Base instinct

Reading Nien’s Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai, an account by a Chinese woman arrested during the Culture Revolution in the 1960’s, I am disturbingly reminded of an oppressive book I read as part of my Russian Studies program, namely Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.  Curiously it is not the cruelty of the regimes depicted in this book that is so disturbing but instead their callousness. To paraphrase Hannah Arendt, while the Nazi regime wanted people, mainly non-Germans, to die, Stalin and Mao simply did not care if you died, whether you were of the same nationality or not.  Tens of millions of Russians and Chinese perished, with the exact toll impossible to determine. In any case, the numbers are numbing to the mind and ultimately impossible to comprehend.

Regardless of the political background of the individual killing waves, including collectivization, the Great Purge, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, to name a few, one of the most puzzling aspects is the genuine public support or at least acceptance of these extreme measures. To a large degree, many of the citizens of these country had no problem as their fellow farmers, professionals and closest friends were cruelly punished for nothing. Clearly, in the pre-Internet years, most did not have access to any other information aside from the official channels. Also, by nature, many peasants and workers did not actively seek the “truth’ or think it was wise to do so. Yet, beyond the impact of behaving politically correct, I sense the cynical use of one of the basic instincts of human nature, envy.

Max Weber describes peasant thinking in terms of a zero-sum world. The term refers to the concept that everything, both material and spiritual, is limited in quantity and cannot be expanded.  Therefore, if someone receives more food or love, their extra is ultimately at my expense. In the context of Russia and China, both of which were very peasant before and during the revolution, a kulak, technically a rich peasant, had one more cow than you while a bourgeois had a slightly bigger house or a better job. Stalin and Mao exploited this natural joy in seeing someone get his/her comeuppance and were able to perpetrate the greatest massacres of their own populations that history has recorded. This mass murder was not committed with viciousness but instead, and maybe even worse, with apathy.

There is a Russian proverb recounting that a peasant, offered anything that he wanted on condition that his neighbor received twice of it, requested to have one of his eyes removed. If the horrors of the Russian and Chinese revolution as described in the books mentioned above were aberrations, I would be less disturbed. However, today’s politicians have more tools than ever to exploit the basest instincts of the public to their own good and no less inclination. That is what is so scary.

Puttin’ Putin in his (historical) place

I recently translated some articles on Putin, the elected dictator of the Russian Federation.  It brought up two seemingly separate memories.  Once is a book dated written in 1978 by Alexander Yanov describing the Russian new right in the then-called Soviet Union. He discusses the ideology of the right-wing opposition to communism, as personified by the Solzhenitsyn, noting its absence of any enthusiasm for democracy and pluralism. The other is a joke about Russian thinking: a Russian peasant, when given the choice of anything he wanted on condition that his neighbor gets twice as much, chose to have one eye removed. My thoughts during this translation were how Yanov was correct about the historical cycle of Russian politics and how tragic it is.

To explain, Yanov noted the bipolar behavior of Russian national politics from extreme terror by an individual (Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Stalin, to name a few) to irresponsible leadership by small class of elite (Moscow boyars, post-Soviet industrialists). He noted the historical lack of ruling elite trusted by the mass of people to act in the overall good of the country.  As a result, populist leaders, such as Putin, have had no problem gaining support in suppressing any organized opposition to totalitarianism. He contrasted this with the UK, where the British aristocracy had (barely) enough wisdom to see that the only way to guarantee their dominance was to ensure a decent life for the common folk. 

This consideration for the general welfare in England allowed for the gradual development to complete democracy. By contrast, Russia is once again in its dictatorship mode, creating “equality in poverty”, i.e. nobody has any real freedom. For those that would like to see a confident, not paranoid Russia and believe in the intellectual potential of Russians, this situation is a depressing tragedy, a bit like watching a drug addict trying to kick his habit.

I would to find some good Russian expression putting some silver lining to this cloud, but, alas, Russian proverbs tend to be as pessimistic as the current political situation.  Instead, I will do as most Russians have historically done, wait patiently until something changes but without any great hope.