Cynicism: The Soviet Journey

~ Clarissa

Cliff Arroyo asked the following important question about something I said in a previous post:

Clarissa: According to the Soviet mentality, making money is the only goal a human being should have, and no sacrifice is too big to achieve it.

Cliff: Is that part of the Soviet mentality or the post-Soviet mentality (or a hybrid, part of what destroyed the Soviet Union and which guaranteed that the successor states would have lots of problems)?

The problem with communism is that it needs to put something in place of personal gain to motivate people. In the 1920s, the Soviet leadership used the enthusiasm of the people and their pride to be part of something they thought was good to motivate them to work. This kind of enthusiasm (that in our culture we call “naked enthusiasm”, as in the enthusiasm that is based on nothing real) can only be sustained for a short period of time.

In 1930s, the motivating factor was the terror. Again, this is not something you can sustain for a very long time unless the demographic conditions really permit that. The Soviet Republics were not China, so that motivation had to go quite soon. When both naked enthusiasm and intense fear disappear as motivating factors, profound cynicism sets in.

In the case of the USSR, the development of cynicism  as a world-view and a way of life was intensified by WWII. Soldiers who were in the war, as well as the many people who had been forcefully removed to Germany to work (especially from Ukraine and Belarus), finally had a chance to see how other European countries lived and the level of well-being they enjoyed. Even after Europe was destroyed by the war, it was still pretty obvious that the German, Belgian, French, etc. farmers had a much higher standard of living than Ukrainian peasants. This realization that the Soviet propaganda was lying about the misery of capitalist countries contributed to the growing cynicism.

As a result, the cynical mentality which lauded the accumulation of material goods as the only acceptable and respectable interest one could have came into existence in the USSR at the end of WWII. This is when deep class divisions began to set in. The party apparatchiks and the folks who served their needs enjoyed a degree of material well-being that regular people could not even begin to imagine. By the 1970s, when the generation that still remembered the enthusiasm and the faith of the 1920s started to die out, the cynicism became wide-spread and overwhelming.

When the USSR finally collapsed in 1991, people started getting access to such a wide variety of goods that were being imported from the West that the materialistic streak could only become more pronounced. In the 1990s, I saw people abandon all morality in a search for money and things to such a degree that it was painful to watch. Folks who used to be intellectuals would demand bribes, swindle their closest friends, and descend to such moral lows that it was scary to watch. A friend from college back in Ukraine stole an amount of money that was quite insignificant to her from me just because she could. When I confronted her, she felt extremely self-righteous and accused me of making it too easy for her to steal the money. This was the most religious and “spiritual” of all my friends.

As I shared before, I did not emigrate from my country in search of a better economic situation. I sacrificed a higher standard of living in return for a much lower one that I encountered in North America, and I did that consciously. It was the cynicism that I was escaping from. The sad life where people’s eyes glaze over when you try to talk about anything but things you have bought or want to buy, the impossibility of finding anybody who has any sort of political convictions, the incapacity to trust even the closest friends not to swindle you or steal from you.

P.S. I really like it when people ask questions. This is a hint. Wink, wink.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Clarissa

20 thoughts on “Cynicism: The Soviet Journey”

  1. Yesterday I went to see the movie Anna Karenina. The movie was faithful to Tolstoy’s novel. Of course, Tolstoy focused for the main part on the nobility. Clearly they were driven by more than money. Vronsky was rich, so he would have been able to pave Anna’s return to high society in the USSR. But in Imperialist Russia he was helpless to remedy her perceived mortal sin against moral virtue. Levin (Tolstoy I understand) was able to secure the loyalty of his peasants by hard-work and concern for their welfare.

    What a pity (at least for the morality of the nobility) that the Csars were removed and replaced by low-quality Godless trash.

    Like

    Reply

    1. The really hilarious thing is that Stalin himself was only sentenced to a 6-year exile when he was arrested for subversive activities and terrorism for the 4th time (!) by the tsarist secret police. When Stalin himself came to power, such tiny sentences didn’t exist even for 12-year-old children whose crime would be coming to work 15 minutes late, let alone for actual terrorists.

      Like

      Reply

      1. “People who bitch about the materialism of capitalist societies have no idea what real materialism looks like”

        I’m reminded of a line from Russian Journal by Andrea Lee (paraphrasing from memory) who grew weary of Russians accusing Americans of materialism after months of being exposed to the crudest materialism of all – the avaristic (atavistic?) envy of the have-nots….

        Like

        Reply

  3. “It was the cynicism that I was escaping from.”

    How did you avoid internalising that cynicism? Why were/are you not as cynical as your country-people?

    Like

    Reply

    1. Autism makes it easier to avoid social conditioning. You don’t care as much about being liked and accepted, so you can develop your own values. Autism runs in our family, so I had several relatives who never interiorized the cynicism because of their autism and created a tradition of separating ourselves intellectually and emotionally from the popular worldview.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Autism makes it easier to avoid social conditioning.

        I’m also Asperger’s, though I don’t identify as autistic. I’m not sure whether they are the same thing or not.

        You don’t care as much about being liked and accepted, so you can develop your own values.

        Being accepted has been overwhelmingly important to me. As I’ve said in other comments, I was bullied to hell and back as a child, and consequently internalised the feeling that I was monstrously unacceptible. Acceptance from others, above and beyond the call of politeness was, for many years, the only thing that could negate that inner feeling.

        What is acceptance above and beyond the call? The gratuitous casual friendliness of that twelve-year-old girl I mentioned in a previous comment; the adoration of a baby; and sex: there is nothing quite so accepting as a invitation into another person’s body.

        Autism runs in our family, so I had several relatives who never interiorized the cynicism because of their autism and created a tradition of separating ourselves intellectually and emotionally from the popular worldview.

        That rings true.

        Like

        Reply

  4. “Clarissa: Making money is the only goal a human being should have, and no sacrifice is too big to achieve it.”

    With all due respect my friend, you must admit that sentence in isolation is a joke, as David Gendron puts it. I know you a little bit, and I can’t believe you can trust that sentence (in isolation) without hesitation. Just think, if your “religious and spiritual friend” is judged by this sentence, she will be absolved!
    No one’s only goal should be making money.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I agree that it shouldn’t be anybody’s only goal. I’m just saying this was what the Soviet people believed. And this conclusion is not even my own. I borrowed from two very important Russian Jewish writers who said this in a very poignant and tragic novel about the USsR in 1970s.

      Like

      Reply

      1. OK, I finally realize what the problem is. I need to start reading my own posts. I never realized that many readers haven’t seen the discussion the quote was taken from. I have now corrected it.

        I’m getting very dense.

        Like

        Reply

  7. Oddly enough I find Russian popular music much less toxic than North American music which now seems bogged down in nihilism, fame whoring and dismissive avoidance.

    Admittedly I only faintly undestand the lyrics (from knowing another slavic language and google translate) but these, for example, seem much more emotionally healthy than Katy Perry or Niki Manaj

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMLK0OlTT5Q
    (bonus: guest appearances by Senor Chang at 1.43 and Eric Northman at 1.55)

    Like

    Reply

  8. I visited Russia in 1995, and the attitude that you speak of was clearly present, but I didn’t see it in anyone I actually met, though they were aware of it, and unhappy about it. It was the kind of attitude exemplified by the “gymnast” you wrote about a few months ago.

    Like

    Reply

  9. \ “Clarissa: Making money is the only goal a human being should have, and no sacrifice is too big to achieve it.”
    …
    And this conclusion is not even my own. I borrowed from two very important Russian Jewish writers who said this in a very poignant and tragic novel about the USsR in 1970s.

    I know it’s an old post, but became very curious about this novel. What is it?

    Like

    Reply

      1. I found Петля и камень на зелёной траве and I have never heard of it before.

        Thank you for the rec!

        Like

        Reply

Leave a reply to el Cancel reply