REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP

282 REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP

World War II. While I almost died of frostbite in the process, they

manifested few signs of discomfort.

Character in Transition

Years have passed since the making of Kozintsev and Trautberg ’ s fi lm

about Gorky ’ s youth and the writing of Erikson ’ s article, and many

dramatic changes have occurred in Russia. The USSR has imploded

into the Russian Federation; many of the countries that belonged to the

old Soviet Socialist Republic have become independent; the glasnost and

perestroika introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev and the reforms attempted

and implemented by Boris Yeltsin and his senior advisors, and afterwards

by Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, have resulted in a dramatic

transformation of Russian society. The consequences of many of these

changes have been mixed: although certain segments of society have

profi ted from the new situation, the chaotic transitional stage of the

Russian economy has left much of the population feeling alienated and

disenfranchised.

The fact that Russia is still in the middle of a radical transformation

makes any attempt to decipher the Russian personality a challenging

task. The great geographical diversity of Russia, which has long been a

melting pot of different races, religions, languages, regions, and cultures,

and whose territories stretch from Eastern Europe through Siberia to

the Far East, makes the task even more diffi cult. Nonetheless there is a

certain stability to the essential nature of Russian character — there are

certain distinctive characteristics that have retained their signifi cance

regardless of place, time, or regime.

CONTEXTUAL FACTORS IN THE FORMATION

OF THE RUSSIAN CHARACTER

The Impact of Nature

Given the extremes of weather in Russia — a country half given over to

permafrost — Russians know what it means to be subject to environmen-

tal whims, a fact that may help explain their patience, submission, and

caution. They do not experience the sense of control that characterizes

people in many cultures not exposed to such extreme climate conditions.

As they alternate bursts of activity with periods of weather - determined