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POLITICAL CULTURE |
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Russia's political culture has been shaped by its geographic setting, cultural orientation, and conflicting attitudes toward the state.
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Geographical Setting - Russia is the largest country in the world and encompasses many different ethnicities and climates. Its republics and regions border the Black Sea in the Southwest, the Baltic Sea in the Northwest, the Pacific to the East, the Arctic Ocean to the North, and China to the south. Its borders touch many other nations with vastly different political cultures and customs. Russia is also one of the coldest countries on earth, partly because of northern latitude, but also because so many of its cities are inland. Ironically for a country of its size, warm water ports are few, and its history has been shaped by the desire to conquer countries that block Russian access to the sea. Russia has many natural resources, including oil, gas, and timber, but much of it is locked in Siberia, frozen and very difficult to extract. |
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Eastern Orthodoxy - Early in its history, Russians cast their lot with the flourishing city of Constantinople, establishing trade routes in that direction, and adopting the Eastern Orthodox religion. As Constantinople's influence waned, the influence of Western Europe increased, but Russia's orientation meant that it did not share the values generated by the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment. Instead of individualism, Russians came to value a strong state that could protect them from their geographic vulnerabilities. In contrast to Russian statism, the West developed a taste for a civil society, or spheres of privacy free from control by the state. Eastern Orthodoxy also was inextricably linked to the state, so the principle of separation of church and state never developed. Even when the Communist state abolished practicing religion, the acceptance of government control remained. |
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Equality of result, not equality of opportunity - The Communist regime instilled in the Russian people an appreciation for equality, a value already strong in a country of peasants with similar living standards. Russian egalitarianism has survived the fall of the Soviet Union, and most Russians resent differences of wealth or income. This "equality of result" is very different from western "equality of opportunity" that sees "getting ahead" as a sign of initiative, hard work, and talent. As a result, the Russian political culture is not particularly conducive to the development of capitalism |
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Hostility toward the Government - Despite their dependence on government initiative, Russian citizens can be surprisingly hostile toward their leadership. Mikhail Gorbachev found this out the hard way when he initiated glasnost &endash; a new emphasis on freedom of speech and press &endash; in the 1980s. He received torrents of complaints from citizens that almost certainly contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Years of repression have sparked resentment, and modern Russians often badmouth their leaders and express pessimism regarding their political and economic future. |
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The importance of nationality - Even though cultural heterogeneity has almost always been characteristic of the Russian political culture, people tend to categorize others based on their nationality, and they often discriminate against groups based on long-held stereotypes. Russians generally admire the Baltic people for their "civility" and sophistication, but they sometimes express disdain for the Muslim-Turkic people of Central Asia. In return, governments in those areas have passed laws discouraging Russians from remaining within their borders. Anti-Semitism was strong in tsarist Russia, and today some nationalists blame Jews for Russia current problems. |
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Russia Net provides great maps that show political geography, including autonomous regions and ethnic groups.
