What are the messages of the artists from Russia?
In the past hundred years or so, Russia has produced many historically outstanding novelists, writers, musicians, and artists. Will their reflections and feelings provide some inspiration and reference value for how Chinese culture faces and adapts to the impact of modernization?
Author: GUDORDI | 2024-09-03
Over the past hundred years, Russian society has experienced great turmoil in all aspects of politics, economy, society, and culture. (Shutterstock)
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
──Martha Graham
I remember that when I was in college, I was exposed to a rather big proposition, which was the impact of modernization on human society. According to estimates by the World Bank, more than half of the world’s population currently lives in cities. There are cities with a population of one million. Larger cities have a population of nearly ten million, and the largest ones even reach tens of millions. In these cities, many people come from all over the world, with different races and cultural backgrounds; they are often engaged in very secular activities, such as trade, commerce, entertainment, tourism, etc. This is very different from the situation of human society for thousands of years. When many traditional values of human society emerged, it was impossible to experience the experiences of many modern people. This then brought up a question: What is the human society? Can traditional culture cope with the impact of modernization?
Where Chinese culture will go has yet to be resolved.
This is a deep question. To put it more exaggeratedly, human history over the past hundreds of years is a story about how different cultures faced modernization. Roughly speaking, global culture can be divided into five major categories: Western, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Russian and others. Among these five, the one most closely related to Hong Kong is of course Chinese culture. In fact, the reason why Hong Kong emerged was because of a war related to the conflict between Eastern and Western cultures, and the history of China over the past 200 years is inextricably related to this. From the initial “Chinese learning as the body, Western learning as the application”, to the Boxer Rebellion, the Westernization Movement, the May Fourth Movement that advocated “overthrowing the Confucian family shop” and comprehensive Westernization, to the Cultural Revolution, reform and opening up, socialism with Chinese characteristics, etc., They can all be regarded as Chinese culture’s responses to relevant issues at different times. On relevant issues, it can be said that Chinese culture has gone a long and difficult road. But despite this, at least on a cultural level, I don’t think the relevant issues have been resolved.
The case of Russia is worth pondering
In fact, the situation in other cultures is not much better. Even in the West, there are still many issues that have not been addressed. Within this general framework, relatively few people have paid attention to the situation in Russia, but this does not mean that its importance is lower, especially the path Russia has taken, which has a profound impact on both the contemporary West and China.
I can’t remember which historian once said: Russia is an enigma. Although the history of Russia is not as old as China, the Slavic nation also has a culture that spans more than a thousand years. The founding of the Slavic nation in Kiev in 862 AD can be regarded as the origin of Russia, but the event that had the greatest impact on the Slavic nation should be the “Baptism of Rus” in 988 AD, which meant that the Slavic nation accepted the Orthodox Christianity of the Byzantine Empire. From then on, Orthodox Christianity began to penetrate into the soul of the Slavic nation.
On the other hand, the baptism of Rus also means that Slavic culture has a certain inheritance from Christianity and Judaism in the West, which has a history of more than a thousand years. The Mongol rule that followed added the Eastern autocratic kingship tradition to Slavic culture──in Mongolia Under the rule, royal power absolutely overrides religious power. Later, the decline of the Roman Empire led to the division of East and West Rome, and the Orthodox Church and Constantinople became another religious and political center outside of Rome. Later, when the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople, the Tsar declared Moscow the Third Rome and replaced Constantinople as the center of global Orthodoxy.
Do the reflections of Russian artists have some reference value?
How deep is the influence of Orthodox Christianity on Russia? This is a deep but extremely important question. Some historians believe that Orthodox Christianity has always been the soul of the Slavic nation, and this has never fundamentally changed for thousands of years. Regardless of whether this argument is valid or not, Orthodox Christianity has had a profound influence on Russia and the Slavic nation, and no one should doubt it. Its most important influence should include at least the following three deep concepts: First, the Messiah or savior The second is the concept that the Slavic people are God’s chosen people, and the third is the concept that any means (ends-justifying means) can be used to achieve the divine goal. It is worth noting that some historians believe that this last point may have a subtle, important and far-reaching connection with the concept of “Foolishness for Christ” unique to Russian culture and Lenin’s Bolshevism. .
In any case, over the past hundred years, Russian society has experienced great turmoil in all aspects of politics, economy, society, and culture. As the aphorism quoted at the beginning of this article points out, since ancient times, artists have often had an extraordinary sense of social changes and the deepest desires of human beings. In the past hundred years or so, Russia has indeed seen a lot of historical works. Excellent novelists, writers, musicians, and artists. Will their reflections and feelings provide some inspiration and reference value for how Chinese culture faces and adapts to the impact of modernization? Can Ayn Rand’s novels and thoughts be regarded as one of them? These are some propositions worth pondering.
