Russia Proper

Russia has spent much of its lengthy history trying to find itself. Some of its rulers tried searched in eastern, Asiatic cultures while others looked for it in western, European cultures. Many of them looked for it in the Orthodox church, but to this day Russians only define themselves by very ambiguous ideas. These ideas can be split into one of four categories: Asiatic Russia, European Russia, Communist Russia, and Russia Proper. The first three are fairly self explanatory, however the fourth is just as ambiguous as the ideas it contains.

Asiatic Russia is Rurik and the unification of Russia, and the early wars with the Mongols. Russia was an ugly, outcast cousin of the booming European monarchies. It hadn't found itself yet as a European state, even though the feudalist system of Serfdom mimicked it quite nicely. The Orthodox church held a great deal of power but in a more cultural than political context.

European Russia came with the building of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great. It was going to be, in addition to a strategic port city not controlled by Turkish straits, Russia's "window to the west". The Romanovs brought meaning to the double-headed eagle as their crest; one head looking east, one head looking west. This was the time of Romanovs, Orlovs, and Stroganovs. Of massive palace's and intense decadence. To be a viable writer or artist in this time you simply had to mimic the west. These are the times that spawned Pushkin, Tolstoi, and Fabrege.

Communist Russia needs no explanation. Communism was not just the government but also the law, the culture, and the religion. What it could not understand or control it simply crushed. Those who stood against it were relegated to any number of less than desirable fates. The strange thing though is the way people talk about it now, as though it was worse than they realized but not as bad as they thought. For a nation know, for its oppressive cultural regime it did manage to pump out Проковиев, Кандинский, Шагалл, Блок, Горкий, Ахматова, Замятин, Бульгаков, Пастернак, и Маяковский. Thats an impressive list of writers, composers, and artists to come from what was often looked at as a culture-less society.

But it is Russia Proper that is the heart of this enormous country. It is an elusive thread that has stretched it self from the first Moscovy in Kiev to the day I first set foot in this country. It is an indelible mark that survived losing 20 million of its sons during WWII. It survived almost equally devastating loses against Napolean, the Mongols, and the Turks, even though they were "victors" in all of these wars. It survived Serfdom, Stalin, Gulags, Purges, and a three year blockade of Leningrad. Furthermore, it will survive regardless of whether or not its current government is a democracy, because it is not a rule or form of government. It is not a single idea or concept. Rather, Russia Proper is birch trees and borsch. It is onion dome churches and fur-lined hats, gold capped teeth and scarf covered women. It is слава богу, no matter when you last when to church. It is both peasants and intelligentsia but never Tzars or General Secretaries.

Russia Proper is not something you discover in history books, but an idea hidden deep within late nights drinking vodka or giving a cigarette to a homeless war vet. Its appreciating the tales told by relics of an older time, even if everyone's great-grandfather was an advisor to the Czar who lost everything during the revolution. It is sharing whatever you have with anyone you meet, even if its just a tall tale or bit of history. Its woven in the fabric of revolutions and crumbling governments,the icy winters and unforgiving land. Its woven most deeply in the culture's ability to endure through the hardest of times.

Unfortunately, the same Russia Proper that endures all the world throws at it, is the cause of much of its own problems. The same vodka drinking that warms the soul on a frigid Siberian night also leads to rampant alcoholism. The same dedication to Russian Orthodoxy that silently endured seventy years of Communism also breeds religious intolerance. The fierce nationalism showed during they most trying times in Russian history is also the cause of fierce xenophobia.

Russia Proper is something I long to understand, but even more to be a part of. Its is a way of life and ideology that is equal parts self-sustaining and self-destructive, but yet unsurpassed in curiosity. Russia Proper, as Potter Stewart would say; I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

ramble on,
Craig