Defects of the Russian mind: what Academician Pavlov feared

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

I recently came across the text of the lectures of Academician Ivan Petrovich Pavlov on the Russian mind on the Internet and was amazed: everything that he said exactly a hundred years ago about the defects of our mind that give rise to our Russian catastrophes is still relevant to this day. And precisely because, he said at the very beginning of the Bolshevik madness, "the characterization of the Russian mind is gloomy, and what Russia is going through is also extremely gloomy."

For our Russian mind, the academician argued, facts, truth, reality are not a decree. For us, the main thing is what we believe in, that we ourselves came up with what we have in our brains. That is why we Russians live in fantasies. We do not know what human culture is based on, we do not know "Great work and pain"leading to "Obedience to the truth", unknown what is called "True".

And in this regard, Ivan Pavlov gives an example, oddly enough, remains relevant to this day. Until now, there is not a single fact confirming the belief of the Slavophiles in the special civilizational mission of Russia. But we still believe in it. We are talking about the unfading faith of our patriotic Slavophiles that Russia was created by God in order to teach reason to the decaying West. And this example, Pavlov says, testifies to the fact that we do not give a damn about the truth, the truth, the facts.

“Take our Slavophiles. What did Russia do for culture at that time? What samples has she shown to the world? But people believed that Russia would rub the eyes of the rotten West. Where does this pride and confidence come from?"

And then the text, which is directly related to modern Russia:

“And you think that life has changed our views? Not at all! Don't we now read almost every day that we are the vanguard of humanity! And does this not testify to the extent to which we do not know reality, to what extent we live fantastically!"

It is amazing: absolutely everything that Ivan Pavlov called the defects of the Russian general life mind is still alive today. Everything remained as it was. Overcoming the Russian pre-revolutionary illiteracy of the population and raising a multimillion Soviet intelligentsia did not change anything in this regard. Judge for yourself. We Russians, the academician said, "are not inclined to the concentration of thought, we do not like its concentration, we even have a negative attitude towards it." Therefore, we do not pass from the word, from the emotional assessment of the subject to its study, to the study of the causes of what happened, and even more so to the study of its essence, its consequences.

"The Russian man does not get to the root of the matter",

- asserted Pavlov.

Surprisingly, everything that happens in modern Russia on various kinds of television shows was described by Ivan Pavlov a hundred years ago. We do not have disputes, because no one listens to each other and is in a hurry to express their own opinion on the issue under discussion first of all. The truth really does not bother anyone, for us the main thing in the dispute is "Onslaught on the enemy" … We are far from the dispute, not only "From the side of those who think differently, but also from the side of reality".

There is some kind of mysticism. "Geopolitical factor"in the eyes of our elite, this is the main evil for modern Russia. But, pay attention, no one says who created this evil, and, the most amazing thing, no one is going to fight this evil, to change something in our foreign policy. We proceed from the premise that our leadership has never been wrong and is not in a position to be wrong. Nobody here is going to fight this "Demon", With "Geopolitical factor". "Bes"sacralized in our eyes, acquires holiness, becomes almost the support of our life. And our people are already seriously beginning to believe that if God forbid, the West lifts the sanctions, then we will perish. The passivity of the mind is side by side with some amazing doom. And therein lies the paradox: belief in Putinpersists, but there was no faith in the prosperity of their country.

Question "why"turned out to be banned precisely at that period of our history when all the deep-seated problems of Russian statehood surfaced and became visible. Just one example. Before our eyes, the core of the Russian world has finally crumbled, if not a union, then cooperation, a joint life for more than three centuries in the same state of Ukrainians and Russians, in the past Little Russians and Great Russians. For more than 300 years they fought together, built, reached the Pacific Ocean, enjoyed equal rights, especially during the Soviet era, which, by the way, Ukrainian nationalists do not want to recognize. And as a result, they not only parted on different sides, but also became, most likely for a long time, sworn enemies. But nobody asks the question "why".

Previously, nevertheless, as Ivan Pavlov believed, there was a qualitative difference between the Russian mind of educated Russia and the mind, as he said, "Ignorant peasant Russia" … Educated Russia, according to him, did not like the truth, did not like to dig to the roots of the events that were taking place, suffered from romance and daydreaming. Yet she did not live on the people's thirst for finding enemies. And for the peasant mind, Pavlov emphasized, all the troubles of our life are the result of the intrigues of enemies, and the enemy for the peasant was above all an educated, cultured person. The popular mind, from the point of view of the academician, does not think, does not investigate, but only looks for enemies and connects all its troubles with their intrigues and intrigues, therefore the Marxist enmity towards the bourgeois and exploiters turned out to be so close to the people's mind.

“Sailor, brother of my servant,

- says Ivan Pavlov,

- I saw all evil, as expected, in the bourgeoisie, and bourgeois meant everyone except sailors and soldiers. When he was noticed that you can hardly do without the bourgeoisie, for example, cholera will appear, what will you do without doctors? He solemnly replied that all this was nonsense, because it has long been known that doctors themselves admit cholera.».

(Emphasis added by I. Pavlov.)

The academician concludes his story about the Bolshevik sailor with the following question:

"Is it worth talking about such a mind and can any responsibility be placed on it?"

The changes that have taken place in the Russian mind over a hundred years consist in the fact that the peasant thirst to find enemies, the thirst to feel like a victim of the intrigues of enemies, not only migrated from the minds of ignorant Russia to the minds of a literate, educated Russia, but has now become, as they say, The "dominant trend"our new social thought. In modern Russia, anyone who begins to seriously study the kinship of Stalinist communism with National Socialism must "Lackey of the West".

Many reasons contributed to this reorientation of our social thought, primarily political, towards the search and exposure of enemies. The essence of Marxism, which possessed our brains for almost the entire twentieth century, was precisely the people's, proletarian passion for fighting the enemy, with the capitalists and the bourgeoisie, and therefore the view of the world of the Bolshevik sailor, which Ivan Pavlov described, became in fact the essence of our Soviet social studies.

Academician Pavlov believed that the dreaminess and laziness of the Russian mind, which did not want to see our Russian reality in its entirety, which allowed the Bolsheviks to come to power, could ultimately ruin Russia, and therefore at the end of his lectures he called on his compatriots to pull themselves together and put an end to these "Defects of the Russian mind" … That is why I took the risk of telling a Russian person, Ivan Pavlov said, who he really is, for I believe that a Russian person is still able to learn, improve his mind. After all, even the mind of an animal, after a series of mistakes, is enlightened, and it, an animal, begins to turn on "Brakes", begins to avoid what is dangerous for him.

But personally, unlike Academician Pavlov, I have less and less optimism. It is difficult to believe in the future of a country in which not only politicians, but also representatives of historical science have gone mad and believe that the sovereignty of poverty, savagery and ignorance is preferable to prosperity, progress achieved by loss "Privileges"to independence from the West superior to us in cultural and civilizational terms.