Our attitude towards Europe and Europeans is still that of provincials towards the dwellers in a capital: we are servile and apologetic, take every difference for a defect, blush for our peculiarities and try to hide them, and confess our inferiority by imitation. The fact is that we are intimidated: we have never got over the sneers of Peter the Great and his coadjutors, or the superior airs of French tutors and Germans in our Civil Service. Western nations talk of our duplicity and cunning: they believe we want to deceive them, when we are only trying to make a creditable appearance and pass muster. A Russian will express quite different political views in talking to different persons, without any ulterior object, and merely from a wish to please: the bump of complaisance is highly developed in our skulls.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Our attitude towards Europe and Europeans is still that of provincials towards the dwellers in a capital: we are servile and apologetic, take every difference for a defect, blush for our peculiarities and try to hide them, and confess our inferiority by imitation. The fact is that we are intimidated: we have never got over the sneers of Peter the Great and his coadjutors, or the superior airs of French tutors and Germans in our Civil Service. Western nations talk of our duplicity and cunning: they believe we want to deceive them, when we are only trying to make a creditable appearance and pass muster. A Russian will express quite different political views in talking to different persons, without any ulterior object, and merely from a wish to please: the bump of complaisance is highly developed in our skulls." in the context of "Alexander Herzen, Childhood, Youth and Exile (first published 1923)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.