Russian writers about the Russian people. Fake Russophobic quotes

The idea of ​​this article was inspired by the posts of some dark personalities who publish examples of quotes on various sites on the Internet, allegedly belonging to famous Russian figures, in which the dignity and mental abilities of the Russian people are humiliated. In a small study aimed at clarifying the situation around the sources of these lies, a well-known search engine was used, which provided invaluable assistance in establishing the truth. Here, in fact, are the very false quotes that are walking around the expanses of the Internet.

1. Academician Pavlov

2. Alexei Tolstoy:\"Muscovy-Russian taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial \". (Muscovy - the Russia of taiga, Mongolic, wild, bestial.)

3. Fyodor Dostoevsky:\"A people that wanders around Europe looking for something to destroy, to destroy just for fun\". (People who roam across Europe in search of what to destroy and obliterate, only for the sake of gratification.)

4. Mikhail Bulgakov: \"They are not people, they are boors, villains, wild hordes of murderers and miscreants.]

5. Maxim Gorky:\"The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is its sadistic cruelty \". (The most important trait of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic brutality.)

6. Ivan Aksakov:\"Oh, how hard it is to live in Russia, in this stinking center of physical and moral depravity, meanness, lies and villainy \". (How difficult it is to live in Russia, this stinking center of physical and moral perversity, meanness, deceit and evil.)

7. Ivan Turgenev:\"Russian is the biggest and most insolent liar in the whole world \". (A Russian is the greatest and the cheekiest of all liars in the world.)

8. Ivan Shmelev: \"A people that hates the will, loves slavery, loves the chains on their hands and feet, dirty physically and morally...ready at any moment to oppress everything and everything \". (The people who hate freedom, adore enslavement, love handcuffs and who are filthy morally and physically, ready to oppress everyone and everything.)

9. Alexander Pushkin: \"A people indifferent to the least duty, to the least justice, to the least truth, a people that does not recognize human dignity, that does not fully recognize either a free person or free thought \". (The people who are indifferent to the least of obligations, to the least of fairness, to the least of truth... the people who do not recognize human dignity, who entirely defy a free man and a free thought.)

:\"The Russian people are in an extremely sad state: they are sick, ruined, demoralized\". \"And now we learn that he, in the person of a significant part of his intelligentsia, although he cannot formally be considered insane, is nevertheless obsessed with false ideas bordering on delusions of grandeur and delusions of enmity towards him of everyone and everyone. Indifferent to his real benefit and real harm "He imagines non-existent dangers and bases on them the most absurd assumptions. It seems to him that all his neighbors offend him, do not bow enough to his greatness and in every possible way against him. He accuses each of his household of striving to harm him, separate from him and go to enemies, and he considers all his neighbors to be his enemies...\"

Now let's look at it in detail:

1. Academician Pavlov: \"I must express my sad view of the Russian man - he has such a weak brain system that he is not able to perceive reality as such. For him, there are only words. His conditioned reflexes are coordinated not with actions, but with words \". 1932

Pavlov never said or wrote anything like that.

1). From the point of view of physiology, the false quote attributed to Academician Pavlov is absolutely amateurish. Even if we discard the absolutely delusional and Russophobic first sentence, upon hearing which the old man Pavlov, without hesitation, would have carried out an emergency lobotomy of the inflamed brain of the author of such nonsense, then, in the third, an abnormality in the connection of the conditioned reflex and words is postulated. Although, even people far from science understand that the higher the neurophysiological organization of a person, the more capable he is of reflex actions based on speech. Apparently, the writer of this quote is worse than a trained dog - since he is not able to coordinate his activities with words.

2). Pay attention to the word used - \"sad \", it will be used below, which suggests that the false quotes are the product of the work of the same person.

2. Alexei Tolstoy:\"Muscovy-Russian taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial \". The works of Aleksey Nikolaevich and Aleksey Konstantinovich have been verified. Both writers have never said or written anything like this.

Complete works of both:
http://az.lib.ru

3. Fyodor Dostoevsky:\"A people that wanders around Europe looking for something to destroy, to destroy just for fun\".
The phrase was taken out of context. Dostoyevsky reflects critically on the European view of Russians.
Check out the links below!
Writer's diary. 1876:
http://az.lib.ru

\"I said that Russians are not loved in Europe. That they do not like - about this, I think, no one will argue, but, by the way, we are accused in Europe, all Russians, almost without exception, that we are terrible liberals, moreover - revolutionaries and always, even with some kind of love, are inclined to join the destructive rather than the conservative elements of Europe.For this, many Europeans look at us mockingly and condescendingly - hatefully: they do not understand why we should be deniers in someone else's business, they positively take away from us the right of European denial - on the ground that they do not recognize us as belonging to civilization. They see in us rather barbarians, wandering around Europe and rejoicing that something and somewhere can be destroyed - destroy only for the sake of destruction. , for the pleasure of just watching how it all falls apart, like a horde of savages, like the Huns, ready to swarm over ancient Rome and destroy the shrine, without even having any idea what kind of jewel they are destroying. In their own way, they declared themselves liberals in Europe - this is true, and even this is strange. Has anyone ever asked themselves the question: why is this so? Why is it that almost nine-tenths of Russians, throughout our century, having cultivated in Europe, have always sided with that layer of Europeans that was liberal, with the left side, that is, always with the side that itself denied its own culture, its own civilization, more or less finite (what Thiers denies in civilization and what the Paris Commune of 71 denied in it are extremely different) \"

4. Mikhail Bulgakov: \"Not the people, but cattle, boor, wild horde, murderers and villains.\"
Bulgakov never said or wrote anything like this.
Check out the links below!
Full composition of writings:
http://www.lib.ru

5. Maxim Gorky:\"The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is its sadistic cruelty \".
Gorky never said or wrote anything like this.
Check out the links below!
Full composition of writings:
http://az.lib.ru

6. Ivan Aksakov:\"Oh, how hard it is to live in Russia, in this stinking center of physical and moral depravity, meanness, lies and villainy \".
The phrase has been taken out of context and modified. Aksakov laments Russia's failure in the Crimean War and blames it on bribery.
Pay attention to - physical and moral debauchery - no Russian, and even in the time of Aksakov, would say so. The Russian language for the writer of this phrase is not native, below we will encounter this again
Check out the links below!
Letters to relatives. (1849-1856)
http://az.lib.ru

We had to stand either in Little Russian or Moldovan villages. Moldavian huts are even cleaner and more beautiful than Little Russian ones; no matter how poor the Moldavian is, his hut is decorated with carpets and various homemade handicraft fabrics, which are not even sold. However, these are all women's works; the woman in these aspects is active and industrious and incomparably superior to the man. A young crest is ten times lazier than a native crest. The owner of my hut, having served his underwater service, lay for two days with an air of inexpressible bliss behind the stove, saying only from time to time: When will these sovereigns make peace with each other! In general, the entire Kherson province and Bessarabia are severely depleted and devastated by war and crop failure: there is no bread at all, and there is no other food, except for hominy (corn), and even then in small quantities. Everyone here wants peace, both residents and warriors, a rumor has circulated and continues to circulate among them that Austria is entering into an alliance with us, refusing to let the allies through Moldavia and Wallachia, and they are all happy about this and praise the Austrians. So heavy is the war, so heavy are the sacrifices made with instinctive certainty that they are fruitless, without any animation, that whatever peace is concluded now, it will be accepted here by the inhabitants, and by almost the majority of the army with joy. I say here - in Russia it's different. But even in Russia they somehow got used to failure. When the French landed in the Crimea, the idea that they might get Sevastopol horrified the merchants at the Krolevets fair, and I remember how one rich old man Glazov said with sincere fervor that if Sevastopol was taken, then I would go too. and so on. Sevastopol is taken, he did not go and will not go. - But further. - In Volonterovka, a village inhabited by the Cossacks of the Danube army, mostly Moldovans, we found only 50 men, 700 people in the service. “Here in Bendery the chief commander is the commandant of the fortress, Lieutenant-General Olshevsky, a kind, fat man, a Russian man in the full sense, i.e. representing a combination of courage, good nature, cordiality, simplicity, humility with what constitutes the necessary belonging of any Russian person acting, not living in a peasant community. “Oh, how hard, how unbearably hard it is sometimes to live in Russia, in this stinking environment of filth, vulgarity, lies, deceptions, abuses, good little scoundrels, hospitable bribe-takers, hospitable rogues—fathers and benefactors of bribe-takers! I did not write these lines about Olshevsky, I do not know him, but in my imagination the whole image of management, the whole administrative machination appeared.

7. Ivan Turgenev:\"Russian is the biggest and most insolent liar in the whole world \".
Turgenev never said or wrote anything like this.
Check out the links below!
Full composition of writings:
http://az.lib.ru

8. Ivan Shmelev: \"The people that hates the will, loves slavery, loves the chains on their hands and feet, dirty physically and morally...ready at any moment to oppress everything and everything \".
Shmelev never said or wrote anything like this.
Pay attention again, as in the case of Aksakov, the same phrase is used - physical and moral - no Russian, and even in the time of Shmelev did not speak like that. The Russian language for the writer of this phrase is not native, below we will encounter this again
Check out the links below!
Full composition of writings:
http://www.lib.ru

9. Alexander Pushkin: \"A people indifferent to the least duty, to the least justice, to the least truth, a people that does not recognize human dignity, that does not fully recognize either a free person or free thought \".
Pushkin never said or wrote anything like this.
The quote allegedly belonging to Pushkin contains semantic errors. Which can mean only one thing - the Russian language for the writer of this phrase is not native.
Check out the links below!
Full composition of writings:
http://www.lib.ru

10. Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov wrote:\"The Russian people are in an extremely sad state: he is sick, ruined, demoralized \". \"And now we learn that he, in the person of a significant part of his intelligentsia, although he cannot formally be considered insane, is nevertheless obsessed with false ideas bordering on delusions of grandeur and delusions of enmity towards him of everyone and everyone. Indifferent to his real benefit and real harm "He imagines non-existent dangers and bases on them the most absurd assumptions. It seems to him that all his neighbors offend him, do not bow enough to his greatness and in every possible way against him. He accuses each of his household of striving to harm him, separate from him and go to enemies, and he considers all his neighbors to be his enemies...\"

Solovyov never said or wrote anything of the kind.
1). Pay attention to the use, as in the case of Pavlov, of the word - sad, which suggests that the false quotes are the product of the work of the same person.
2). An explicit metaphor (allegorical imposition of a version), in its psychotherapeutic and propagandistic understanding, of the August 2008 events in the interpretation of the Georgian authorities.
Check out the links below!
Full composition of writings:
http://www.vehi.net
Information impact.

We've all heard the word propaganda and public relations. in other words public relations. Let us discard the discussion of the question of how these two concepts differ from each other, and rather pay attention to what unites them. In both cases, both terms imply some kind of production and delivery of specially constructed information messages to the final listener or consumer. At the same time, the main task of any propagandist or PR specialist (as you like!) a predictable change in the behavior or state of the end consumer of information, whether it is an unbearable desire to fly with a certain airline or a sudden emergence of positive emotions in relation to any organization, etc.

Trust in information.

Consumers of information, voluntarily or not, always evaluate the reliability of incoming information, and the most important issue that PR has to face with information impact is to ensure the trust in the source of information from the target audience. Everything is simple. Ask yourself the question, who is easier to convince you to go to some place, let's say to a store - to a complete stranger on the street or to your close friend? The answer is obvious. In the first case, we have more reason to distrust and suspect bad intentions than in the second.

Once, in ancient Greece, people thought about the principles and methods of persuasion, that in the end all this resulted in the emergence of a whole branch of knowledge - rhetoric. A few centuries later, these skills were successfully used in religious sermons in different parts of the world. And after some time, the name of the phenomenon of mass persuasion was coined - propaganda. Everything would have remained so to this day, if in the last century, at the end of the Second World War, it had not occurred to someone to distance themselves from the term propaganda that had set the teeth on edge with the help of a neutral and plausible-sounding concept - public relations. But no matter how it was - at its deepest basis of public relations is still the same ancient art of public speaking and persuasion.

What did the ancients say about trust and its role in the process of persuasion? The greatest Greek of all time, Aristotle, singled out three reasons in this matter, which, when presented together, make us believe without evidence. This is intelligence, decency and a good attitude towards us. In the process of development and socialization, as well as the acquisition of life experience, a person becomes convinced that others may not be trustworthy for one or more of these reasons. Aristotle believed that incorrect reasoning is the result of:
1. the speaker's folly,
2. or rightly reasoning, the individual, as a result of his dishonesty, lies,
3. or a reasonable and honest person, but one who treats us badly, may not give the best advice, although he knows what it consists of.

Will we fully trust the advice of a man who is unreasonable, but decent and on good terms with us? And smart, but a liar? Or, for example, will we believe a reasonable and decent, but having unkind feelings towards us?

Now it is worth mentioning famous and famous personalities, whose statements we tend to trust without much evidence. These people, as a rule, worked long and hard, as a result, they proved to everyone their reasonableness and decency, and also, for the most part, a good attitude towards society. That is, they deserve a certain prestige. In PR there is a special term for them - opinion leaders. If we delve completely into the jungle of science, then the perception of authority is due to the laws of human thinking, namely, the desire of the human mind to generalize. There are good reasons for this. We would probably expend great mental effort, forced to constantly reflect on the intentions, reasonableness and decency of people close to us - as we do when judging strangers or unfamiliar ones.

Discrediting the source.

And now about how specialists in the field of PR and propaganda act in conditions of tough competitive situations, when two or more sources of information are fighting for the consciousness of the audience, and there are no special regulatory rules. I mean the so-called information wars, which, as a rule, are the product of information support for certain political actions. In addition to a number of measures, propagandists are trying to undermine the credibility of competing sources of information, while at the same time raising the credibility rating of their own as much as possible.

To discredit the trust of the audience, thereby increasing the likelihood of rejection of the information, according to Aristotle, will be any doubts of the listeners in:
1. Intelligence source
2. Decency (honesty, morality, appearance, etc.)
3. Favors (good intentions, good attitude towards the target audience)

In the light of the foregoing, it seems useful to analyze the semantic orientation of false quotes in terms of destabilization of trust in each of the three parameters.

1. Academician Pavlov: \"I must express my sad view of the Russian man - he has such a weak brain system that he is not able to perceive reality as such. For him, there are only words. His conditioned reflexes are coordinated not with actions, but with words \". 1932

Try to write something like this about Russians on your own behalf and you may even be beaten, but at the same time, these same people honor as classics those who are the author of these characteristics of the Russian people.

There is a double standard and doublethink, there are those who can tell the truth about Russians and those who cannot.

........................................ ....


"Heavy Russian spirit, nothing to breathe and you can't fly." - A. Blok

"Muscovy - Russia of the taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial." (Muscovy - the Russia of taiga, Mongolic, wild, bestial.) - Alexey Tolstoy

"Not a people, but cattle, a boor, a wild horde, murderers and villains." (They are not people, they are boors, villains, wild hordes of murderers and miscreants.) - Mikhail Bulgakov

"The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic cruelty." (The most important trait of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic brutality.) - Maxim Gorky

"The Russian is the greatest and most insolent liar in the whole world." (A Russian is the greatest and the cheekiest of all liars in the world.) - Ivan Turgenev

"A people that wanders around Europe looking for something to destroy, to destroy just for fun." (People who roam across Europe in search of what to destroy and obliterate, only for the sake of gratification.) - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Russians are a people that hates freedom, deifies slavery, loves fetters on their hands and feet, loves their bloody despots, does not feel any beauty, is dirty physically and morally, lives for centuries in darkness, obscurantism, and has not lifted a finger to something human, but always ready to captivate, to oppress everyone and everything, the whole world. This is not a people, but a historical curse of mankind ”- I.S. Shmelev.

"Oh, how hard, how unbearably hard it is sometimes to live in Russia, in this stinking environment of dirt, vulgarity, lies, deceptions, abuses, good little scoundrels, hospitable bribe-takers, hospitable rogues - fathers and benefactors of bribe-takers!" - Ivan Aksakov, from a letter to relatives.

“I must express my sad view of the Russian person - he has such a weak brain system that he is not able to perceive reality as such. For him, there are only words. His conditioned reflexes are coordinated not with actions, but with words. - Academician Pavlov. About the Russian mind. 1932

“A people indifferent to the least obligation, to the least justice, to the least truth, a people that does not recognize human dignity, that does not fully recognize either a free person or free thought.” (The people who are indifferent to the least of obligations, to the least of fairness, to the least of truth... the people who do not recognize human dignity, who entirely defy a free man and a free thought.) - Alexander Pushkin

“Russia is the most vile, bloody disgusting country in the entire history of the world. By the method of selection, monstrous moral freaks were brought out there, in which the very concept of Good and Evil is turned inside out. Throughout its history, this nation has been floundering in shit and at the same time wants to drown the whole world in it ... ”- I.A. Ilyin (1882-1954), Russian philosopher
(Putin was personally involved in the transfer of the ashes of Ilyin to the Russian Federation and participated in the reburial ceremony)

"Not the people, but the infernal freak." – V. Rozanov - Russian philosopher, publicist and critic.

"The Russian people are in an extremely sad state: they are sick, ruined, demoralized." “And now we learn that he, in the person of a significant part of his intelligentsia, although he cannot formally be considered insane, is nevertheless obsessed with false ideas bordering on megalomania and mania of enmity towards him of everyone and everyone. Indifferent to his real benefit and real harm, he imagines non-existent dangers and bases on them the most absurd assumptions... It seems to him that all the neighbors offend him, do not bow enough to his greatness and in every possible way are plotting against him .... - Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov

God of the hungry, God of the cold
Beggars far and wide,
God of unprofitable estates
Here he is, here he is, the Russian god.
God of breasts and f... saggy
God of bast shoes and plump legs,
Bitter faces and sour cream,
Here he is, here he is, the Russian god.
P.A. Vyazemsky

“The main feature of the Russian national character is cruelty, and that cruelty is sadistic. I'm not talking about individual explosions of cruelty, but about the psyche, about the soul of the people. I looked through the archive of one court for 1901-1910. and I was horrified at the sheer amount of unbelievable mistreatment of people. In general, in Russia, everyone beats someone with pleasure. And the people consider beats to be useful, since they made up the saying "for the beaten they give two unbeaten." For 1917-1919 the peasants buried the captured Red Guards upside down so deep that their legs stuck out of the ground. Then they laughed at how those legs twitched. Or high on a tree they nailed one arm and one leg and enjoyed the torment of the victim. The Red Guards, on the other hand, flayed the skin from the living captured Denikin-counter-revolutionaries, hammered nails into the head, cut out the skin on the shoulders, like officer epaulettes. "- Gorky Maxim. About the Russian peasantry (1922)

If Russia had failed, there would have been no loss, no unrest in humanity. -- Ivan Turgenev

"There is no smaller, bastard and boorish individual in this world than a katsap. Born in a Nazi country, fed by Nazi propaganda, this bastard will never become a Human. His country has no friends - either lackeys or enemies. His country can only threaten, humiliate and kill. And for the preservation of this status of Russey, an ordinary katsap is ready to sacrifice his own life, the lives of his parents and children, the quality of life of his own people. Truly: katsaps are animals. Fierce, bloodthirsty, but ... mortal." - A. Solzhenitsyn

In Russia there are no average talents, simple craftsmen, but there are lonely geniuses and millions of worthless people. Geniuses can do nothing because they have no apprentices, and nothing can be done with millions because they have no masters. The former are useless because there are too few of them; the latter are helpless because there are too many of them. - Vasily Klyuchevsky

The Russian commoner - Orthodox - is serving his faith as a church duty imposed on him to save someone's soul, but not his own, which he has not learned to save, and does not want to. No matter how you pray, everything will go to hell. This is all his theology. - Vasily Klyuchevsky

One can revere people who believed in Russia, but not before the object of their belief. - Vasily Klyuchevsky

The Russian government, like reverse providence, arranges for the better not the future, but the past. - Alexander HerzenHerzen

(He said about Putin through the centuries)

Russian History before Peter the Great is one memorial service, and after Peter the Great - one criminal case. - F. Tyutchev

"To lie to a Russian is to blow your nose. Their lies come from their slavish nature. The people who never knew and never spoke the truth are the people of spiritual and physical slaves. Poor people." - N.M. Karamzin

“Russian man is a big pig. If you ask why he does not eat meat and fish, then he justifies himself by the lack of imports, means of communication, etc., and meanwhile, there is vodka even in the most remote villages and in whatever quantity you like.
“A Russian person strives to crack ham just when trichinas are sitting in it, and to pass through the river when ice cracks on it.”
“Nature has invested in the Russian man an extraordinary ability to believe, a probing mind and the gift of thinking, but all this is shattered into dust by carelessness, laziness and dreamy frivolity ...”
"Russian man loves to remember, but does not like to live."
"The Russian man lacks the desire to desire."
- A.P. Chekhov

“The whole of Russia is a country of some kind of greedy and lazy people: they eat an awful lot, drink, love to sleep during the day and snore in their sleep. They marry for order in the house, and they have mistresses for prestige in society. Their psychology is dog-like: they beat them - they squeal softly and hide in their kennels, caress them - they lie on their backs, paws up and wag their tails ... ”- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in a conversation with Maxim Gorky.

“Our national character is dominated by servility and servility, obscenity and bloodthirstiness, savagery and drunkenness.” - Metropolitan Hilarion

"National self-consciousness - national complacency - national self-adoration - national self-destruction".
"Russians are not even capable of having a mind and a conscience, but they have always had one meanness." - V. Soloviev

"A Russian man knows how to be a saint, but he cannot be honest." - Konstantin Leontiev, Russian philosopher (1831 - 1891)

“We, the Muscovites, have drunk the Kirghiz, Chemeris, Buryats and others. They robbed Armenia and Georgia, banned even worship in the Georgian language, robbed the richest Ukraine. We gave Europe the anarchists P. Kropotkin, M. Bunin, the apostles of ruin and butchery Shigalev, Nechaev, Lenin, etc. Moral dirt, Muscovy is a monster that even hell would disdain and vomit on the ground. - V. Rozanov, Russian philosopher (1856-1919)

There are few smart people among Russians. If you find any suitable person, then by all means either a Jew, or with an admixture of Jewish blood ... ”- V. I. Lenin, the most revered politician in Russia (1870 - 1924)

A miserable nation, a nation of slaves, from top to bottom - all slaves. - N. Chernyshevsky

“And I don’t want to know the bestial parody of people, and I consider it a great misfortune for myself that I was born in Russia. After all, the whole of Europe looks at Russia, almost like a cannibal. More than once, I felt ashamed that I belonged to a wild nation.” - V. M. Botkin
during a dispute with Nekrasov. Avdotya Panaeva. "Memories"

The outstanding composer M. Glinka, finally leaving Russia on April 27, 1856, got out of the trough at the border, spat on the ground and said: “God forbid I never see this vile country and its people again!”

The Russian people live too much in national-spontaneous collectivism, and the consciousness of the individual, his dignity and his rights has not yet been strengthened in him. This explains the fact that Russian statehood was so saturated with Germanism and often presented as a foreign dominion. - Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev.

Russia does not contain any healthy and valuable grain. Russia actually-no, it-only seems. This is a terrible phantom, a terrible nightmare that crushes the soul of all enlightened people. From this nightmare we run abroad, we emigrate; and if we agree to leave ourselves in Russia, it is for the sole reason that we are fully convinced that soon this phantom will not exist; and we will scatter it, and for this scattering we remain in this accursed place of Eastern Europe. Our people is only "environment", "material", "substance" for the acceptance into itself of a single, universal and final truth, which is collectively called "European civilization". No "Russian civilization", no "Russian culture". - V.V. Rozanov.

There was nothing good, nothing worthy of respect or imitation in Russia. Everywhere and always there was illiteracy, injustice, robbery, sedition, personal oppression, poverty, disorder, lack of education and depravity. The gaze does not stop at a single bright minute in the life of a people, not at a single era of consolation. – A. Khomyakov

“We are a cruel beast, dark and evil slave blood still flows in our veins - the poisonous legacy of the Tatar and serf yoke. There are no words that could not be used to scold a Russian person ... In Russian cruelty one can feel the devilish sophistication, there is something subtle, refined in it ... It can be assumed that reading the lives of the holy great martyrs influenced the development of cruelty ... Who is more cruel: white or red ? Probably the same, because both of them are Russians. - M. Gorky, "proletarian" writer (1868 - 1936)

Russia had no special mission and no! No need to look for any national idea for Russia is a mirage. Life with a national idea will lead first to restrictions, and then there will be intolerance towards another race, another people and another religion. Intolerance will inevitably lead to terror. It is impossible to achieve the return of Russia to any single ideology, because a single ideology will sooner or later lead Russia to fascism. - Academician D.S. Likhachev

(Again about Putin)

The idea of ​​this article was inspired by the posts of some dark personalities who publish examples of quotes on various sites on the Internet, allegedly belonging to famous Russian figures, in which the dignity and mental abilities of the Russian people are humiliated. In a small study aimed at clarifying the situation around the sources of these lies, a well-known search engine was used, which provided invaluable assistance in establishing the truth. Here, in fact, are the very false quotes that are walking around the expanses of the Internet.


1. Academician Pavlov:

2. Alexei Tolstoy:"Muscovy is Russia of the taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial." (Muscovy - the Russia of taiga, Mongolic, wild, bestial.)

3. Fyodor Dostoevsky:"A people that wanders around Europe looking for something to destroy, to destroy just for fun." (People who roam across Europe in search of what to destroy and obliterate, only for the sake of gratification.)

4. Mikhail Bulgakov:"Not a people, but cattle, a boor, a wild horde, murderers and villains." (They are not people, they are boors, villains, wild hordes of murderers and miscreants.)

5. Maxim Gorky:"The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic cruelty." (The most important trait of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic brutality.)

6. Ivan Aksakov:"Oh, how hard it is to live in Russia, in this stinking center of physical and moral debauchery, meanness of lies and villainy." (How difficult it is to live in Russia, this stinking center of physical and moral perversity, meanness, deceit and evil.)

7. Ivan Turgenev:"The Russian is the greatest and most insolent liar in the whole world." (A Russian is the greatest and the cheekiest of all liars in the world.)

8. Ivan Shmelev:"A people that hates freedom, loves slavery, loves chains on their hands and feet, dirty physically and morally ... ready at any moment to oppress everything and everyone." (The people who hate freedom, adore enslavement, love handcuffs and who are filthy morally and physically, ready to oppress everyone and everything.)

9. Alexander Pushkin:"A people indifferent to the least obligation, to the least justice, to the least truth, a people that does not recognize human dignity, that does not fully recognize either free man or free thought." (The people who are indifferent to the least of obligations, to the least of fairness, to the least of truth... the people who do not recognize human dignity, who entirely defy a free man and a free thought.)

10. Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov:

Now let's look at it in detail:

1. Academician Pavlov:"I must express my sad view of the Russian man - he has such a weak brain system that he is not able to perceive reality as such. For him, there are only words. His conditioned reflexes are coordinated not with actions, but with words." 1932

Pavlov never said or wrote anything like that.

one). From the point of view of physiology, the false quote attributed to Academician Pavlov is absolutely amateurish. Even if we discard the absolutely delusional and Russophobic first sentence, upon hearing which the old man Pavlov, without hesitation, would have carried out an emergency lobotomy of the inflamed brain of the author of such nonsense, then, in the third, an abnormality in the connection of the conditioned reflex and words is postulated. Although, even people far from science understand that the higher the neurophysiological organization of a person, the more capable he is of reflex actions based on speech. Apparently, the writer of this quote is worse than a trained dog - since he is not able to coordinate his activity with words.

2). Pay attention to the word used - "sad", it will be used below, which indicates that the false quotes are the product of the creativity of the same person.

2. Alexei Tolstoy:"Muscovy is Russia of the taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial." The works of Aleksey Nikolaevich and Aleksey Konstantinovich have been verified. Both writers have never said or written anything like this.

3. Fyodor Dostoevsky:"A people that wanders around Europe looking for something to destroy, to destroy just for fun."

The phrase was taken out of context. Dostoyevsky reflects critically on the European view of Russians.

“I said that Russians are not loved in Europe. That they are not loved - I think no one will argue about this, but, by the way, we are accused in Europe, all Russians, almost without exception, that we are terrible liberals, moreover, revolutionaries and always, even with some kind of love, tend to join the destructive rather than the conservative elements of Europe.For this, many Europeans look at us mockingly and condescendingly - hatefully: they do not understand why we should be deniers in someone else's business, they positively take away from us the right of European negation, on the grounds that they do not recognize us as belonging to civilization, they see us rather as barbarians roaming around Europe and rejoicing that something and somewhere can be destroyed - destroy only for the sake of destruction, for the pleasure of just watching how it all falls apart, like a horde of savages, like the Huns, ready to swarm over ancient Rome and destroy the shrine, without even having any idea what kind of jewel they are destroying. In their own right, they declared themselves liberals in Europe—this is true, and even this is strange. Has anyone ever asked themselves the question: why is this so? Why is it that almost nine-tenths of Russians, throughout our century, having cultivated in Europe, have always sided with that layer of Europeans that was liberal, with the left side, that is, always with the side that itself denied its own culture, its own civilization, more or less finite (what Thiers denies in civilization and what the Paris Commune of 1971 denied in it are extremely different)"

4. Mikhail Bulgakov:"Not a people, but cattle, a boor, a wild horde, murderers and villains."
Bulgakov never said or wrote anything like this.

5. Maxim Gorky:"The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic cruelty."

Gorky never said or wrote anything like this.

6. Ivan Aksakov:"Oh, how hard it is to live in Russia, in this stinking center of physical and moral debauchery, meanness of lies and villainy."
The phrase has been taken out of context and modified. Aksakov laments Russia's failure in the Crimean War and blames it on bribery.
Pay attention to - physical and moral depravity - no Russian, and even in the time of Aksakov, would say so. The Russian language for the writer of this phrase is not native, we will come across this below.

We had to stand either in Little Russian or Moldovan villages. Moldavian huts are even cleaner and more beautiful than Little Russian ones; no matter how poor the Moldavian is, his hut is decorated with carpets and various homemade handicraft fabrics, which are not even sold. However, these are all women's works; the woman in these aspects is active and industrious and incomparably superior to the man. A young crest is ten times lazier than a native crest. The owner of my hut, having served his underwater duty, lay for two days with an air of inexpressible bliss behind the stove, saying only from time to time: When will these sovereigns make peace with each other! In general, the entire Kherson province and Bessarabia are severely depleted and devastated by war and crop failure: there is no bread at all, and there is no other food, except for hominy (corn), and even then in small quantities. Everyone here wants peace, both residents and warriors, a rumor has circulated and continues to circulate among them that Austria is entering into an alliance with us, refusing to let the allies through Moldavia and Wallachia, and they are all happy about this and praise the Austrians. So heavy is the war, so heavy are the sacrifices made with instinctive certainty that they are fruitless, without any animation, that whatever peace is concluded now, it will be accepted here by the inhabitants, and by almost the majority of the army with joy. I say here - in Russia it's different. But even in Russia they somehow got used to failure. When the French landed in the Crimea, the idea that they might get Sevastopol horrified the merchants at the Krolevets fair, and I remember how one rich old man Glazov said with sincere fervor that if Sevastopol was taken, then I would go too. and so on. Sevastopol is taken, he did not go and will not go. — But further. - In Volonterovka, a village inhabited by the Cossacks of the Danube army, mostly Moldovans, we found only 50 men, 700 people in the service. “Here in Bendery, the chief commander is the commandant of the fortress, Lieutenant-General Olshevsky, a kind, fat man, a Russian man in the full sense, i.e. representing a combination of courage, good nature, cordiality, simplicity, humility with what constitutes the necessary belonging of any Russian person acting, not living in a peasant community. “Oh, how hard, how unbearably hard it is sometimes to live in Russia, in this stinking environment of filth, vulgarity, lies, deceptions, abuses, good little bastards, hospitable bribe-takers, hospitable rogues - fathers and benefactors of bribe-takers! I did not write these lines about Olshevsky, I do not know him, but in my imagination the whole image of management, the whole administrative machination appeared.

7. Ivan Turgenev:"The Russian is the greatest and most insolent liar in the whole world."
Turgenev never said or wrote anything like this.

8. Ivan Shmelev:"A people that hates freedom, loves slavery, loves chains on their hands and feet, dirty physically and morally ... ready at any moment to oppress everything and everyone."

Shmelev never said or wrote anything like this.

Pay attention again, as in the case of Aksakov, the same phrase is used - physical and moral - no Russian, and even in the time of Shmelev did not speak like that. The Russian language for the writer of this phrase is not native, below we will encounter this again

9. Alexander Pushkin:"A people indifferent to the least obligation, to the least justice, to the least truth, a people that does not recognize human dignity, that does not fully recognize either free man or free thought."

Pushkin never said or wrote anything like this.

The quote allegedly belonging to Pushkin contains semantic errors. Which can mean only one thing - the Russian language for the writer of this phrase is not native.

10. Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov wrote:"The Russian people are in an extremely sad state: they are sick, ruined, demoralized." “And now we learn that he, in the person of a significant part of his intelligentsia, although he cannot formally be considered insane, is nevertheless obsessed with false ideas bordering on delusions of grandeur and delusions of enmity towards him of everyone and everyone. Indifferent to his real benefit and real harm, he imagines non-existent dangers and bases the most absurd assumptions on them. It seems to him that all his neighbors offend him, do not bow enough to his greatness and in every way slander him. He accuses each of his household of striving to harm him, separate from him and go over to enemies , and he considers all his neighbors to be his enemies ... "

We have all heard such a word as propaganda and public relations, in other words, public relations. Let us discard the discussion of the question of how these two concepts differ from each other, and rather pay attention to what unites them. In both cases, both terms imply some kind of production and delivery of specially constructed information messages to the final listener or consumer. At the same time, the main task of any propagandist or PR specialist (whoever you like!) Is a predictable change in the behavior or state of the end user of information, whether it be an unbearable desire to fly on the planes of a certain airline or the sudden appearance of positive emotions in relation to any organization, etc. d.

Trust in information.

Consumers of information, voluntarily or not, always evaluate the reliability of incoming information, and the most important issue that PR has to face with information impact is to ensure the trust in the source of information from the target audience. Everything is simple. Ask yourself the question, who is easier to convince you to go to some place, let's say to the store - a complete stranger on the street or your close friend? The answer is obvious. In the first case, we have more reason to distrust and suspect bad intentions than in the second.

Once, in ancient Greece, people thought about the principles and methods of persuasion, that in the end all this resulted in the emergence of a whole branch of knowledge - rhetoric. A few centuries later, these skills were successfully used in religious sermons in different parts of the world. And after some time, the name of the phenomenon of mass persuasion was coined - propaganda. Everything would have remained so to this day, if in the last century, at the end of the Second World War, it had not occurred to someone to distance themselves from the term propaganda that had set the teeth on edge with the help of a neutral and plausible-sounding concept - public relations. But no matter how it was, at its deepest basis of public relations is still the same ancient art of public speaking and persuasion.

What did the ancients say about trust and its role in the process of persuasion? The greatest Greek of all times, Aristotle, singled out three reasons in this matter, which, when presented together, make us believe without evidence. This is intelligence, decency and a good attitude towards us. In the process of development and socialization, as well as the acquisition of life experience, a person becomes convinced that others may not be trustworthy for one or more of these reasons. Aristotle believed that incorrect reasoning results from:
1. the speaker's unreasonableness,
2. or rightly reasoning, the individual, as a result of his dishonesty, lies,
3. or a reasonable and honest person, but who treats us badly, may not give the best advice, although he knows what it consists of.

Will we fully trust the advice of a man who is unreasonable, but decent and on good terms with us? And smart, but a liar? Or, for example, will we believe a reasonable and decent, but having unkind feelings towards us?

Now it is worth mentioning famous and famous personalities, whose statements we tend to trust without much evidence. These people, as a rule, worked long and hard, as a result, they proved to everyone their reasonableness and decency, and also, for the most part, a good attitude towards society. That is, they deserve a certain prestige. In PR, there is a special term for them - opinion leaders. If we delve completely into the jungle of science, then the perception of authority is due to the laws of human thinking, namely, the desire of the human mind to generalize. There are good reasons for this. We would probably expend a great deal of mental effort, forced to constantly reflect on the intentions, reasonableness and decency of people close to us - as we do when judging strangers or little acquaintances.

Discrediting the source.

And now about how specialists in the field of PR and propaganda act in conditions of tough competitive situations, when two or more sources of information are fighting for the consciousness of the audience, and there are no special regulatory rules. I mean the so-called information wars, which, as a rule, are the product of information support for certain political actions. In addition to a number of measures, propagandists are trying to undermine the credibility of competing sources of information, while at the same time raising the credibility rating of their own as much as possible.

To discredit the trust of the audience, thereby increasing the likelihood of rejection of the information, according to Aristotle, will be any doubts of the listeners in:
1. Reasonable source
2. Decency (honesty, morality, appearance, etc.)
3. Favors (good intentions, good attitude towards the target audience)

In the light of the foregoing, it seems useful to analyze the semantic orientation of false quotes in terms of destabilization of trust in each of the three parameters.

1. Academician Pavlov: "I must express my sad view of the Russian person - he has such a weak brain system that he is not able to perceive reality as such. For him, only words exist. His conditioned reflexes are coordinated not with actions, but with words." 1932

“She [Russia] is a terrible sight of a country where people traffic in people, without even having the justification that the American planters slyly use when they claim that the Negro is not a person; countries where people call themselves not names, but nicknames: Vanki, Steshki, Vaska, Palashki; a country where, finally, there are not only no guarantees for the person, honor and property, but there is not even a police order, but there are only huge corporations of various official thieves and robbers. . - Vissarion Belinsky

"Heavy Russian spirit, nothing to breathe and you can't fly." - A. Blok

"Muscovy is Russia of the taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial." (Muscovy - the Russia of taiga, Mongolic, wild, bestial.) - Alexey Tolstoy

"Not a people, but cattle, a boor, a wild horde, murderers and villains." (They are not people, they are boors, villains, wild hordes of murderers and miscreants.) - Michael Bulgakov

"The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic cruelty." (The most important trait of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic brutality.) - Maksim Gorky

"The Russian is the greatest and most insolent liar in the whole world." (A Russian is the greatest and the cheekiest of all liars in the world.) - IvanTurgenev


"A people that wanders around Europe looking for something to destroy, to destroy just for fun." (People who roam across Europe in search of what to destroy and obliterate, only for the sake of gratification.)- Fedor Dostoevsky

"The Russian people are boorish." - Mikhail Bulgakov, 1923

"The Russian people do not have a hint of creativity." - G. Uspensky.

“Russians are a people that hates freedom, deifies slavery, loves fetters on their hands and feet, loves their bloody despots, does not feel any beauty, is dirty physically and morally, lives for centuries in darkness, obscurantism, and has not lifted a finger to something human, but always ready to captivate, to oppress everyone and everything, the whole world. This is not a people, but a historical curse of mankind" - I.S. Shmelev.

"Oh, how hard, how unbearably hard it is sometimes to live in Russia, in this stinking environment of dirt, vulgarity, lies, deceptions, abuses, good little scoundrels, hospitable bribe-takers, hospitable rogues - fathers and benefactors of bribe-takers!" - Ivan Aksakov, from a letter to relatives.

"In the soul of every Russian, unlike the European, lives a cunning, vicious animal." - Carl Gustav Jung in an interview.

“I must express my sad view of the Russian people - he has such a weak brain system that he is not able to perceive reality as such. For him, there are only words. His conditioned reflexes are coordinated not with actions, but with words. - Academician Pavlov. About the Russian mind. 1932

"A people that hates freedom, loves slavery, loves chains on their hands and feet, dirty physically and morally ... ready at any moment to oppress everything and everyone." (The people who hate freedom, adore enslavement, love handcuffs and who are filthy morally and physically, ready to oppress everyone and everything.) - Ivan Shmelev

“A people indifferent to the least obligation, to the least justice, to the least truth, a people that does not recognize human dignity, that does not fully recognize either a free person or free thought.” (The people who are indifferent to the least of obligations, to the least of fairness, to the least of truth... the people who do not recognize human dignity, who entirely defy a free man and a free thought.) - Alexander Pushkin


We have five thousand miles from thought to thought. - Peter Vyazemsky

“Russia is the most vile, bloody disgusting country in the entire history of the world. By the method of selection, monstrous moral freaks were brought out there, in which the very concept of Good and Evil is turned inside out. Throughout its history, this nation has been wallowing in shit and at the same time wants to drown the whole world in it ... " - I.A. Ilyin (1882-1954), Russian philosopher

"... The measure of devotion to the Motherland is in informing the special services."
"... A measure of groveling before the authorities is like a measure of devotion to the country."
- I.A. Ilyin, Russian philosopher, from an article "The Soviet Union is not Russia", 1947

“I am not proud that I am Russian, I submit to this position. And when I think ... about the beauty of our history before the damned Mongols and before damned Moscow, even more shameful than the Mongols themselves, I want to throw myself on the ground and roll in despair from what we have done ... ". - Tolstoy A.K. From a letter to a friend B. M. Markevich on April 26, 1869. Collected works in 4 vols. T. 4. - M., 1964

"The Russian people are in an extremely sad state: they are sick, ruined, demoralized." “And now we learn that he, in the person of a significant part of his intelligentsia, although he cannot formally be considered insane, is nevertheless obsessed with false ideas bordering on megalomania and the mania of enmity towards him of everyone and everyone. Indifferent to his real benefit and real harm, he imagines non-existent dangers and bases the most absurd assumptions on them. It seems to him that all his neighbors offend him, do not bow enough to his greatness and in every way slander him. He accuses each of his household of striving to harm him, separate from him and go over to enemies , and he considers all his neighbors to be his enemies ... " - Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov


God of the hungry, God of the cold
Beggars far and wide,
God of unprofitable estates
Here he is, here he is, the Russian god.
God of breasts and f... saggy
God of bast shoes and plump legs,
Bitter faces and sour cream,
Here he is, here he is, the Russian god.
P.A. Vyazemsky

The Russian character is an incessant ebb and flow, and a purely Russian word "Nothing!" well expresses the fatalism of these endless fluctuations. - D. Galsworthy

The Russian man has an enemy, an irreconcilable, dangerous enemy, without which he would be a giant. This enemy is laziness. - N. Gogol

"Not the people, but the infernal freak."- V. Rozanov is a Russian philosopher, publicist and critic.

"A treaty signed with Russia is not worth the paper it's written on." -- Otto von Bismarck


“The main feature of the Russian national character is cruelty, and that cruelty is sadistic. I'm not talking about individual explosions of cruelty, but about the psyche, about the soul of the people. I looked through the archive of one court for 1901-1910. and I was horrified at the sheer amount of unbelievable mistreatment of people. In general, in Russia, everyone beats someone with pleasure. And the people consider beats to be useful, since they made up the saying "for the beaten they give two unbeaten." For 1917-1919 the peasants buried the captured Red Guards upside down so deep that their legs stuck out of the ground. Then they laughed at how those legs twitched. Or high on a tree they nailed one arm and one leg and enjoyed the torment of the victim. The Red Guards, on the other hand, ripped off the skin of the living captured Denikin-counter-revolutionaries, hammered nails into the head, cut out the skin on the shoulders, like officer epaulettes. Gorky Maxim. On the Russian peasantry (1922)

Alas, this beast was ... His Majesty the Russian people ... - Shulgin V. V. Days; 1920. - M., 1989, p. 182(1878-1976), publicist, one of the leaders of the right in the State Duma

If Russia had failed, there would have been no loss, no unrest in humanity. - Ivan Turgenev

"The Russian mind shows itself most clearly in stupidity." - Vasily Klyuchevsky

Damn it! - in the native country, as in a foreign land. - V. Shukshin

"There is also such an old Russian fun - the search for a national idea ..." - Vladimir Putin, KGB Lieutenant Colonel

http://trip-trial.blogspot.co.il/2014/03/Citaty-i-aforizmy-o-russkih.html

Quotes about the Russian people - from the great, and not so great, from Dostoevsky and Bismarck - to Putin and Rabinovich .. How to live - with this sea of ​​​​negativity about your nation? Or maybe people just were not in the mood at that moment?

"Muscovy is the soul of the taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial."
A. Tolstoy

"A people that wanders around Europe, looking for something to destroy, to destroy just for the sake of entertainment"
Dostoevsky

“Not a people, but cattle, a boor, a wild horde, murderers and villains”
Bulgakov

“Oh, how hard it is to live in Russia, in this stinking center of physical and moral debauchery, meanness, lies and villainy”
Aksakov

"The Russian is the greatest and most insolent liar in the whole world"
Turgenev

“A people that hates freedom, loves slavery, loves chains on their hands and feet, dirty, physically and morally ready to oppress everything and everyone at any moment”
Shmelev

“A people indifferent to the least duty, to the least justice, to the least truth, people,
which does not recognize human dignity, which does not fully recognize either a free person or free thought”
Pushkin

“There are still only two troubles in Russia - fools and bad roads.”
Nicholas I

“Russia is the most vile, bloody disgusting country in the entire history of the world. By the method of selection, monstrous moral freaks were brought out there, in which the very concept of Good and Evil is turned inside out. All your history
this nation wallows in shit and at the same time wants to drown the whole world in it ... "
Ilyin, Russian philosopher.

"The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic cruelty"
bitter

* * *
About the cruelty of Russian peasants with details:

People whom I used to respect ask: what do I think about Russia?
Everything that I think about my country, more precisely, about the Russian people, about the peasantry, the majority of it, is very hard for me. It would be easier for me not to answer the question, but - I have experienced too much and I know in order to have the right to remain silent. However, I ask you to understand that I am not judging anyone, I am not justifying anyone - I am simply telling in what forms the mass of my impressions has taken shape ....
There was a certain Ivan Bolotnikov in Russia, a man of an original fate: as a child he was captured by the Tatars during one of their raids on the outlying cities of the Moscow kingdom, as a young man he was sold into slavery to the Turks, he worked on Turkish galleys, he was redeemed from slavery by the Venetians, and , having lived for some time in the aristocratic Republic of the Doge, he returned to Russia.
This was in 1606; The Moscow boyars had just hunted down the talented tsar Boris Godunov and killed the smart daredevil, the mysterious young man who, having taken the name of Dmitry, the son of Ivan the Terrible, occupied the Moscow throne and, trying to overcome the Asian mores of the Muscovites, said to their faces:
“You consider yourself the most righteous people in the World, and you are depraved, vicious, have little love for your neighbor and are not disposed to do good.”
He was killed, the cunning, double-hearted Shuisky, Prince Vasily, was chosen as king, the second impostor appeared, also posing as the son of Grozny, and now the bloody tragedy of political disintegration began in Russia, known in history under the name of the Time of Troubles. Ivan Bolotnikov stuck to the second impostor, received from him the right to command a small detachment of supporters of the impostor and went with them to Moscow, preaching to the serfs and peasants:
“Beat the boyars, take their wives and all their property. Beat merchants and rich people, divide their property among themselves.
This seductive program of primitive communism attracted tens of thousands of serfs, peasants and vagabonds to Bolotnikov, they repeatedly beat the troops of Tsar Vasily, armed and better organized than they were; they besieged Moscow and with great difficulty were thrown back from it by an army of boyars and merchants. In the end, this first powerful rebellion of the peasants was flooded with blood, Bolotnikov was taken prisoner, his eyes were gouged out and he was drowned.
The name of Bolotnikov was not preserved in the memory of the peasantry, his life and work did not leave behind any songs or legends. And in general, in the oral work of the Russian peasantry there is not a word about the ten-year era - 1602-1603. - bloody turmoil, which the historian speaks of as "a school of self-will, anarchy, political unreason, double-mindedness, deceit, frivolity and petty selfishness, unable to assess common needs." But all this did not leave any traces either in everyday life or in the memory of the Russian peasantry.
In the legends of Italy, the memory of Fra Dolcino has been preserved, the Czechs remember Jan Zizka, as well as the peasants of Germany Thomas Müntzer, Florian Geyer, and the French - the heroes and martyrs of Jacqueria and the English the name of Wat Taylor - about all these people there are songs, legends among the people, stories. The Russian peasantry does not know its heroes, leaders, fanatics of love, justice, revenge.
Fifty years after Bolotnikov, the Don Cossack Stepan Razin raised the peasantry of almost the entire Volga region and moved with them to Moscow, excited by the same idea of ​​political and economic equality. For almost three years, his gangs robbed and slaughtered boyars and merchants, he withstood correct battles with the troops of Tsar Alexei Romanov, his rebellion threatened to uplift the entire rural Rus. He was smashed, then quartered. Two or three songs remain in the people's memory of him, but their purely folk origin is doubtful, the meaning was not clear to the peasantry already at the beginning of the 19th century.
No less powerful and wide in scope was the revolt raised under Catherine the Great by the Ural Cossack Pugachev - "this is the last attempt to fight the Cossacks against the state regime," as the historian S. F. Platonov defined this revolt. About Pugachev, too, there were no vivid memories in the peasantry, as well as about all other, less significant, political achievements of the Russian people.
Literally the same can be said about them as the historian said about the formidable era of the Time of Troubles:
“All these uprisings have not changed anything, they have not introduced anything new into the mechanism of the state, into the structure of concepts, into mores and aspirations ...”
(at the time of Bolotnikov, Razin and Pugachev, the Cossacks did not consider themselves "Russian" at all and categorically distanced themselves from the Great Russians, therefore the Great Russians could not compose songs about a community alien to them)
It is appropriate to add to this judgment the conclusion of a foreigner who carefully observed the Russian people. “This nation has no historical memory. He doesn't know his past, and even doesn't seem to want to know it." Grand Duke Sergei Romanov told me that in 1913, when the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty was being celebrated and Tsar Nikolai was in Kostroma, Nikolai Mikhailovich, also a Grand Duke, a talented author of a number of solid historical works, said to the Tsar, pointing to a crowd of thousands of peasants:
“But they are exactly the same as they were in the 17th century, choosing Michael as king, the same; this is bad, don't you think?"
The king was silent. It is said that he was always silent in response to serious questions.It is a kind of wisdom if it is not cunning or is not caused by fear.
Cruelty is what has amazed and tormented me all my life. Where are the roots of human cruelty? I thought about it a lot and - I didn’t understand anything, I don’t understand ....

I must note that in Russian cruelty there seems to be no evolution, its forms seem to remain unchanged.
A chronicler from the beginning of the 17th century tells that in his time they were tortured in such a way: “they poured gunpowder into their mouths and lit it, and for others they stuffed gunpowder from below, they cut through women’s breasts and, having threaded ropes into wounds, they hung them on these ropes.”
In the 1818 and 1919 they did the same in the Don and the Urals: inserting a dynamite cartridge into a person from below, they blew it up.

I think that the Russian people exclusively - just as exclusively as the English sense of humor - is characterized by a sense of special cruelty, cold-blooded and, as it were, testing the limits of human patience for pain, as if studying the tenacity, fortitude of life.
In Russian cruelty one can feel a diabolical sophistication, there is something subtle, refined in it. This property can hardly be explained by the words "psychosis", "sadism", words that, in essence, do not explain anything at all.

If the facts of cruelty were an expression of the perverted psychology of units, one could not talk about them, in this case they are the material of a psychiatrist, and not a writer of everyday life. But I have in mind only the collective amusements of human suffering.

In Siberia, the peasants, having dug pits, lowered there - head down - captured Red Army soldiers, leaving their legs - up to their knees - on the surface of the earth; then they gradually filled the pit with earth, following the spasms of the legs, which of the tormented ones would be more enduring, tenacious, who would suffocate later than the others.
The Trans-Baikal Cossacks taught their youth how to cut captives.
In the Tambov province, communists were nailed with railway crutches in the left arm and left leg to trees at a height of a meter above the ground, and they watched how these - deliberately incorrectly crucified people - were tormented.
Having opened the prisoner's stomach, they took out the small intestine and, nailing it to a tree or a telegraph pole, drove the person around the tree with blows, watching how the intestine was exhausted from the wound. Having stripped the captive officer naked, they tore off pieces of skin from his shoulders, in the form of shoulder straps, and nails were driven in instead of stars; the skin was torn off along the lines of sword belts and stripes - this operation was called "dress in uniform." It certainly required a lot of time and great skill.
There were many more similar nasty things, disgust does not allow to increase the number of descriptions of these bloody amusements.
Who is more cruel: whites or reds? Probably the same, because both of them are Russians. However, history quite definitely answers the question about the degrees of cruelty: the most cruel is the most active ...
I think that nowhere women are beaten so ruthlessly and terribly as in the Russian village, and, probably, in no other country there are such proverbs-advice:
“Beat your wife with a butt, lie down and smell it - is it breathing? - fools, still wants. “A wife is twice sweet: when they take her to the house, and when they take her to the grave.” "There is no trial for a woman and cattle." "The more you beat the woman, the tastier the cabbage soup."
Hundreds of such aphorisms - they contain the wisdom of the people acquired over the centuries - are circulated in the countryside, these advices are heard, children are brought up on them.
Children are also beaten very hard. Wanting to get acquainted with the nature of crime in the population of the provinces of the Moscow District, I looked through the "Reports of the Moscow Court of Justice" for ten years - 1900-1910. - and was overwhelmed by the number of tortures of children, as well as other forms of crimes against minors. In general, people in Russia are very fond of beating, it doesn't matter who. "Folk Wisdom" considers a beaten person very valuable: "For a beaten man they give two unbeaten, and even then they don't take."
There are even sayings that consider a fight a necessary condition for the fullness of life. "Oh, it's fun to live, yes - there is no one to beat." I asked the active participants in the civil war: do they not feel some embarrassment killing each other?
No, they don't feel.
“He has a gun, I have a gun, which means we are equal; nothing, beat each other - the land will be freed.
Once I received an extremely original answer to this question, it was given to me by a soldier of the European war, now he commands a significant detachment of the Red Army.
- Internal war is nothing! But internecine, against strangers, is a difficult matter for the soul. I'll tell you straight, comrade: it's easier to beat a Russian. We have a lot of people, our economy is poor; well, they will burn the village - what is it worth! She would have burnt herself in due time. And in general, this is our internal affair, like maneuvers, for science, so to speak. But when I ended up in Prussia at the beginning of that war - God, how sorry I was for the people there, their villages, cities and the economy in general! What a majestic economy we ruined for an unknown reason. Nausea! .. When I was wounded, I was almost glad - it's so hard to look at the ugliness of life. Then - I got to the Caucasus to Yudenich, there Turks and other black masses. The poorest people, kind people, smile, you know - it is not known why. They beat him, and he smiles. It’s also a pity, because they, too, each have their own occupation, their own attachment to life ...
This was said by a man who is humane in his own way, he treats his soldiers well, they apparently respect and even love him, and he loves his military business. I tried to tell him something about Russia, about its significance in the world - he listened to me thoughtfully, smoking a cigarette, then his eyes became dull, sighing, he said:
- Yes, of course, the power was special, even completely unusual, but now, in my opinion, it has finally fallen into villainy!
It seems to me that the war has created many people like him, and that the leaders of countless and senseless gangs are people of this psychology.
Speaking of cruelty, it is difficult to forget the nature of the Jewish pogroms in Russia. The fact that the pogroms of Jews were allowed by evil idiots who had power justifies nothing and no one. Allowing them to beat and rob Jews, the idiots did not inspire hundreds of pogromists: cut off the breasts of Jewish women, beat their children, drive nails into the skulls of Jews - all these bloody abominations should be considered as "a manifestation of the personal initiative of the masses."
But where - finally - is that good-natured, thoughtful Russian peasant, a tireless seeker of truth and justice, about whom Russian literature of the 19th century so convincingly and beautifully told the world?
In my youth, I intensively searched for such a person in the villages of Russia and did not find him. I met there a stern realist and cunning who, when it suits him, is perfectly able to show himself to be a simpleton. By nature, he is not stupid and he knows it well. He created many sad songs, rude and cruel tales, created thousands of proverbs that embody the experience of his hard life. He knows that "a man is not stupid, yes - the world is a fool" and that "the world is strong as water, but stupid as a pig."
He says: "Don't be afraid of devils, be afraid of people." "Beat your own - strangers will be afraid."
He doesn’t have a very high opinion of the truth: “You won’t be full of the truth.” "What is it that is a lie, if you live well." "The truthful, like a fool, is just as harmful."
Feeling like a man capable of any kind of work, he says: "Beat the Russian - he will make the clock." And it is necessary to beat because "every day there is not laziness, but reluctance to work."
He has thousands of such and similar aphorisms, he deftly knows how to use them, from childhood he hears them and from childhood he is convinced how much harsh truth and sadness are contained in them, how much mockery of himself and anger against people. People - especially the people of the city - greatly interfere with his life, he considers them superfluous on earth, literally fertilized with his sweat and blood ...

In conclusion of this gloomy essay, I will cite the story of one of the participants in a scientific expedition that worked in the Urals in 1921. The peasant turned to the members of the expedition with the following question:
- You people are scientists, tell me how to be. A Bashkir slaughtered a cow for me, I, of course, killed a Bashkir, and after that I myself brought a cow from his family, and so: will I be punished for a cow?
When he was asked: isn't he waiting for a punishment for killing a person?niya, - the man calmly replied:
- It's nothing, man is cheap now.
The word "of course" is characteristic here...

There is an opinion that the Russian peasant is somehow especially deeply religious. I have never felt this, although I seem to have observed the spiritual life of the people with sufficient attention. I think that a person who is illiterate and not accustomed to thinking cannot be a true theist or atheist, and that the path to firm, deep faith lies through the desert of unbelief.
Talking with believing peasants, looking closely at the life of various sects, I saw, first of all, an organic, blind distrust in the search for thought, in its work, I observed a frame of mind that should be called the skepticism of ignorance....
This is simply a passive and fruitless denial of phenomena and events, the connections and meanings of which thought, poorly developed, cannot understand ....

And in conclusion, after a long, cruel criticism of the city's "amusements", the bearded peasant said, sighing:
- If we ourselves made the revolution, it would have been quiet on earth long ago and order would have been ...
Sometimes the attitude towards the townspeople is expressed in such a simple but radical form:
- It is necessary to cut off all the educated from the earth, then it will be easy for us fools to live, otherwise you have hounded us!

Yes, than others, and the Russian peasant is no different for generosity. It can be said about him that he is not vindictive: he does not remember the evil done by himself, and, by the way, he does not remember the good done in his favor by others ....

And the attitude of the peasants towards the communists is expressed, in my opinion, most sincerely and more precisely in the advice given by fellow villagers to my friend, a peasant, a talented poet:
- You, Ivan, look, do not enter the commune, otherwise we will slaughter both your father and brother, and - besides - both of your neighbors too.
- Neighbors for what?
- Your spirit must be eradicated.
What conclusions do I draw?
First of all: hatred of meanness and stupidity should not be mistaken for a lack of friendly attention to a person, although meanness and stupidity do not exist outside of a person. I have outlined - as I understand it - the environment in which the tragedy of the Russian revolution has played out and is playing out. This is an environment of semi-wild people.
I explain the cruelty of the forms of the revolution by the exceptional cruelty of the Russian people.