In my article “On the benefits of barbarism” I've listed nouns that “work” for bullying and persecution. Today I am starting to talk about the role of these words in Russian cultural history. I decided to start with a lie — the main weapon of mobbers. Bullying is always based on substitution and defamation. But “Russian lies” cut without a knife, so let's start with them.
It must be noted that the unconscious “old Russian lie” that N.A. Berdyaev wrote about in his article “The Spirits of the Russian Revolution” (1918) has not retired, but helps lies effectively and consciously carry out their defamatory actions and rot people. Persecution and bullying are largely based on the fact that in the world of slanderers and mobbers, two types of lies coexist — excusable and aggressive, which are mutually supportive. An apology helps people justify themselves and their unseemly actions, as well as in a victimized society formed by lies, to justify the rapist and torturer — their boss. Aggressive lies — a weapon of propaganda, a weapon of struggle and persecution against dissenters — are also perceived as an excusable lie because, according to the Russian spiritual tradition, “deception”, “lying”, “untruth”, and “silence” were not considered moral categories, as they do not appear at a conscious level, have no motives, and do not pursue a goal. It just so happened that these concepts have never belonged to moral categories in Russia, since the moral aspect of lies and deception could only be formed in a culture that went through the cultural initiation of the Renaissance, which involved the development and emancipation of individuality, through temporary liberation from authorities (religious and secular), through the cult of real earthly life in all its manifestations, from high to low. The meaning of European humanism was, among other things, that along with freedom, people realized the motives, causes and consequences of their actions, and realized the burden of personal responsibility for everything that happens. That is why the Western-style concept of “lying” is always a serious moral ailment. In Russia, which did not survive this crucial period in the development of world culture, people continued to shift responsibility to God, the Tsar and the Devil. Unfortunately, the replacement of cultural “passes” that Academician D.S. Likhachev wrote about did not affect the spiritual life of the Russian people. You can “transplant” crafts and literature, but you can't take personal responsibility for your actions. The Russian people are used to hiding their impulses (good and bad) behind “choral” and “collective” principles in culture, faith and state, and have continued to do so for many centuries. Perhaps the first person to include lying in the realm of a person's conscious responsibility for his actions was philosopher V.S. Solovyov, who defined lying in the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedic dictionary as follows: “Lying, as opposed to error and error, means a deliberate and therefore morally reprehensible contradiction with the truth.” But who listened to him?
Lying in this sense is too strong a moral concept that the Russian people have tried to avoid in communication since ancient times. This is confirmed by Russian proverbs and sayings, in which the word “lie” is rarely used, so we can talk about the concept of “Russian lie”. Here are examples from the “Dictionary of Russian Proverbs and Sayings..” edited by V.P. Zhukov (1991).
A lie leads to lies.
Lying to the hunter, not love — don't listen!
Lying on cockroach legs (increase: look they'll break down).
Lies don't live. I've been lying (or: Fairy Tale) for a short century.
Much more common are those proverbs and sayings in which the word “lie” is replaced by neutral “lies”, “deception”, and “untruth”. However, the Russian people also have a very lenient, gentle and unjudgmental attitude towards these concepts:
Although he lies, he doesn't drink intoxicating things (or: yes, he doesn't take intoxicating things in his mouth).
Lies don't charge duties, and they don't pay salaries either.
People's attitude towards the truth was very, very contradictory. Firstly, it is “not easy”, “unprofitable”, and more often “unkind”:
He really doesn't like jokes.
Really rude, love God. The truth is angry, but sweet to God.
It's true that a chain dog (an increase: whoever they let them down on will cling to).
You destroy the truth and disappear with it yourself.
It is ruled (i.e., acquitted by the court) that birch bark is on fire.
Just like a Moscow gulf.
It's a straight word like a horn.
Just a word like trouble.
Straight (or: Right), like an arc.
The straight word sticks out.
Straight what is bad (i.e. stupid).
Straight as blind: it aches in vain.
Straight, what's crazy: it aches.
Once he lied, he became a liar forever.
Don't joke with the truth!
Joking with the truth is like joking with fire.
He did not save himself, but destroyed others (i.e., with consciousness)
And if we accept as an excuse for the Russian people the following “statements” that the truth died before us; the truth is exhausted, and lies have been conquered;
the light has been wrong from time immemorial; the lie did not become us (or: it has begun), and it will not end with us; the truth is holy, and we are sinful people; the truth has been gone for forty years, and therefore “don't cry for the truth, settle in a crook!” ; if you don't lie and get a goiter; if you don't lie, you can't sell it; if you don't lie, you can't tell the truth, it becomes clear why in the Russian spiritual tradition neutral “lies”, “lies”, and “deception” are not analogous to “lies”, and “lies” are not established in the people's minds, but not in Western terms, as moral or a psychological illness, but only “to save” or as a sweet lie that is better than a bitter truth or a clever lie that is better than a stupid truth. Therefore, lie to a Russian person about eating a peeling testicle. The substitution category, which underlies the interchangeable concepts of “lie”, “lie”, “deception”, and “untruth”, is noteworthy. It turns out that nothing is a lie, even the lie itself dressed in the clothes of salvation, redbait, and delusion.
My handbook on Russian culture by L.N. Gumilyov and A.M. Panchenko, “To Keep the Candle Out”, has a chapter “Their idol is a lie”, which begins with L. Gumilyov asking the question: “Are there lies in wildlife?” And he answers it in the affirmative:
“To some extent, there are. Animal mimicry is an attempt to deceive a predator or prey. But both predators and their victims have the right to save their lives, which are threatened either by starvation or by being eaten, so mimicry is justified by the laws of the biosphere, which is beyond good and evil.”
A.M. Panchenko picks up this idea and develops it:
“There is something similar in human communication — so-called “saving lies” (not of their own skin), for example, the lies that are always told to a dying person at his deathbed. There are other types of selfless lies, at least redbait, as confirmed by the “justifying” proverb: “A red field is red, and a speech is a lie. This was well understood by the mayor from The Inspector, or rather, by Gogol, who used to behave the way Khlestakov behaved in everyday life. Such a lie is not a sin but a weakness.”
This example shows that two Russian people are trying to define what a “lie” means within the framework of the Russian cultural tradition. And in both cases, the definition of “lies” is benign and exculpatory. It is not for nothing that A.M. Panchenko remembered Nikolai Gogol's heroes in this regard. If there is an excuse, and there is always one — protection, survival, weakness — then a lie is not a lie at all, but just a lie, a sweet thing that leads to the truth. But as you know, everyone has their own truth. Gogol, the townsman, Chichikov, and Khlestakov had excuses for deception. N. Berdyaev also noted that the lies exposed by Nikolai Gogol are based on substitution:
“A true spiritual revolution in Russia would be liberation from the falsehood that Gogol saw in Russian people and a victory over the illusory and substitution that are born from falsehood.”
The philosopher also drew attention to the fact that “lies have the ease of irresponsibility, they are not connected with anything existential, and the most daring revolutions can be built on lies.”
If we express this idea in Gogol's words, it turns out that in fact “everything is a lie, everything is a hoax, nothing is what it seems”. However, we can go even further and assume that even “lies” and “deceptions” themselves are not what they appear to be. Apparently, this “unbearable lightness” of the lie, which is based on an irresponsible and condescending substitution of good and evil, is the very “Russian lie” that is as old as the world and which has been reflected in Russian literature from ancient times to the present day. But more on that another time.
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