The living legacy of Russia’s slavery

By Dilip -
Russian society has never learnt what it is to feel responsibility for anything. Serfdom was abolished 150 years ago, engendering feelings of panic in many of the ‘liberated’ peasants. Ivan Karamazov uses the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor to demonstrate that it’s easier when there is no freedom and decisions are taken higher up the vertical of power. Slavery too is a vertical.. “I am particularly suspicious, particularly distrustful of a Russian in power – a recent slave himself, he becomes the most unbridled despot as soon as he is given any authority over his neighbour. “  Thus wrote Maxim Gorky in his ‘Untimely Thoughts’ninety years ago, but just as timely today.

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By Dilip -
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