P.S. Oh, and regarding this -
Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry10
I don't know if 150 million Russians think like you, but highly doubt it. I want to believe though that many Russians are civilized, and think that man (or woman) is the sovereign.
I think some of them understand Enlightment, that we all are born with liberty and individuality to think for ourselves, not subdue our spirit to the lords or the collective, and that man (not religion or a cult) is at the top of the pyramid. I believe that there are Russian who reject group-think and servitude to the state or collective, or that "greater-than-man" tyrannical slogans.
You just might not be amongst them.
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This is what I have to say - of course Russians are different - they have different opinions, but judging by the gist of your post here, I'd say great Russian writer M. Bulgakov already addressed people like you in his
"The Master and Margarita" book once and for all)))
(From "The Master and Margarita," Chapter I "Never talk to strangers.")
****
"May I join you?" enquired the foreigner politely, and as the two friends moved somewhat unwillingly aside he adroitly placed himself between them and at once joined the conversation. "If I am not mistaken, you were saying that Jesus never existed, were you not?" he asked, turning his green left eye on Berlioz. "No, you were not mistaken," replied Berlioz courteously. "I did indeed say that."
"Ah, how interesting!" exclaimed the foreigner.
"What the hell does he want?" thought Bezdomny and frowned.
"And do you agree with your friend?" enquired the unknown man, turning to Bezdomny on his right.
"A hundred per cent!" affirmed the poet, who loved to use pretentious numerical expressions.
"Astounding!" cried their unbidden companion. Glancing furtively round and lowering his voice he said: "Forgive me for being so rude, but am I right in thinking that you do not believe in God either?" He gave a horrified look and said: "I swear not to tell anyone!"
"Yes, neither of us believes in God," answered Berlioz with a faint smile at this foreign tourist's apprehension. "But we can talk about it with absolute freedom."
The foreigner leaned against the backrest of the bench and asked, in a voice positively squeaking with curiosity:
"Are you... atheists?"
"Yes, we're atheists," replied Berlioz, smiling, and Bezdomny thought angrily: "Trying to pick an argument, damn foreigner!"
"Oh, how delightful!" exclaimed the astonishing foreigner and swiveled his head from side to side, staring at each of them in turn.
"In our country there's nothing surprising about atheism," said Berlioz with diplomatic politeness. "Most of us have long ago and quite consciously given up believing in all those fairy-tales about God."
At this the foreigner did an extraordinary thing — he stood up and shook the astonished editor by the hand, saying as he did so:
"Allow me to thank you with all my heart!"
"What are you thanking him for?" asked Bezdomny, blinking.
"For some very valuable information, which as a traveller I find extremely interesting," said the eccentric foreigner raising his forefinger meaningfully.
This valuable piece of information had obviously made a powerful impression on the traveller, as he gave a frightened glance at the houses as though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window.
"No, he's not an Englishman," thought Berlioz. Bezdomny thought: "What I'd like to know is — where did he manage to pick up such good Russian?" and frowned again.
"But might I enquire," began the visitor from abroad after some worried reflection, "how you account for the proofs of the existence of God, of which there are, as you know, five?"
"Alas!" replied Berlioz regretfully. "Not one of these proofs is valid, and mankind has long since relegated them to the archives. You must agree that rationally there can be no proof of the existence of God."
"Bravo!" exclaimed the stranger. "Bravo! You have exactly repeated the views of the immortal Emmanuel on that subject. But here's the oddity of it: he completely demolished all five proofs and then, as though to deride his own efforts, he formulated a sixth proof of his own."
"Kant's proof," objected the learned editor with a thin smile, "is also unconvincing. Not for nothing did Schiller say that Kant's reasoning on this question would only satisfy slaves, and Strauss simply laughed at his proof."
As Berlioz spoke he thought to himself: "But who on earth is he? And how does he speak such good Russian?"
"Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for that 'proof' of his!" Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly.
"Ivan!" whispered Berlioz, embarrassed.
But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not surprise the stranger but actually delighted him
"Exactly, exactly!" he cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. "That's exactly the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: 'If you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad.'"
Berlioz's eyes bulged. "At breakfast... to Kant? What is he rambling about?" he thought.
"But," went on the foreigner, unperturbed by Berlioz's amazement and turning to the poet, "sending him to Solovki is out of the question, because for over a hundred years now he has been somewhere far away from Solovki and I assure you that it is totally impossible to bring him back."
"What a pity!" said the impetuous poet.
"It is a pity," agreed the unknown man with a glint in his eye, and went on: "But this is the question that disturbs me — if there is no God, then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and keeps the world in order?"
"Man rules himself," said Bezdomny angrily in answer to such an obviously absurd question.
"I beg your pardon," retorted the stranger quietly, "but to rule one must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?"
"In fact," here the stranger turned to Berlioz, "imagine what would happen if you, for instance, were to start organizing others and yourself, and you developed a taste for it — then suddenly you got... he, he... a slight heart attack..." at this the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though the thought of a heart attack gave him pleasure..." Yes, a heart attack," he repeated the word sonorously, grinning like a cat, "and that's the end of you as an organizer! No one's fate except your own interests you any longer. Your relations start lying to you. Sensing that something is amiss you rush to a specialist, then to a charlatan, and even perhaps to a fortune-teller. Each of them is as useless as the other, as you know perfectly well. And it all ends in tragedy: the man who thought he was in charge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motionless in a wooden box and his fellow men, realizing that there is no more sense to be had of him, incinerate him.
"Sometimes it can be even worse: a man decides to go to Kislovodsk," — here the stranger stared at Berlioz — "a trivial matter you may think, but he cannot because for no good reason he suddenly jumps up and falls under a tram! You're not going to tell me that he arranged to do that himself? Wouldn't it be nearer the truth to say that someone quite different was directing his fate?" The stranger gave an eerie peal of laughter.
Berlioz had been following the unpleasant story about the heart attack and the tram with great attention and some uncomfortable thoughts had begun to worry him. "He's not a foreigner... he's not a foreigner," he thought, "he's a very peculiar character... but I ask you, who is he?.."
Needless to say this was written back in Stalin's times ))))
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No, that would be more appropriate to be told by Russians actually - "do not attack me and my family," not Americans so much. Yet you see a lot of complaints here, when it comes to "the cost of war." And a lot of demands for Russians to apologize.
