A couple of weeks ago Ukrainian parliament has finally recognized this term on the official level and listed several telltale signs of it. But in my opinion they can be boiled down to two main actions: disregarding the laws, agreements and traditions (if some suckers believe in those—then it’s just easier to swindle them) and constantly lying, often in an unconvincing way and usually by attributing own deficiencies to somebody else. They’ve been behaving like that throughout their history (which is partly stolen and partly fictitious), the wars just make it more visible. So, why russians behave like that?
Fascism and Nazism grow to power using the support of the second-worst kind of people: people who feel offended or wronged and do not think for themselves. That sort of folks would never blame themselves for their own faults and will gladly follow a leader who has simple answers to questions like who’s guilty and what to do (those answers are usually “that certain group of people” and “unite around me and do what I tell”). In case of ruscism, I believe it’s not merely an ideology that unites the nation but rather the idea that defines this entity (you’ll see why I don’t consider them a nation soon).
One researcher described russians as a dynamic community where everybody can belong to it or fall from it depending on circumstances (or rather benefits it gives: if I need something from you then you’re my brother, if you need something from me then I don’t know you). From this a rather obvious conclusion follows: russians have failed to develop as a nation—even small tribes usually have clear definition of who belongs to them and who are outsiders—and it must be something immaterial uniting them (i.e. an idea). Nations have not merely clearly defined rules of belonging but also clearly defined territory (no matter if it’s the historical settlement are or pieces of land wrestled from somebody else)—russians claim that russia has no borders and that any territory where a russian has been is a part of russia (IIRC just last year some russian dropped a piece of dirt on Dubai beach and claimed that now it’s all russian soil; I’ve encountered many more examples where common russians believed that some place is russian because they’ve been there).
If you look at the real russian history, it starts with the principality of Suzdal, created on the territories inhabited mostly by Finnic and Ugrian people, conquered by the Golden Horde and after its fall proclaiming itself a legitimate successor and capturing other lands (usually not inhabited by Slavic people either) and yet they tried to turn this multi-ethnic mix into “russians”, partially succeeding at that. Last year the russian führer made a speech that he belongs to all nationalities living in russia—what has not been said is that all those nations are russian only as long as they’re going to war, if they try to move to moscow they’ll be greeted with the traditional “go back to your shithole you non-russian hick” (but if they die at war they’ll be called as “true russian heroes” anyway).
It is hard to define the idea that unites them though. It is not a religion since the original pagan beliefs were replaced by the state-controlled Christian church (unlike many countries where the Church was an independent powerful player, in russia it was created by the state—two or three times even—always to serve the state interests). It is not the idea of exclusivity: such ideas are usually created to support the nation while in russia it’s mostly used to sacrifice russians for that very idea. There’s a difference “you’re the best so everything belongs to you, you just need to go and take it” and “you’re the best so keep living in shit until you’re sent to die for defending that belief somewhere abroad”. Sure, a deep spirituality of russian people is usually mentioned in connection to that but no concrete examples are ever given.
You know, there exists such thing as russian nationalists whose ideas can be boiled down to “russians are being offended; and usually it’s Britain that offends them by acting as a puppeteer of russian government since long ago”. Even funnier that until very recently they were prosecuted by the government—I suppose not for the incompatibility of views but rather because they formed those views independently instead of following the official guidelines.
I propose a different explanation: because of the vague dynamic community russians lost incentive to work themselves (a lot like with socialistic system: why bother if everybody around belong to the same community and you can benefit from them working while not benefiting from working hard yourself? See kulak for an example of russian peasants who worked slightly better than the rest and what happened to them; russian national symbol should’ve been a crab bucket instead), in the same time they believed they can take anything because they all belong to the same community. And the refusal offends them. The same story with them believing that whatever they sell or give as a gift still belongs to them (so they can always take it back or tell what you can do or not with it). That may also be the reason behind russians ignoring all kinds of agreements—they’ve been trained only to recognize “might makes right” rule. Yet it does not prevent them from trying to take what belongs to somebody else again and again (like Ukraine). Why don’t they stop attempts? Because they essentially live off selling natural resources (back in the day it was wax, fat and furs, nowadays it’s oil, gas and metals) and they need somebody to actually mine those resources (usually foreigners) and when the old sources get depleted of course they want to capture a new source of income.
Now consider what happens when such creature feels that everything should belong to it and denied those things, feels that others are more developed in many aspects (not just, say, advanced electronics, but having a functioning society too), feels that others have no respect for them (the archetypical question of a drunk russian is “do you respect me?” hints on it)? You’ll get a gamut of emotions, from the desire to present themselves as much better than in reality to drag others down by attributing them all your own bad features. That is how we get claims that Europe will freeze without russian gas (even in summer—they really claimed that), the claims about famous russian culture (it was created by a small strata of elites, often not of russian origin; for the most of russian population their own culture remained alien and forced from above; russians love to present exceptional cases as the general rule), the claims about Western level of quality of life (in moscow—do not look at the rural area that lacks gas, sewer system and roads) and evil godless Westerners want to occupy and destroy them (they’ve looked in the mirror while creating this lie).
And that’s how we get ruscism: psychological complexes of something not deserving to be called a nation, which realizes and resents that. Throw in their sociopathic disregard for honouring agreements (nothing demonstrates it better than the Budapest Memorandum but they’ve been inventing pretexts or outright violated international treaties for centuries) and the lack of thinking (critical or otherwise—there are countless examples that the discussions with common russians fail because those accept ideas selectively and refuse to see connections between different facts) and you get the perfect mix for disaster.
The sad thing is that all russians are infected by it in one form or another. Some may demand nuclear holocaust for all countries that do not ally with them, others merely cheer at the news of russian war criminals killing civilians. Some want russia to conquer the whole world (or at least restore its borders to the times of USSR or russian empire), others simply want russia to end war and not get punished for all its war crimes. Some want to destroy USA, others believe that USA will collapse soon anyway (and they all secretly want to move there regardless). Some hate all other nations, others don’t (but still despise Jews, people from Asia and Caucasus).
I think now it’s more or less clear what the idea unites russians and creates ruscism: russians are those who cast away thinking for a feeling of inferiority. Now, what to do with all that? The realistic way is demonstrated by the Ukrainian Army: over two hundred thousand russians will no longer force their opinions onto others. In theory occupation and re-education might work—it worked for Japan which behaved rather similarly in 20th century—but considering the sheer area of russia and the lack of interest I doubt that even China will attempt it. Meanwhile the best you can do is not to listen to russians at all and check the information you get. Keep thinking, that’s what distinguishes a normal human from russian.
