- Darling, something's hot. Please turn off the nuclear reactor.
- Now I will finish the vodka and turn it off, but for now play the balalaika and feed the bear.
Isn't that funny? But often myths and clichés nestle in the heads of Russians themselves. For example, the myth that before Peter the Russians lived badly or that the peasants lived badly before the revolution.
Land of slaves, land of masters
Many people still have the idea of tsarist Russia as a serf country from school, in which the overwhelming majority of the population dragged out a slave existence. But if you look … Peasants were the largest population group in Russia (according to the general census of 1897, three quarters of the country's inhabitants were peasants). But not all of them were serfs: in the middle of the 18th century, according to the historian Gauthier, 53 percent of the peasants were serfs, the rest were state. And gradually the number of serfs decreased: by 1861, only a third of the peasants were dependent on the masters. In addition, many foreigners who lived in Russia in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries admitted that Russian peasants live better than their French or, say, Polish, Italian counterparts.
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Wild Pre-Petrine Russia
The myth is widespread that before Peter I, Russia was immersed in ignorance, was a wild and uneducated country. However, Europe in the Middle Ages was also not a hotbed of literacy. Before the Mongol-Tatar yoke, only one percent of the inhabitants of Russian principalities could read and write. But, for example, in progressive England, the first public schools appeared only at the end of the XIV century. For almost a thousand years, both in Russia and in Europe, literacy remained the prerogative of the clergy and the highest aristocracy. But by the end of the 17th century, there were 15% of literate peasants in Muscovy, about 30% of literate artisans, about 70% of monks, landowners and courtiers, and there was no priest who could not read and count.
Unwashed Russia
Another myth about unwashed Russia. In the Middle Ages, Russians were considered barbarians due to their habit of bathing too often, once a month! Many European sovereigns, for example Louis XIV, aka the Sun King, washed only a few times in their entire life.
Roads are a Russian problem
Roads are of course a problem! But, in fairness, it should be noted - not only here. In the Middle Ages, off-road was typical of our lands even to a lesser extent than European ones. Rather, off-roading was ubiquitous until the 17th-18th centuries, but the Russians were rescued by winter. When the ground was covered with snow, we, unlike the Europeans, changed into sledges, the ride in which was both softer and more pleasant.
The terrible life of the working class
Another myth - supposedly workers in our country lived worse than their counterparts in Europe and America. But! “I was surprised to see that these workers live no worse, and many of them are even much better than students. On average, each of them earned from 1 ruble. 25 kopecks up to 2 rubles. a day,”one of the revolutionaries Grigory Plekhanov wrote about the situation of the Petersburg workers. And according to the American researcher Blum, the food of the Ural workers in the second half of the 19th century was healthier and more abundant than that of representatives of the same specialties in England and France.