Speaking of Napoleon and winter, the Russian winter utterly defeated his war campaign, as every Frenchman knows it. It also defeated Hitler, as most Germans know. I’ve never been to Russia in winter or spring or any other season. But I’ve been there all year round as a reader ever since the St. Petersburg summer I spent in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. This is a Russian winter, made famous by the great novelists of Russia.
A hundred writers have said it before and a hundred will say it again, but it is no less true for being a common-place that the way to an understanding of Russian life lies through the ordeal of a Russian winter. Russkaya zima (Русская зима), the great depressant of spirit and water of animation. It is not a season of the year like other seasons, not merely a longer, darker, crueler span of time than that which annually slows the countries of northern Europe and America. It is a life sentence to hardship that prowls near the center of the Russian consciousness, whatever the time of year. As a prime cause and a symbol of Russia’s fate, it molds a state of mind, an attitude toward life.
However, Russian winter has its delights. Not long ago, I read that the huge expanse of land and climate, together with the hard struggle for survival, produces many good qualities. Absolutely right! The bitter weather drove away the French, of course, and there are dozens of delicacies you can freeze. All that’s true and the children and skate too: on a full stomach, layered with proper clothes, the cold’s amusing. But for a working man – people tramping or begging or making pilgrimages – it’s the prime evil and torment.
Let me finish these incoherent and bewildered thoughts with beautiful lines that I recently came across: “Winter can be cruelly cold on those who don’t have loving warm memories for their hearts. And it can be even brutally colder on those who have such memories but don’t have the ones they shared it with anymore“
@pursuit_of_truth
A hundred writers have said it before and a hundred will say it again, but it is no less true for being a common-place that the way to an understanding of Russian life lies through the ordeal of a Russian winter. Russkaya zima (Русская зима), the great depressant of spirit and water of animation. It is not a season of the year like other seasons, not merely a longer, darker, crueler span of time than that which annually slows the countries of northern Europe and America. It is a life sentence to hardship that prowls near the center of the Russian consciousness, whatever the time of year. As a prime cause and a symbol of Russia’s fate, it molds a state of mind, an attitude toward life.
However, Russian winter has its delights. Not long ago, I read that the huge expanse of land and climate, together with the hard struggle for survival, produces many good qualities. Absolutely right! The bitter weather drove away the French, of course, and there are dozens of delicacies you can freeze. All that’s true and the children and skate too: on a full stomach, layered with proper clothes, the cold’s amusing. But for a working man – people tramping or begging or making pilgrimages – it’s the prime evil and torment.
Let me finish these incoherent and bewildered thoughts with beautiful lines that I recently came across: “Winter can be cruelly cold on those who don’t have loving warm memories for their hearts. And it can be even brutally colder on those who have such memories but don’t have the ones they shared it with anymore“
@pursuit_of_truth