What is the "Russian soul" or "Russian character" has often baffled both the East and the West. When it comes to answering this riddle, Lossky's The Character of the Russian People is a classic.
Russians are passionate about pursuing absolute values and changing the world, and they have little tolerance for differences of opinion. The flip side of this fundamental trait is that they cannot exert themselves in moderation, are poor at taking the middle road, and lack a sense of proportion. In their pursuit of absolute values, this gives rise to traits at the opposite extreme: kindness coexists with cruelty, perseverance with passivity, and freedom with autocracy.
In this book, Lossky presents a multifaceted portrait of Russian character, making it a condensed "encyclopedia" of the Russian national character. Writing as a philosopher and religious thinker, he draws on a wealth of sources and explains his ideas with clarity, analyzing the many manifestations of Russian character through history, culture, morality, and psychology. He highlights the Russians' religiosity and the various traits that stem from it, thereby explaining the extremes of the Russian character. The book helps readers quickly understand Russian character and history, and in turn make sense of Russia's current domestic and foreign policies and discern the direction of its future development.
