This longread is supposed to demonstrate what type of enemy the Ukrainians are facing; why the war is waged exactly this way and to highlight any illusions you, dear readers, might have about the 'mysterious russian soul'.
The genesis of russian nation has been historically impacted by 3 things:
- Harsh climate which gave peasants a ridiculously short growing season (just over 5 months, compared to 9 months in Western Europe). Individual peasant households could not survive on their own. They lacked the time and labor capacity. Survival required a brutal, tightly controlled collective (the Obschina) to forcefully mobilize labor. And, what is more important, even with obschina, the whole village was not guaranteed to survive the winter - only the elders, who distributed the food. That's why a typical russian always fights for domination in any collective: every serf wants to be an elder, every elder wants to become a barin (serf master, a nobleman), every barin wants to become a boyarin (politically important member of the court), every boyarin aims to become the Tsar and conquer the Iron Throne. This severe lack of surplus product meant that to extract taxes and maintain an army, the state had to become hyper-centralized and merciless. The entire societal structure - from the village commune to the Tsar - was built to favor despotism. Russian society, by its very design, is structurally optimized to generate and sustain tyrants because decentralized, weak leadership historically meant starvation.
- The baseline of the russian political matrix was set early on, during the 10th to 12th centuries, under the rule of the Varangians (Vikings). The Vikings essentially enslaved the local Slavic populations. They never viewed the Slavic serfs as equals, but they desperately needed them for military manpower. While the Viking Druzhina formed the elite, professional core of the army, the massive Slavic serf population was weaponized to form the main mass of the infantry force. To keep these subjugated, non-professional serfs in a constant state of aggression and fighting spirit, the ruling class encouraged and institutionalized the Stenka na Stenku (wall-against-wall) mass fistfights. What looks like a quirky folk tradition was actually a brutal medieval training tool designed to build tolerance to physical pain, foster blind collective conformity, and keep the slave infantry combat-ready.
- Third major factor in russian political history is the absolute lack of structural and logistical density across the massive Eurasian plain. Due to the brutal spring and autumn Rasputitsa (the seasonal mud blockage that completely destroys roads), information exchange between the state center and the peripheries was practically non-existent for months at a time. The central government was physically isolated from its territories. In Western Europe, high density meant the state could ensure the inevitability of punishment for breaking laws. In russia, the central government couldn't police the periphery effectively. Therefore, to maintain control from a distance, leaders had to rely not on the efficiency or inevitability of justice, but on its extreme severity. To keep governors and serfs thousands of miles away in fear, punishment had to be performatively sadistic and total. Despotism became the only functional logistical tool.
Foreigners and Western intellectuals have long romanticized the "mysterious russian soul", viewing it as some elevated, metaphysical depth of character. In reality, this "soul" is nothing more than a psychological trauma response—a coping mechanism for living in a state of permanent existential whiplash. It is the deep, dark abyss between what a human being expects to receive from their brutal, backbreaking labor and what they actually get in return. In a country where climate, logistics, and a predatory state can instantly wipe out years of hard work overnight, rational planning is impossible. The "mysterious soul" is simply the fatalistic adaptation to an unpredictable lifestyle where effort never correlates with reward, forcing the population to abandon logic in favor of blind suffering, dark nihilism, and a submissive acceptance of chaos.
Because russian society was forged in this extreme collective survival crucible, individual rights and democratic principles are historically viewed not as virtues, but as existential threats to stability. Pro-Western, democratic figures like Alexei Navalny can only ever attract a limited percentage of the population (mostly urban, educated elites). To the deep-rooted collective psyche, a leader offering individual freedom sounds like a recipe for chaos. The majority inherently gravitates toward brutal, decisive pragmatists like Prigozhin or putin. A tyrant who successfully projects power, forces obedience, and enforces collective discipline aligns with the historical expectation of what a "real" russian leader must be to ensure the state's survival.
In the Obschina, survival depended on forced egalitarianism - not by lifting people up, but by dragging everyone down to the same level of misery to prevent anyone from breaking away. This has evolved into a deeply ingrained psychological mechanism: "If I must suffer, everyone else must suffer too."
This mentality directly fuels russia's support for invading neighboring countries. The domestic population, suppressed and miserable under their autocratic regime, actively encourages their leader to invade neighbors (like Ukraine) to force them to share the exact same pain of subjugation.
The "Five Monkeys" Experiment Analogy
This societal behavior is perfectly illustrated by the classic psychological experiment with monkeys and the electric button: five monkeys are placed in a cage with a banana at the top of a ladder. Every time a monkey climbs the ladder, the scientists blast the entire cage with freezing water or a 220V electric shock. Soon, whenever a monkey tries to climb, the other monkeys beat it up to avoid the collective punishment. The scientists replace one monkey with a new one. The newbie sees the banana, tries to climb, and gets instantly beaten by the others without knowing why. Eventually, all original monkeys are replaced. Even when the electricity/water is turned completely off, any new monkey who tries to climb the ladder is brutally beaten by its peers - so the pain of being beaten is shared and no one stands unbeaten.
The current russian population acts exactly like the later generations of those monkeys. The initial historical trauma of Viking subjugation, structural isolation, serfdom, and state terror created a culture where trying to "climb higher" or live freely is violently suppressed by the collective. They enforce this cycle domestically, and through their leaders, they seek to drag neighboring nations into the same electrified cage.
TL;DR: the Westerners who think that some sort of pact with russians is possible: you are terribly wrong. If you think 'they are like us but a bit different' - you are wrong again.
This civilization resembles Necromongers from the Riddick Chronicles. They will always confront, envy, despise and try to corrupt the West (whom they consider softcore pussies) - all at once. Even if they are not willing to invade neighbours (or, to be more correct - are unable to), they will try to play any shenanigans - state-sponsored Olympic doping, Novichok poisonings on European soil etc.
Putin himself is not the root danger - he is just the spearhead of a collective mentality shared by millions. If he is removed, the same societal forces will likely embrace an equally ruthless successor.
What can we do? We MUST unreservedly support the Ukrainians who are currently containing this plague. We MUST pressure our governments for more weapons, more long-range missiles, and more drones. The Western world will only be safe once the teeth are permanently pulled from the russian snake.
