5

How They See Themselves

The Russian attitude to themselves is summed up in one of their many
pithy, earthy proverbs: "My country may be a smelly dungheap - but it's my
smelly dungheap."
Although they despair of anything ever turning out right, the Russians
firmly believe that, as a nation, they are destined to save the world. This is
nothing whatever to do with the Revolution. This is something they have
believed since the 16th-century monk, Filofei, described Moscow as "the
third Rome, and there will be no fourth".
The Russians would like to be seen above all as being capable of running
things smoothly while keeping their personal dignity intact. "The trouble with
us is that we all have a serf mentality," Moscow intellectuals frequently
muse. The playwright Chekhov talked of his lifelong struggle to "squeeze the
slave out of my soul". This is sometimes misread by people in a hurry as
"squeeze the SLAV out of my soul" - impossible and undesirable, of course.
The Russians think of themselves as expansive, generous, open-minded,
peace-loving and sincere. When the old Communist regime fell in August
1991 and the files were opened, they were genuinely amazed to discover
that the Red Army really did have plans for invading Western Europe.
They will occasionally adopt a jocular, dismissive tone about themselves
to test a stranger's attitude to them. One should not be taken in by this.
They run themselves down but get angry if others criticise their
shortcomings.
On the negative side, they recognise that they are lazy and not inclined
to look ahead or foresee the consequences of their actions. Like Dickens' Mr.
Micawber, there is a national inclination to rely on "something turning up".
Their leaders were still boasting that not a single German jackboot would
ever touch Russian soil when divisions of the German army were already
hundreds of miles inside the Russian border, within striking distance of
Minsk, Kiev and St.Petersburg.