To gain insight into the pervasive mindset of the people of present Russia, it is important for western national leaders to understand their long history.
Thankfully, many do so, no small achievement in dealing with an immensely wide and distant land, peopled by Cossacks, Tatars, Slavs and a myriad of unnamed tribal groups who call the northern taiga and the central Asian steppes their home.
Some of these ancestral inhabitants have based their economy and often their survival on whale or walrus killing, reindeer herding , feats of horsemanship and trade and their attendant conquest of less powerful clans, next incorporated into larger, more mobile cultures emphasizing survival skills and warfare as common sport.
Borders between the lands of history’s Viking Russ and those of the agile, expert riders of Mongol and central Asian inhabitants were fluid, never fully secure amid seesaw relations of hundreds of years.
First, the eastern horse lords ruled and demanded tribute, succeeded by resurgent, northern European peoples eager for conquest and lands in as much of sub-arctic Asia as possible – neither side could permanently win, and so fighting became their only security. Make no mistake. The Russians, including all their diversity of cultures, are a perpetually inventive, ingenious lot.
Their world view, organized under a strong or fanatical leader, is as different from that of you and me as may be imagined, Their multitude of small camps across a broad landscape formed what became a sense of community unpierced by later conflicts. Intermarriage was common, further strengthening alliances.
As individuals, modern Russ’ may embrace Brezhnev-era bombastic bullying by a former General Secretary who delighted in rattling cages of his prized doves, just to see them terrorized.
Russia has also been well represented by composers of brilliant symphonies heard in opera houses, where Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff and others transported listeners from the mundane to the transcendent. Thalia Mara, whose Russian last name is largely unpronounceable to southern ears, brought a matchless gift to Mississippi in calling upon her global dance friends to come and stage electrically charged competition ballets, and they did!
Ballet Russe and Bolshoi- inspired dancing, interspersed with echoes of magnificent baritone and mezzo-soprano voices in such operas as Boris Godunov can now be seen and heard worldwide.
These contributions to sublime arts come directly from the profound, beating heart of an ancient people, spread across 11 time zones for millennia. Russia is a nation of war and romance, cruelty and compassion together. And they are not like us in many, many ways.
The nature of the Russ is to commit totally to whatever passion is uppermost in his day, reaching heights of enduring heroism unmatched anywhere during the massive defeat and rout of Hitler's legions, chasing them all the way back to Berlin. Ukraine fought alongside them, against a common enemy.
One would not wish to surrender in war to such men as these Slavs, capable of inflicting the most base and vile of tortures on any luckless being caught in their net. To battle the Russ is to face ancestral demons of which the West has never heard, nor would we wish to hear. They believe historically in absolutism - a society existing in clans and oblasts (states) around loyalty to a super strong man, who is obeyed without question.
So unfolds the current war between Moscow and Kyiv: the Kyivans have moved beyond medieval fear-based fealty to adopt a western lifestyle and government, much feared by Putin, the Moscow old guard and their adherents and vassals. Hence, it must be brought to heel or destroyed. They will soon succeed at this – unless we help Ukraine.
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
