The innate differences in how The East thinks and how The West thinks
must be bridged before there can be any true meeting of the minds.
This connection must not preclude the retention of their own natures.
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“Westerners have enormous difficulty in understanding that Russia, like the Orient, is simply not comparable to the West. Different solutions and different ways of thinking dominate.”
April 2, 2015
For much of the West in the middle of the 19th century, the idea of Russia and how to approach its people diplomatically was a matter of differentiating them as Europeans or Asians. The prevailing view at the time was a belief that Russians belonged to the latter group, and could not be considered part of Europe. The absolute role of the Russian Monarchy was an increasingly alien concept to the people of the West, a generation that was no stranger to popular upheavals and calls for political reform. Marx created the concepts of the “asiatic mode of production” and “oriental despotism” with reference to the Russian Empire, believing that their path to communistic development was different than the industrialized nations of the Atlantic. Still, the intellectual body of these same nations was divided, some believing that the people of Russia were indeed Europeans, but comparatively primitive to the rest of the continent and lacking in the necessary Enlightenment values of modern statehood. Through one form or another, this way of thought has survived to our time, and its continued existence gives credence to the vast differences between the Western and Russian cultures. Indeed, history repeats itself.
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