Russians Hate Rules… And Admire Chapaev.
Russians hate rules. Cold, impersonal, iron-clad, mechanical rules, that are mechanically applied, without taking in consideration circumstances and other complications.
For a Russian, this computer like approach is the sign of stupidity, not wisdom.
When Pushkin observed, "What is timely for London, might be too early for Moscow," he expresses this unique dialectical approach to life so much valued by the Russian mind.
And consequently, anyone who insists on rules and regulations or rather hides behind them-- hides his understanding of humanity, and consequently, his sense of human bond and camaraderie. Such a person would never be loved by Russians. Maybe feared, but not loved.
The case in point, is one of my favorite films, Chapaev, and its universally admired protagonist. Such diverse people as Stalin, Mandelstam, Tarkovsky, Babel, or Dovzhenko expressed their admiration for the film, let alone millions of ordinary and less ordinary Russians.
The protagonist, — a dashing military hero Chapaev —is both smart and silly, heroic, and bumbling, fatherly and child-like. He is a walking contradiction, and has the same approach to life and and to military strategies. There are no universal rules, it all depends on the moment, on the particular case and circumstance. And sometimes, the moment's needs can overcome all other needs and all other rules. And the characters in the film, learn from him. Now his orderly lets the captured White soldier go, now Anka uses her intuition instead of the order, when deciding for the right moment to use the machine gun.
And what makes his opponents --Whites --lose in the film, is precisely their insistence on rules. His main opponent, Colonel Borozdin, plays piano, reads Lenin, and tries to accommodate to changing circumstances, but at a key moment, the military rules prove too powerful for him, which proves his undoing eventually. And the undoing of the Whites in general, the Whites who fail to treat common Russians as the part of their family.
To further complicate the film, its wise makers make Chapaev obey the rule once, as if breaking the rule that there are no rules: Chapaev hates the fact that his vet can't be promoted to the position of a doctor. He is ready to shoot two military nurses, who refuse to issue the certificate. He insists that conniving intelligentsia always creates obstacles to a common man. And yet, his side-kick, Furmanov, convinces him that medical rules are too important to disregard.
This amazing dynamism, that ability to be hard as steel, and soft as mother's touch -- has been so badly lacking in various leaders, all of whom Russians would eventually reject.
Lermontov have captured the ideal Russian leader, badly lacking in real life, yet, continuously cherished in people's hearts, when he described one of the 1812 war heroes: Полковник наш рожден был хватом, слуга царю, отец солдатам. (Our colonel was born a hero: a servant to a tsar, a father to his soldiers).
I am not surprised that when the film first came to the screens, Russians were going from one cinema to another watching the film again and again, hoping that this time, Chapaev would break the rule again, and would cross this river...
