[A. Pole]

Every primitive stone age tribe has its own great singers and dancers, but still it remains a primitive stone age tribe.

So if you compare Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov and others with the tribal singers and dancers, then who are people like Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov? They must be the primitive tribal story tellers in your eyes.

I specifically referred to the way of life, i.e. to how people relate to one another [...]

Have you ever been in Russia?

[GSlob]

"Have you ever been in Russia?"
I was born in Moscow (thucking USSR) in 1955; and grew up and lived in the aforementioned country till 1981. I suppose it means that have indeed been in Russia. And as for Tolstoy etc. - they are precisely story-tellers, either over the fire or without it.