The Slave Soul of Russia: Moral Masochism and the Cult of Suffering

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This book owes its title and chief inspiration to the Soviet Russian writer Vasilii Semenovich Grossman (1905–64). In his pessimistic novella Forever Flowing Grossman explains Russia’s uniqueness by its “slave soul.” Russia is a land of endless suffering, according to Grossman, because Russians typically cannot overcome their self-defeating slavishness.

If there was anything to what Grossman was saying, I thought when I first read him, then the psychoanalytic theory of moral masochism ought to apply to the Russians. Nearly one thousand footnotes later, I have become convinced that Grossman was correct, for I have been able to document the widespread occurrence of moral maoschism in various spheres of Russian culture.

Work on this book has been supported over the years by Faculty Research Grants (1988–93) from the University of California, Davis. The book also benefited from an International Research and Exchanges Board travel grant to the Soviet Union in 1990.

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