Let me just preface this by clearing up the most common misconception about Russia; that is, he’s evil. In canon, it’s the complete opposite. Russia is explicitly described as “not evil”, albeit being “naturally scary.” Obviously, being scary in appearance and possessing an evil mind are two entirely different things.
In the same character note, it goes on to say that Russia thinks that Vodka and General Winter are his friends. What’s more, everyone that he meets he thinks are his friends. Strange, considering that aside from protecting Russia from invading nations, General Winter attacks and torments Russia himself.
It’s this warped understanding of reality and interpersonal relationships that I’ll be discussing over the course of this post. To do that, we need to understand the core influence of Russia’s childhood on his present person today.
In doing so, this will give insight into the reasons why Russia wrongly sees violence as an answer; why he comes off as cold; and why, despite having good intentions to make friends, he does anything but.
To put it simply, Russia’s childhood was brutal. For the most part, he spent his winters alone with little help and no shelter. This strip darkly alludes to the fact that he grew accustomed to freezing to death.
On top of that, Russia grew up in oppressive circumstances. One example of this would be how he was subjected to Tatar Rule (the Golden Horde).
In “The Yoke of Tatar”, Lithuania first meets Russia and warns the latter that he’ll “freeze to death” if he stays outside for too long. Of course, from the example above, we know that Russia has already died this way several times before.
Here, Russia fantasizes about becoming a bigger country and tells Lithuania that they’ll become friends one day. Now, pay attention to what Russia says when Lithuania offers for them to become friends in the present moment.
“We don’t have enough power.” To me, that seems like a child with a twisted conception of what a healthy relationship entails. Power in a relationship is what Russia’s been taught, it’s all he knows.
He’s picked up on the authority that the Tatars hold over him, and therefore applies it to how he interacts with others. Put another way, the ruled strives to be the ruler.
This cycle of unhealthy learned behaviour is also demonstrated in chapter 194 of World Stars. There, Russia dismantles England’s naval brigade during the American Revolution. When confronted about it, Russia’s response is so naturally oblivious that it appears to have been internalized.
He’s literally equated power with the ability to do whatever you want. Once again, you see how the influence of his childhood factors in here. What Russia observed as a child is now being repeated by himself.
Likewise, it’s not as if Russia’s history has given him a break from suffering either. The damage only keeps accumulating.
In the Bloody Sunday strip, Russia’s brought to tears as he laments about how all his hard work to improve his country has backfired, resulting in his people hating him.
Even darker is that at the end the strip, it’s hinted that he’s been tasked with quelling the civil unrest.
Russia also hasn’t had any mercy spared to him regarding his bosses. While we don’t get too much information about them, what little that we do is heartbreaking.
When Russia is taken as a prisoner of war in WW2 by Germany, he erupts with happiness and claims that he’s in heaven. Out of everything, the most important comment is how he mentions that he doesn’t have to deal with his boss.
Further, when he’s later forced to build a railway by Stalin, Russia snaps. By snap, I mean that he begins to fantasize about warm weather and loses all touch with reality.
This distance from/ misperceived reality is also to be taken into account regarding how Russia doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions. He grew up with violence, so violence is the only way he sees fit to solve his problems.
One example of this would be when England’s caught sleeping at a meeting, and Russia offers to wake up England by hitting him with a sickle. China’s comment, “violence is not the answer!”, is the most telling indication of Russia’s troubled neuroses.
Another example of this inability to recognize the consequences of his violent actions is when Russia snaps Latvia’s neck in an attempt to get him to stop trembling.
That said, I would like to end this by citing a favourite psychologist of mine, Karen Horney. She believed that the “basic evil” (this is used loosely) in the world is parental indifference, neglect, and hostility towards children.
While Russia may have had Ukraine and Belarus, they weren’t around all the time. Centuries of oppressive leaders, bloodshed, and isolation has taken a massive toll on Russia. What Horney also said was that parents who exercised this basic evil of indifference were incapable of treating their children with warmth and compassion as a result of their own troubled childhoods.
Isn’t that what you see with Russia? It’s not that he doesn’t want to be warm and compassionate towards others, because he does. He wants nothing more than to make friends and help ease his chronic loneliness.
The problem is that he doesn’t know how.
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