Russians often express a more mystical view of culture. I keep hearing declarations such as: 'The essence of Russian culture is the specific Russian spirit. It is intuitive. It's a combination of elements created by the Russian spirit, Russian blood, Russian soil.'
My response to this (and I believe it is the response of an Englishwoman, not just my personal response) is that I would be unhappy as a Russian, because I do not like to be spiritually bullied into accepting something that someone else is proclaiming on my behalf. I want to say: 'It is not for you to tell me how I feel in my soul, just because you are the elder or the spokesman in our family!' Such declarations are typical of marching armies or of persecuted religious groups, but not, I think, of people who can remember that they have felt differently in the past, have changed their minds, enjoy new experiences, and expect to interpret and re-interpret their personal and national history as long as they go on living.
Many Russians will then say, 'Ah, but as Russians we believe in great leaders and wise father-figures. This is in our history.'
(I think: 'Along with tyrannical cruelty and violent revolution.') Then other Russians tell me that 'I don't believe in any of this leader nonsense'. It is useful to remind ourselves that any notion of a national culture does not obliterate personal temperament and individual opinions. What cultural attitudes and values do is to interact with those individual qualities, encouraging certain traits, sometimes suppressing others.
Using these explicit and implicit contrasts and complications, I will try to say something about British culture and values.
The first point is that I am tentative. The British distrust big grand statements. They believe that big grand statements are not about ordinary human beings, and therefore they are either not true or they lead to tyranny and disaster.
The second point is that I am more comfortable when thinking about English culture, because there is a difference between the values and attitudes of England and the much smaller countries, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These three countries have a sense of their Celtic heritage expressed in its myths and legends. Although Scottish Gaelic has almost died out and Irish Gaelic is learnt by a small minority in Northern Ireland, Welsh is still a flourishing, living Celtic language. Industrialization in the South Wales valleys added a distinctive culture in which poetry met politics and inspired education; there was (and is) nothing quite like it in England. In the sparsely occupied areas of the Scottish western highlands and islands one can find plenty of evidence of ancient Celtic culture, but it is too remote to have much influence on contemporary Scotland. More significant has been the succession of Scottish philosophers, sociologists, economists, natural scientists, politicians, explorers, writers and engineers who have played a far greater part in the history of the United Kingdom than one could expect from a population as small as that of Scotland. [Plenty of books about the cultures of these smaller peoples have been written. If you are interested, search them out.]
So the rest of this chapter will be about the English, those four-fifths of our total population. The English distrust generalizations. They like details and examples. In this book I have given you far more details and examples than you would ever find in a similar book written by Russians (That is not quite true. Russian guides overwhelm their listeners with the heights of monuments, the lengths of railways, the weight of huge precious stones.) I mean the kind of details which provide evidence and explanation. However, the problem with details and examples is that they can be anecdotal and untypical, so we have to be careful in choosing them, just as you have to be careful in your generalizations. I have tried to be careful.
One way of distinguishing cultural values is to compare the 'communal' response and the 'individual' response. It is sometimes suggested that Russians think in 'communal' ways and Americans in 'individual' ways. Using this line of thought, I suggest that the English seem to like defining themselves as members of small groups which they have, as individuals, helped to create. I have illustrated this trait at several points in this book. You can also see it in our attitude to names.
Russians are often surprised by the British pleasure in giving names to people, to places and even objects. We find this pleasure so normal that we are surprised when we encounter your culture and discover that, by contrast, names are either lacking or strangely anonymous in Russia. While the differences are not just between Britain and Russia, most other countries probably come somewhere between yours and ours. Your naming system recognises gender differences, patronymics, diminutives which get longer and longer. But you have few names to play around with. In your classic novels the peasants have colourful and ingenious names, but the major characters from noble or merchant homes share a handful names among them. It is not just Chekhov who has to make do with his Olga and Masha and Irina and Natasha. If I ask Russians today to name more than twenty current girls' names or boys' names, they struggle.
By contrast, every year one of our national newspapers publishes a list of the fifty most popular boys' names and fifty most popular girls' names. We can assume that another five hundred different names for each sex are in use that year, and that many more have been used in previous years. So where does all this dazzling variety come from? From traditional saints' names; names from the Bible; Irish, Scottish and Welsh Gaelic names; names from legends, mythology and history; names from flowers and plants and animals; names of virtues; names from novels and stories; names from film stars and other celebrities; nicknames which have become 'standard'; names of political and sporting heroes; surnames turned into first names; names which are traditional in recent immigrant groups, some of which are becoming popular in the wider community. Names that parents simply invent for their children because they like the sound or the vague associations. The joke that the main street in every Russian town must be Lenin Street derives from a society dedicated to many kinds of social conformity. Ostensibly Lenin Street can be compared with the standard name for the main street in an English town: High Street. But 'High Street' is deliberately anonymous as it is the centre for everyone. More interesting are all the other streets, roads, avenues, lanes, parades, drives, passages, ways, alleys, closes, and other routes which make up our towns. Typically, Russian towns are built on grid patterns, so that roads keep the same name as they cross from one side of the town to the other; by contrast, English roads wind and twist, connect and disconnect, stop abruptly, change names when they meet another road, or exist as little appendages to other roads. Each of these short stretches of roadway glories in its own name. Some names refer to important features: 'Church Lane' or former uses: 'Hayfield Road' or to orientation: 'West Hill View'; some to famous people: 'Churchill Way' or well-known local men and women such as 'Jack Smith Drive' or 'Camilla Close'; many try to suggest an atmosphere, usually a rural atmosphere in an urban setting: 'Thornfield Road' or Almond Tree Crescent' or perhaps Rabbit Alley.