and religious fervor. St. Petersburg was already spiritually decrepit, and he came “tensed as a drawn bow,” as Veniamin wrote. I trust these words: Rasputin came to St. Petersburg as a spiritual phenomenon. But he likely did not stay on that spiritual height. He had a combination of very diverse traits. We know for sure that he was a very prayerful man, but we don’t know for sure if he was an adulterer. Perhaps there was something there, but the legend definitely exceeds the reality here.
Perhaps, Rasputin is a case of a failed Holy Fool—a man who tried to undertake the feat of being an intentional fool for Christ, and for some reason couldn’t bear it.
R. P. But maybe this is a manifestation of Russian soul? Maybe he thought that these two things—prayer and adultery, sin and saintliness—can in fact be combined? As the popular saying goes, if you won’t sin, you won’t repent. We see it in literature as well. As writer Valery Popov said about one of his characters, “he killed six people, but his soul is pure…”
A. V.: We are again stepping into the realm of guesswork. I can well see the Brothers Karamazov in Rasputin, because clearly this man combined the prayerfulness of Alexei, the passion of Dmitry, the wit of Ivan and the lust of Fyodor Pavlovich. But as a historian, I cannot say with certainty that it was exactly so. Yet he was undoubtedly a very rich personality, who unfortunately did not end up playing the role he wanted to play. He definitely did not want to do evil either to the royal family, or to his country. At the time, when many betrayed the Tsar, he remained faithful to the royal family to the very end. One can say many more good things about him than bad ones. But unfortunately, the role that he objectively played in Russian history is different—he pitted the tsar against everyone he could—against the Duma, the church, the army, society, and the other members of the royal family.
There are two sainted sisters—Empress Alexandra and Grand Duchess Elizabeth: one welcomed Rasputin’s murder and sent a congratulatory telegram to his murderer Felix Yusupov, the other wept over the death of her friend. Both were soon martyred, both are canonized. They can be reconciled in Heaven, but on earth—probably not. So, we are talking about a major rupture in Russian history.
R. P. There is a theory that Russian history is made up of ruptures, break-ups—the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century, 1917 and 1991. Do you see much in common between 1917 and 1991?
A. V.: I think the commonality between them is very distant, superficial and illusory. The Revolution of 1917 was definitely a tragedy that violated the natural path of Russia’s development and led to tremendous human losses, bloodshed, fratricide and ultimately to a dead end. The events of 1991, no matter how critical we can be of some of their aspects and consequences, are something I see as a positive development. We should not deny all the bloodshed on the periphery of the empire. But it was not an immediate consequence of August 1991. It was the consequence of all the contradictions that accumulated over the 70 years of the Soviet period. I think we ultimately managed to get through with much less blood spilled than we could have.
The Russian Orthodox Church is often accused of not having done anything during 20 years of freedom. I think it is a very superficial statement. It did not promise anything. But it kept the country together in the 1990s, at a time when all the sects, schisms, and internal conflicts were tearing the country apart, threatening fratricide. I think that it is in part due to the church that we have preserved the country. This is also radically different from the revolutionary situation in 1917, when the church was humiliated and marginalized. I can be very critical of President Boris Yeltsin and dislike his policies, but I wouldn’t equate Vladimir Lenin with Yeltsin.
We often hear about the bad Mikhail Gorbachev, bad Yeltsin, bad Putin. I say that we should be historical realists. The country that was ruled by Lenin, Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev or Konstantin Chernenko, cannot generate its General Charles De Gaulle or its Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They are nowhere to be found! We should be realists and say thanks for Gorbachev, for Yeltsin, for Putin after all. Russia is slowly crawling up from a pit, and we should not expect any miracles here.
R. P. You mentioned the state, the church and culture as three bonds keeping Russia together. What about the state and the Russian soul’s attitude toward authority? There is a widespread belief that Russians are predisposed toward authoritarianism on the one hand, and toward uncontrolled destructive rebellion on the other. What is the Russians’ relationship with the state?
A. V.: I don’t know how it was in the 19th century, but in the 20th century I believe that Russians don’t trust the state. At the same time, the different 20th century Russian writers whom I studied—Mikhail Prishvin, Alexei Tolstoy and Mikhail Bulgakov—were all statists.
Prishvin was an interesting case. He was a ferocious enemy of the Bolsheviks in 1918. Then he lived in a village in the first post-revolutionary years from 1919 to 1921 and he started to gradually side with the Bolsheviks, because he was terrified of the uncontrolled nature of popular rebellion. Eventually he came to the conclusion that people became so barbarized during the revolution, that only a brutal and bloody force like the Bolsheviks was capable of bringing them to their senses. He did not accept Lenin, who was for him a destructive revolutionary force, but he accepted Stalin as a constructive statist force.
Interestingly enough, Alexei Tolstoi, who had a completely different position both socially and in literature, had a similar logic. Why did he hate Tsar Nicholas II? Because he saw the latter as a weak ruler who led Russia to defeat in World War I and to the Bolsheviks selling off Russian land. But when he saw that the Bolsheviks started gathering back Russian land, he sided with them, because, in his eyes, they were becoming useful to the Russian state. They were people who understood that a strong state is in the interests of this large country and large people, who would otherwise kill themselves.
The mission of Russian literature should be to try to make this state as merciful and just as possible. I think this is the idea of Alexander Pushkin’s “Captain’s Daughter,” where it says: “May God grant you not to see the Russian rebellion—senseless and merciless”. Yemelyan Pugachyov is shown as a hostage of this Russian rebellion. At the end we see an idealized Empress Catherine, who is merciful. In the “Bronze Horseman” Pushkin also shows the conflict between an individual and the state, and doesn’t side with either of them.
In a way, this is the main tragedy of Russian life, because the state will always encroach upon an individual, the individual will always distrust the state. There will never be an ideal symphony here. One should try to keep this system in some kind of balance, because the other alternative is blood and smoke, either brutal terror or a wild rampage.
As a Russian, I have a dual attitude toward what happens in Moscow on the 31st of every other month. I don’t go to these rallies. I am not a kind of Putin loyalist and not enough of a fan of the opposition to take part in it. But when I see photos of how the police are beating people up on the Internet, it spurs horror, shock and revulsion. On the other hand, I understand that police are the “Tsar’s people” and they also need to carry out the work assigned to them. I strongly dislike that these events are feeding hatred between them both. In some sense, both are dear to me. Both are Russians, both are my compatriots. But the enmity is growing. In the same way as enmity is growing between the traffic police and drivers. As a driver, I feel it. But if you think about it, you realize that if you remove the traffic police, it would only be worse, no matter what kind of bribe-takers they are.
These frictions scare me. I think that the authorities are behaving highly unreasonably by seeding this animosity. They should be doing exactly the opposite—healing these pains, establishing a dialogue in society, civilizing it. But they behave with lordly disregard, they couldn’t care less.
R. P. It is often said that the Russian people are mystical or fatalistic. That they lack reason or the Aristotelian “virtue of moderation”.
A. V.: I think there is a big difference between Russian people of the beginning of the 20th century and Russian people of the beginning of the 21st century. And there is a big question of how much the Soviet period has distorted us. To what extent are we Russian and to what extent are we Soviet people today? I do not think that today’s Russian people are particularly mystical. We have swung toward greed, pragmatism and making money so much that there is no place for mysticism left. There was a certain obsession with the mystical in the 1990s, But I have a feeling that that too is gone. The modern Russian person appears to me to be tough, knowing what he or she wants. But not Western. A Russian person’s intentions, whether good or bad, are very much dependent on how circumstances turn out. Yet we are unpredictable and capable of surprising. That seems to be the key.
Interview by Dmitry Babich and Andrei Zolotov, Jr.
