ABSTRACT
Now that the research is complete, we are able to discard many of the preconceived ideas mentioned earlier and to provide well-argued reflections. In the first part of our work, our objective was to develop a better understanding of the Russian identity. Our analysis of the historical and geographical components of
that identity showed that the Russians had to conciliate sometimes antagonistic parameters to forge their identity. The latter had to embrace the diversity of the Russian population and come to terms with the successive legacies of foreign invasions, occupations and influences. Of course, this led to an unusual mix that, if looked at from the outside, can well appear as totally contradictory. This contradiction, however, is the key to understanding the Russian identity. As George F. Kennan pointed out:
Contradiction is . . . the essence of Russia. West and East, Pacific and Atlantic, Arctic and tropics, extreme cold and extreme heat, prolonged sloth, and sudden feats of energy, exaggerated cruelty and exaggerated kindness, ostentatious wealth and dismal squalor, violent xenophobia and uncontrollable yearning for contact with the foreign world, vast power and the most abject slavery, simultaneous love and hate for the same objects . . . The Russian does not reject these contradictions. He has learned to live with them, and in them. To him they are the spice of life.3
