Russian and American Cultures

This study provides a broad and interdisciplinary examination of Russian culture and Western perceptions of the country. Drawing from psychology, anthropology, law, and literary criticism, the author traces the roots of Russian authoritarianism, collectivism, and nationalism in the country’s history of religion, agricultural communes, and serfdom.

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Russia is a great country—both in terms of size and its achievements. It is the largest country in the world and, perhaps, the richest one as well, if one counts all its natural resources combined. The Russian population is well educated and its sciences and technology are quite advanced. It is also a country with political, legal, and economic systems similar to those in Western Europe and North America. What then prevents it from joining the community of Western democratic societies? What makes it always slide back into the habitual mode of authoritarianism, nationalism, and permeating corruption even when formal democratic institutions and structures are installed? Why does it stubbornly resist any attempts to promote democracy and liberalism? Is it because some curse hangs over the country and it always ends up in the hands of a bad government? The author of this book is convinced that the Russian government is just a derivative of the entire population—the entire culture.

The book is thus devoted to Russian culture in comparison with Western cultures and the United States in particular. The author begins this juxtaposition at the dawn of Russian history—the Christianization of Russia in the late tenth century. Religion played a tremendous role in shaping Russian tradition from the tenth through the seventeenth centuries. Choosing Greek Orthodoxy Russia made the first and decisive step away from Western Christianity inheriting the Byzantine kind of authoritarianism and banning not only the religious doctrine but also all knowledge coming from the West including Latin. The author also demonstrates how serfdom and the agricultural commune, which lasted virtually into the twentieth century, fostered the culture of collectivism, nationalism, and legal nihilism. The book’s last part explores the psychology of Russian perceptions of the United States—a crucial factor in the relationships between the two countries. Russian culture, the author contends, persists due to inculcating children during the early childhood socialization, thus passing values and myths from generation to generation.

This book represents a truly interdisciplinary project employing ideas and research results from such disciplines as cultural and psychological anthropology, social psychology, psychology of child development, sociology, semiology, law, and history of Russia and Russian religion.