Since Mr. Duncan chose to comment on my signature quote TO THE ENTIRE LIST,
please allow me a single and brief reply.  His comment was:  >What a load
of Russia bashing and with no flicker of truth.
 
I use this quote (and others like it) to illustrate a characteristic of
Russian society and culture which I have observed to be true in history and
in our own time.  If Edward Clarke overstated his observation we can't
really blame him:  travelling in Russia, one is sometimes too much inclined
to see things in stark terms.  At least he was more generous than Baron Von
Haxthausen in 1856 who wrote:
 
"Nowhere are the dangers which accompany our modern civilization so evident
as among the Russians. In the educated classes there are many who have
acquired the highest European culture; they may be judged according to the
proverb, -- 'Half philosophy draws a man away from God; perfect philosophy
conducts man to God'; when half-culture touches a Russian he is ruined; it
is said that when he shaves off his beard, lays aside the kaftan, and puts
on a European coat, he becomes a knave. The Russians who have acquired the
usual West-European cultivation are called lackered barbarians; this is
inaccurate; they are no barbarians, but a healthy, vigorous, intellectual
people, of noble race, religious and moral; if however they are brought
suddenly into contact with and receive taint of modern culture, their
natural virtues vanish, their religion and morals, simplicity and honesty
are destroyed, and nothing remains but the animal nature common to man. The
Russian however then becomes worse than those who bear the poison of
civilization more easily, from its having been longer united with their
existing manners."
 
My apologies for taking up your time,
 
W. M. Reger IV
 
sans signature
 
W. M. Reger IV     :     [log in to unmask]