Characteristic features of the Russian mentality. Russian mentality: what does it mean to be a Russian person

In a book about Germany and the German mentality (“Watching the Germans”, “Germany without lies”, etc.), which was republished with updates, I had to compare the Germans with us. Not all readers agreed with me, but I am grateful to them all: the book you are holding in your hands was born out of debate. Who is it written for? For every inquisitive person who is not in the happy confidence that he already knows everything. This book is intended primarily for residents of Russia. It can also help foreigners understand Russians, find a common language with them, and adapt to Russia faster and easier.

Who are we, why are we like this and where are we going? How do we amaze and attract foreigners? Is it true that the Russian soul is mysterious, and what are its secrets? Is it true that the Russia we lost was completely different? Why was it in Russia that the state first declared the goal of building communism? How did the Russians influence the rest of the world? Why in Russia, the richest country in terms of its resources, do people live poorer, and most importantly, not as comfortable as in developed countries? Is it possible, having understood the Russian character, to answer the question of what to do and predict what awaits us? Centuries, rulers, laws change, but do we understand where we are moving and what is stopping us? Maybe for this we need to understand ourselves and look in the mirror again? Unpleasant? Let us remember Gogol - he took as an epigraph to his “The Inspector General” the proverb “There is no point in blaming the mirror...”. Someone will say that the mirror is crooked? But even in an attraction with distorting mirrors, it’s interesting to look at yourself from the outside, and it doesn’t hurt to laugh at yourself. I had the opportunity not only to live in Russia for a long time, but also to spend a lot of time abroad. After this, a lot of things become clearer here. This book is based on my personal experiences, consistent with the research of social scientists. They are supplemented with materials from foreign and Russian press.

In the West, Russians are accused of laziness, drunkenness and lack of culture, while domestic authors sometimes deny real problems. Discussions do not stop - hundreds of books and articles have been and will be written about the Russian mentality: the topic is inexhaustible. I am grateful to the authors with whom I was able to meet, and I regret that it is not possible to list them all. I will mention at least some of the humorists - Zhvanetsky, Zadornov, Irtenev, Gorin, Shaov, Yankovsky, Melikhan, the authors of apt statements on this topic.

Traditional ideas do not take into account the fact that recently the Russian way of life, mentality and value system have changed noticeably. It is extremely important in which direction these changes are going and what they will lead to. People on the Internet ask: “Is it possible to average all Russians? Everyone was very mixed up. My friends and I have ancestry from Uzbeks and Chechens to Germans, British and Balts.” I will answer: the purpose of the book is to identify the main, common traits of Russians, which do not necessarily belong to each of them. We are talking about traits that, in my opinion, are inherent in the majority or even the minority, if such traits occur and significantly influence our lives. If the book compares Russians with anyone, it is primarily with the peoples of developed and especially European countries. Because Russia is a country of high culture, close to European. Every nation has its pros and cons, and you will not find even two completely identical people. To some, the word “mentality” seems like a petrified rule into which they personally try to squeeze it, and this is nothing more than “the average temperature in the hospital,” which changes even before our eyes and which everyone measures in their own way. Each reader probably has his own opinion about the Russian mentality, and he will find something to object to me. I tried to harmonize my thoughts with the research of sociologists, supplement them with materials from the foreign and Russian press, and yet the book is based primarily on my personal impressions. Everything said in the book is just my views and value judgments. Everyone has the right to other views, and I do not claim to be the ultimate truth. On the contrary, it is desirable that this book give rise to thought and debate. In a dispute, truth is born - provided that both sides argue with mutual respect.

One cannot help but admire our people, who managed to develop a vast territory and create a great culture in the most difficult conditions. Although most Russians are nice and likable people, this, of course, does not exclude contradictions or flaws in the Russian character. I want to reassure the reader - the author was not recruited or bribed by anyone. If, dear reader, your soul hurts for your country and you want life in it to become better, then you are certainly a patriot and this book is addressed to you. What if you don’t want to change anything because you are convinced that everything that surrounds you here is the best in the world? If you think that only enemies can talk about shortcomings? Then you are also a patriot. But a patriot is of a different kind, and I advise you not to read this book: it is not for you.

In parts one and two we will talk about the first impressions of foreigners when meeting Russians, that is, about those features of Russians that catch the eye. Gradually we will move on to features that require closer acquaintance.

I am grateful to my wife Galina Tomchina for her invaluable and main assistance in editing the book, as well as to Olga Papysheva, Maxim Tomchin, Leonid Zakharov, Mikhail Itsykson and Lev Shapiro, who read the book in manuscript, for their valuable comments.

Russia is recognizable to a Westerner, but at some points it is completely unpredictable. This is a completely different culture, a completely different society... Looking at you, as in a mirror, we see ourselves in a new way.

E. Miller

Russia is inhabited by people of more than a hundred nationalities - Russians. But I prefer the word “Russians”. This is what I will call everyone who considers the Russian language and culture native and considers themselves Russian. Abroad, all residents of Russia are called Russians. There is a joke: two Japanese, a Tatar, a Russian, a Ukrainian and an Armenian are riding in a hotel elevator. One Japanese man quietly says to another: “Look at these Russians - they all look the same!” No matter how different the people of Russia may be, they have a lot in common.

“Whoever thinks in what language belongs to that people,” said Vladimir Dal. Tsar Nicholas II did not have even one hundredth of Russian blood, but he was a Russian man. Many “foreigners” made important contributions to Russian civilization. Among them are Pushkin, Lermontov, Fonvizin, Karamzin, Levitan, Bagration, Witte, and Dahl himself. According to journalist L. Parfenov, “Germans, Georgians and Jews were especially massive and bright in converting to “Russianness.” The Jew Levitan was a Russian artist, and the German Catherine II was the Russian Empress. “One cannot assume that anyone brought up in Russian culture (whether he is Chinese or an Armenian with the last name Khachikyan) can consider himself a Russian. Even if his nanny read Russian fairy tales to him as a child,” Natalya V. writes on the Internet. And Nadezhda K. did not like Pushkin’s statement about Russians, and she assures that “he is just not Russian.” She considers herself a real Russian, although her Russian language is lame. What's the point of arguing with them? Let fighters for the purity of Russian blood consider our classic an Ethiopian poet. And Okudzhava is a Georgian or Russian-language poet, but not Russian.

The indigenous inhabitants of Russia famously renamed foreigners. Hamilton? So, you will be Khomutov. Koos von Dahlen? Kozodavlev! The hero of M. Weller's story, an English engineer, married a Russian and stayed to live in Russia. Walter (we have Bolt) got drunk and learned to knock down two kopecks from the store. Everyone loved him “as a kind, harmless fool who made life more interesting.” The Chinese living in Siberian cities, already in the second generation, begin to drink, take steam in the bathhouse and work without the same zeal. “In Russia, even Jews grow Slavic cheekbones,” noted F. Engels. Russians show a rare ability to understand people and recognize their own at first sight. The philosopher Vasily Rozanov said a hundred years ago: “If you look at a Russian with a sharp eye, he will look at you, and everything is clear, no words are needed. This is what you can’t do with a foreigner.” Jokers say that Russians are the people who manage to survive in Russia. Maybe people are united by common difficulties? A common destiny and language are what unites all Russians.

GOU VPO

"Voronezh State Medical Academy named after. N.N. Burdenko"

Abstract on the topic:

“Characteristics of the peculiarities of the Russian mentality.”

Completed by: student P-509

Lyamina O. S.

Voronezh 2009

Mentality is one of the basic concepts of modern humanitarian knowledge. It includes the main characteristics of an ethnic group and is one of the leading criteria when comparing nations with each other.

Mentality is the subject of consideration in several humanities, each of which brings its own feature to the definition of this concept. The modern Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary interprets mentality as a way of thinking, the general spiritual disposition of a person or group, limiting itself only to the study of thinking. Encyclopedic Dictionary Terra Lexicon This concept implies a certain way of thinking, a set of mental skills and spiritual attitudes inherent in an individual or a social group. In this interpretation, there is no mention of language as an important component of mentality, and among cultural characteristics, only behavioral characteristics are probably taken into account.

One-sided interpretation is not a feature of modern science alone. Mentality as an independent subject of research began to be considered in the 20-30s. XX century At the beginning of the 20th century, the term “mentality” appears to have been used in two ways. In ordinary speech, this somewhat fashionable term preferably denoted collective systems of attitude and behavior, “forms of the spirit.” At the same time, it also appears in the scientific lexicon, but again as a “way of thinking” or “peculiarities of attitude.”

There are many definitions of what mentality is, here are some of them:

Mentality is a special “psychological equipment” (M. Blok), “symbolic paradigms” (M. Eliade), “dominant metaphors” (P. Ricoeur), “archaic remains” (S. Freud) or “archetypes” (K. Jung), “... whose presence is not explained by the individual’s own life, but follows from the primeval innate and inherited sources of the human mind.”

The term mentality originated in France. It is already found in individual works of R. Emerson in 1856. In addition, W. Raulf, based on an analysis of French journalism at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. came to the conclusion that the semantic charge of the word mentality was formed before [Raulf W. History of mentalities. Toward the reconstruction of spiritual processes. Digest of articles. - M., 1995. P. 14], as the term appeared in everyday speech.

It is generally accepted that the category of mentality was one of the first to be introduced into the scientific terminology apparatus by the French psychologist and ethnographer L. Lévy-Bruhl after the publication of his works. In its essence, mentality is historically processed archetypal ideas, through the prism of which the main aspects of reality are perceived: space, time, art, politics, economics, culture, civilization, religion. Consideration of the mental characteristics of the consciousness of a particular social group allows one to penetrate into the “hidden” layer of social consciousness, which more objectively and deeply conveys and reproduces the mentality of the era, to reveal a deeply rooted and hidden slice of reality - images, ideas, perceptions, which in most cases remains unchanged even when one ideology changes to another. This is explained by the greater stability of mental structures compared to ideology.

Even J. Le Goff noted that “mentalities change more slowly than anything else, and their study teaches how slowly history moves”[ Disputes about the main thing: Discussions about the present and future of historical science around the French school of “Annals”. - M., 1993.- P.149]. If ideology, with certain deviations, generally develops progressively, so to speak linearly, then within the framework of mentality, ideas change in the form of oscillations of various amplitudes and rotations around a certain central axis. The basis of such a movement and development of mentality is a certain way of life.

So, mentality is a concept very rich in content, reflecting the general spiritual mood, way of thinking, worldview of an individual person or social group, which is not sufficiently conscious, in which the unconscious occupies a large place.

The mental characteristics of Russian culture are characterized by a number of specific features, which are due to the fact that any attempt to present Russian culture as an integral, historically continuously developing phenomenon, with its own logic and expressed national identity, encounters great internal difficulties and contradictions. Each time it turns out that at any stage of its formation and historical development, Russian culture seems to double, revealing at the same time two faces that are different from each other. European and Asian, sedentary and nomadic, Christian and pagan, secular and spiritual, official and oppositional, collective and individual - these and similar pairs of opposites have been characteristic of Russian culture since ancient times and have actually persisted to the present day. Double faith, double thinking, dual power, schism - these are just a few of the concepts that are significant for understanding by the historian of Russian culture, identified already at the stage of ancient Russian culture. Such stable inconsistency of Russian culture generates, on the one hand, increased dynamism of its self-development, and on the other, periodically escalating conflict. inherent in the culture itself; constitutes its organic originality, typological feature and is called by researchers binary (from Lat. duality).

Binary nature in the structure of Russian culture is an undoubted result of the border geopolitical position of Rus'-Russia between East and West. Russia, throughout its history and geography, for centuries has been a Eurasian society, either striving to get closer to its European neighbors, or gravitating throughout its entire system of life towards the Asian world. [Semennikova L.I. Russia in the world community of civilizations. - M., 1994.]

It was (since the times of the Golden Horde) a country of border civilization. Western cultural figures perceived Russia as a country of a different, non-European order. Thus, G. Hegel did not even include Russians in his list of Christian peoples of Europe. Many observers have come to the conclusion that Russia is a kind of Eurasian hybrid, in which there are no clear signs of either part of the world. Oswald Spengler argued that Russia is a centaur with a European head and an Asian body. With the victory of Bolshevism, Asia reclaims Russia after Europe annexed it in the person of Peter the Great [Quote from the book Russia and the West: Dialogue of Cultures. M., 1994].

In addition, cultural and historical paradigms in Russian history were layered on top of each other: one stage has not yet ended, while the other has already begun. The future sought to come true when the conditions for this had not yet developed, and, on the contrary, the past was in no hurry to leave the historical stage, clinging to traditions, norms and values. A similar historical layering of stages, of course, is found in other world cultures - Eastern and Western, but in Russian culture it becomes a constant, typological feature: paganism coexists with Christianity, the traditions of Kievan Rus are intertwined with Mongol innovations in the Muscovite kingdom, in Peter's Russia there is a sharp modernization combined with the deep traditionalism of pre-Petrine Russia, etc. Russian Culture for centuries was at the historical crossroads, on the one hand, of the modernization paths of civilizational development characteristic of Western European culture, on the other, of the paths of organic traditionalism characteristic of the countries of the East. Russian culture has always strived for modernization, but modernization in Russia was slow, difficult, constantly weighed down by the unambiguousness and setness of traditions, every now and then rebelling against them and breaking them. Hence the numerous heretical mass movements, and the daring thirst for will (robbers, Cossacks), and the search for alternative forms of power (imposture), etc.

The mental characteristics of Russian culture historically naturally developed as a complex, disharmonious, unstable balance of forces of integration and differentiation of contradictory tendencies of the national-historical existence of the Russian people, such as a sociocultural balance (often on the verge of a national catastrophe or in connection with its approaching danger), which declared itself in the most decisive, crisis moments of the history of Russia and contributed to the survival of Russian culture in extremely difficult for it, and sometimes seemingly simply impossible socio-historical conditions and everyday circumstances as the high adaptability of Russian culture to any, including directly anti-cultural factors of its more than thousand years of history.

The Russian mentality is characterized by absolutism - which is reflected even in the Russian language: the frequency of words such as “absolutely”, “perfectly” - as well as synonymous words “terribly”, “terribly” - is more than ten times higher in the Russian language, than, say, in English. And the very synonymy of these and other concepts paints an image of global, stunning and extreme changes. Sometimes they go beyond the rational and reasonable, since the collective mind, like ideology, is the preservation of the existing - and for the sake of radical change it is necessary to overturn it too.

The constant need for something fundamentally new gives rise to the desire to actively adopt someone else’s (just as quickly consigning one’s own to oblivion: neglecting it as outdated). Russian thought has often been accused of turning to foreign heritage for the lack of its own. However, they did not indicate the other side of the coin: the ability to assimilate and implement other people's ideas as universal ones. It is the constant desire for something fundamentally different, new, as well as the perception of the universalism (objectivity) of ideas that makes it possible to cultivate them on our own soil.

The second Russian trait is going beyond one’s own boundaries: not only at the level of society, but above all at the level of the individual, which manifests itself in overcoming interpersonal barriers. This trait is clearly visible to everyone who has been abroad: Russians strive to unite their own and others, organizing collective interaction in any conditions. They easily manage to do this, unlike representatives of other nations, and this is due to the lack of fear and the presence of the habit of invading the very essence of someone else's life, crossing the personal barrier and overcoming the isolation of individuality. This quality is usually referred to as “Russian soulfulness.” Foreigners often perceive it as aggression: an attack on a person. For the vast majority of nations, the boundaries of the individual are sacred, and the psychological barrier between souls is insurmountable.

The concept of morality is inextricably linked with the very significant concept of truth for the Russian mentality - which is confirmed by the Russian language. The Russian word “pravda” not only has a high frequency in the Russian language compared to others, but also the epithet “mother” (truth-uterus, truth-mother), depicting the blood closeness of truth to a person, his original womb and refuge. And also the synonym “truth”, meaning the highest truth: truth in the spiritual sense, which connects it with the concept of the source of morality and ideal.

We can safely say that the desire to unite people/nations with an ideal or some universal idea is typical of our character. By playing such a role, Russia (Russian people) has a face in front of other nations (people).

Also important for the Russian mentality are the concepts of the soul: as a special inner, significant world - and fate, correlated with humility and the expression “nothing can be done.” Such concepts of soul and fate are unique: inherent only in the Russian language.

This character trait in physical terms is confirmed by more than six months of hibernation of nature and external passivity during this period - against the background of which there is an internal, unconscious fermentation of the psyche, predisposing to deeply religious perception (recently, studies have appeared proving that the shortness of daylight hours promotes meditation , although also depression). The consequence of this is the philosophical depth of mental life, manifested primarily not even in philosophers, but in writers whose works have gained worldwide fame (Tolstoy or Dostoevsky). When the clear mind is silent, images speak. The fact that Russian philosophy expresses itself in fiction more clearly than in rational-logical concepts has been repeatedly pointed out by historians of Russian philosophy, among them E.L. Radlov and A.F. Losev.

Nations deprived of such a long-term forced decline in physical activity (inevitable in our climate, no matter how it is influenced by the now intense, violent social rhythm of life) do not develop such emotional and spiritual philosophical depth.

Russian Orthodoxy also played a huge role in the formation of the mental characteristics of Russian culture. It has given internal certainty to the mentality of the Russian people and over the last millennium has determined the spiritual potential of the nation. The Orthodox faith plays the role of a spiritual core or spiritual substance for the Russian national mentality. Orthodoxy did not preach the idea of ​​predestination. And therefore, responsibility for sins committed of one’s own free will fell on the sinner. This was understandable and acceptable. Orthodoxy in this context is identical to the emotional and artistic structure of the Russian mentality: it reflects the Russian commitment to absolute spiritual values, maximalism, and the figurative and symbolic construction of the Russian national culture.

The historical conditions of existence, the spatial environment, the Orthodox religion and the Russian Orthodox Church as a sociocultural institution have left an indelible imprint on the Russian national mentality.

The Orthodox faith is a special, independent and great word in the history and system of Christianity. The Russian national spirit and national morality, respect and love for all tribes and peoples are based on Orthodoxy.

The moral and religious dominant gives rise to a number of features of the Russian cultural mentality. Firstly, not a single people had a Christian idea at the national-state level, only the Russians. Secondly, the Russian people are capable of religious and philosophical thinking. Thirdly, only Russians tend to understand the world through religious intuition, unlike the West. Fourthly, of all European peoples, the Slavs and especially the Russians are the most prone to religion, for in ancient times they believed in one God, and in our monotheistic paganism there was a premonition of Christ and the Mother of God, and Christian concepts such as God, heaven, hell, demons were originally Slavic.

The mental characteristics of Russian culture, which was determined by Orthodoxy, are the peculiarities of the attitude towards private property, wealth and justice in the Russian mentality. The economic experience of the Russians was dominated not by economic interest, but by the established moral economy, which has survival as its main goal. Therefore, people abandoned economic success and the risk associated with it, those values ​​that seem natural in modern liberal civilization. Property relations for the bulk of the population were of a labor nature, and achieving material well-being was not an end in itself. Hence, in the character of Russians, there is a relative indifference to material wealth and individual property. The absence of traditions of private property in Russia is the Orthodox view of wealth, which is not the result of labor, it is sent by God and is given not for accumulation and storage, but for beneficial use to others. The focus is on the righteous use of wealth rather than the acquisition of it. Wealth should serve a person, and not vice versa. Income was not an end in itself.

In Russia, the Orthodox ethics of entrepreneurship and commodity-money relations was created, while Western Christianity cultivated pragmatism, hoarding, and a passion for money and wealth in people. In the Russian mentality, the category of wealth acquires the greatest value, as a measure of spirituality in connection with wealth. Entrepreneurs looked at their activities differently than in the West, not so much as a source of profit, but as the fulfillment of a task assigned to them by God or fate. Entrepreneurship was seen as a certain type of creativity and self-affirmation.

Wealth in Orthodox ethics was perceived as a violation of fair mechanisms. And if a market economy is based on the principles of rationality and expediency, then in Russia they give priority to the ideas of justice. In the historical mentality, Russians have developed an egalitarian understanding of justice, associated with the harsh climatic conditions of Russia and the need for the physical survival of people. Here there was no objective possibility of ensuring the distribution of produced material goods in proportion to the merits of each person to society. Ideas about equality in the Russian mentality are predominantly moral, not legal, in nature.

Under the influence of Orthodoxy, a moral tradition of world development and management was formed in the Russian mentality, which persists even where conscious religiosity was lost. The Russian world development is characterized by the principles of a religious and ethical approach to the development of life.

Many researchers note the indifference of Russians to the organization of their earthly life, some strange disregard for the material layer, comfort, and ease of existence. When a culture is oriented towards eternity, then human existence in it is perceived as especially brief and ephemeral. In the “Cherubim Song” there are the words: “Put aside every care of this life...”, which means pushing into the background all the troubles associated with ensuring material well-being and order in this world. At the same time, the world for such a person is only a temporary refuge, and the leading type of attitude is “the delicate patience of a guest.”

The focus of culture on eternity explains why it has a poorly developed time perspective and orientation towards the future. Therefore, it is incredibly difficult to reform anything in such cultures. They strongly resist any changes, and if they occur, they are revolutionary, or rather apocalyptic in nature.

Another mental characteristic of Russian culture is self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is an absolute value in our culture. Quite strange things have happened several times in history - on the eve and during terrible troubles that threatened humanity with destruction, many European countries, their unique, original cultures and peoples were saved by the voluntary bloody sacrifice of Russia.

Of course, the original Russian culture and its spiritual center - Orthodoxy - are difficult for representatives of other national cultures to understand. Pushkin said this brilliantly: “the Greek religion, separate from all others, gives us a special national character.” It is not surprising that the West does not know or understand us; it is much more important that we ourselves know and understand our culture and mentality.

Bibliography

1. Anufriev E. A., Lesnaya L. V. Russian mentality as a socio-political phenomenon // SPZh., 1997. No. 4

2. Gurevich A.Ya. Medieval merchant // Odysseus. Man in history. (Personality and society. - M., 1990.

3. Goryunov E.V. The relationship between folk and scientific culture of the Middle Ages in the mirror of church rituals and sacred objects // Odyssey. Man in history. (Picture of the world in the popular and scientific consciousness). - M., 1994.

4. Culturology: theory and history of culture. - M.: Knowledge, 1998.

5. Raulf W. History of mentalities. Toward the reconstruction of spiritual processes. Digest of articles. - M., 1995.

6. Russia and the West: Dialogue of Cultures. M., 1994.

7. Stelmashuk G.V. Culture and values ​​// Current problems of philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. - SPb.: Leningrad State University named after. A.S. Pushkin.- 2000.

Unhealthy Lifestyle

As sad as it may be, the inhabitants of the country... Favorite phrase of Russians: “It will go away on its own!” It is not customary for us to trust doctors, but it is customary to use traditional medicine recipes. Some even treat cancer with herbs and magic devices.

This happens because for such a long period of the country’s existence, we have not focused on health. We are not educated in this area and misunderstand the meaning of the saying: “What does not kill us makes us stronger.” Love for an idle lifestyle leads Russian people to.

Fortunately, today the younger generation is beginning to take an interest in their health, are interested in sports, and go to the gym to gain a beautiful figure. But this is only the beginning of a long journey after the realization that Russia was sliding down.

Life "by connections"

Another established distinctive feature of the Russian people is bribery. 200 years ago in Russia it was customary to give officials a fee for services, but even when this right was abolished, the habit remained.

The officials had settled into such comfortable conditions that they never wanted to lose financial contributions from the people. Therefore, issues are still being resolved not according to the law, but “through pull.”

It is impossible to eradicate this trait at this historical stage in Russia, since there are other global problems, but the struggle has already begun and is bringing success.

Endurance

Historical events such as uprisings, wars, blockades and constant changes of rulers led to troubles for the Russian people. This made it possible to cultivate endurance, patience and the ability to withstand adversity in people.

Russian people are only recently getting used to comfort. Previously, we spent a lot of time in the fields to feed our family; there were often lean years, so we had to work without sleep or rest.

Weather conditions also influenced the formation of the Russian mentality. Foreigners are terribly afraid of the cold. For them, 0 degrees is already a reason to wear a sheepskin coat. The Russian people are accustomed to such temperatures and tolerate them well. One has only to remember the tradition of diving into an ice hole at Christmas. Some Russians actually practice winter swimming all winter.

Today Russia is emerging from the crisis, and the people are facing new challenges. Therefore, the mentality is gradually changing, acquiring new features. But some of them will forever remain in Russian souls and will help them remain invincible and undaunted in the face of dangerous enemies.

Russian mentality cannot be mechanically identified with the Russian people. There are many carriers of the Russian mentality among representatives of other nations. And the perception of the Russian character, as studies show, is practically not connected either with the type of civil self-identification, or with ideas about the desired model of the national-state structure, or with the choice of one or another definition of the concept “Russian”.

Mentality-forming constants are formed under the influence of three reasons:

1) geographical factors - characteristics of the territory: its size, climate, landscape, soil type, wealth of subsoil, flora and fauna, etc., collectively referred to below as nature;

2) genetic factors - features of the genetic mechanism of inheritance of psychophysiological traits typical of the population, acquired under the influence of nature in the process of natural selection;

3) social factors - objective features of the history of the emergence and existence of a people.

According With these three reasons, mentality-forming constants can be divided into three types: nature-formed, gene-formed and socially formed.

Towards Russian mentality-forming constants of natural origin (meaning historical Russia in the current framework) include the following: the huge size of the territory; the middle geographical location of Russia between East and West; colossal natural resources; the harsh climate of the main part of the territory with long winters and short summers; low-fertility soils of most of the territory (about 70% of the territory of Russia is in the permafrost zone). Natural mentality-forming constants played a primary role in the formation of the Russian mentality, as they contributed to the emergence of gene-formed and socially formed constants.

The Russian mentality-forming constant of genetic origin is high heterozygosity (a variety of variants of the same genes in the chromosomes), the richness of the gene pool and genotypes. High heterozygosity of the population arose as a consequence of the multinationality of Russia (about 150 peoples and nationalities) and the absence of prohibitions on interethnic marriages. In turn, the multinationality of Russia was a consequence of reasons of a geographical and historical nature (the diversity of natural conditions in different parts of the vast territory, giving rise to the national identity of the indigenous peoples living in these parts; the inclusion of these parts into Russia at different periods of its history).

The Russian mentality-forming constant of socio-historical origin is the centuries-old existence of the Russian people under conditions of centralized power and patronage of the state, personified in the form of a leader (prince, boyar, tsar, General Secretary, etc.). And again, centralized power and state patronage in relation to the population appeared as a consequence of the central geographical position of the Russian state, the protection of which from threats from both the East and the West required strong power. The government organized the protection of the population, the population supported the government. This mutual support strengthened as Russia's territory expanded.

All of the listed mentality-forming constants were formed, of course, not simultaneously, but gradually, in the process of the historical formation of the Russian state, accompanied by the formation of special features of both the Russian mentality and Russian civilization. In general, we can consider the emergence of the Russian mentality, state and civilization not an accident, but an objective pattern determined by the laws of nature.

The features of the Russian mentality, formed under the influence of natural mentality-forming constants, include the following.

1. Nervous system stability, ability to overcome difficulties, perseverance, patience. The mentality of the population is largely determined by the composition of the products they eat. In turn, the composition of products depends on the set of agricultural crops growing in the area where the population lives and giving a good harvest. For this reason, in conditions of infertile soils, harsh climate and short summers, central Russia is characterized by the cultivation of durum varieties of rye, from which black rye bread is baked. Black bread has long been the basis of nutrition for the Russian people. This unique food product is rich in B vitamins, which have a positive effect on the formation of a stable nervous system of the population. Therefore, black rye bread, as a national Russian product, can be considered a nature-forming factor in the formation of such traits of the Russian mentality as perseverance and patience. History has shown the ability of Russian people to overcome a variety of difficulties due to these character traits.

2. Balance of temperament. The climate in which they live has a great influence on the mentality of the population. A harsh climate requires an economical expenditure of energy for survival, and, conversely, a comfortable climate relaxes people, promoting the spontaneous release of their internal energy. Native northerners are more reserved, cold-blooded, focused, and self-contained than southerners. This determines the balanced, calm temperament characteristic of Russian people.

3. The ability to mobilize internal forces. The influence of climate in the form of centuries-long alternation of relatively long winters and short summers with a high percentage of the rural population in Russia required a “pulse” regime of energy expenditure by the body - intensive expenditure in summer on agricultural work and low expenditure in winter. This impulse mode contributed to the formation of such a character trait as the ability to mobilize internal forces for a certain period of time. However, given the transition over several generations of the majority of the population from a rural lifestyle to an urban one, this feature of the national mentality may be gradually lost.

4. Peacefulness, hospitality and good nature. Obviously, the mentality of the crowded population of small countries and the sparse population living in the vastness of large countries is different. Large countries like Russia have never had the problem of expanding living space, they have had the problem of preserving it. The special geographical position of Russia, occupying the space between the West and the East, forced it at different times to wage mainly defensive wars against Western and Eastern aggressors. Russians have always been peace-loving (we don’t need someone else’s, we have plenty of our own!). From here follows the well-known hospitality, hospitality and good nature of the Russian people, tolerance towards other peoples (we have nothing to envy!)

5. Breadth of nature. The large size of the territory of Russia, endless forests and numerous rivers and lakes, rich in animals and fish, berries and mushrooms, created in the Russian people the idea of ​​​​the inexhaustibility of natural resources and the boundlessness of living space, gave rise to a feeling in the psychology of the Russian population of the greatness of a huge country, the boundlessness of its size and the diversity of its capabilities and, as a consequence, the breadth of nature.

The genetically determined features of the Russian mentality include the following:

1. Talent. Diversity of genetic composition of hereditary biological structures ( chromosomes) gives rise to a very wide range of physical, psychological and intellectual characteristics of individual people. Combined with the large population, this genetic property predetermines a high probability of the emergence of unusual, phenomenal types of people with original genotypes. It is among such people that talents and geniuses are most often found - people with outstanding or unique abilities for a certain type of activity. The peculiar combinations of gene variants in these genotypes explain the talent of the Russian people.

2. High adaptability. High heterozygosity determines the presence in every Russian person of a wide range of behavioral reactions. This results in a high adaptive capacity, the adaptability of the Russian population to changing living conditions. This same high adaptability can explain such features of the Russian mentality as unpretentiousness and tolerance to living conditions, since at an unconscious level there is a genetic mechanism for adapting to them.

3. Russian ingenuity represents one of the ways to realize high adaptability when you need to find an original way out of a difficult situation. Ingenuity is an intellectual means of survival, of overcoming difficulties regardless of their content.

The considered genetic traits of the Russian mentality are inherited genetically. In contrast, the socially-formed features of the Russian mentality discussed below are inherited not genetically, but through the mechanism of historical memory, which includes folk traditions, folklore, literature, art of all kinds, and in general everything that is commonly called culture.

The socio-formed features of the Russian mentality are determined by the interaction of its gene- and nature-formed features with the social conditions of life over a fairly long historical period, covering many generations (hundreds of years). Only a nation with a centuries-old history, such as the Russian one, can have socially educated traits.

The sociocultural features of the Russian mentality include the following:

1. Collectivism and conciliarity, developed by centuries of life in a rural community. The community did not appear suddenly, but as a historically formed necessity of existence, as a reaction to low soil fertility, low agricultural yields and harsh climatic conditions, in which it was easier to survive in a community and using mutual assistance than alone. Russian history has shown that its course is determined not by socio-economic theories of changing social formations, but by the habit of the Russian population to a certain way of life, especially the habit of the rural population to life in the community. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the stability of socially-formed mentality traits is lower than genetic and nature-formed ones, therefore urbanization and the rapid reduction of the rural population in Russia may in the near future lead to the degradation of the mentioned collectivist tradition and the undermining of one of the main foundations of Russian civilization.

2. A heightened sense of injustice among the Russian people social inequality that infringes on the interests of the poor. This trait can be seen as a manifestation of collectivism. Hence the ancient feeling of social compassion for people who are spiritually and physically damaged: the poor, holy fools, cripples, etc., and the egalitarian tendencies in the Russian understanding of social justice.

3. Religiosity of the Russian people, brought up by the church and the authorities for almost a thousand years. Religion in Russia has always gone hand in hand with secular power. The Tsar was considered the representative of God's power on earth, and the Russian national idea for several centuries was expressed in the formula “God, Tsar and Fatherland.” The specific form of Russian religiosity was Orthodoxy, introduced into Rus' again by the secular authorities in the person of Prince Vladimir. Social essence Orthodoxy, based on the concepts of social justice, goodness, the primacy of the spirit over the flesh, embodied in the church biographies of Orthodox saints, as well as the forms of Orthodox religious rites - fasting, religious festivals, etc. turned out to be most consistent with the historical conditions of existence, the way of life and the Russian mentality generated by them people. This correspondence explains the stability of the Orthodox faith among the Russian people.

4. Cult of the leader. Deep religiosity, understood as hope for a deliverer from life’s hardships, contributed to the formation of such a socially oriented Russian trait as the cult of the leader. The entire Russian history took place under the sign of first the power of the prince, then the tsar, and during the Soviet period under the banner of the personality cult of the leader of the Communist Party. In all cases, it was the sole power of the leader (prince, king, general secretary) and the people blindly relied on him. It can be noted that the cult of the leader is also promoted by collectivism, one of the manifestations of which is the subconscious subordination of the individual to the collective, and in his person to the one who expresses collective interests, that is, the leader, personifying the collective in the mass consciousness. Hence the currently observed lack of initiative of the main part of the population, political infantilism, inability to politically self-organize, and reluctance to take responsibility for socially significant actions.

5. National and religious tolerance. Almost one and a half hundred different peoples have lived peacefully on the territory of Russia for many centuries. In Russia there has never been racial hostility, religious wars, or bans on interethnic marriages. The country, with few exceptions, has historically been formed as a voluntary multinational association. This could not but give rise to such a socially formed Russian trait as national and religious tolerance.

6. Finally, one cannot help but say about Russian patriotism. Patriotism exists in any country, but the basis of patriotism is different in different countries. Russian patriotism is patriotism based on the people's awareness of their community. The rise of the Russian patriotic spirit always arose in years of difficult trials, not for individual people, classes or groups of the population, but for the entire people, when they began to become acutely aware of themselves as a historical community that was in great danger - enslavement or destruction. These were precisely the tasks set by its enemies in the wars against Russian civilization.

In such years, this community was determined not only by the threat of personal loss of family, housing, property, but also by the threat of a general loss of the Fatherland: the traditional way of life, the opportunity to be proud of the past and believe in one or another social idea, that is, everything that is commonly called the self-identification of the people . The people rose to defend the Fatherland as a civilization. The idea of ​​individualism, now being introduced under the banner of individual freedom and human rights into the Russian national consciousness, is deeply anti-patriotic, because individualism has never been a social value among the Russian people, like, for example, among Western European peoples, and they will not defend it in case of national danger.

Despite not all the virtues of the Russian people, listed above, the peoples of Russia are also endowed with a number of vices. The main ones are: passivity; drunkenness and recently rapidly developing drug addiction; theft, which has become truly widespread.

However, sociological studies show that the basic features of the mentality of Russians are still the predominance of moral components. And, above all, a sense of responsibility and conscience, as well as a special understanding of the relationship between the individual and society.

Important features the mental life of a Russian person is the ability to feel and think in different, sometimes mutually exclusive ways; combine the impulse for boundless freedom with patience.

Mentality acts spontaneously, without realizing it, manifesting itself in a set of principles and habits reflected in character traits. Thus, the structure of mentality is a complex multi-level pyramid of mechanisms and methods of action directly related to the centuries-old culture of the people. At the same time, the peculiarities of the mentality of the people serve as the basis for the formation of ideology and national ideas.

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Research work in geography

Mentality of the Russian people

Tynda 2005

• Content
• Introduction
• The riddle and solution to the mysterious “Russian soul”
• Mentality of the Russian people
• About Chinese pragmatism
• China is a land of contrasts
• Poll: Russians about the Chinese
• Misunderstanding of humor in intercultural communication
• Features of the French mentality
• Poll: France is a wonderful country, but the French are unbearable
• Russia and USA
• Russians about their attitude towards Americans and their idea of ​​Americans’ attitude towards us
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

Introduction

In my work I will try to answer the following questions:

what character traits distinguish the Russian people (according to the authors of literary sources);

how do the Chinese and representatives of European countries differ from other peoples;

what the peoples of the world think about each other, what they think about themselves;

what needs to be done so that all peoples of the world live in peace and harmony

Basic working methods:

analysis of literary sources (textbooks, media materials)

analysis of Internet materials

conducting a social survey;

I will continue to work on this topic, because... The issue of finding a common language between the peoples of the world remains relevant. The fact that human thinking is largely reactive and situational was noted by ancient philosophers. In their everyday behavior, people rarely give an account of why they acted this way and not otherwise. Even Leibniz, long before Freud’s theory of the unconscious, wrote that “in our actions we are three-quarters automata.” R. Chartier, who quoted him, noted that “firstly, there still remains “one quarter” of human actions that are determined by collective determinants. The latter are not necessarily realized by individuals, but, nevertheless, they control and command the actions of people in these cases.” As you know, in difficult historical periods such as the one we are currently experiencing, the volume of significant social information increases many times over. The collective intelligence of a nation is not always able to efficiently and timely process these overflowing information flows. The importance of mentality among phenomena of this level is difficult to overestimate. Moreover, without analyzing the deep ethno-mental foundations, it is impossible to understand the uniqueness of the spiritual life of a particular people, to explain why the development of democratic and market principles in Ukraine collided with the psychological inertia of the masses, with the unpreparedness of a conservatively oriented person for ideological pluralism.

Secondly, the theoretical relevance of mental issues is determined by the presence of a long period of latent development, when mentality was described and studied without calling it such. It is impossible to detect the concepts of mentality of this period in philosophical literature by any external signs: the fact that they are talking specifically about mentality becomes clear only after reading the works.

Thirdly, different authors put different content into the same concept of mentality, which greatly complicates comparative analysis. It is generally accepted that mentality is one of those concepts in scientific and everyday language that are difficult to define in any strict way. If you try to somehow explain its various meanings, you will end up with more of an intuitive image than a logically verified category. Different authors at different times understood by mentality the contradictory integrity of the picture of the world, the pre-reflective layer of thinking, the collective unconscious, the sociocultural automatisms of the consciousness of individuals and groups, and the “global, all-encompassing “ether” of culture” in which “all members of society are immersed” etc. The urgent need for systematization of existing definitions of mentality, which would form the basis of mentality as a doctrine of mentality, its nature, content, its specific manifestations, also determine the relevance of the chosen topic. (1)

The riddle and solution to the mysterious “Russian soul”

Each of the readers has probably heard about the “mysterious Russian soul” more than once. And I read it more than once. Nobody knows what it is (that’s why it’s “mysterious”). Most often it is explained that the mystery of the Russian soul lies in its extraordinary breadth. But what is "breadth"? Not the distance from the equator along the meridian, expressed in degrees! When you understand more thoroughly what exactly is meant by this, it becomes clear - three things.

First. Extraordinarily great kindness.

Generally speaking, there are good (as well as evil) people among every nation. But there are nations where a kind person is rather the exception, and an evil person, like a hungry wolf, is the rule. There are peoples who have a lot of virtues, for example, hard work, discipline, musicality, etc. and only in last place is not at all amazing kindness. And there are peoples who have a lot of shortcomings, but it is their kindness that amazes the imagination.

These are the Russians.

This coin also has a flip side - amazing tolerance for oppression, endless suffering from the oppressors.

Second. An unusually humane state of mind, when in the first place in a person’s value system is the fate of humanity, far in the background is the fate of one’s own people, very little is the fate of one’s family, and absolutely zero attention is paid to one’s own fate.

It was precisely this mentality that distinguished typically Russian behavior at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 20th centuries. - “intelligentsia” of Russian origin, which has significant differences both from the Western “intellectuals” and from the Eastern “contemplative philosophy”. Today there is little left of the intelligentsia: this breed has been eradicated generation after generation since 1917. However, the tragic fate of Andrei Sakharov, the Russian Robert Oppenheimer, with a remarkably similar life and fate, shows that something of the intelligentsia has survived to this day. What is most striking is that exactly the same mentality is widespread among the common people - down to the last beggar.

There are nations where “everyone for himself - one God for all,” and relations between people are regulated by laws. There are peoples where the feeling of belonging to one’s own people, to one’s own tribe, dominates everything. It turns people into a close-knit pack of animals, and woe to anyone who comes across this pack on the way (there are more than enough examples of how Russians come across different packs on this path). And there are nations where relations between people are regulated not by laws, not even by reason - by the heart. The Russians belong to them.

An unusually developed sense of asceticism. Not in the sense of complete self-forgetfulness, when, according to the Russian proverb, you need to move a mountain. Russians have no equal when it comes to throwing themselves into a burning house or into icy water to save a person. When you need to put out a fire or dig out a rubble. When you have to fight to the death in a besieged fortress or go into a bayonet attack. When you need to lift the unbearable or endure the unbearable. When you need to “dissolve” your life in the life of another person or devote it entirely to the cause you serve.(2)

Just one example. Having heard that one of the leaders of the American communists was blind, one Soviet schoolboy offered him his eyes for a transplant: after all, he needed them more for the common struggle against the villainous American imperialists who oppress the unfortunate American people! Someone can say that skillfully staged totalitarian propaganda is capable of bringing not only a Russian boy to such a state. I just want to emphasize that this is typical for Russians.

And at the same time, any tourist who comes to Moscow never tires of being amazed at the viciousness of the service staff, the thievery of almost everyone he comes across, the shameful laziness encountered at every step. The typical Russian tourist who finds himself before your eyes in a country foreign to him is very far from heartfelt kindness, dedication, selflessness. How to combine one with the other? Is this really the mystery of the “mysterious Russian soul”?

Let's first remove the various husks from this notorious “soul” and take a closer look at its “core”.

In this regard, Russia is distinguished by two significant characteristics.

Firstly, the special character of Russian communalism. The Russian village has moved far from that primitive stage of communalism, when a person’s personality literally dissolves in the community, when he turns into a simple detail of the social mechanism of the community, like a warrior of the ancient Greek phalanx, which moved and fought as one whole. This condition is still typical for rural communities in developing countries in Asia and Africa (including the Asian republics of the former USSR). It has a number of advantages - mainly in terms of resilience to endure hardships - but is so uncompetitive with respect to the modern urban way of life that everywhere in the world, to one degree or another, it is in a stage of decay, transition to more modern forms of life.

Secondly, this combination was superimposed on those national traits of the Russian character. And this increased the strength tenfold. Actually, it was community (collectivism) that helped and is helping the Chinese, North Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Iranian, Iraqi, Libyan, Cuban and other peoples of the world who fell into this trouble to endure the hardships of totalitarianism.

But it was precisely the imposition of the unique features of the national Russian character on the community that allowed the Russian people to endure not only the burden of totalitarianism, but also the burden of the arms race, which was unbearable for other peoples (on equal terms with the much stronger economically United States of America!) and even break out from developing into a number of developed countries peace - albeit mainly through the military-industrial complex and its infrastructure.

This, in our opinion, is the riddle and solution to the imaginary “mystery” of the notorious Russian soul. We are convinced that there is nothing mysterious about it. Many components of this “mystery” are present among many peoples. Collectivism is even stronger among the peoples of developing countries in Asia and Africa. Latin America. Individualism is stronger among the peoples of the developed countries of the world. Many traits of the national Russian character are also found in the mentality and social psychology of other peoples, who have their own unique character, no worse or better than the Russian. It’s just that a unique combination of different components, features, and characteristics has created a unique phenomenon that is difficult to study and therefore has acquired an aura of “mystery.”

But no matter how we feel about this phenomenon of the “Russian soul,” it must definitely be taken into account and kept in mind. Otherwise, it is impossible to understand how, in what way Russia endured a Civil War, which was an order of magnitude greater in its hardships, sacrifices and economic devastation than the Civil War of 1861-1965. in USA. How did it endure the complete destruction of agriculture with tens of millions of victims, very similar in its consequences to the most ferocious hurricanes that ever swept over the territory of the southern states of the United States, or to the tragic events in the African Sahara of the 70s, Somalia in the late 80s? early 90s. How did she endure mass terror with tens of millions of victims (affecting almost every third inhabitant of the country in one way or another), very similar to the tragedy of the Jews during Hitler’s Holocaust or the tragedy of Cambodia during the time of Pol Pot. How did she endure the Second World War, when she was caught by surprise, unprepared for war, and had to literally litter the approaches to first Moscow and then Berlin with corpses, when ten Russians were forced to give their lives so that the eleventh could kill one German soldier. Finally, how, and at what cost, did she endure the almost half-century-long Third World War (the so-called “cold”) war against a much stronger economically and technologically powerful enemy.

There is no doubt that the Russian people would have endured the burden of totalitarianism and the arms race for some time to come. It was not he who was defeated in the Third World War. Totalitarianism itself was defeated, which turned out to be uncompetitive in competition with the “democracy + market” system and began to decline, gradually decaying from within. And then suddenly it collapsed like a rock and crumbled into sand. (3)

Mentality of the Russian people

The mentality of the people is an integral part of the national culture. The study of folk mentality is necessary to understand the relationship between nature, culture and society in a certain territory. Man is part of the geographical environment and depends on it.

S. N. Bulgakov wrote that the continental climate is probably to blame for the Russian character being so contradictory, thirst for absolute freedom and slave obedience, religiosity and atheism- these properties of the Russian mentality are incomprehensible to Europeans and therefore create an aura of mystery, enigma, and incomprehensibility in Russia. After all, for us ourselves Russia remains an unsolved mystery. F. I. Tyutchev said about Russia:

You can't understand Russia with your mind,

The general arshin cannot be measured.

She will become special -

You can only believe in Russia.

The facts indicate that the Russian state and the Russian ethnic group were historically, geographically and psychologically “programmed” for opposition from the outside. The Russian ethnos originated in the center of Eurasia, on a plain that was not protected from the west or east by seas or mountains and was accessible to military invasions from both East Asia and Western Europe. The only way to maintain independence in such conditions is to occupy as much territory as possible, in which any enemy armies would be bogged down.

Vast spaces, harsh climate and the need to resist the combined forces of many peoples from the West and East at the same time gave rise to the prevailing type of subconscious and conscious psychological attitudes.

The severity of our climate also greatly affected the mentality of the Russian people. Living in a territory where winter lasts about six months, Russians have developed enormous willpower, perseverance in the struggle for survival in climate conditions. Low temperatures for much of the year also affected the temperament of the nation. Russians are more melancholy, slow than Western Europeans.

The Northern Eurasian character of our nation has formed a type of national psychology that not only does not correspond to the prevailing world trends. But exactly the opposite of them. Hence, instead of developing a commercial economy - psychology of care in subsistence farming(saving during the years of foreign intervention, but unproductive for building an intensive economy), instead of independence - habit of paternalism, instead of high material demands - unpretentiousness to living conditions.

The harsh Russian winters had a strong impact on the traditions of Russian hospitality. To deny a traveler shelter in winter in our conditions means dooming him to a cold death. Therefore, hospitality was perceived by Russian people as nothing other than a self-evident duty. The severity and stinginess of nature taught Russian people to be patient and obedient. But even more important was the persistent, continuous struggle with harsh nature. Russians have long had to engage in all kinds of crafts along with agriculture. This explains practical orientation of the mind, dexterity and rationality. Rationalism, prudence and a pragmatic approach to life do not always help Great Russians, since the waywardness of the climate sometimes deceives the most modest expectations. And, having become accustomed to these deceptions, our man sometimes prefers to recklessly choose the most hopeless solution, to oppose the whim of nature with the whim of his own courage. This inclination tease happiness, play with luck V. O. Klyuchevsky called it “the Great Russian avos.”

Living in such unpredictable conditions, when the outcome depends on the whims of nature, is possible only with inexhaustible optimism. In a ranking of national character traits compiled on the basis of a survey by Reader's Digest magazine conducted in 18 European countries in February 2001, this quality was in first place among Russians. 51% of respondents declared themselves optimists (only 3% were pessimists). the rest of Europe won among the qualities constancy, preference for stability.

A Russian person needs to cherish a clear working day. This forces our peasant to rush, to work hard in order to accomplish a lot in a short time. No people in Europe are capable of such intense work in a short time. Such hard work is perhaps unique to Russians. This is how climate influences the Russian mentality in many ways. The landscape has no less influence. IN. Klyuchevsky reveals the landscape determinism of the Russian character as follows: “Great Russia of the 13th - 15th centuries, with its forests and swampy swamps, presented the settler with thousands of small dangers at every step, among which he had to find himself. Which we had to fight every minute. This taught him to vigilantly monitor nature, to look both ways, as he put it, to walk, looking around and feeling the soil, not to venture into the water without looking for a ford, developed in him resourcefulness in small difficulties and dangers, the habit of patiently struggling with adversity and deprivation .

In Europe there is no people less spoiled and pretentious, accustomed to expect less from nature and fate and more resilient. The uniqueness of Russian nature, its whims and unpredictability were reflected in the mindset of Russians, in the manner of their thinking. Everyday irregularities and accidents taught him to discuss the path traveled more than to think about the future, to look back more than to look forward. In the struggle with unexpected hardships and thaws, with unforeseen August frosts and January slush, he became more cautious than precautionary, learned to notice consequences more than set goals, and cultivated the ability to sum up the art of making estimates. This skill is what we call hindsight...Nature and fate led the Great Russian in such a way that they taught him to take the straight road in a roundabout way.” The beautiful Russian nature and the flatness of Russian landscapes have accustomed the people to contemplation. According to V. O. Klyuchevsky, “in contemplation our life, our art, our faith. But from excessive contemplation, souls become dreamy, lazy, weak-willed, and unhardworking.” Prudence, observation, thoughtfulness, concentration and contemplation- these are the qualities that were nurtured in the Russian soul by Russian landscapes.

In many ways, the specific (and often contradictory) features of the Russian mentality are determined by the vastness of the spaces in Russia. A huge, sparsely populated territory required for its development a special type of people, capable of decisive action, daring and courageous. And everywhere during their march, the Russians created a network of settlements - fortresses, which also played the role of economic centers for the development of the territory. This population was distinguished by its entrepreneurial spirit, extraordinary love of freedom and rebellion. A significant part of the residents fled beyond the Urals from the “sovereign eye,” and the authorities themselves preferred to keep such citizens away from the capital.

Russians were formed not in a nationally closed space, but in an open plain - a plain of assimilation. They were “boiled” in this cauldron. And we came out of it with two fundamental feelings - a feeling of powerful unity with each other and arising from centuries of life experience a conciliatory attitude towards neighboring peoples - both to those from whom lands had to be seized, and to those who joined based on their own interests; and even more so to those who considered it important for themselves to pass on their knowledge and creative elements of their culture to the Russians.

The spirit of hostility and rivalry was alien to the Russians - precisely because of their obvious predominance, as well as because they had a powerful folk root with its Moscow core. This Russian “root” was so strong that it digested the kings of German blood, and the Baltic bureaucracy, and the Tatar Baskaks and Murzas, and its French-speaking nobility, and the Ukrainian version of Orthodoxy.

The vastness and incomprehensibility of the country's spaces could not but affect its perception by its neighbors. Emperor Alexander 3, in his parting words shortly before the country entered the 20th century, said: “Remember, Russia has no friends. They are afraid of our enormity.”

A long period of careful dosing of deliberate distortion of information leaking abroad did not contribute to the formation of an objective image of the country among foreigners. P.A. Vyazemsky, a writer and friend of Pushkin, characterized such opinions this way: “If you want an intelligent person, a German or a Frenchman, to stop being stupid, force him to express judgments about Russia. This is an object that intoxicates him and immediately darkens his thinking abilities.”

“Vast spaces were easy for the Russian people, but organizing these spaces into the greatest state in the world, maintaining and preserving order in it was not easy for them. The size of the state posed almost impossible tasks for the Russian people and kept the Russian people in exorbitant tension (N.A. Berdyaev). All this could not but affect the mentality of the Great Russians. The Russian soul was suppressed by the vast Russian fields, the vast Russian snows, it seemed to be drowning, dissolving in this immensity. Long and cold winters reflected a joyless sadness in the souls of the Russian people.

State mastery of vast spaces was accompanied by terrible centralization, the subordination of all life to state interests and the suppression of free personal and social forces, the suppression of any initiative coming from “from below.” Centralization affected the Russian spirit in two ways: firstly, the Great Russian decided that the one who controls such vast spaces that represent Russia and the great people is almost of supernatural origin. From here - cult of personality, feeling of reverence for« to the Tsar Father» in the soul of the Russian people. Secondly, the feeling that someone stands over a person and controls all his actions resulted in such a quality of the soul as carelessness. ON THE. Berdyaev said: “The Russian soul is bruised by the vastness.” The soul of a Russian is wide, like the Russian land, rivers, fields - the soul of a Russian person can absorb everything, all human feelings and properties will fit in it.

The power of the shire over the Russian soul also gives rise to a whole series of Russian “disadvantages.” Related to this is the Russian laziness, carelessness, lack of initiative, poorly developed sense of responsibility.“The breadth of the Russian land and the breadth of the Russian soul crushed Russian energy, opening up the possibility of extensiveness,” noted N.A. Berdyaev.

Russian laziness (Oblomovism) is widespread among all segments of the people. We are lazy to do work that is not strictly necessary. Oblomovism is partially expressed in inaccuracies, delays.

Seeing the infinity of their expanses, Russians come to terms with the idea that it is still impossible to master such a vastness. I. A. Ilyinsky said: “Russia has endowed us with enormous natural wealth - both external and internal.” Russian people consider these riches to be endless and do not protect them. This creates in our mentality mismanagement. It seems to us that we have a lot of everything. And further in his work “About Russia” Ilyin writes: “From the feeling that our wealth is abundant and generous, a certain spiritual kindness is poured into us, a certain organic, affectionate good nature, calmness, openness of soul, sociability... there is enough for everyone, and the Lord will send more.” . This is where the roots of Russian lie. generosity.

“The natural calm, good nature and generosity of the Russians amazingly coincided with the dogmas of Orthodox Christian morality. Humility in the Russian people and from the church. Christian morality, which for centuries supported the entire Russian statehood, greatly influenced the national character. Orthodoxy brought up in the Great Russians spirituality, forgiving love, responsiveness, sacrifice, kindness.

The unity of the Church and the state, the feeling of being not only a subject of the country, but also a part of a huge cultural community, has fostered an extraordinary patriotism reaching the point of sacrificial heroism. A. I. Herzen wrote: “Every Russian recognizes himself as a part of the entire power, is aware of his kinship with the entire population.” The problem of overcoming Russian spaces and distances has always been one of the most important for the Russian people. Nicholas 1 also said: “Distance is the misfortune of Russia.”

The Russian person has perseverance and thoroughness peasant and nomadic blood ( prowess, the desire to move away from habitable places in search of something better, horizontal structured space, etc..) Russians do not distinguish between Europe and Asia, balancing between two development models.

A comprehensive geographical analysis of the ethnocultural and natural environment today allows us to reveal the most important features of the mentality of any people and trace the stages and factors of its formation. (3)

About Chinese pragmatism

The sage takes care of the stomach, not the eyes: he takes what is necessary and discards what is unnecessary. (Lao Tzu. “Tao Te Ching”)

The unifying principle in the rethinking and processing of the values ​​of various cultures and religions and their development and assimilation in China is pragmatism. It is this dominant feature of the Chinese mentality that determines the amazing adaptability of the Chinese and their ability to survive in the most difficult conditions throughout the complex history of the Celestial Empire. That is why Chinese civilization, which gave birth to one of the most mystical movements - Taoism, lives very pragmatically, does not talk about benefits, but constantly follows it. Just like any Chinese, he strives to extract his interest even from small things. Obviously, this circumstance determines the realities that a tourist who comes to modern China faces. First of all, what is striking is the amazing diligence of the Chinese, or rather their work in any area, regardless of its type and level. On the way to Cheng De, we observed how the Chinese create artificial terraces in the mountains for agricultural work. Pictures of the distant past literally came to life before us: an ox, a plow, a basket and a man. We saw how workers covered many kilometers of greenhouses for growing the most common vegetables, peas and beans with mats from the night cold, and in the morning, with sunrise, they removed them, putting them in huge piles - and so on every day. Even at a gas station quite far from the central highway, the toilet is washed and deodorized with incense after each visit by a visitor.

But if « workaholism» - a well-known trait of the Chinese, their love for trade is amazing. Wherever you are - near a museum, temple, palace, in a parking lot, at a restaurant, theater, hotel, on an observation deck, everywhere there is a huge number of sellers of various souvenir items, toys, postcards, handkerchiefs.

In China there live more than 500 million “unregistered” people, those who were born into a family in excess of the established “minimum”: one or two children - the second with a special permit. They are not registered and have no documents. But everyone needs to live!

China is a country of different languages, peoples, and cultures. And even in the Chinese language itself there are four tonic stresses. The slightest change in tone - and the spoken word takes on a completely different meaning. Chinese from different provinces may not understand each other at all. Therefore, in China, video information is preferred. Almost all films, performances and programs of an informational and political nature are dubbed with captions - hieroglyphs are read the same way in all provinces and by everyone. But it was the presence of tonic stresses that contributed to the development of high musical culture.

Pragmatism of the Chinese is manifested in everything, in relation to health, first of all. After all, it is health care that underlies Taoism, the flourishing of Chinese and Tibetan medicine, and traditional martial arts. Every morning, driving through any city, you can observe groups of people doing qigong breathing and meditative exercises and taijiquan gymnastics. On weekends, parks and gardens are given over to pensioners for recreation.

China is a land of contrasts

... Existence and non-existence give rise to each other,

Difficult and easy create each other,

The short and the long are measured by each other,

High and low are drawn to each other.

(Lao Tzu. “Tao Te Ching”)

However, upon closer examination, classical culture is striking at the same time with a certain stereotyping. In China, everything corresponds to the Taoist canon and is therefore stereotypical. In accordance with the principles of Taoism and its symbolism, the odd number “9” will prevail in architecture - it is the most beloved, slightly less often “7”, and there will never be an even number, especially “4”, because it is equivalent to the concept of “death”. At the same time, symmetry prevails, usually associated with the principle of the unity of opposite principles - feminine and masculine (Yin and Yang). Therefore, in front of all the palaces there will be figures of two lions: on one side, a lion with its paw on the ball - a male symbol, denoting power, and on the opposite side - a lion, under whose paw there will be a child - a female symbol, denoting fertility. All buildings, in accordance with the principles of Taoism, will have a rear wall adjacent to the mountains, and a façade facing a river or artificial reservoir. True, the symbolic elements of the harmony of the Cosmos are intertwined here - earth and water, and in the middle is man, with purely practical, functional ones - protection from enemies, of which the Chinese have always had many.

Chinese gardens - the most harmonious combination of opposites Yin and Yang: nature and architecture, vertical and horizontal, emptiness and fullness. In any garden, three elements must be present in order for a person to live in it: water, rocks and plants. The color scheme will always consist of five colors, according to Taoist ideas about the five elements. In addition, the color scheme also signifies the characters' personalities - both in fine art and in sculpture. The color scheme is even used in religious rituals. And, of course, the use of animal symbolism is canonical, in which the first place is occupied by the dragon, personifying water and performing protective functions. Popular ones are tiger, turtle, horse, unicorn. Among flowers, preference is given to the lotus - a symbol of purity. Clouds are also a symbol of the sky, the cult of which occupied a paramount place in the life of pre-Confucian China. Hence the ancient name of China - the Celestial Empire. Dragons on the roofs perform a protective function, protecting all living things from the power and interference of evil spirits in their lives. The same functions are performed by the famous curved roofs with tightly sealed tubes of tiles, as well as the peculiar labyrinths of gates at the entrance to the dwelling of the medieval Chinese.

With all the originality and specificity of Chinese history and culture, in contrast to the history and culture of our country, one can also see their common features. These include collectivism - or community, goodwill And hospitality, ability artificially create difficulties and then overcome them (5) .

Poll: Russians about the Chinese

As the survey showed, 42% of Russians, judging by their own words, have developed positive image of China. In the groups, respondents talked a lot about the fact that the Chinese are hardworking, patient, and wise people:

« Well, everyone knows that the Chinese are the most hardworking people in the world. And they proved with their hard work, their work» (DFG, Novosibirsk).

« The country is civilized. And so - this is a country of hard workers...» (DFG, Novosibirsk).

« Patient people. It seems to me that their whole story<об этом говорит> « (DFG, Moscow).

« Very hardy people» (DFG, Moscow).

« They are very wise people» (DFG, Samara).

« This is an old, wise state...» (DFG, Novosibirsk).

By the way, respondents aged 50 and older speak about a positive image of China much more often than average (48%). This attitude of representatives of these socio-demographic groups, apparently, is largely due to the perception of this country as one of the last “strongholds” of the communist order. Note that modern television pictures from China - not with pagodas, but with a red banner, hammer and sickle - only reinforce such an image, heavily seasoned with nostalgic feelings.

Another group more likely than average to say they have a very positive image of China is those with higher education (53%).

More than a third of Russians (36%) say that they have developed neutral image of an eastern neighbor, and more often than average, this is how young respondents (48%) and people with secondary general education (41%) define their ideas about this country.

Negative The image of China was formed by 12% of respondents. It is worth noting that residents of the Siberian (17%) and especially the Far Eastern districts (29%) speak more often than others about the negative image of this country. It is there that the problem of illegal immigration of residents of the “Heavenly Empire” is extremely acute.

« 25% of Vladivostok are Chinese. Free passage of the border, free purchase and sale, well, everything! In the center of Vladivostok there are houses, restaurants, everything Chinese. It’s the same in Transbaikalia» (DFG, Novosibirsk)

« We ourselves have many unemployed. Well, why do they come from there, without any visas?» (DFG, Novosibirsk).

Another 10% of respondents found it difficult to answer the question of what image of China they had in their minds.

As for the experts, two-thirds of them have a positive image of China, a quarter has a neutral image, and only one-sixteenth of the surveyed experts speak of a negative image of their eastern neighbor.

The “peaceful expansion” of China in the Far East causes considerable concern among respondents:

« Everyone knows that they inhabit Siberia and that’s it. They export everything... They export timber, furs, and everything. They are introduced, and there is a gradual peaceful seizure of territories» (DFG, Samara).

« They populate our territories... They are slowly occupying our territory» (DFG, Samara).

« In general, if you look at military history, they almost never acted as an attacking party. They acted in a peculiar way: they seemed to let the invader through, and then assimilated them. And the fact that there are now a lot of Chinese in Russia is more likely that they will slowly creep in, creep in...(DFG, Novosibirsk).

Finally, the traditional fear of the “large numbers” of the Chinese, judging by the remarks of the focus group participants, is still present in the mass consciousness:

« And this billion worries me. Causes concern» (DFG, Moscow).

« The fear for the whole world is Chinese expansion. Because it is developing very well, the population is very huge, the army is very strong. So in the future there are fears that it will seize territories» (DFG, Samara).(6)

Misunderstanding of humor in intercultural communication

Misunderstanding of humor as a consequence of insufficient competence in intercultural communication can be divided into several types:

misunderstanding of everyday humor, associated with the lack of similar realities in one’s culture,

misunderstanding of certain accepted etiquette standards,

lack of understanding of the deep values ​​of the corresponding culture.

Misunderstanding of humor, based on ignorance of the realities, is easily removed in the presence of comments. The exception is a play on words: a speaker of another culture understands that, probably, in another language such a random coincidence of homonymous units may turn out to be funny, but since in their native language these words are by no means homonyms, there is no comic effect. The clarification associated with the form of words actually removes the surprise of the semantic clash that lies at the heart of humor. Likewise, jokes based on rhymes do not cause laughter. Such jokes are not very typical for English culture, and in Russian jokes they are recorded in our corpus of examples, mainly in relation to primitive jokes.

Anecdotes associated with various classifications concerning ideas about other peoples usually make us smile. Even if the essence of the joke is not immediately clear, the bearer of Russian culture can easily guess that the very structure of the joke should suggest its climax. For example, the following anecdote, translated into Russian, does not quite fit into the Russian idea of ​​Italians, but becomes understandable thanks to the context:

How to convince a new skydiver to make his first jump?

The American needs to be told: “If you are a man, you will jump!”

To the Englishman: “Sir, this is tradition.”

To the Frenchman: “This is the lady’s request.”

To the German: “This is an order.”

To the Italian: “Jumping is prohibited!”

The last remark in the joke is based on contrast; this contrast is based on the typical image-stereotype of an Italian in the eyes of Europeans.

More complex is an anecdote with a mixed-up classification:

Paradise is a place where the police are English, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, and the managers are Swiss. Hell is a place where the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the police are German, and the managers are Italian.

The British respect their police officers, the German police are known for their severity, it is also known that French cuisine is famous for its sophistication, and English cuisine is criticized by the French and other Europeans (note that modern English cuisine is largely international). The Germans are known in Europe for their love of mechanics and precise mechanisms, the stereotype of the Italian is a passionate lover, the Swiss are famous for their discipline and good organizational skills, the idea of ​​reliability is enshrined in the concept of a “Swiss bank.” This anecdote becomes clear to Russian listeners after the commentary, but among Europeans, often traveling to the countries of their continent, this confused classification causes a genuine smile: they remember that in France no one could fix their car, in Italy they had to spend a lot of time at the airport due to administrative problems and irresponsibility of the staff, etc. In other words , this kind of anecdotes are based largely on personal experience, i.e. on the conscious experience of incomprehensible realities.

Here is another anecdote that plays on the stereotypes of representing foreign ethnic groups:

German, American and Swedish police are participating in a competition to see who is the best at catching criminals. A task is given: a hare is released into the forest, and it must be caught. Swedish police officers place animal informants throughout the forest, interview all plant and mineral witnesses and, after three months of intense search, come to the conclusion that there are no hares in nature. The Americans break into the forest, scour the forest for two weeks, cannot find anyone, set the forest on fire, killing everyone, including the hares, and do not apologize to anyone. The Germans get down to business and two hours later return with a badly beaten bear, who screams: “Yes, I am a hare, I am a hare! Just don’t kick me!”

From the point of view of the British and Americans, the Swedish police are overly scrupulous and liberal. In our opinion, the Swedes ended up in this row by accident: it was necessary to construct a unique classification of cruelty and show that there is a people whose police are too lenient towards criminals. The American police are distinguished not by sophisticated brutality (here the priority belongs to the Germans), but by insufficient competence, which is compensated by the manifestation of brute force. Also noteworthy is the lack of tact emphasized by Americans (“they don’t apologize to anyone”), the latter symptom is painful for those cultures where it is customary to observe politeness standards, primarily for English culture. This anecdote is generally understandable to speakers of Russian culture, those who imagine the behavior of American supermen from films and know about the cruelty of the Germans during the war.(7)

The British demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of Russian realities associated with proper names in jokes:

Aunt Valya: “Dear guys! First place in our drawing competition on the theme “Vanya and the Bear” was taken by Vova Glazunov from Moscow. He has the most beautiful drawing. True, grandfather Ilya helped him a little..."

The British may not know that Ilya Glazunov is a famous contemporary Russian artist. In addition, the idea of ​​a child submitting a picture that they helped him draw to a children's drawing competition seems strange to the British: this idea violates the British idea of ​​\u200b\u200bfair play. Similarly, the English do not understand the attitude of Russians towards giving a hint during an exam: in our country, a friend who refused to give you a hint during an exam is clearly assessed as a traitor; in English culture, refusal to help in such a situation is not perceived so sharply (punishment for cheating, `cheating at the exam" is quite harsh).

The British had difficulty understanding very specific Russian jokes about the KGB:

A man calls the KGB on a pay phone: “Hello, KGB? You’re doing a bad job!” He ran to another pay phone: “Hello, KGB? You’re doing a bad job!” He ran back to the third: “Hello, KGB? You’re doing a bad job!” He feels a hand on his shoulder: “We work as best we can.”

The specificity of these jokes is that state security is endowed with supernatural abilities and is assessed positively. This attitude towards power contradicts the norms of carnival culture, the inversion of values ​​and the nature of the joke. It is no coincidence that there is an opinion that this kind of jokes were specially invented in the analytical departments of the KGB to create appropriate stereotypes among the population. By the way, the very abbreviation “State Security Committee” was also deciphered humorously with a positive connotation of “deep drilling office.” The idea of ​​the omnipresence of our intelligence services is expressed in the following anecdote, which is not entirely clear to the British (they understand the intent of this text, but do not internally agree with the pathos of the anecdote ):

NASA is wondering why the left SHUTTLE solid fuel accelerator exploded, and the KGB is wondering why the right one did not explode...

Even without taking into account the fact that the KGB is attributed in this text with the functions of foreign intelligence, bearers of Russian culture emphasize the ability of our special services to carry out the most fantastic operations. The British perceive such a text as pretentious and partly national chauvinistic.

Frank apologetics for power is no exception in Russian jokes about meetings of senior leaders. Here is a children's joke from the time of Brezhnev:

Brezhnev arrives in America. American President Reagan says: “Press this button!” Brezhnev pressed and found himself under a cold shower. After some time, Reagan arrives in Moscow. Brezhnev tells him: “Press this button!” Reagan pressed, nothing happened. I pressed it again, nothing happened either. He says: “What is this? Here, in America...” And Brezhnev told him: “Your America no longer exists.”

The British did not find this anecdote funny; the reaction was a polite smile, and in some cases a shrug of the shoulders. It cannot be said that the respondents (and these were citizens of the United Kingdom) felt solidarity towards the United States, but the open praise of the power of the USSR in the genre of an anecdote seemed strange to them. Interestingly, at the same time, jokes were circulating in which Brezhnev was shown as a very weak person; these jokes did not cause misunderstanding among English respondents.

Speaking about the realities of our culture, incomprehensible to the English respondents, we note that jokes about the police are very specific to Russian culture. The attitude of the bearers of Russian culture towards law enforcement officers is sharply negative. The police in the anecdote are characterized by corruption and narrow-mindedness. For example:

A policeman/traffic cop comes home, angry and frozen - he earned little while standing on the highway. His schoolboy son opens the door for him. The traffic cop shouts: “Give me the diary, if you get a bad mark, I’ll flog you!” The boy runs to his mother in tears: “I just got a bad grade today!” “Okay, don’t be afraid,” says the mother and puts fifty rubles in her son’s diary on the page with a deuce. The boy gives the diary to his father with horror. He, frowning, flips through the pages, reaches the page with the banknote, puts it in his pocket, sighs with relief and says: “It’s good that at least everything is in order at home!”

This text seemed difficult for the British; they understood that we were talking about the inappropriate behavior of a policeman, but the entire system of Russian realities turned out to be closed to them. They had to tell them that the police on the roads, the state traffic police service, now, by the way, renamed the State Road Safety Inspectorate (STSI), are almost always perceived in the minds of bearers of Russian culture as extortionists, unfairly fining drivers for minor traffic violations. It is clear that the tellers of the jokes are victims of the state's unjust control over people. Bearers of modern Russian culture are also familiar with the procedure for presenting a driver’s license to a police officer; usually, a banknote is inserted into the license. The humor of the above text lies in the fact that instead of a driver's license, a student's diary appears - another reality that is absent in English culture. English schoolchildren do not have diaries, which are a strict form of control over children.(8)

The British could only superficially appreciate the following joke:

At the exhibition of fire departments:

- Uncle, why do you need a helmet and a belt?

- Well, kid, when I climb into a burning house, and if something falls on my head, the helmet will save me.

- Ugh, I thought that the muzzle would not crack.

A superficial understanding of this text is the boy’s mockery of the fat fireman. In this sense, we have before us a trap joke. But in this text, the English do not understand the linguocultural presupposition: a fireman is a man who sleeps all the time on duty, so he has a swollen face that needs to be bandaged with a strap so that it does not crack. The boy in many Russian jokes is a trickster provocateur who inevitably baffles an adult. This function is expressed in the most vivid form in a series of jokes about Vovochka (many of these jokes are rude).

The results of our experimental analysis of the perception of jokes showed that the sign of “rudeness” did not appear in the answers of respondents, both from the English side and from the Russian side (however, we did not consider openly obscene jokes, although for carrying out an objective study in special work they should also be accepted take into account). A number of English jokes were perceived by Russian respondents as extremely bland. The British have the same reaction to sophisticated jokes from Southeast Asian countries:

The monkey king ordered to get him the moon from the sky. The courtiers jumped from a high cliff, crashed, and, finally, the most dexterous of them managed to jump to the moon and brought it to his master. Handing the moon to the king, the courtier asked: “Oh, great king, I dare to ask, why do you need the moon?” The king thought: “Really, why?...”

Such jokes are philosophical in nature and make you think about life, perhaps with a smile, but they can hardly be classified as spontaneous jokes.

English respondents found themselves in difficulty when trying to understand an anecdote that featured a value very specific to Russian linguistic consciousness:

Advertisement in a Ukrainian newspaper: I am exchanging a 3x4 m carpet for a piece of lard of the same size.

In the minds of Russians, lard is the favorite food of Ukrainians; the anecdote contains an obvious hyperbole. In this case, the measure of value is the carpet, which in our apartments was often hung on the wall as decoration and was considered as a valuable investment. In English there is no one-word and unambiguous translation of the Russian reality "lard", there are words meaning fat, rendered fat, the British do not understand the hyperbole in the size of an immense piece of lard, and finally, they perceive carpets only as a comfortable floor covering, and not at all as an object of art or demonstration welfare. The British also cannot understand the specific teasing of Russians over Ukrainians and vice versa, although similar relations take place between the English and the Scots, the English and the Irish, etc. Elements of mutual misunderstanding in intercultural contact, presented in a caricatured anecdotal form, are, apparently, an ethnocultural universal, but the qualities of another people that are subject to ridicule are specific. Let us note that the British could not understand a very characteristic anecdote for intercultural misunderstanding between Russians and Ukrainians:

Wife: Why did you hit me, I didn’t do anything!

Husband: If there was a reason, I would have killed him.

The presupposition about the right of a husband to hit his wife seems strange to the British, although in a large number of jokes about mother-in-law, such a presupposition does not raise questions. The British, in principle, do not understand unmotivated action: when faced with a world in which, in principle, there are no cause-and-effect relationships and which Russians perceive for this very reason as cheerful, the British experience a kind of cognitive discomfort. This leads to the conclusion about the orderliness of the world as a value in the English-speaking consciousness.(9)

These kinds of jokes stand in stark contrast to jokes that exaggerate and caricature certain human qualities. In our corpus of examples there is a humorous miniature on the topic of “radio interception”:

Actual radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations (so it says)

Hail: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Reply: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Hail: This is the Captain of a U.S. Navy Ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Reply: No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Hail: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER ENTERPRISE. WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE U.S. NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!

Reply: This is the lighthouse...your call.

Radio recording from Navy report.

Request: I request you to change your course 15 degrees north to avoid collision.

Answer: I recommend that you change your course 15 degrees south in order to avoid a collision.

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