In an interesting article recently published in the Times Literary Supplement, the Ukrainian novelist, essayist and poet Oksana Zabuzhko blamed Western readers for failing to recognize Russian barbarism. Too many, she argues, believe that the great Russian writers, like Fyodor Dostoevsky, expressed humanist European values, but have not looked deep enough to glimpse the savagery of the Russian soul.
Zabuzhko believes that Russian literature represents “an ancient culture where people only breathe underwater and have a daily hatred of those with lungs instead of gills.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can only be understood if viewed through the prism of “Dostoevkism,” defined as “an explosion of pure evil and long-repressed hatred and envy.”
This kind of cultural analysis sounds rather old-fashioned. It was often used to interpret the Third Reich as a disease of the German soul: “From Luther to Hitler,” ran the thesis, implying that Luther’s anti-Semitism planted the seeds of Nazism some 350 years before Hitler was born. But few today have such a stark view of German history.
Many applied similar ideas with even greater conviction to Japan in the 1940s. Lacking a dictator like Hitler or a party resembling the Nazis, critics blamed the country’s culture for its 20th-century militarism. While the Germans could be redirected from their criminal cult of racism to the European tradition of Mozart and Goethe, Japan was supposed to be different. There, only massive re-education could cure an entrenched cultural disease related to “feudalism” and the samurai spirit.
After World War II, the US occupation authorities banned symptoms of this supposed disease, such as Kabuki plays, sword-fighting dramas, and even images of the holy Mount Fuji. All of this irritated many Japanese, but most were already in enough trouble trying to survive the harsh post-war years to push against the bans, which were lifted soon after, if anything.
Both Germany and Japan still have far-right groups parading in combat gear, but that’s true of most Western democracies as well. Apart from there, it is difficult to find traces of the samurai spirit in present-day Japan or of racial barbarism in contemporary Germany. On the contrary, both countries are remarkably peaceful, with Germany receiving more migrants and refugees than most European countries.
This does not mean that cultural reeducation has worked, but rather that cultural analysis was always wrong. After all, the Nazis also listened to Mozart and read Goethe. And Japan’s war in Asia was hardly the result of watching too many sword-fighting dramas.
Even a cursory review of world history shows that criminal regimes and brutal behavior can emerge anywhere. Some of the worst atrocities of the Thirty Years’ War in the seventeenth century were committed by the Swedes.
The most civilized peoples can become barbarians when demagogues and dictators exploit their fears and activate their most atavistic instincts. Rape, torture and massacres often occur when soldiers invade foreign countries. Sometimes they are actively encouraged by their commanders and superiors so that the enemy will panic and surrender. And sometimes they happen when the officer corps loses control and discipline breaks down. The Japanese and the Germans know about this, as well as the Serbs, the Koreans, the Americans, the Russians and many others.
It is true that some countries have longer histories of political oppression than others. The Russians are lucky in this regard. It could be argued that powerful elements of the Russian Orthodox Church have been complicit in oppressive governments, from the tsars to President Vladimir Putin. But to claim that Putin’s (or Stalin’s) misrule is a natural and inevitable result of Russian culture is to fall into the same trap as the “From Luther to Hitler” theorists. As postwar Germany and Japan have shown, nothing is inevitable and “national character” can change rapidly.
The stereotyping of Russian culture as the savage root of Putin’s aggression and brutal war in Ukraine is as dangerous as it is wrong. The cancellation of functions of Russian composers, the exclusion of artists and tennis players of that nationality or making withering judgments against literature in that language is tremendously functional and convenient for the dictator of the Kremlin.
No culture is monolithic, and Russian culture less than any. The European Enlightenment reached St. Petersburg, and many Russian writers, composers, and artists have looked to France, Germany, and England for inspiration. Apart from that, we have the Slavophile side of Russian culture, suspicious and resentful of the West, which has been the source of great romantic and spiritual art, while at the same time fostering violent paranoia. Dostoevsky’s novels are a mixture of both characteristics.
Putin channels the paranoid tendency. I would like all Russians to feel that this arrogant, decadent and depraved West has set out to dominate them and destroy their haughty spirit. He appeals to a persecution complex that can be easily aroused among Russians, but not only among them.
Both Nazi and Japanese propaganda in World War II were full of self-pity. Putin’s version is fueled by traumatic memories of the horrific German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and it is also deeply personal. As a former KGB official, he sees the fall of the Soviet Union as an affront to everything that was of value to him. But, as much as that might delight him, Putin does not represent Russian culture.
Seeing the Ukraine war as a conflict not only with the Putin regime but also with Russian culture, and treating all Russians as existential enemies, is a great gift to the Kremlin. It strengthens the persecution complex that Putin needs to keep the Russian people on his side. Furthermore, it reinforces the kind of attitudes that the allies mistook in the
Post-war Germany and Japan as markers of an essential and immutable national character.
We must avoid making that mistake again and instead celebrate the masterpieces of Russian art, music, dance and literature, and save our condemnation for those who, like Putin and his inner circle, have poisoned the well that produced them.
Translated from English by David Meléndez Tormen
Ian Buruma’s latest books are The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, From Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022. www.project-syndicate.org
