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Difference between revisions of "Avos (Russia)"
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The concept of avos’ is a response to unpredictability and has deep roots in a cosmological vision of how the world works. Although advocates of modernity express the view that it must sooner or later disappear, in fact avos’ springs into view as soon as the economy experiences one of its abrupt upswings or downturns, and hence it is widely evident in 21st century Russia. | The concept of avos’ is a response to unpredictability and has deep roots in a cosmological vision of how the world works. Although advocates of modernity express the view that it must sooner or later disappear, in fact avos’ springs into view as soon as the economy experiences one of its abrupt upswings or downturns, and hence it is widely evident in 21st century Russia. | ||
It is worth briefly considering the history of the idea. There is an ageless proverb, ‘русский бог—авось, небось да как-нибудь’ (The Russian god is chance (avos’), probably, and yes, somehow) which has been extolled, lamented and satirised by Russian writers from Alexander Pushkin onwards. In the 19th century the notion that avos’ was somehow like a god for the common folk was used, for example, by the novelist Pavel Mel’nikov-Pechersky when he was contemplating the secrets of the economic success of the Old Believers (dissenters who broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century). He wrote that what separates the upstanding, prudent, hard-working Old Believers from the lazy peasants belonging to the mainstream Orthodox Church is that they have escaped from the fatalism of ‘the primordial law of the Russian person, ‘the Russian god—avos’. | It is worth briefly considering the history of the idea. There is an ageless proverb, ‘русский бог—авось, небось да как-нибудь’ (The Russian god is chance (avos’), probably, and yes, somehow) which has been extolled, lamented and satirised by Russian writers from Alexander Pushkin onwards. In the 19th century the notion that avos’ was somehow like a god for the common folk was used, for example, by the novelist Pavel Mel’nikov-Pechersky when he was contemplating the secrets of the economic success of the Old Believers (dissenters who broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century). He wrote that what separates the upstanding, prudent, hard-working Old Believers from the lazy peasants belonging to the mainstream Orthodox Church is that they have escaped from the fatalism of ‘the primordial law of the Russian person, ‘the Russian god—avos’.’ The Old Believers are virtually all active and efficient, he wrote, and therefore prosperous, whereas the Orthodox peasants, prey to avos’, are an inert, slack and reckless lot only too happy to ‘eat at others’ expense’ (Mel’nikov-Pechersky 1868)<ref>Mel’nikov-Pechersky, P. 1868. Otchet o sovremennom sostoyanii raskola v Nizhgorodskoi gubernii http://az.lib.ru/m/melxnikowpecherskij_p/text_0200.shtml</ref>. | ||
It might seem that the passivity of avos’ would imply an idea like Providence, a viewpoint sub specie aeternitatis, the viewpoint of God’s eye—except that in fact avos’ is devoid of Christian connotations and refers instead to wild, untamed happenstance. So, with avos’, it is not by the will of the Christian God that an opportunity comes to me. Rather, avos’ suggests an alternative chanciness—not as inexorable as Fate nor as deity-like as Fortuna, even if Russian writers refer to it sarcastically as a deity—which is just the way the unfathomable world seems to work. Latching on to avos’ implies unreflective immediacy. The great Russian dictionary of Vladimir Dal’ explains the etymology of avos’ as a shortening of ‘А вот сейчас’ (Oh, there it is, right now!) (Dal’ 1836-6). | It might seem that the passivity of avos’ would imply an idea like Providence, a viewpoint sub specie aeternitatis, the viewpoint of God’s eye—except that in fact avos’ is devoid of Christian connotations and refers instead to wild, untamed happenstance. So, with avos’, it is not by the will of the Christian God that an opportunity comes to me. Rather, avos’ suggests an alternative chanciness—not as inexorable as Fate nor as deity-like as Fortuna, even if Russian writers refer to it sarcastically as a deity—which is just the way the unfathomable world seems to work. Latching on to avos’ implies unreflective immediacy. The great Russian dictionary of Vladimir Dal’ explains the etymology of avos’ as a shortening of ‘А вот сейчас’ (Oh, there it is, right now!) (Dal’ 1836-6). | ||