A large part of Russians are not capable of independent action, they follow orders. That is why they will endure all kinds of adversity and catastrophes, as long as the authorities point out to them an enemy who is to blame, writes Prof. Evgeniy Dainov.
"How to understand Russians" - I see that Europeans are still "lost in three pine trees", as the Russians themselves say, on this issue. They have been lost like this for as long as I can remember.
His answer unfolds on two levels: how to understand the power (i.e. Putin) and how to understand the mass of Russians (the "people").
Putin is just another elementary dictator
Putin is easy. He has long since overcome the basic "Russianness" in his soul and has become an elementary dictator. Such people are easy to understand because they are clones of each other: you understand one - you understand them all. To understand the Russian people, much more detailed observation, deeper knowledge, as well as meaningful experience are necessary.
Back in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher persistently explained that the West would never reach meaningful agreements with dictators, since Western people make the same mistake every time. They consider the dictator on the other side of the table to be something like them, but in a more extravagant version. They are convinced that they can find a common language with him on topics such as national interest, international security, mutual benefit for countries. This, Thatcher rages, is childish. No dictator is interested in either the interests of his nation, or the security of other countries, or the mutual benefit of the negotiating peoples. He is interested in only one thing: constantly increasing his personal power.
He, the dictator, is convinced that he is the only subject on the ground. The only way to convince him to agree is to explain to him how this agreement will increase his personal power. There is no other carrot. Therefore, with dictators, it is generally better to negotiate from a position of overwhelming force. As the legendary American President Theodore Roosevelt said at the beginning of the 20th century: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick".
Conclusion: if you want Putin to agree to any of your proposals, show him that in case of disagreement you will crush him.
How we saw Russians in their most natural form
So far it has been easy. Understanding and dealing with the Russian people is a much more complicated task.
After the collapse of the USSR, the Russian people were deprived of their civilizational centers - Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and the Baltic republics - and stand before us as a being we have never known. In the past, we have seen them with friendly eyes through the prism of Baltics, Ukrainians and individual writers, poets and musicians who rose above the masses. Today, the Russian people are not disguised by Baltics, Ukrainians, or intellectuals and artists. There are no such people anymore. This people stands before us in its completely natural and basic form without any makeup.
We have seen this form of it every day for the past month in the videos that ordinary Russians share about the new crises in their lives - the lack of fuel at gas stations, the hundreds of refineries, warehouses and factories blown up by the Ukrainians, the smoke from the fires that literally obscure the sky over Moscow, Petersburg, Rostov, Yekaterinburg, Saratov, Samara, Volgograd, Omsk and dozens of other places throughout the vast territory of the country.
I have not heard a single Russian make a connection with the war being waged in their name in Ukraine, and those who would probably refute me are probably a minority. In the first two weeks, Russians overwhelmingly believed the authorities' explanations that these were temporary difficulties. When they realized that there was nothing temporary about the situation, they began to ask not the question that we Europeans would ask: "What is happening and how to fix it?", but the deeply Russian question - "Who is to blame?" ("Who is to blame?").
Why don't they understand what is happening before their eyes
They immediately started fighting in the queues at gas stations, because they thought some of their own kind were to blame, who were stocking up on fuel in cans. After the fights didn't provide more fuel, the car owners looked "upwards". According to some, the culprits are the incompetent local authorities, who messed up the supply. According to others, the big chains, who are holding back fuel in order to crush small competition. According to still others, it is some kind of mafia combination.
I have not heard a single representative of the Russian people, among those who stood in line for days for gasoline and then posted videos complaining, build the following causal thesis: "There is no fuel because the Ukrainians neutralized two-thirds of the refineries in Russia. And the Ukrainians did this because Russia invaded their territory and is trying to exterminate them to the ground". For them, the war, as well as the explosions in the refineries, are "somewhere out there" and have no bearing on their lives, which are "here".
As incredible as it may sound, the same inability for causal thinking is demonstrated by those Russians who are "out there" and post videos of refineries, warehouses, and factories burning around their homes. They film the drones and missiles flying towards the targets. They film the explosions and fires. They click their tongues. And they don't make a connection with the war in Ukraine.
For the Russians filming the fires, drones and missiles are not Ukrainian. And, of course, they are not the Ukrainian answer to the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory. Drones and missiles are just some things that fall from the sky by themselves and explode and burn. Something like the fire and brimstone that fell from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah. Most likely, their citizens reacted like today's Russians - instead of saying to themselves "we have sinned something", they asked themselves "but what is happening?".
For many Russians, the statement "actions have consequences" is obviously completely incomprehensible. For them, everything that happens does not depend on their will. It depends on the will of God. Whatever a person does, the result will be what he decides. And when problems arise, it is the fault of some evil infidels.
The good and bad news for us
This helplessness, this surrender to fate gives rise to that deep, all-pervading Russian fatalism, which Lermontov wrote about in the story "A Hero of Our Time", published in 1840. Since nothing depends on you - everything is in the hands of fate - you simply endure what happens to you. Drones and shells fall from the sky? Well, apparently that's what happens. The sky over Moscow has been black with smoke for days. So what are we to do? The Russians even have a saying on this occasion, the culmination of dozens of jokes: "А если нет - то нет" ("If there is none, then there is none").
Two pieces of news follow from this state of the Russian mass consciousness - one good and one bad. The good news is that most of these people are not capable of independent action. They do something only when they receive an order. This makes them shockingly untenable on the front, where the ratio of Ukrainian-Russian casualties is definitely in favor of Ukraine.
The bad news is that a deeply fatalistic people is capable of enduring adversity and catastrophes that would break any more advanced society. They will not have gasoline, electricity, water, food, they will live in dugouts and will still obey, tolerate and carry out orders. Especially if their government points to some evil enemy - us, the Europeans - and says: "They are to blame. If we beat them, everything will be fine".
This text expresses the opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the State News Agency as a whole.