Immortal Regiment: A Window into The Russian Psyche

Russian soul is where distinctions blur

Probably you've heard about the so-called Immortal Regiment by now. It is a relatively recent ritual where Russians march holding the portraits of their family members or relatives that died in WWII to commemorate their "victory" in what they call "The Great Patriotic War".

I first encountered it in 2015 - this kind of commemoration likely also originated that very year. When I saw it in the Russian news it seemed really strange to me. I have never witnessed such kind of celebration in any other culture before.

Obviously, other peoples commemorate their ancestors too. Veneration of the fallen is ubiquitous among mankind. But this Russian-style commemoration still felt unique. It was blurring the psychological barriers between life and death; it felt as if, for Russians, those dead people were physically nearby. As if the dead and the living did not exist in separate, mutually exclusive realms, but co-inhabited the same realm.

At the time I did not attach too much significance to it, and soon this strange feeling that I had was forgotten. But then in November of the same year, around All Saints' Day, a Mexican colleague at the institute invited me to a Mexican cultural event. The Mexican students were organizing the celebration of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). It is a religious event celebrated in Mexico at the beginning of November. It has its roots in the Catholic All Saints' Day, but has originated with the incorporation of indigenous Amerindian elements, and emerged as a uniquely Mexican cultural phenomenon.

So, when I attended it, uncanny parallels to the Russian Immortal Regiment from earlier that year struck me immediately. For example, the celebration of the Day of the Dead involves, among other things, putting the favorite objects and food of the dead people around their portraits. Just like in the Russian Immortal Regiment, the dividing line between the dead and the living feels blurred. It was as if for Mexicans, just like for Russians, their dead family members, relatives, acquintances etc were together with them, in the here and now.

The All Saints' Day from which this uniquely Mexican type of celebration originates also involves the veneration of the dead - i.e., the saints. Needless to say, it was brought to them by Europeans - Spaniards. But within the original version there is a clear comprehension that the dead and the living exist in different dimensions - that their realms of habitation do not overlap. The Mexican Dio de los Muertos, just like the Russian Immortal Regiment, however, makes it feel as if they exist within the same space.

A typical characteristic of the Russian psyche that distinguishes it from Europeans, in fact also from many other peoples on Earth, is the numbness to distinctions - the unique capacity to feel equivalence between starkly disparate states of matter & mind, and the ability to blur the distinctions that for other peoples seem concrete and self-evident.

This manifests itself, for instance, in the way Russians can blur the lines between obvious truth and falsehood in their minds. It supplies them with an uncanny capability to lie credibly - to claim that 1+1=5466 - with a straight face, without blushing. They are indifferent to distinctions between truth and falsehood, for them these two states are equivalent. This explains, for example, why their propaganda is highly effective, which manages to convince a surprisingly large number of people in the West even of the most asinine lies that defy any logic. After all, the best way to convince others of your lies is to believe in those lies yourself. And in general, Russian society is infused with habitual lying. A Russian may lie to you, not necessarily because he wants to deceive or take advantage of you. He may do it casually, without any particular reason, just because... just because he feels like it. Because he doesn’t feel the glaring distinction between truth and falsehood.

Another area where this character trait manifests itself is the numbness to the clear distinction between life and death - two clearly distinct, mutually exclusive states of matter, that for Russians apparently are not so distinct and mutually exclusive. This can explain, for instance, their nonchalant attitude towards high death toll in wars and in general their blithe disregard to human life, a character trait that sets them starkly apart from Europeans. It's because life and death are close to equivalent to them, they don't feel the distinction between these two states as acutely as Europeans. The phenomenon of Immortal Regiment has the same psychological underpinnings.

In my latest writing I explored the similarities between Russia and Latin America. Indeed, there are significant historical parallels between the genesis of what later came to be known as Russia and Latin America, which might also help us predict the future of Russia (or rather the post-Russian space).

Both of those cultural realms emerged by the migration of Europeans to those areas and their intermixing with the indigenous local populations. In the case of Latin America, the European stock came from Spain and Portugal, with some migration from other European countries (e.g., Italy, Germany) later. Those European settlers mingled with the native peoples of the Americas, producing the mixed-race societies that are now associated with the region.

Russia followed a parallel path. Initially, Eastern Slavs - ancestors of present-day Ukrainians - migrated to the northeast of Kyivan Rus’, settling in areas inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes. Later, that northeastern part came under Mongol domination, during which the Grand Duchy of Moscow (Muscovy) emerged as the forerunner of the future Russian state. Starting from the 16th century, Muscovy expanded further eastwards, eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean. This whole process led to incorporation of Finno-Ugric, Mongolic and Turkic elements into the population group that is known today as "Russians".

There’s an even more intriguing connection between Russians and Latin Americans. The indigenous peoples of the Americas, with whom the Iberians intermixed, are themselves descended from the ancient populations of Central and Northern Asia - the same ancestral pools that shaped the racial composition of present-day Russians. In this light, Russians and Latin Americans may share not only historical parallels, but also similar psychological traits rooted in their genetic ancestry. These psychological traits may in turn manifest themselves in certain aspects of their cultures.

One such shared pattern might be the softening - or even erasure - of firm boundaries between distinct states, even between opposites. Between truth and falsehood, yes, but more strikingly, between life and death. This could help explain why both Russian and certain Latin American cultures have developed rituals in which the dead are not merely remembered, but symbolically brought back into the present, as if they continue to exist alongside the living.

The Immortal Regiment in Russia and Dia de los Muertos in Mexico are cultural expressions of a psyche where existence is more fluid, less binary. Where ancestors are not sealed off in some otherworldly realm, but walk beside their descendants, held in memory and made visible in ritual. Both practices reflect a cultural logic in which the line between the here and the hereafter is a thin, shifting, and sometimes transparent veil. This shared sensibility may be the echo of a common ancestral psyche - one that still speaks persistently, through ritual and tradition.