--- Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
> Revisited", in Soviet Studies, April 1981 .
>
> Russian peasant commune conditions were consistent,
> however, with the
> development of the kind of "subject" from which
> Stalinism could
> emerge. They produced an extreme degree of
> psychopathology.
I don't think I would call it psychopathology. The majority of the Russian population in the late 1800s was pretty much living in a medieval society with a medieval worldview. They believed in the literal presence of the Devil in daily affairs, witches, the Tsar as the representative of God on Earth, wonder-working icons, and Jewish Blood Libel (not a big step from that to Stalinist show trials). For instance, a Cossack woman who went around with her head uncovered would be considered a witch and probably killed by her fellow villagers. Those were facts to them. And their lives were pretty brutal and short. Pretty much like in Western Europe a couple of hundred years earlier, or much of Africa today. I don't think that makes them psychopathic, unless your benchmark for sanity is a 21st-century Western European. :)
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