What the mir has ordained is what God has decided (Chto mir poriadil, to Bog rassudil).
As the mir wishes, judges, ordains, establishes, wants, sentences, decides; the will of the mir (Kak mir zakhochet, rassudit, poriadit, postavit, povolit, prigovorit, polozhit; mirskaia volia).
When the mir roars, the forests groan / the forest bows (Mir zarevet, tak lesy stonyt [les klonitsia]).
Wherever the hand of the mir is, my head is [in agreement] (Gde u mira ruka, tam moia golova).
The mir cannot be judged, but its members can be beaten (Mir nesudim, a mirian b’iut).
If the mir goes crazy, still you can’t put it in chains (Mir s uma soidet—na tsep’ ne posadish’).
Who would be greater than the mir? You don’t argue with the mir (Kto bol’she mira budet? S mirom ne posporish’).
The neck of the mir is tough: it stretches but does not break (Mirskaia sheia tuga: tianetsia, da ne rvetsia).
No member of the mir can be opposed to the mir (Nikakoi mirianin ot mira ne proch’).
The people’s voice betrayed / crucified Christ (Glas naroda Khrista predal [raspial]).55
Language is used in a personifying fashion in most of these sayings. That is, it is clear that the collective is understood to be a person. It has a “will” of its own. It has body parts, such as a “hand” that directs, or a “neck” that is strong. It is capable of doing things persons do: it “wishes,” “judges,” “ordains,” “decides,” “passes sentence on,” “roars,” “goes crazy,” and so on. In effect, the proverbs give the commune a human face.
The proverbs may state outright that the commune is a person. In a positive vein we have: “The mir is a great person” (“Mir—velik chelovek”). On the negative side, however, there is “The mir is an aggressor/destroyer” (“Mir—nasil’nik-razoritel’”).56 From these contrasting examples provided by A. A. Rittikh it is clear that the peasant had ambivalent feelings about the personified commune.
What the commune-person does is require submission from real persons, its members. And the members go along, they submit. There is a certain passivity and fatalism to the proverbs. The commune is not to be questioned. The imagery for its members is abject. A forest “bows” to it, a member is powerless to “argue” or be “opposed” to it, one’s “head” is in automatic agreement with it. One can be “beaten” by it, one can even be “crucified” by it, as was the case with Christ, the ultimate willing victim for a Russian (“Glas naroda Khrista raspial”). Here it is worth mentioning that the saying about Christ’s crucifixion is the one which concludes the section of Dahl’s handbook which I have been quoting from, while another one with a very similar wording begins the same section: “The people’s voice is God’s voice” (“Glas naroda—glas bozhii”). Evidently Dahl intended to convey a message with this symmetrical construction, namely: the voice of the commune is the voice of God the father, who demands the sacrifice of his son Christ. The commune member is thus a child, while the personified commune is a parent.
The commune member sometimes resists the commune, especially if its collective activity does not seem very intelligent:
The mir was in session for days, smoked up the sky [accomplished nothing], and then dispersed (Mir sutki stoial, nebo podkoptil i razoshelsia).
The people is stupid—it gathers itself into a heap (Narod glup: vse v kuchu lezet).
The peasant is smart, but the mir is a fool (Muzhik umen, da mir durak).57
These particular sayings suggest a certain degree of “dissidence” from the will of the collective, but it must be admitted that they are few and far between. The great majority of expressions Dahl collected on this topic favor submission over resistance. Psychoanalytically speaking, the masochistic solution is to be preferred.
The submission is particularly evident in the advice to conform. To live in the commune is to accept being lowered to the level of a dog:
If you live with wolves, howl like a wolf (S volkami zhit’—po-volch’i vyt’).
You’ve landed in a pack, so whether you bark or not you’d better wag your tail (otherwise you’ll be eaten) (Popal v staiu, lai ne lai, a khvostom viliai [a to zaediat]).
Don’t run ahead, but don’t lag behind your own either (Vpered ne zabegai, a ot svoikh ne otstavai!).
Though you may be in the rear, you’re still in the same herd. If you lag behind, you become an orphan (Khot’ na zade…, da v tom zhe stade. Otstal—sirotoiu stal).58
The implication of the last item is that the individual is a child, the commune a parent. To fail to go along with the commune is to lose a parent, to become an orphan (in Russian one becomes a “sirota” with the loss of either or both parents). The only element missing in this practically psychoanalytic characterization of masochistic conformity to the collective is a specification of which parent—mother or father—the commune represents.
The communal mentality on moral matters might thus be paraphrased as: whenever there is any doubt, the commune is right and the individual is wrong. Or, the commune is innocent and the individual is guilty. Or, to quote the poetic formulation made by one of my Russian informants to explain this whole series of proverbs: “the commune is God and the individual is shit [govno].” The masochistic orientation of anyone who actually accepts this idea of himself or herself should be self-evident.
Even death is not so bad, as long as it occurs in the context of the commune (or among people generally): “Even death is beautiful when you have got people round you” (“Na miru [Na liudiakh, S liud’mi] i smert’ krasna”).59 Perhaps the attitude expressed by this proverb was not shared by all Russian collectivists, just as the comparable “Misery loves company” does not necessarily reflect the attitude of most English speakers. Yet there is something striking about the way the Russian proverb expresses fondness for company. The English proverb does not suggest that one welcomes misery, while the Russian proverb suggests an actual welcoming of death in the context of a collective (Fedotov speaks of a “zhazhda unichtozheniia v kollektive”).60 An individual may be mortal, but that is trivial because the collective with which one merges is immortal. It is even an honor to die in public.
As normally happens in masochism, the individual experiences an unclear psychical boundary with the object, in this case, with the commune. Numerous proverbs attest to the experience of identification with the group or its members:
I am such as those with whom I am (S kem ia, tem ia).
You are known by the company you keep (S kem zhivesh’, tem i slyvesh’).
Tell me who you are acquainted with, and I will tell you what kind of person you are (Skazhi, s kem ty znakom, i ia skazhu, kto ty takov).
You bear a resemblance to the one with whom you break bread (S kem khleb-sol’ vodish’, na togo i pokhodish’).61
The Soviet historian Boris Mironov seems to have these proverbs (and others cited earlier) in mind when he discusses the individual’s place in the post-emancipation commune:
Although an individual peasant’s role depended on his personal qualities and immediate circumstances, the socialization process and the strong social control exercised by the commune did not allow a distinction between the individual and the group: the peasant’s “I” merged with the communal “we.” The result, though imperceptible and unnoticed by the peasant himself, was a far-reaching regulation of the peasant’s whole life and the observance (more often unconsciously than consciously) of those stereotypes and models existing in the commune.