ma kakvi...jedina i ispostavilo se, fatalna greška je ubistvo romanova i nasilno preutimanje vlasti od crvenih razbojnika
da je ruski narod sledio ideje petra velikog i nasledio sposobnost ekatarine velike, da je nastavio sa dostojevskim, tolstojem i čehovim, danas bi bili poštovana država i ozbiljna sila...ovako, doživeli su da ih prckaju banderaši i razvaljuju cigančići iz sirije...no, sami su birali, eto im botoksirani kepec da ih vodi u dalju propast
To je pitanje koliko su mogli. Rusi su, možda, u boljim okolnostima mogli nastaviti razvoj pa zapadnim normama. No, možda je Vasilij Grossman u "Sve teče" bio, nažalost u pravu- Rusi su ispali određeni determinizmom prošlosti na način da je nacizam Nijemcima aberacija, no Rusima boljševički totalitarizam možda neminovnost.
So. Is the Russian soul still as enigmatic as ever? No, there is no enigma.
Was there ever an enigma? What enigma can there be in slavery?
But is this really a specifically and uniquely Russian law of development? Can it truly be the lot of the Russian soul, and of the Russian soul alone, to evolve not with the growth of freedom but with the growth of slavery? Can this truly be the fate of the Russian soul?
No, no, of course not.
This law is determined by the parameters—and there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of such parameters—within which Russian history has unfolded.
“Soul” is neither here nor there; it simply does not come into it. If the French or the Germans, the Italians or the English, had been placed a thousand years ago within the same parameters of forest, steppe, bog, and plain, in the force field between Europe and Asia, amid Russia’s tragic vastness, then the pattern of their history would have been no different from that of Russian history. Anyway, it is not only the Russians who have known this path. There are many people on every continent of this Earth who have come to know the bitterness of the Russian path—some of them only vaguely and from a distance, some of them closely and clearly, suffering bitterness of their own.
It is time for the students and diviners of Russia to understand that the mystique of the Russian soul is simply the result of a thousand years of slavery.
And in admiration of the Byzantine purity and Christian meekness of the Russian soul there lies an involuntary recognition of the inviolability of Russian slavery. The sources of this Christian meekness and Byzantine ascetic purity are the same as the sources of Lenin’s passion, intolerance, and fanatical faith—they lie in the thousand years of Russian serfdom, Russian nonfreedom.
And this is why the Russian prophets were so tragically mistaken. Where, where can we find this “Russian soul, all-human and all-unifying”—that Dostoevsky told us would “speak the final word of the great general harmony, of the final brotherly concord of all tribes according to the law of the Gospel of Christ”?
Where indeed, O Lord, is this all-human and all-unifying soul to be found? Did the prophets of Russia ever imagine that their prophecies about the coming universal triumph of the Russian soul would find their fulfillment in the unified grating and grinding of the barbed wire stretched around Auschwitz and the labor camps of Siberia?
Lenin was in many ways opposed to the great prophets of Russia. He is infinitely far from their ideals of meekness, of Christian, Byzantine purity and the laws of the Gospel. But he is also strangely and surprisingly close to these prophets. While going his own very different way, he made no effort to save Russia from her thousand-year-old quagmire of non-freedom. Like them, he recognized Russian slavery as something unshakable. Like them, he was born of our non-freedom.
The Russian slave soul lives both in Russian faith and in Russian lack of faith, both in Russian meek love of humanity and in the Russian propensity to reckless violence. It lives in Russian miserliness and philistinism, in Russian obedient industriousness, in Russian ascetic purity, in the Russian capacity for fraud on a supreme scale, in the redoubtable braveness of Russian warriors, in the Russian lack of any sense of human dignity, in the frenzy of Russian sectarians, and in the desperate ferocity with which Russian rebels rebel. The Russian slave soul is manifest in Lenin’s revolution, in Lenin’s passionate embrace of Western revolutionary teachings, in Lenin’s fanaticism, in Lenin’s violence, and in the victories of the Leninist State.
Wherever slavery exists in the world, it gives birth to souls of the same kind.