> There is a veneer of civilized Westernized Russians...
So, in your opition, civilisation == westernisation?
:) What about multiculturalism?
And yes, Western civilization far exceeds All others.
Once upon a time, even the Czar of Russian accepted that and set off to become more civilized ( read WESTERN )and you folks added Great, to Peter's name.
There are, and have been, more Dostoevskys than Tergenevs. The Slavophiles in the majority have long deserved the epithet, scratch a Russian and a Tatar bleeds. And please, do not talk about capitalism in Russia; there is the very thinest of veneers at work there too in a nation where cronyism abounds. And when you talk of religiosity, what is it that you mean? The meaningless drone of Russian Orthodoxy, the supercilious pacifism of Tolstoi, or something else like a resurgence of the "Old Believers"? And what is Russian civilization? Is it the onion-domed churches created by Western architects, the buildings of St. Petersburg created by Western architects, the tsarist gems created by French and worn by European monarchichal families? Or is the Kremlin Walls, the perfect personifaction of the walled personality defying all entry from foreign sources?
So Russian culture is not civilized? I have news for you, Rus were Christian and were writing and reading long before the Germans or modern day French (Franks) or anything in the Nordic countries.
Also, by your statement I take it that the Hindus, Chinese and Japanese are uncivilized too? Wow, what a narrow definition of civilization. Guess the Romans and Greeks were not civilized either, since they were definitly not Western, since Western as a culture/civilization didn't even exist until around the 1400s.