In stories from a hat, I tried to drastically extend the archetypes and other terms I use to make a wider range of possible combinations. Some of these might need some explanation, so here’s one of the new archetypes. And of course, my apologies to Lena. You’re nothing like The Russian. Really.
The Russian as I see him in this archetype is a rough and ready, somewhat stoic individual with a really harsh sense of justice and a ruthlessness when it comes to accomplishing their goals. They are brutal when necessary, but high livers and drinkers otherwise. The expenditure of human life, be it adversary or ally is secondary to the goal of victory. Killing millions of countrymen on a suspicion of dissent is an option always on the table. The notion of “good enough” is of a much lower standard than elsewhere. The early Russian space program was a great example of this, there are tales of how safety was too impractical a consideration when it came to winning the race. I know this is something of a stereotype, but they earn the reputation. I collect examples of The Russian as I come across them in news, and personal contacts, just to keep the stories in mind, and I ran across one this week, but that may not be the best illustration. First, the Fermi Lab Russian Story.
Some of my friends are physicists at Fermi Lab. I’m sitting with a couple here at dinner as I write this. Occasionally they have some extra beam running around after an experiment, and so they’ll put it to good use by having an on-call physicist with ready-to go experiments. Once, when they had such a situation, they called in a particular Russian physicist. He ran in, set up his experiment and ran it. They still had more beam. So he set up another experiment. And then they still had more beam. This continued late into the night and then morning, and finally one of the controllers asked if he needed rest, they were all tired. He responded with “I will sleep in the grave.” Inherent in this statement is two aspects of the Russian, the strength to carry through no matter what, and also a complete lack of interest in what others may be feeling.
A second example deals with Russian justice. A tanker was captured off the coast of Somalia, so a Russian naval vessel went in to free it from its situation. The Russians overtook the pirates, captured them, and sent the ship along the way. A minor international incident played out as they debated what could be done with them legally. Eventually they decided that they had no grounds to try them in Russia, and there would be no trail in Somalia with its government in failure, so they released them back into their own boat. Of course, they were much further out to sea than they had started, and the Russians had confiscated their weapons and navigation equipment. Several miles away, and even more miles from shore, their ship disappeared from radar. Problem solved.
And the one I heard this week was about how they determined if cosmonauts were compatible enough to last a long space journey together. They would send them on a road trip through Siberia, and if they didn’t kill each other by the time they got back, they could handle a long space trip.
Tales of early Russian science experiments are rife with a detached cruelty, a “you’re a test subject for Mother Russia” kind of mentality, like the human-ape hybrid experiments of conspiracy theory legends. Look that one up, if you don’t believe me. Often if you dig past the legends into truth, you’ll find less cruelty than the story promises, but that you aren’t surprised by the allegations is a testament to how powerful an archetype this is.
This is a stereotype, played with in many movies and books. The Russian is a favorite of Cyberpunk, and I can think of a couple examples from Neal Stephenson and William Gibson. It is up to the writer to create a character with these traits, and they hardly need to be Russian to have these traits. The challenge is to create the depth of character to make this one dimensional description a real person.
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