The classes and the masses

Looking at the four countries I know well, Russia, America, Britain and France, I appreciate the distinction drawn in German philosophy, one between culture and civilisation. Many people use these words interchangeably, but that, I think, is a mistake.

The two concepts may not even inhabit the same breast: we all know civilised individuals who aren’t cultured and cultured individuals who aren’t civilised. Broaden your focus to encompass a nation, and a similar dichotomy may well appear.

The culture of a nation comes across through the top five to 10 per cent of the population, if that. Our British friends call that group PLUs (People Like Us), well-educated, well-read highbrows, either professional or artistic.

The corresponding French term is les bobos (bourgeois bohemians). The Russians use their own Latin-based coinage intelligentsia. The Americans, ever bashful about social categorisations, may eschew the tag, but they are well aware of that group’s existence.

Now, as an exercise in homespun comparative ethnography, I find few and mostly trivial differences among these four elite groups. (It is indeed homespun for I’m in no position to conduct rigorous sociological studies. I have, however, accumulated heaps of anecdotal evidence over a long and peripatetic lifetime, and made certain general observations on that basis.)

They all place a slightly heavier emphasis on their own culture, but not to the exclusion of others. They are civil, multilingual and well-behaved. I’d say that the British and especially the French tend to have better table manners than the Americans and especially the Russians, but all in all it’s much of a muchness.

Typically, members of those elite groups feel more comfortable with their foreign counterparts than with the uncultured masses in their own country. Cultural commonality tends to trump national and ethnic identity.

By contrast, civilisation can never be elitist. While culture thrives on esoteric exclusivity, a civilisation can’t last unless it includes most members of society. Some may drive it, some may snooze in the back seat, but they must all be inside.

Civilisation is the opposite of militarisation, and not only semantically. It’s an unspoken compact of unifying mutual respect that enables different people to coexist without stepping on one another’s toes or settling their disputes outside the law. Culture is only one aspect of civilisation, one of many.

It’s the lower reaches of any society that provide a reliable indication of its civilisation. If the masses are civilised, one can confidently assume that so are the classes. And there the differences among the four countries stop being trivial and become instantly apparent.

Walk through the centres of provincial towns or villages in the downmarket regions of the four countries and watch how the locals interact with you and one another. Get a drink at a bar, buy something in a shop, ask for directions – above all, keep your ears open and your eyes peeled.

Russia will immediately stand out. Her uncouth masses treat one another – and will treat you – with suspicion rather than amity, rudeness rather than courtesy, selfishness rather than altruism, a scowl rather than a smile.

Even long before the arrival of endlessly corrupting and dehumanising bolshevism, foreign visitors already pointed out those little idiosyncrasies. Thus a Dutch ambassador remarked in the 18^th century that: “The Russians don’t need bread. They eat one another and that keeps them fed.”

You’ll notice how eagerly Russians in all walks of life speak ill of one another. Put four Russians together, and within a couple of days you’ll know who wouldn’t piss on whom if he was on fire. People push, shove and jostle their way through crowds, they jump queues and at the slightest provocation (or even without one) call one another oedipal names.

Casual street violence is commonplace, with universal drunkenness a contributing factor. These days one seldom has to step over drunks in the centres of Moscow or Petersburg, but a weekend stroll down the street in the provinces will still feel like an obstacle course.

No trust seems to bind people together – the recent memory of millions of friends and families denouncing their nearest and dearest to a murderous secret police has never been expunged. Nor will it be soon, what with those happy times descending on Russia again.

An innate code of behaviour has never reached the Russian masses – and even their classes are often wanting in that department.

The contrast with our area in France is startling. This is one of the poorest parts of the country, with most locals subsisting on social handouts. The bars fill up in the morning, and rivers of rouge never stop flowing throughout the day.

Bright youngsters up sticks and go somewhere else where jobs exist. Those who stay guzzle their rouge by day and copulate with their next of kin by night. Incest is rife, and the locals refer to it as le cinéma des pauvres (poor man’s cinema). That entertainment genre produces rather stunted development, and our Parisian friends who have second homes here describe the locals as les monstres.

And yet they are impeccably civilised. I’ve never been treated with anything other than politeness and respect, and the locals also treat one another with amiable, chatty joviality.

After dark, the streets of our village empty out. But I don’t feel tense when walking past a group of disreputable-looking youngsters, who’ve all had a glass or two. I know that all I’ll get from them will be a chorus of “bonsoir, monsieur”.

America isn’t far behind. When I lived in Texas, I wasn’t long out of Russia and could appreciate the contrast. I saw something I had never seen back there: the presumption of civilised kinship.

Teenagers opening doors for one another, old people treated with respect, polite forms of address – the people were utterly civil across the board. The same held true in the Midwest, and, while Los Angeles and especially New York had more rough edges, one could see that civility had trickled down to those hectic places as well, if in a thin stream.

Britain, I’m afraid, is getting to be closer to Russia (still a long way to go, but nevertheless) than to America and France. Walking through our town centres at night, especially upcountry, is an unpleasant, and occasionally dangerous, experience.

I remember once a friend of ours played a Friday concert in Chester (one of the most affluent British cities, by the way), after which we popped into an Indian restaurant for a late supper. When we came out, there wasn’t a single sober person anywhere to be seen.

Next to the restaurant door, a young man was slowly sliding down the wall. A trickle of vomit was dripping down his chin, which didn’t deter his equally drunk girlfriend from kissing him on the mouth. Other drunk girls were screaming: “Kevin, get a fooking taxi!”, but taxi drivers knew better than to stop for Kevin.

I suspect that the locals here in France drink as much, in average annual consumption, but I’ve never been treated to such spectacles anywhere in France. However, in Britain that show never closes.

Then again, though I’m not a stickler for ceremony, I don’t like it when strangers younger than my grandchildren call me by my first name. Yet polite forms of address have disappeared.

Not long ago, a young tradesman rang us up, and Penelope answered the phone. “May I speak with Mrs Boot?” “This is she.” “Oh good morning. What can I call you?” “You can call me Mrs Boot,” suggested Penelope. “No, what can I call you?” insisted the perplexed youngster. “Mrs Boot will be fine.” He genuinely couldn’t understand what she was on about.

In France, I’ve played tennis with the same group of people for years, but it took me much insistent effort to make them stop calling me monsieur Boot. Egalitarian familiarity hasn’t quite corrupted the French as much.

A rapid decline in civilisation is observable in the three Western countries, especially among the young. By and large, the older the group, the higher its level of civilisation. Parents and grandparents in the Anglophone countries are failing to pass it down the generations, and within another decade or two barbarism will reign in America as widely as in Britain.

I still hope the populations of the three countries close to my heart will never become as thoroughly brutalised as Russia is. Their civilisational capital is being frittered away, but they still aren’t quite bankrupt. Yet.