On Russian Democracy, Filth, and the “Prison of Nations”

20 hrs. 17 min.

Miscellaneous

Language Russian

Author Vladimir Medinsky

Narrator Natalya Karpunina

Description

Russia has never had a democratic tradition and therefore cannot exist without a “strong hand.” Its entire history—from Prince Svyatoslav to Suvorov and Zhukov, from the shield over the gates of Tsargrad to the Cossacks in Paris, Soviet tanks in Vienna, and missiles in Cuba—is a history of uninterrupted military expansion by a military-bureaucratic state. Novgorod and Kazan were burned and slaughtered, Crimea was stolen from the Tatars, Poland was partitioned and beheaded, the freedom-loving peoples of the Caucasus were enslaved, and the independent khanates of Central Asia were conquered by tsarist colonial troops. Everywhere the Empire imposed its own order, its one true “Orthodox” faith, its bureaucratic apparatus. Thus tiny monoethnic Muscovy turned into a gigantic “prison of nations” covering almost 1/5 of the land surface. At the same time, the absence of a European culture of everyday life gave rise in this peasant country to that horrifying lack of sanitation, slovenliness, and age-old filth that Russia has been unable to get rid of to this day… Well then, according to the author, everything said above is a lie. In this book, the second in the “Myths About Russia” series, he proves the exact opposite. Read. Think. Argue.

Contents:

Part V. The Myth of Russian Filth
Chapter 1 Where Did the Myth Come From?
The Peculiarities of the National Water Supply
Without Running Water
Chapter 2 Ancient Traditions About Lifestyle and Hygiene
The Bathhouse Is Not Just Cleanliness
The Russian Bathhouse
The Slavic Bathhouse Spirit Bannik
The Feast of Ivan Kupala
A Word to the Arabs
The “Corruption of Morals” in Europe
Chapter 3 Everyday Life in Western Europe and Russia
European Cities of Death
Inevitable Consequences
Cities of the 16th–18th Centuries
Magical and Delightful Versailles
Kings Among Heaps of Garbage and Filth
Cities of Rus'
On the Charm of Perfumery
Chapter 4 Physical Health, and Not Only
On Epidemics
Population Growth Dynamics
On Ideals of Beauty
The Extermination of Beautiful Women
Chapter 5 On Cleanliness in the Modern World
Cities of Modern Europe
Hygiene in Modern Europe
Who Has Better Genetics?
What Sustains the Stereotype?
Part VI. The Myth of Tsarist Russia as a “Prison of Nations,” or A Little About the “National Question”
Chapter 1 The Origins of the Myth
First There Was the Thesis About the Prison…
The Genie Escaped from the Bottle
Classics of Marxism on the Colonial Order
Chapter 2 Western Colonial Empires
Rulers of the World
A Little About the Slave Trade
Cleansing the Land
And in the Russian Empire?
In All Civilized Countries
Shamil and Napoleon
A Nice Trait of All Empires
Continental Empires
Revolutionary Colonizers
In Continental Empires
Chapter 3 The Russian Empire: Features of Territorial Expansion
The Tatar Question
The Multinational Muscovite State
The Multinational Tatar Khanates
On the Conquest of Siberia, Kazan, and Astrakhan
Was the Muscovite Tsardom an Empire?
Was the Russian Empire an Empire?
The Problem of Self-Government
A Paradoxical Analogy
Under Soviet Rule
Chapter 4 Empire in Reverse, or Russian National Policy
Escape to the “Prison”
Those Who Came to the Empire
Brothers Buryats
Kalmyks-Oirats
Khakasses—Tributaries of the Kyrgyz
Uyghurs: From China to Russia
Armenians—in Turkey and in Russia
Russian Koreans
Russian Chinese
Those Who Left the Empire
Adyghe
Chechens
Jews
Poles
Historical Realities and Propaganda
Conclusions
Part VII. The Myth of the Russian Threat
Chapter 1 Ancient Rus'—A Victim of Invasions?
Ancient Rus'—A Complete Absence of Myth
Rus'—The Eternal Victim of Invasions
The Most “Beloved” Neighbors from the South
The “Beloved” Neighbors from the West
An Important Pattern of Russian History
An Even More Important Pattern of History
The Pattern of Historiography
Chapter 2 The Birth of the Myth
“Orsha Propaganda”
The Livonian War
Romanov Muscovy—Together with the Rest of Europe
New Steps in a New Myth
The Seven Years’ War
Half-Forgotten Glory
The Partitions of Poland
Chapter 3 The Mythology of Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon’s Political Demagoguery
Napoleon and the Church
Propaganda in Action
On Equal Terms
How Bonaparte Gave Birth to the Myth of the Russian Threat
Myths and the Reality of the War of 1812
Napoleon’s Anti-Russian Propaganda
The Results of Propaganda in Action
Were the Russians Bonapartists?
Missed Opportunities
The Russian Army in the Very Heart of Europe
Chapter 4 The Polish Card, or the Russophobic Campaign of the 1830s
A Little About the “Polish Card”
An Uprising or a War?
Chapter 5 Features of the Russian Empire
The Birth of New Russia
The Problem of the North Caucasus
The Beginning of the Caucasian War
In the West and North
In the East
Empire Against Empires
Chapter 6 The Worst Empire
The Age of Colonialism
England, Russia, Propaganda, and Colonialism
The Cause—Rivalry
The Caucasus
Central Asia
Clashes in Central Asia
The Crimean War
Course of Events
Reasons for Defeat
Consequences
The Failure of the “Palmerston Plan”
The Baltics and the North
Clashes in the Pacific Ocean
Myths About the Crimean War
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78
Chapter 7 The Myth of “Russian Aggression” and Political Realities. Conclusions
Part VIII. The Myth of Russian Slavery (More Precisely, of Russia’s Historical Inclination Away from a Democratic Form of Government)
Chapter 1 What Is Democracy, After All?
Out of the Darkness of Ages
Sparta and the Spartans
From Democracy to Emperors
Or Still a Monarchy? (A Modern Digression)
Direct Democracy in Cities
Magdeburg City Law
Estate-Representative Democracy
The Estates-General
Parliament
The Sun of Absolutism and the Irony of Elites
Democracy or Plutocracy?
The Beacon of Great Democracy
“Florida”
Democracy. From $1 Billion
So What Is Democracy, After All?!
Chapter 2 Was There Democracy in Ancient Rus'?
The Original State of Affairs
Princely Power and the Druzhina
Not the First Heir, but the Clan!
The Formula of the Congress of Liubech
A Necessary Digression
Yaroslav’s Charters
A Turn in Favor of the Veche
The Last Century and a Half
Lord Novgorod the Great
On Democracy in Novgorod
Everyday Administration
Pskov—A Special City
Lord Pskov the Great
The Rule of Law
The Charter—Mass and Democratic
A Discovery
What Did the Novgorodians Write About?
Mass Literacy
Book Learning
Education and Democracy
The Punished Autocrat
When Did the Veche System End?
Chapter 3 Was There Democracy in Muscovite Rus'?
The Vastness of a Great Country
Local Democracy. The Commune and the Bolshaks
Local Democracy. The Gubnye Tselovalniki
Free Peasants of Muscovy
Serf Peasants of Muscovy
Townspeople
Tax-Exempt Population
Bureaucracy
The Aristocratic Principle, or the “Career Elevator” in the Muscovite State
Zemsky Sobors—Our Estates-General
Social Mobility
Zemsky Sobors: From the Civic Chamber to the Congress of People’s Deputies, or How the Romanovs Were Elected
Let Us Sum Up
Chapter 4 Democracy in the Russian Empire
A Terrible Blow to Russian Democracy
In the Kingdom of Chaos
And Yet Democracy!
An Attempt at a Noble Constitution
Bribing the Nobility
A Project of Emancipation
Corporate Democracy of the Nobility
Urban Self-Government
Catherine II’s Estates-General
“Five Minutes” from a Constitution
Nicholas I “Palkin” and His “Vertical of Power”
Zemstvo Democracy
The October 17 Manifesto
The State Duma
The Provisional Government
The Constituent Assembly
Conclusions
Chapter 5 Democracy in the USSR
Is It Possible?!
The Essence of the Soviet System
Social Security
Social Mobility
Conclusions
Twenty Years Between Two Photographs