US-Soviet Syndrome

In a relatively recent conversation with the press, Vladimir Putin paraphrased Karamzin’s famous expression: “If you scratch every Russian hard enough, you’ll find a Tatar.”*

And how many variants have come from that expression! But when the nation’s president uttered that very same adage, it cleared the air somewhat and put the Russian question into safekeeping — from an ideological point of view — for several years.

Yet with the reunification of Crimea, the safe box has ended up wide open. Never before in recent Russian history has the phrase “Russian person” stood in such high esteem. Any negative connotations have been taken away from it. Those who previously so stubbornly refused to say “Russian citizen” instead of “Russian,” and who were just as stubbornly ostracized for it, are now mostly riding high — at least the ones smart enough to discern how to properly present their position.

But let’s ask ourselves a seemingly blasphemous question: Just what is a Russian person today? Let’s “scratch him,” not in an ethnic sense but in a cultural sense. Let’s try to understand what cultural codes define him, what meanings he transmits and, conversely, what transmissions he perceives as his own, familiar and dear….

And this is where we experience culture shock.

The fact is that under the thin layer of the “Russian spring,” we discover a fantastical hieroglyph that includes — like the yin and yang — two components: the Soviet and the American.

The Soviet part is responsible for an understanding of social justice, of how to “restore” everything, and for the nostalgia of being a superpower — more precisely, for the trauma that the collapse of the Soviet Union left in the soul of every person caught within it during their adulthood. The American part is responsible for the way of life, the perception of mass culture (and even of television, regardless of the values being promoted), behavior on the World Wide Web….

Here we must make two important clarifications. First, this does not at all mean that our person from Moscow or Kaluga is a partial copy of a person from the state of Idaho. Far from it! Local Americans live in Idaho, local Americans who are as strikingly different from the perception of them outside the U.S. as real police officers in Chuvashia are from the characters in the TV series “Menty.”**

An important component of our person (as well as of any other person in the world today) is the global American, an American tailor-made to become a recipient of “soft power.” Not of crude and blatant propaganda, but of the transmission of values through more subtle channels. Well, that’s why it’s called “soft power.”

Second, we ought not delude ourselves, in looking at the things around us, that they have any origin other than an American one (in terms of the conception, the idea). I always like to give the example of Japanese chain restaurants. They all (even some in Japan) are American, in the sense that they were devised, developed and popularized by Americans.

Both the cuisine and the supply chain were designed accordingly. Thus, sushi rolls are an American invention, the ingredients originally imported from the U.S. to one of the largest Russian chains of Japanese restaurants — as everything was already ready for use there. And this is only a tiny fragment of the reproduction of the bourgeois way of life and business model of global American technology.

If here we add Hollywood, the iPhone, GPS, social networks, the various American systems of management, etc., we end up with a machine for the reproduction of the global American.

Hollywood in this sense is especially revealing. Domestic films are either remakes of Soviet films (especially the many such films about war, which sometimes actually turn out pretty well) or a “dream factory” knock-off. “Stalingrad” is quite a good film except that it’s completely American. Even the portrayal of the main German villain is American, Hollywood-esque.

A reasonable question arises: Is it possible to create a machine for the “reproduction” of the Soviet person, especially since the recent Crimean mood is nudging us toward this very decision? Well, the history of the USSR has shown that the Soviet person is irreproducible. He is unprofitable.

Not in the sense that he costs a lot — I think in Soviet times the value of a person was not even considered — but in the sense that you can only “expend” this person: on collectivization, on industrialization….

But this is during the time of the most severe totalitarian crackdowns and oppressions, whereas in the late Soviet period there began a mixing in of consumer society in the USSR (remember the ever-increasing satisfaction of the growing needs of the Soviet people?). At the same time, the expenditure of human material continued, except the goals grew smaller and smaller.

In part, because spending by the handful and bucketfuls — as happened in the 1930s — was already frightening: there might not be enough people, and output had obviously diminished….

Some might retort, of course, that we have a lot that is Russian. But let’s analyze this “a lot” in a responsible manner. There isn’t enough room in the column for all the examples, so let’s give just one example.

Great Russian literature of the 19th century? You see, we studied it in school, either in Soviet anthologies or, to spite everyone, in the original (if someone had it), all the while gradually becoming anti-Soviet — that is, raw material for the global American. And surely it’s a sign of desperation when you have to go so far into the past for examples.

Not to mention the fact that America has long since been translating the entire world of Dostoevsky (along with that of Chekhov and Tolstoy), including in the form of Hollywood film adaptations. And there is nothing that is specifically ours in the translation. It has long since been global. To some extent that’s good, but you can’t build “soft power” on top that originates in Russia.

You can try to punch me harder and say: our faith. But that punch lands nowhere. Among global Americans, there is a huge number of Hindus, Buddhists and even Muslims….

Thus, on closer inspection only two structures emerge: the American and the Soviet. And the Soviet cannot be reproduced. It is dear to us as a memory, but today it is nothing more than an antique. And the older our children and grandchildren get, the more tenuous and less noticeable the Soviet part of the hieroglyph becomes.

And the American part is alien.

And the only way out of this situation is to devote ourselves to the drawing of a new hieroglyph, designing a “project” of a person who could be popularized globally, seeing as how Russia has once again regained the courage for global action.

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.

**Editor’s note: “Menty,” or “Cops,” is a popular Russian TV crime drama.