The United States against Russia. Whether everything is so obvious here?. Юрий Михайлович Низовцев
one of the first Westerners, spoke about it so: "Each people have a period of lively excitement, passionate concern, activities reckless and aimless… They are obliged to it by the brightest memories of heroic elements of the history, the poetry, all most strong and fruitful ideas; it is a necessary basis of any society … We don't have anything it. At first – wild barbarity, then – rough ignorance, then – furious and humiliating foreign dominion, which spirit were inherited later by our national power, – such is the sad side of our youth" [2].
This statement, of course, is insulting, but it accurately reflects, at least, temporal backwardness of Russia in institutional, technological, cultural and educational level from Europe for that time.
The general idea of Westerners is that Russia and Europe after reforms Peter I go by identical paths. Russia on this way should borrow experience of Europe and the educated minority in it should achieve release of the personality and create the state and society providing this liberty.
Here is correct only that Russia can borrow a lot of things on the way of development in more developed Europe.
However all remaining didn't happen still in spite of the fact that since appearance of first Westerners passed nearly two hundred years.
"The educated minority" of imperial Russia showed the full helplessness and insolvency in 1917, and was dispersed already as the Constituent assembly at the beginning of 1918. Less educated minority which was formed during the Soviet power, new in respect of liberate of the personality didn't invent anything. On the contrary, it emasculated even more and enslaved the personality within single and false ideology.
As for the thesis of Westerners, including here and Marxists, that Russia will catch up and will overtake the West, it is only possible to be surprised to their naivety and mechanicalness of their views.
Really can the unripe young man catch up and overtake by explosive way, for example, the mature man with his experience? The difference of unripe and mature, experimental consciousness remains practically invariable for the few years of this race. Read "Fathers and children" of I. S. Turgenev. Perhaps only that, the young man, having reached already maturity, at last, will understand thought and feeling, perhaps, already late father.
The modern domestic liberals-Westerners don't offer original anything, except the same aspiration to the blessed the West where don't wait for us as the equivalent partner at all.
By the way, about it insightful, though inconsistent Chaadayev P. Ya., wrote actually providentially: "All people of Europe have the general physiognomy, some family likeness … In addition to the general character, each of these people has still the private interest, but also that and another wholly are weaved from history and tradition. They make successive ideological heritage of these people. Each certain person uses the share of this inheritance, without labour and excessive efforts he accumulates into himself in life stock of this knowledge and skills and derives from them the benefit. Compare and tell, whether much we find at ourselves in daily use of elementary ideas by which we could be guided barely in life?… Would you like know, what it for ideas? These are ideas of debt, justice, right, order. They were born out of events which have created society there, they enter as a necessary element into social way of life of these countries. It also makes the atmosphere of the West; it is more, than the history, more, than the psychology, it is physiology of the European person. Than do you replace it at us?" [2].
Really, it is impossible to join to the alien organism, and it won't accept you and will always reject you or will make you by its colony, as it happened actually to Russia when after 1991 it has given itself on mercy of the West, supposing by naivety of the young consciousness that the West is same noble and fair as itself. But the West was the indifferent and the calculating in the relations with "someone else's" nations.
So hopes of domestic liberals for merge to the West are vain. If they don't understand it, they are inadequate, but if understand and continue to insist on it, they are compradors and traitors of the homeland who are handing over it to the West which already joyfully has received from Russia, destroyed, in fact, by the same the West in case of their active involvement, the income in the amount of not one trillion dollars for the last twenty years.
The Russian State still continues "to feed" strenuously the West and own elite, retaining at this overwhelming part of the population in poverty, probably, in hope that the West won't forget the assistants in elite of Russia, and correctly understanding that it is easier to control and direct the poor population, throwing it sometimes pathetic handouts.
The difference of public consciousness of the West outstripping the level of development of public consciousness of Russia on some centuries under no circumstances won't allow Russia to interact as equals with the West.
Here Westerners and Marxists confuse technical achievements with institutional, cultural and educational values, with experience and traditions.
It is technically possible to catch up and even to overtake the West under certain conditions and tension, as the Soviet Union made it, having created by the first a hydrogen bomb, having launched the satellite, but the Soviet Union didn't manage even to approach close to creation democratic institutes which are similar of the western, to establishment of more or less real independence of different branches of the power, more or less democratic choices, quality of a general education of the population, quality of medical attendance of all segments of the population, etc. The value of life in Russia and in the West is different that is manifested everywhere in the current life in relation of the authorities to ordinary people. But – not only in it. For example, Europeans and Americans didn't throw and didn't forget about the perished fighters. They found and reburied or, at least, marked places of burial of all the soldiers who were killed in battles of World War II, but in Russia millions of perished Russian soldiers still lie thrown and not buried in places of fights. Anybody doesn't look for them, except sparse enthusiasts, doesn't mark and doesn't rebury with honor in spite of the fact that they perished for the homeland and it should be eternally grateful to them at least by memory of them, produced by honorary burial of them in graves with signs and should not spare expense and attention to the aid of families of perished soldiers if they need it. It should be the first duty of the state. And Soviet and then and the Russian authorities the perished fighters simply wrote off and forgot about them.
Approach as Westerners, and Slavophiles to a peasant community is primitive.
It is known that Slavophiles, nativist and Westerners-socialists consider that the community is a basis of Russia whereas other part of Westerners supposed that the community is a remnant that it will disappear just as it disappeared in countries of Western Europe earlier. Respectively the first stood up for full support of a community, others – for transition to individual economy.
It is dispute not about that at all. Of course, eventually communities should to be broken up and give way to individual farms or collective farming of other form, as practice showed.
The thing is quite different. Peasant communities have disappeared in Russia recently. Do not forget also about the collective farms in the USSR. For this reason the consciousness of the Russian people still keeps, acting for many centuries in mass of the population, spirit of collectivism, mutual, sympathy of neighbor, reinforced by the fact that during the Soviet power individualism in no way encouraged, while in developed countries this spirit long gone away, replaced by individualism of private owner, which thinks only of himself.
That is national originality of the Russian people consists not in the community as Slavophiles claimed, but in consciousness of the people which many generations until recently were absorbing in themselves spirit of collectivism, support of the neighbor, friendship with it, but not hostility.
Russian people still keep this noble spirit, disinterestedly helping all who asks about it and do not wait for special gratitude. All other people are surprised, and some even sneer under "stupidity" of Russians who do not ask anything for support which sometimes was by the decisive for other peoples. If to remember the Soviet Union, Russians invested in economy of other republics so much that those began to live better, than Russians themselves who, in general, and did not complain.
This opposition of the Russian type of behavior, religiousness to values of more progressive the West was the main mistake of Slavophiles. It is impossible