the biology of democracy and tyranny
Open Democracy, vial AL Daily, has an essay on the appeal of Stalinism by Arseny Roginski. Why is it, after a century of war and death, that Russians romanticize the Stalinist state? Roginski’s essay hits the right notes: seeking Russian greatness, inability to admit killing your own people, a refusal to assign moral blame for failure. One summary is that the victory of WWII allowed Russians to cultivate a myth of greatness that conveniently elided the harsh reality of mass murder. However, I found an interesting comment by Roland Brown:
There is, perhaps, a biological explanation. The majority of today’s young Russians are likely to be descendants of people who either did well under Stalin, or who managed to keep their heads down throughout his reign.
Many of those who would have passed down the most negative personal narratives of the Stalin period to their children simply never survived to do so.
I’ve wondered about this myself. Does tyranny create a massive selection effect? The winners under a tyrant are those that either (a) agreed with the tyrant, (b) benefited from the tyrant, or (c) folks who support, or at least tolerate, the status quo. Opponents are killed, jailed, or just leave. Those who remain are more likely to pass on to their children, through genes or socialization, the psychological traits that support evil.
Democracy has the opposite effect. A norm of toleration creates a mix of people, many of whom are whiners and complainers, which often has the effect of demystifying national culture. We’re a lot less likely to unconditionally value power at the expense of all else and excuse our prior crimes. In America, for example, we have a growing sense of the injustice done to African Americans and Native Americans. In Australia, people are coming to grips with the nastiness done to aborigines early in the 20th century. In Europe, there’s a heightened sense of the genocides of colonialism and fascism, at least compared with similar atrocities committed by non-Western peoples. These bitter debates, in turn, allow democratic nations to better assimilate outsiders who bring new vitality to the nation.
It’s to our benefit, though. The Russians will continue to glamorize the evils of the past and support new regimes that just homogenize the culture. For the same reason, I don’t worry much about Iran or China, or any other despotic country, except for the immediate harm they do their citizens and neighbors. Long as they’re despotic, they’ll spiral into new forms of counter-productive authoritarianism while democratic cultures enjoy the fruits of a noisy, but tolerant, society.
There is, perhaps, a biological explanation. The majority of today’s young Russians are likely to be descendants of people who either did well under Stalin, or who managed to keep their heads down throughout his reign. Many of those who would have passed down the most negative personal narratives of the Stalin period to their children simply never survived to do so.
I guess this mechanism must be the reason why Jewish people never hear anything much about the horror of the Holocaust.
Kieran
January 1, 2009 at 7:33 pm
“I guess this mechanism must be the reason why Jewish people never hear anything much about the horror of the Holocaust.”
– that is probably not true.
The key difference between stalinist russia’s atrociities and the holocaust is that there were almost no jewish “people who either did well under” the holocaust;
There aren’t many “who managed to keep their heads down” either, because keeping your head down wasn’t the path to long term survival either.
sd
January 1, 2009 at 8:03 pm
excuse the bad construction & repetitions of “either”.
sd
January 1, 2009 at 8:05 pm
A blog that makes the case for Chinese-style authoritarianism over noisy democracy is here.
I’ve only read a little of “The State” by Anthony de Jasay, but he speculates there that the Soviet Union gave its citizens an “allergy” to its rule.
teageegeepea
January 1, 2009 at 8:06 pm
K:
“I guess this mechanism must be the reason why Jewish people never hear anything much about the horror of the Holocaust.”
The key point is that there are very few Jews left in the nations that perpetrated the worst anti-Semitic violence – Russia, Germany, East Europe, the Balkans. In some parts of East Europe, Vienna for example, nearly 90% of Jews were murdered. Those non-Jews left behind were often perpetrators, accomplices, or sympathizers. Or just people who preferred not to look. Probably a key reason that you have effective anti-semitic nationalist parties in these places (except Germany, which was conquered by the West and had democracy shoved down their throats).
The people who survived and left went to the West and Israel. The biggest memorialists of the Holocaust are likely those in democratic nations and Israel, where the repression was no where near what it was in Russia and Germany. I’d guess that more people remember and grieve over the Holocaust in Manhattan than in Moscow. Does Russia have anyplace that resembles the Holocaust Museum in DC? Or am I missing your point?
fabiorojas
January 1, 2009 at 8:10 pm
K: Factoid – according this Israeli directory of holocaust museums (http://www.science.co.il/holocaust-museums.asp), the US has 25 holocaust museums, while Russia has 1. Israel has at least 4. All other countries in the world have 29 combined. In other words, two nations, which had no responsibility for that horror, account for 50% of the museums.
The Allies (excluding the USSR) account for 39 of the 59 museums. Basically, it’s the places that accepted the survivors that remember it the most, not the places were it actually happened the most. Germany and Poland have most of the remaining museums, which appear to be located at former camps.
fabiorojas
January 1, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Certain lifestyles and ways of thinking were certainly selected for by the Stalinist purges, but, unless we start considering lifestyles and ways of thinking to be overwhelmingly biologically derived, there is no reason that this selection should be genetic as opposed to simply cultural. Furthermore, even if we assume a strong lifestyle-gene link, for any kind of selection to occur we have to also assume that only a finite set of lifestyles would lead one to be a victim of Stalinist purges, which seems like a big assumption to make (lots of things could get you killed). Also, even if the “dangerous” behaviors come from certain genes, for selection to occur we have to assume that those genes would nearly always lead one to exhibit the punishable behaviors, which is clearly false as the “dangerous” behaviors also have non-genetic prerequisites — being old enough is one of them; living near a populated area is another.
I think cultural selection makes a far better explanation because of the greater malleability of culture. If rebelliousness was a gene present in, say, 20% of the population, and half of those people were killed, you would still remain with 10% rebels. But if rebelliousness was a cultural trait present in 20% of the population, and half of those were killed, I think the remaining 10% could easily stop being rebellious as well, and you’d end up with no rebels.
The spread of the Holocaust museums also seems to be far easily explainable in cultural terms. Lots of Russian Jewish immigrants who are not at all religious or attached to their heritage there become very involved in it once they arrive in the States.
Andrei
January 2, 2009 at 5:30 am
I’ve heard a similar argument from an American (who worked in Brussels a long number of years) over the lack of political aggressiveness and outspokenness of Belgians, and their urge to avoid conflict both in the workplace or in the political arena. Here we have a small country that has been occupied by all neighbouring countries (Netherlands, France, Germany) and even some non-neighbours (Roman empire, Spain, Austrian-Hungarians). Everyone who had the ‘drive’ to fight was more likeley to be put in jail, executed or chose to flee the country, all leading to a lower fertility of the fighters. As a Belgian, I’ve always found that to be a fascinating explanation, and I have come to accept this bio-centric selection reasoning as a likely part of the puzzle of our national character, especially if you add the cultural sauce of centuries of catholiscism. Belgians will pride themselves over their rebellious character, but when I contrast it with the outspokennes of the French or the Dutch we come out as prudent compromisers, and indoor-rebellians.
Olivier
January 2, 2009 at 11:19 am
The general public in Russia wasn’t aware of the Stalinist purges until late on in 1938 (see R. W. Thurston, “Fear and Belief in the USSR’s’ Great Terror’: Response To Arrest, 1935-1939,” Slavic Review 45, no. 2 (1986): 213–234). The purges were also pretty much a party officials affair, and I’m not sure how much a “keeping your head down” attitude would have protected someone during the height of Stalin’s Terror.
It was quite easy to industrialise a fairly rural economy, but much more difficult for an industrialised economy to improve productivity and shift into advanced industrialism / post-industrialism. As a result, Stalin will be forever credited for rapid industrialisation living within a generation, and the building of infrastructure to improve standards. All the post-Stalin leaders are seen as a bit of a failure with Khrushchev seen as an incessant fiddler, and Brezhnev as the period of stable living standards, but economic stagnation. After that it was all downhill.
Not sure that biological reasons explain all that much.
randomvariable
January 2, 2009 at 9:45 pm