Every normal person, according to Topolianskii, has a need to do some useful, even creative activity. If this need is repressed externally the individual may start to behave in a self-destructive way. A worker’s negative attitude toward work is an example. The shoddy workmanship of Soviet industrial products harmed not only consumers, but did psychological harm to the workers themselves, or induced them to harm themselves. Tatiana Zaslavskaia, in her secret “Novosibirsk Report” of 1983, spoke of the “low value attached to labour as a means of self-realization” among Soviet workers.213 Anyone who lived in Russia during the late Soviet period knows the proverb, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” But in behaving according to this proverb one was really betraying oneself, one was acting in a self-destructive fashion. The worker’s “I don’t care” attitude—which translates Topolianskii’s very oral Russian expression “naplevatel’stvo,” literally, “spitting on [something]”—could only lower one’s own opinion of oneself and make one feel like “scum.” One might just as well have been one of the most extreme forms of masochist, that is, an alcoholic, as in the proverb: “If vodka interferes with your work, give up work!”214
Another recent commentary on masochism in Russia comes from the president of the recently founded Russian Psychoanalytic Society, psychiatrist Aron Isaakovich Belkin. In an article that appeared in the newspaper Sovetskaia kul’tura in July of 1991, Belkin discusses the negativism of the contemporary Soviet media (“Everything is bad, everything is horrible, and everything will become even more horrible!”), comparing it to the attitude of a normal adolescent who is trying to break free from the parents by constantly finding fault with them. He points to alcoholism, endemic boorishness (“khamstvo”), and the widespread I-don’t-care attitude as examples of “self-destruction of the personality” (“samodestruktsiia lichnosti”).215
Curiously, Belkin does not use the psychoanalytic term “masochism,” and demonstrates no awareness of the recent psychoanalytic research on masochism that has been going on in the West (see chap. 5, below). In the newly emerging psychoanalytic literature, on the other hand, masochism is explicitly discussed in light of recent Western research. These discussions are for the most part confined to erotogenic masochism, however.216
THREE
Two Key Words in the Vocabulary of Russian Masochism
It would be difficult to move any further in this psychoanalytic treatise without an explication of two items which are very difficult to translate into English. Indeed, I will not translate them, but will refer to them in transliterated form for the duration.
Smirenie
The ethical notion of smirenie falls into the same semantic ballpark occupied by such English terms as “humility,” “meekness,” and “submission,” but the Russian term is more affectively loaded for Russians than the English terms are for most English speakers. Smirenie is primarily a religious (specifically, Russian Orthodox) feeling. Typically one submits oneself to a high dominance male called “God” (“Bog”), but other powerful figures, such as the peasant commune (“mir”), may also elicit this emotion.
Smirenie (together with etymologically related items) is generally evaluated in a positive way by traditional Russians. For example, most of the proverbs gathered on this topic by Dahl express approvaclass="underline"
Smirenie is pleasing to God, is enlightening to the mind, is salvation for the soul, is a blessing to the home, and is a comfort to people (Smiren’e—Bogu ugozhden’e, umu prosveshchen’e, dushe spasen’e, domu blagosloven’e i liudiam uteshen’e).
Smirenie is a girl’s necklace to a young man [is becoming to her] (Smiren’e devich’e [molodtsu] ozherel’e).
The Lord saves the humble of spirit (Smirennykh Gospod’ dukhom spasaet).
Quietly is not bad, the more humbly the more profitably (Tikho ne likho, a smirnee pribyl’nee).
God opposes the proud, but gives abundance to the humble (Gordym Bog protivitsia, a smirennym daet blagodat’).1
In her semantic analysis of smirenie linguist Anna Wierzbicka speaks of “serene acceptance of one’s fate, achieved through moral effort, through suffering, and through realization of one’s total dependence on God, an acceptance resulting not only in an attitude of non-resistance to evil but also in profound peace and a loving attitude towards one’s fellow human beings.”2 Thus, although smirenie implies a certain degree of psychological calm, it is not the same thing as passivity or inaction. It is attained only after great internal effort, even struggle. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, the resolution of the struggle may well be self-abasing or self-destructive, that is, may be masochistic in certain situations.
Some Russian thinkers, sensing the masochistic potential in smirenie, take exception to the majority’s positive evaluation of this phenomenon. Many among the intelligentsia at the beginning of our century rejected smirenie, as Sergei Bulgakov indignantly observes in his contribution to the Vekhi symposium,3 although as we saw earlier, the intelligentsia were quite capable of finding other routes to masochism. Nikolai Berdiaev, a strong advocate of individual freedom as we have seen, is disgusted with the “slavish doctrine of smirenie [rab’e uchenie o smirenii].”4 He feels that Russians use smirenie as an excuse for disgraceful behavior: “The Russian is accustomed to thinking that dishonor is not a great evil, as long as one is humble in one’s soul [smirenen v dushe], is not proud, and does not put on airs.” “Better to sin humbly [smirenno greshit’],” says Berdiaev with tongue in cheek, “than proudly to seek self-perfection.” Even for the most horrible crime one may “humbly repent [smirenno kaiat’sia].”5
Berdiaev does not mention any specific criminal here, but Freud in his essay on Dostoevsky does, and at the same time expresses a view quite similar to Berdiaev’s:
A moral man is one who reacts to temptation as soon as he feels it in his heart, without yielding to it. A man who alternately sins and then in his remorse erects high moral standards lays himself open to the reproach that he has made things too easy for himself. He has not achieved the essence of morality, renunciation, for the moral conduct of life is a practical human interest. He reminds one of the barbarians of the great migrations, who murdered and did penance for it, till penance became an actual technique for enabling murder to be done. Ivan the Terrible behaved in exactly this way; indeed this compromise with morality is a characteristic Russian trait. Nor was the final outcome of Dostoevsky’s moral strivings anything very glorious. After the most violent struggles to reconcile the instinctual demands of the individual with the claims of the community, he landed in the retrograde position of submission both to temporal and spiritual authority, of veneration both for the Tsar and for the God of the Christians, and of a narrow Russian nationalism—a position which lesser minds have reached with smaller effort.6