In the USSR, there were closed borders and no access to any information other than Soviet propaganda. Yet nobody believed the propaganda and spent all day ridiculing the Soviet leadership. People crawled on their knees for food but at least they hated those who reduced them to it.
In today’s Russia, borders are open, foreign travel is available to many, there’s Internet, there’s easy contact with foreigners, there’s satellite TV, etc. Yet everybody believes every word of Putinoid propaganda and worships Putin. They crawl in the dumps and worship the government that makes them do it.
The only conclusion I can reach is that there’s no propaganda, no brainwashing. People simply choose to believe whatever they want to believe at any given time.
So here’s the question: if in the 1980s Soviet people refused to believe in the “evil West”, why do the same people so eagerly believe in it now?
The only answer I have is that in the Soviet times, “the West” offered a fantasy of living in extreme opulence while doing absolutely nothing. And people were unwilling to let any propaganda to rob them of that dream.
Since then, it’s become clear that “the West” of paradisiacal riches and endless leisure does not exist. People feel betrayed by their most cherished dream and engage in the joyful collective excoriation of the traitor.
Clarissa's Blog 
A very deep and interesting psychological observation! Thank you!
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It’s easy and seductive to blame the television but that’s too easy.
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“The only answer I have is that in the Soviet times, “the West” offered a fantasy of living in extreme opulence while doing absolutely nothing.”
Wouldn’t that be a case of stronger propaganda (‘The American Dream’) winning out over weaker propaganda?
I don’t think that millions of people independently come to the exact same conclusions in the absence of external forces. Call it propaganda, nationalism, marketing, or whatever.
Look at fashion. How is it possible that millions of people find the same style of clothes that they loved wearing 15 years ago completely repulsive now? I’m still the same. My DNA hasn’t changed. Why is it that I wouldn’t be caught dead in acid washed jeans today? Clearly there’s some messaging going on. We don’t have a TV in our place, I download all my TV shows which have ads scrubbed out, I don’t read any fashion magazines. I don’t talk about clothes with my friends. How did I get the memo from the taste-makers that acid washed jeans look ridiculous? I don’t know, but I did. I’m sure 15 years from now I’ll be rocking high-waisted acid-washed dad jeans thinking I’m so fucking cool.
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The Soviet people didn’t have a place from which they could hear about the American Dream. Plus, this wasn’t a fantasy of getting everything you want through hard work. Hard work was never part of it and still isn’t. 🙂
I believe it’s something much older than nationalism, propaganda, or marketing. I think it’s the culture. In European countries, the idea that working was not shameful and didn’t make you inferior had to be brought in by the Enlightenment. In the countries with weak or non-existent Enlightenment, this idea is still not fully accepted. So this mindset where the mark of having achieved real status and respectability is not having to work persists. This is why people in the FSU perceived having to go on the job market, interview for jobs, etc as profoundly traumatic and humiliating. And look how differently we construct the value of work here, in the country that’s a poster child for the Enlightenment: people boast about being overworked, never going on vacation, getting no sleep.
This is my theory, in any case.
And yes, acid washed jeans, yuck! How could we ever think it was a good idea?
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“In European countries, the idea that working was not shameful and didn’t make you inferior had to be brought in by the Enlightenment.”
This is most interesting. Are there any books you could recommend that connect the current values and cultures of different countries back to the enlightenment? I love that you’re able to connect the present to the past so easily.
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It’s difficult to isolate anything specific. But I’ll keep thinking about it. I’ve read so much about the Enlightenment but there isn’t one definitive , good source I can think of.
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Wow, rare i learn completely new thoughts 😉 I really am intrigued by that perspective about the enlightenment was necessary to get people to not look down upon work. At first that seemed crazy, but that is interesting, and i can see how that makes sense. Probably some of that had to with before the enlightenment most work entailed brutal conditions? (the whole thomas hobbe’s short, brutish, nasty life? – i know he was after the enlightenment). Do you think how “difficult / physical” most work was contributed to the notion of looking down upon work or? Really great thought / elucidation of an idea!
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Sorry, in Russian:
http://lenta.ru/articles/2015/08/09/strana/
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Throw Russia-specific thing out of this list and you get a portrait of a typical (or maybe stereotypical) Republican voter.
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Most Republican voters are good people. They don’t get off on constant daily petty cruelty. And our people do.
We were walking last week and it started to rain. Every 2 minutes a car would stop and offer us a lift. Even the cars that were going in the opposite direction.
My people, on the other hand, would do all they can to splash us with water from puddles.
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Everybody should click on this to see the best depiction of the Statue of Liberty EVER! Damn straight russkies! Lady Liberty’s got fangs and lazer eyes!
Slowly working through it (guessing a lot of vocabulary from context and cognates in other slavic languages) there’s lots of interesting stuff, the thing that caught my eye….
90 % of Russians have never tasted Spanish ham (what an odd thing to put on a social survey)
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Cliff, I can translate something, just did not have time in the morning to translate all…
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I meant “now under sanctions” not “not under sanctions”
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Don’t bother on my account, I can work through it and use google translate when cognates and guessing don’t work.
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I do have a question on tenses, when it says “69% ne letajut samoletami” does that mean 69 % have never flown in a plane or that 69% don’t regularly (or often) fly?
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Literally it is closer to the second option. Unfortunately we do not know how the question was stated in the first place. But I can believe in 69% never flown in a plane as well.
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Spanish ham, as well as parmegiano cheese became the symbolic representatives of Western foods that are not under sanctions. The fact that 90% never tried it means that only the spoiled rich big-city people protest the food embargo.
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“Damn straight russkies! Lady Liberty’s got fangs and lazer eyes!”
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Poor stupid fuckers.
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This is a brilliant insight and one I don’t think I would have thought of even if I devoted 387 years to it.
I knew the dream of luxury without work is alive an well in big chunks of Latin America and the Middle East but I hadn’t ever thought to apply it to Russia. It exists but doesn’t seem to be dominant in the post Soviet satellites I’ve been in but the people that had it are exactly the ones who blather about how much better things were under the communists.
In economies in which slave or servant labor is important, any work comes to be seen as demeaning and the dream of success doesn’t involve any kind of effort (beyond ordering the servants around and agonizing over what shade of blue eyeliner to wear to the Duke’s ball).
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In the years of perestroika there was an enormous enthusiasm for change and a huge admiration for the US. And when the realization that the new way of life required work and effort, a profound sense of resentment set in. People are very sincerely saying, “Fuck your abundant food, foreign travel, clothes, etc. If this is the price we have to pay for it, we’d rather go back to the USSR.”
Putin managed to notice this resentment – finally, and now he’s tapping into it with great success.
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