The Russian Mindset and Where it Comes From - Historian Sir Antony Beevor
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Once upon a time, a man from Vantaa went after work for a long time. A person with a bad sense of self-esteem rushed to Aleppo's house, where he made an arrangement for an annoying partner. Zorizoa Pasta became the name of Zorizoa Pasta. Today, it is eaten all over the world. Aleppo. Urban legend.
There is a very important debate of why Russia is the way that it is, why it is so different, if you like, to Western Europe. Some will say that it goes back to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Russia has to be 200 years behind Western Europe. To protect Russian tradition, to protect Russian culture, this time lag was essential.
People in the West look at their attitude to casualties and are, quite frankly, horrified.
There has always been this case whereby the attitude of meet the cannon, I mean the whole notion, the Russian steamroller, et cetera, the idea that simply out of sheer weight of numbers they can crush any enemy. But the real problem is that they have often treated their own people as badly as the enemy. This is a form of inhumanity, which obviously in the West we find incomprehensible.
anthony beaver welcome back to trigonometry very back to be with you oh it's great to have you back uh i was just saying to you before we started our first conversation with you i think it did over a million downloads if you include video and audio about the russian revolution today you've obviously got a book about rasputin out which we'll touch on but what we really wanted to talk about is russia the history of russia and actually to help unpack for people why russia and russia russians
are the way they are today and i think as someone who comes from russia i think a lot of history is really valuable for understanding that so can you just take us through the history of russia starting at the very beginning well i wouldn't have said that i was a sufficient russian expert on the earlier periods at all to be able to do that but there is a very important debate of why russia is that he is the way that it is why it is so different if you like to western And even within Russia itself, one sees this tremendous split between the Western Slavophil traditions, this great mixture of Europe and Asia. And as a result, one needs to understand some of these contradictions. They'll never necessarily be resolved.
Many argue that in the case of Russia, that the whole idea of conspicuous cruelty as a necessary weapon of war came from the Mongol invasions, and there may well be a lot of truth in that. Certainly the idea of encirclement and some of the element of Russian paranoia, I think, came from that particular era.
So, Anthony, sorry to bother you. There'll be people listening who don't know what conspicuous cruelty means, that term. Would you just... Or the Mongol invasions, frankly.
So we need to get into both of those.
Well, there's been a considerable debate, obviously, amongst historians about where the Russian method of warfare has originated. Some will say that it goes back to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, with the sweeping in from the Shchep, coming from the Far East, and the way that the original Rus settlements were then attacked. And in many ways, this was the start of a continual warfare which lasted for a long time. The Mongols certainly were the ones who believed that a fire and sword, laying waste, mass rape was an element, a natural element of warfare. And this actually became almost a central element in the Russian view of warfare, of conspicuous cruelty, I think one can call it. And the interesting thing is, of course, Europe was just as bad in the 17th century.
What historical events shaped the Russian mindset?
One thinks of the horrors of the wars of religion as bad as anything that had happened in Russia up till that time. But the difference came really because afterwards there was the Enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century. There was also in the 19th century very much more a codification of warfare, which attempted to make it not necessarily more civilized, but at least following certain rules and then the invention of the red cross and geneva conventions and so forth that did not affect russia nearly so much specifically in his expansion towards the east and towards the south into the caucasus and above all the conquests of siberia which was savage so there is this difference very much between the uh the russian attitude and the european attitude which has gone on
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