https://sputniknews.in/20260812/nation-that-lives-in-the-past-notes-on-russias-love-for-history-11937403.html
“Nation That Lives in the Past”: Notes On Russia’s Love For History
“Nation That Lives in the Past”: Notes On Russia’s Love For History
Sputnik India
Several recent publications in Russian media dwell, essentially, upon one and the same peculiar feature of our national character: special love for national... 12.08.2026, Sputnik India
2026-08-12T19:57+0530
2026-08-12T19:57+0530
2026-08-12T19:57+0530
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In all cases the writers are trying to view the Russian nation through foreigner’s eyes, that is, to register foreigner’s surprise over our peculiarities, and to tell the audience: yes, we are different, and we have every historic reason for being different.Do we really live hopelessly in the past, just as all these foreigners are telling us? Isn’t it only natural to always keep in mind national history lessons?Here I only have to remember fondly my wife’s stepfather Victor, who is not around anymore. But his books are, lining my shelves and kept respectfully. The thing is, Victor has never belonged to any kind of academic family. He was a construction worker of highest skill, mainly in charge of electric and other equipment for complicated buildings. But he read books, in dozens. Books on history, Russian and foreign.The difference between him and hi-brow academic fellows was only in quality of these books. I’d call at least half of his collection complete trash, as in easy reading. But history books they still are, be it pseudo-historic novels or maybe some sensational nonsense about the origin of Russian nation and the wars it had to fight many centuries ago just to stay alive as a nation. Have to confess, some items of his collection I enjoy immensely, they are fun.But then, there are books of serous hue. One of such has been recently published in Cambridge, USA. Written in English by Mr. Andrei Tsygankov, now an American, it is called Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin, Honor in International Relations. And Tsygankov’s Russian colleague, Mr. Sergei Lebedev of Moscow Higher School of Economy, is expressing his bewilderment in a column on the Vsglyad website: should that idea about honor (and national reputation) be of any use to Westerners willing to understand us? Isn’t it all too obvious that Russia’s political culture, from top to bottom of society, has been formed, generation after generation, of the experience of numerous invasions, emanating mostly from the Western direction? No Western nation has that experience of repeated and multiple aggression against it. It is not about honor, it’s about a simple and constant need of making everyone realize that it is better not to touch Russia again, or else.And here Mr. Lebedev does a very useful thing, that is, makes his own formulae of Russia’s national thinking about the meaning of foreign policy.First: Russia’s political culture, under monarchy or under Communists, was been formed under constant outside threat and pressure. The result is a special kind of political thinking, that places foreign policy above the domestic one.Second: Russian society is usually very attentive to the way Westerners are seeing it, hence the heightened interest to foreign affairs in general, which is visible in all layers of society (and here Tsygankov puts it right, in that book of his). If the West currently seems to get Russia right, Moscow is willing to help and cooperate in many things. If there is an impression that Russia’s interests are being ignored, the whole society gets itself into a “defensive isolationism”, or starts to pursue active anti-Western foreign policy.Third: society’s great majority traditionally and naturally thinks that security is more important than inflation and other such kind of trouble. And this is where most Western analysts fail miserably in estimating Russia’s resilience and general potential.The most obvious example is the ongoing war, started by the West in 2022 by prodding their client Ukraine to stage one provocation against Russia after another. We now have access to huge amount of analytical writings about the goals of that conflict, written at the time by all kind of Western experts in 2022-2023. Their general idea was, any pretext was needed to impose sanctions against Russia, so as to press population into a change of regime in favor of something if not pro-Western, than just weak and inept.The actual result of that cunning stratagem has obviously pushed the dogs of war into their current political crisis, with the looming total reset of the whole system of NATO, the EU and the rest. First, nobody expected Russia to rebuild its economic model into something independent and technologically advanced. Second, nobody could predict a different kind of Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin. That opposition has not yet become formally organized, but in any case the predominant feeling among the public is: Kremlin should take off its famous “white gloves” and forget the “no atrocities” slogan, and strike Ukraine really hard, not sparing also its most active European supporters.So, we, Russians, are not “living in the past”, we just know how to study history’s grim lessons, right? Well, maybe not so right after all. Other publications, these days, note other peculiar features of the Russian nation. We are talking about a special kind of nostalgic thinking about the past.Dmitry Olshansky, columnist of ria.ru, lists several cases of typical Russian nostalgia for the past eras that, maybe, never existed. There is a new cult of the Soviet lifestyle, not just of the brilliant and optimistic 1960-s, but of the grim and hopeless late 1970-s – early 1980-s. (I have been very much around the mentioned era, and remember well the terrible pervasive mood of the ruined system, the mood, softened only by the famous Russian black humor).Then there is a totally different nostalgia, Olshansky goes on, that is, lots of people want to get back to 1913, empire’s last year before the First World War, and to the sheer elegance of elite’s living back then. Finally, there are several competing cults of pre-Russian lifestyle, the one even before Kiev became a capital of the first united princedom. All these customs, and weapons, and dresses of these past-cherishing communities have probably no relation to how it really was more than one thousand years ago, but…But, says our columnist, don’t try to dampen these people’s enthusiasm. Hopeless desire to revive the imaginary past eras is like a hidden diamond on your breast, it shines invisibly and makes your life full of meaning.Oh, well. Do we have to believe that other nations of the world do not play with their past eras and do not cherish their remnants, be it stones or music? I’d say Russia’s case is an excessive stress on sad lessons learned from history plus a fond yearning for the past. A good combination, that.Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
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“Nation That Lives in the Past”: Notes On Russia’s Love For History
Several recent publications in Russian media dwell, essentially, upon one and the same peculiar feature of our national character: special love for national (and, second, international) history and special attention to global events.
In all cases the writers are trying to view the Russian nation through foreigner’s eyes, that is, to register foreigner’s surprise over our peculiarities, and to tell the audience: yes, we are different, and we have every historic reason for being different.
Do we really live hopelessly in the past, just as all these foreigners are telling us? Isn’t it only natural to always keep in mind national history lessons?
Here I only have to remember fondly my wife’s stepfather Victor, who is not around anymore. But his books are, lining my shelves and kept respectfully. The thing is, Victor has never belonged to any kind of academic family. He was a construction worker of highest skill, mainly in charge of electric and other equipment for complicated buildings. But he read books, in dozens. Books on history, Russian and foreign.
The difference between him and hi-brow academic fellows was only in quality of these books. I’d call at least half of his collection complete trash, as in easy reading. But history books they still are, be it pseudo-historic novels or maybe some sensational nonsense about the origin of Russian nation and the wars it had to fight many centuries ago just to stay alive as a nation. Have to confess, some items of his collection I enjoy immensely, they are fun.
But then, there are books of serous hue. One of such has been recently
published in Cambridge, USA. Written in English by Mr. Andrei Tsygankov, now an American, it is called Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin, Honor in International Relations. And Tsygankov’s Russian colleague, Mr. Sergei Lebedev of Moscow Higher School of Economy, is expressing his bewilderment in a column on the Vsglyad website: should that idea about honor (and national reputation) be of any use to Westerners willing to understand us? Isn’t it all too obvious that Russia’s political culture, from top to bottom of society, has been formed, generation after generation, of the experience of numerous invasions, emanating mostly from the Western direction? No Western nation has that experience of repeated and multiple aggression against it. It is not about honor, it’s about a simple and constant need of making everyone realize that it is better not to touch Russia again, or else.
And here Mr. Lebedev does a very useful thing, that is, makes his own formulae of Russia’s national thinking about the meaning of foreign policy.
First: Russia’s political culture, under monarchy or under Communists, was been formed under constant outside threat and pressure. The result is a special kind of political thinking, that places foreign policy above the domestic one.
Second: Russian society is usually very attentive to the way Westerners are seeing it, hence the heightened interest to foreign affairs in general, which is visible in all layers of society (and here Tsygankov puts it right, in that book of his). If the West currently seems to get Russia right, Moscow is willing to help and cooperate in many things. If there is an impression that Russia’s interests are being ignored, the whole society gets itself into a “defensive isolationism”, or starts to pursue active anti-Western foreign policy.
Third: society’s great majority traditionally and naturally thinks that security is more important than inflation and other such kind of trouble. And this is where most Western analysts fail miserably in estimating Russia’s resilience and general potential.
The most obvious example is the ongoing war, started by the West in 2022 by prodding their client Ukraine to stage one provocation against Russia after another. We now have access to huge amount of analytical writings about the goals of that conflict, written at the time by all kind of Western experts in 2022-2023. Their general idea was, any pretext was needed to impose sanctions against Russia, so as to press population into a change of regime in favor of something if not pro-Western, than just weak and inept.
The actual result of that cunning stratagem has obviously pushed the dogs of war into their current political crisis, with the looming total reset of the whole system of NATO, the EU and the rest. First, nobody expected Russia to rebuild its economic model into something independent and technologically advanced. Second, nobody could predict a different kind of Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin. That opposition has not yet become formally organized, but in any case the predominant feeling among the public is: Kremlin should take off its famous “white gloves” and forget the “no atrocities” slogan, and strike Ukraine really hard, not sparing also its most active European supporters.
So, we, Russians, are not “living in the past”, we just know how to study history’s grim lessons, right? Well, maybe not so right after all. Other publications, these days, note other peculiar features of the Russian nation. We are talking about a special kind of nostalgic thinking about the past.
Dmitry Olshansky, columnist of ria.ru, lists several cases of typical Russian nostalgia for the past eras that, maybe, never existed. There is a new cult of the Soviet lifestyle, not just of the brilliant and optimistic 1960-s, but of the grim and hopeless late 1970-s – early 1980-s. (I have been very much around the mentioned era, and remember well the terrible pervasive mood of the ruined system, the mood, softened only by the famous Russian black humor).
Then there is a totally different nostalgia, Olshansky goes on, that is, lots of people want to get back to 1913, empire’s last year before the First World War, and to the sheer elegance of elite’s living back then. Finally, there are several competing cults of pre-Russian lifestyle, the one even before Kiev became a capital of the first united princedom. All these customs, and weapons, and dresses of these past-cherishing communities have probably no relation to how it really was more than one thousand years ago, but…
But, says our columnist, don’t try to dampen these people’s enthusiasm. Hopeless desire to revive the imaginary past eras is like a hidden diamond on your breast, it shines invisibly and makes your life full of meaning.
Oh, well. Do we have to believe that other nations of the world do not play with their past eras and do not cherish their remnants, be it stones or music? I’d say Russia’s case is an excessive stress on sad lessons learned from history plus a fond yearning for the past. A good combination, that.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
