Where Russia fails the most is values. Real messages from my friends. It’s scary
With every new day of this disgusting war, I have less and less hope for Russia to change. Here is why.
For me, this is not a war of global powers nor it is a war of one insane person anymore. This is the war of values. Sadly, it became clear that people in Russia almost completely lost touch with real human values.
It happens when you lose your personality. When you struggle so much to the point that you don’t care about your own choices, your future and naturally you no longer care about others.
The struggle makes us slavish.
This obviously isn’t new. I remember reading about this cruel but simple process of taking away human will and personality that Nazis used in concentration camps.
In his memoir, Viktor Frankl, an Austrian Jewish author and Auschwitz survivor described when prisoners arrived at Auschwitz all of their belongings were taken away — their documents, books, and photographs. Their manuscripts and art — life's work for a lot of them were thrown into a fire.
Then they were stripped naked and shaved completely.
The uniform they had to wear was also made to disparage them — thin people had to wear long and bulky clothes while tall and broad-shouldered received short and tight clothes.
All of that was done to erase a sense of identity, individuality, and self-worth.
As Frankl wrote:
Everyone appeared shaven and broken, as though they had undergone a total metamorphosis of personality.
The concept of struggle is something that has become an ordinary thing for a lot of Russians. Most of them, especially the ones who remain in Russia and support the current narrative, have been struggling for several generations.
For the whole century, people there were robbed continuously— first of their belongings and inheritance, then of their religion and culture, then of their freedom of speech.
Millions were robbed of their freedom in general. Or their life.
People were made to distrust their own judgments. Current Russian propaganda is nothing new or uncommon for people who were born and raised in the USSR. Rather it’s their comfort zone.
People couldn’t choose where to live, where to work, where to travel, what language to speak, or what to believe in. There was a time people couldn’t choose what to eat because there was nothing to choose from. Everything was preplanned and decided for them.
Other than that a lot of people lived in horrifying conditions. Last year I went to Perm. It’s a big city near Ural mountains, the third largest in Russia (by area) and a vital center of artillery production during WW2. Though because of its harsh climate and considerable distance to Moscow and St.Petersburg life there was rough and very very poor. There is an amazing ethnographical museum that holds a variety of authentic local buildings from different time periods. I was shocked to learn that people there heated their wooden houses with smoke furnace (no chimney, open burning fire, smoke coming inside the house) until 1950s. 1950s!!! The world had refrigerators, vacuums, microwave ovens – but people in Russia lived in a house full o smoke with tiny mica windows to keep the frost out, and took baths in a sauna full of smoke that they had to bend in half to enter.
These images make sense for 18th century, but not for the 20th!
Then the struggle of the Post-Soviet 90s came. All that preplanned life disappeared overnight and people had to work blindly and barbarously to have food on their tables. Certain factories were paying their employees with goods instead of money. For ex, toy factory employees had to sell hundreds of stuffed toys on the streets, on the railway, etc – to be able to have any money.
All of this struggle ruins people. Their understanding of life, of self-worth, and freedom. It also messes up values. Big time.
Therefore most people in Russia now don’t feel any changes whatsoever. They have been struggling all along. Their parents have been struggling. Their grandparents have been struggling. You get the picture.
Most people who live in Russia now have always lived from paycheck to paycheck, never been abroad, never tried parmesan cheese, or bought a branded fashion item. Foreign business is an alien for a lot of people — almost half (!) of the population either work for the government or depend on governmental aid.
Most people have never gone somewhere for a vacation other than visiting relatives or working in their garden to grow potatoes for the winter season.
Almost 20% of housing in Russia still don’t have sewerage. TO THIS DAY. They use cesspit toilets outside of their homes. Even in Siberia. Even during winter.
With all the sanctions, inflation, travel restrictions, etc — they just continue to live like they always did. For them, nothing has changed.
For context — here are a few snippets to illustrate how some people who still live in Russia feel about their life there nowadays. These all are nice people, btw. They don’t work for the government, they are young and educated.
Since values are nonexistent, people have no habit of assessing things or moral foundation to re-evaluate them really. They are broken. It means they are not able to change the current narrative, throw the current government, demand anything from Putin, and stop the war.
Most Russians don’t value their own life enough to value someone else’s.
And I can’t express how much it hurts.
Thank you for your time. Peace to all of us.
