Why Is Russia So Weird?

Recently, when I submitted a story on Digg about amazing paintings in Ramenskoye city, one user asked me there: “Why is Russia so weird?”This question was always standing between Russia and Western civilization. Yes, it really was. West is not able to understand why Russia is so… weird. I’m Russian, I live and work in US for the past 6 years. My wife is History Teacher. Together we can shed some light on this question.

I’m going to try to address the question. In fact, I was always interested why western people has this strange perception of Russia as some kind of weird place with weird population. I’ll try to be as simple as possible and, at the same time, provide readers with accurate historical information.

There is no short answer to this question. So, I must provide readers with basic information, key historical events and reasons behind certain actions from Russians point of view. This would help to understand why western people think that Russia is so weird.

I live in United States since 2001 and during this time (and before that) I was having number of conversations about Russia. Curious Americans were really interested to know about yesterday enemy which, they believe, they defeated in so called Cold War. So, let me give you some insight…

1. Climate

Majority of Russia’s territory has very unfriendly climate. For example, year average temperature in Moscow is about 4.2C (five months of solid winter with average temperature way below 0C) . Comparing it to London (9.9C, no single month with negative temperature), Berlin (8.9C, only one month with temperature -0.9C), Paris (11.2C, no winter as well), it’s obvious, that Russians have to spend more energy just to keep themselves warm. It consumes lots of resources and affects all aspects of life: housebuilding, roads, infrastructure, culture, national character… all of them.

If you take a look at the picture above, you’ll see that the border of 0C January temperature almost matches Russia’s western border. That actually means very simple thing: west is warm and spends energy for development, east is cold and struggling with climate.

Even Helsinki (capital of Finland) and Stockholm (capital of Sweden) are located in much warmer climate despite the fact that they are closer to the North Pole than, say, Moscow.

In addition to temperature, there are mostly poor lands from agricultural point of view. So, Russians have (had) to spend more resources to upkeep themselves and they have (had) to work more to have just enough food.

So, Russians have (had) to spend more, to work more on poor land and have to work faster because of daylight time shortage during winter season. There was no electricity until 20th century, so, for hundreds and hundreds of years Russians developed kind of “national habit” to work hard for limited time, in other words, in “impulse mode”.

2. Location

Russia started to form in 10th century as a Principality Of Kiev, which grew until 11th century

then approximately in 12th century it formed several principalities.

13th century is known as a Novgorod Republic time. It was the first democratic state with all attributes of western democracy on Russia’s territory: direct elections, people’s congress (”veche”), municipal governance.

In 14th century Russian principalities were sitting between emerging Europe and powerful Mongols. Today Mongolia is a shy and tiny country, but back than it was #1 in the world from military point of view.

Russia happen to be right in between expanding Mongols and growing Europe. What happened next? In brief, Russians defeated Mongols, so, starting from 16th century Mongolia was dramatically descending.

In addition to Mongols there were other neighbors interested in a big space connecting Europe to Asia with lots of forests and other resources.

That interest led to local and global conflicts which briefly described next.

3. Wars.

This is a short list of major wars (only really big ones):

13th to end of 15th century - war against Mongols (Golden Horde, Chingiz Khan, Batyi Khan, Mamai and others were defeated);

1492-1558 - war against Lithuania (Russia annexed some of western land);

1632-1634 - war against Polish-Lithuania Union (protected land);

1654-1667 - war against Polish-Lithuania Union (annexed more land);

1700-1721 - war against Sweden Kingdom (Swedish forces made an attempt to occupy some of Russian land and got defeated);

1756-1763 - “7-year war” against Germans (Germans were defeated, Russian took Berlin, than made a peace and returned it);

1768-1774 - Russian-Turkish war (southern borders were protected);

1812 - war against Napoleon (after taking almost all the Europe, Napoleon tried to occupy Russia and failed badly, was defeated in Russia and lost about 98% of troops);

1853-1856 - Russian-England war (over southern territories and Black Sea coastline along with Crimea peninsula);

1877-1878 - Russian-Turkish war (Turkish Empire was defeated, Russia annexed substantial amount of land and freed Balkans from Turkish);

1905 - Russian-Japan war (Russia has lost Port-Artur and some Eastern lands);

1914-1918 - World War I (plus 1917 Revolution; millions were killed, Poland and Finland got freedom);

1918-1922 - Civil war (millions were killed);

1941-1945 - Great Patriotic War (as a part of World War II; 20 to 30 millions were killed, less than half of them were military).

So, you see? State of war was always constant part of Russian environment. Very hostile environment, indeed. Average people (which formed Russian National Character) were in situation when working during spring time they wasn’t sure if they could harvest whatever they started.

4. Culture

Because of enormous territory, Russian peasants always had some place to escape. When feudal power got too much pressure, they always could just relocate to some distant land. That situation created two opposite kind of things: a) freedom state of mind (”you have no power over me, I have place to go”), b) repressing power of state officials (they had to collect people and rule them - a hard task with given conditions).

So, in addition to cold climate, poor land, necessity to work harder, constant wars Russians got one more trouble: feuds, state force and such. All together it created a key factor: unpredictability.

Everything was really unpredictable: you just don’t know if all your work will go wasted or not. There were no rational connection between amount of work, quality of work and results. Unlike Europeans, who was able to get richer and live better by working hard, Russians had no chance to go this way. In Russia, you could got richer and more wealthy working less, than other people (because of, for example, bad weather conditions or countless wars).

Again, neither amount of work, nor quality of work didn’t matter, in general. Therefore, national character was refusing to “invest” or “do small steps”. No, only giant steps would do. Only something really extraordinary, innovative, unusual and brilliant would work. Russians can live only pushing life to the limits at the same time having enough patience and insight to wait through times of trouble.

That’s why.