There is a well-known passage from a Lotman lecture on the psychological and social causes of boorishness, which applies equally to the modern hooligan and, as it turns out, to many a civil servant

There is a well-known passage from a Lotman lecture on the psychological and social causes of boorishness, which applies equally to the modern hooligan and, as it turns out, to many a civil servant. A simple formula explains the defiant, odious conduct of people who knowingly destroy what is beautiful. The fragment, it seems to me, fits our story of the renovation programme, and the behaviour of pen-pushers generally, remarkably well.

"If we speak of the psychological basis of boorishness, it is the psychology of the slave... It is the psychology of a person who has been humiliated, who therefore does not respect himself and seeks to compensate for this inner lack of self-respect by humiliating other people...
When humiliation is combined with certain qualities of character, chiefly... with a falling-out from the cultural tradition, the desire to humiliate another is joined by the desire to destroy...
Maxim Gorky repeatedly stressed that the root of hooliganism lies in boredom, and boredom is born of a lack of talent. The combination of a lack of talent with social neglect and humiliation gives rise to the "slum complex", a destructive complex, which bursts out in the form of boorishness.
Culture is a very fine thing, but it also constrains us all: do not do this, do not do that, it is shameful to do that... The further it goes, the more renunciations and constraints culture demands; it refines the feelings and turns a simple person into a cultured one. And so certain people, especially the barely cultured or those oppressed by their own greyness and social humiliation, long very much to throw all this off. Then there appears... an interpretation of freedom as complete freedom from human restraints. This is precisely what boorishness is..."