First Things RSS Feed - Vladimir Osherov https://www.firstthings.com/author/vladimir-osherov en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:50:40 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/vladimir-osherov 60 Russia Repents? https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/12/russia-repents https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/12/russia-repents Mon, 01 Dec 1997 00:00:00 -0500
For anyone watching events in Russia, the confrontation between “reformers,” led by Boris Yeltsin, and their opponents, Communists and nationalists, has become almost self-explanatory: forces of the past against forces of progress; the defeated seeking a comeback against the will of the majority. Still, results of some recent elections have posed a question: why do so many ordinary Russians vote for the Communists rather than patiently endure some predictable hardships of a transition period? Were not seventy years of Communist dictatorship enough?

Konstantin Leontiev, the nineteenth-century conservative thinker and nationalist, once claimed that “a Russian can be a saint but he cannot be honest.” Philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev, commenting on this, wrote in 1918:

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