The Great Yemelia*
The idea of cultural domination is not inherent in all peoples. Some live happily, “remaining themselves in their own way.” Others bend over backwards in the struggle for leadership and suffer from envy. It is, of course, better for us to be happy than great, so the idea of Ukraine for man appeals to me more than the slogan “life for the tsar.” I will explain why.
“Be the best, otherwise you won’t be able to be the happiest.” The well-known American psychologist Eric Lennard Berne considered this educational motto the cause of major psychological disorders. You can’t possibly be a genius in everything, e.g., in drawing, long-jumping, and doing sums. You may have your destiny shaped successfully even without being a leader, while the first place on the podium of statistics does not guarantee wellbeing. Therefore, the belief in your outstanding qualities is good as long as you are able to notice the successes of others and not to overestimate your own self. This rule also applies to countries. Polls have been showing for many years that residents of Costa Rica consider themselves the happiest in the world. But if you try to persuade the citizens of a tiny republic that they are an exclusive ethnos and should be proving their characteristics daily, you will soon see depressed and complex-ridden types instead of people who find joy in living.
All that is now going on in Russian public opinion is the symptom of an acute mental disorder. The Putin regime’s propaganda is not the only cause of this. The entire postwar history of the USSR and Russia is connected with the practice of artificial glorification of the Russian ethnos and culture. Who won in the war against Nazism? The Russian people, said Comrade Stalin – quite unexpectedly for interethnic rhetoric and a multiethnic state. Why is a country rich in natural resources living in poverty? What stands in the way is a special attitude and pride, and a path of their own – a pet idea of the “creative intelligentsia,” the Orthodox Church, and local economists who serve the Western market and Pan-Slavism in one flagon. Those who were born to turn a fairytale into a reality, who are running down a track of their own, the elect of God, and saviors of the world (I quote some leaders of Russian public opinion) have been trying to convince one another of their exceptionality for many decades. If self-aggrandizement were really increasing vigor, who would dare question Russian superiority?
If people are so eager to be the inventors of telescopes, radio, steam engines, or electricity, let them be. Let encyclopedias and schoolbooks be full of the bombastic stories of Russian triumphant hegemony. But, as a Ukrainian-Russian classic used to say, “Alexander the Great was, of course, a hero, but why should you break chairs?” The Russians are prominent people, but they are in no way better than the Estonians, Buryats, Yakuts, and many others. It is not the century in which a happy dweller of Mongolia could go crazy, imagining himself a successor to Genghis Khan’s empire. Like the sleep of reason, grandeur usually produces monsters. So it is better not to fall into the somnambulism of great power chauvinism without medical supervision.
Aspiration for military and political domination was typical of the early history of civilization. It catapulted to stardom the Spartans, the Roman Empire, the Zhou dynasty, the Napoleonic France, etc. But this was no longer considered a condition for progress in the times of Nazi Germany. The Italian philosopher and unconventional Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who died in the Duce’s torture chambers, had written a book on the theory of hegemony on the eve of World War Two. He presented the world with a unique research instrument that helps understand the nature of social phenomena and predict the course of historical events. Gramsci believed that what could be an essential condition for the hegemony of a state, nation, or social group is the cultural nucleus of a society, i.e., a multitude of various views, achievements, discoveries, and opinions. The larger the nucleus, the higher is people’s trust in the system of government. Do we recognize the US hegemony under the influence of preachers and the media? No, what impresses us is the US cultural nucleus: computers, automobiles, unique engineering structures, the system of law, evaluation of intellect and labor – in other words, all that is not propaganda.
On the contrary, striving to win affection, Russia emphasizes the word. And what more can it do? The world does not use the goods Russia makes, does not watch its films, and is not in rapture over a clean environment or its architectural masterpieces. People are almost out of touch with Russia’s cultural nucleus except for its touring musicians and classic books. And, by the laws of propaganda, if there are no convincing facts, emotions come to the rescue. They do not need to be checked, confirmed, or analyzed. It is very rewarding to appeal to the feelings of national exclusiveness, for this excludes comparisons. The grassroots may be living in dreary and dirty cities, but they will be proud of their nationality. It is easier to make a Young Pioneer out of a schoolchild than give to them an iPod. You may look neat when you are slinging mud at those who surround you. And so on. This technique is as old as the hills, but it becomes costlier as time goes by. You can, of course, come back to your sheep and nomad tents 300 years after the siege of Kyiv, as Batu Khan’s successors did. But it is a totally different thing when, in a matter of three months, you slide back from the respected G8 to the forgotten Horde. Hegemony is destructive without a cultural nucleus. If you ban mirrors, you will not manage to turn a plain appearance into a model of beauty. You will never make a strong man out of a runt if you just try to convince him of having Herculean strength.
Many of us are shocked today by the behavior of some Russians who are taking the false idea of their worldwide supremacy for granted. But we should know the sources of these delusions and their repercussions in ourselves. When, “at the pike’s behest and at my request,” a cherished dream comes true, and the guy who lies on a brick stove turns into a lucky man, the rules of real life cannot fit in with the tale’s plot. Invention remains invention.
But when hundreds and thousands of people are imbued with belief in the genius of a Russian lazybones, the fairytale turns into reality. Anybody may go crazy if there suddenly is an opportunity to become “a truly handsome young man” without any effort or restorative surgery. And, who knows, maybe Yemelia the simpleton is in the Russian cultural nucleus the same as the Great Gatsby in the American one?
