When I was thinking about how to address myself to you, I opted for this epithet. This is the way in which, like an abandoned mistress writing to her beloved, a Russian should address a European. There was a time, not all that long ago, when I closely observed your traits, which so resemble mine but which bear the mark of distinction, clearness of purpose and predestination. I observed them with pious devotion and hoped to be worthy of our friendship. My origins frightened me, I was ashamed of my savage kin, I saw my own life as being absurd, and I greatly longed for that wholeness and clarity that are your mark. I thought that in a little while we would become equals; I, too, would become part of this great brotherhood of civilised people; and I, too, would carry the great charge of white men ? I'd only have to scrape the war paint off my cheeks and shake off the dust of the plains. Only a short time ago, it wouldn't have occurred to me to write this letter. The only thing on my mind was an oath of allegiance ? and I pronounced it. Dearest friend, I'm hopelessly in love with your European world. And I could think of no happiness greater than to visit Europe, see its cathedrals, drink its wine and breathe its air ? the air of culture, civilisation and freedom. This is how I ? or we, if one were to speak a bit more abstractly ? imagined the world to be structured: next to savage, lawless steppes, where a dreadful past leads to a dreadful future, there's a land that has been tilled and transformed by culture. This land is the very embodiment of culture: its inhabitants aren't sent to labour camps without a trial but are judged by jury; they aren't forced to insert quotations from Marx into dissertations, aren't crowded into low-quality flats, and don't drink bad port early in the mornings. The streets there are clean, and passers-by smile. When we met the rare people who had been on business there, who had managed to spend a half-dozen days behind the cordon, we devoured every word of their accounts and wondered why they had been so foolish as to return. Mandelstam had said it clearly in his article on Chaadaev: the first ones who had been sent for study in the West did not return, for there's no way back from being to non-being. He said it as simply as that! I thought that if I ever managed to get to Paris, I'd fall to the holy ground and cling to it so hard that no one could tear me away from it and bring me back to odious non-being, to the wasteland where the washing is hung out in the street and crows abound, to the tramline leading to the Railwaymen's Palace of Culture and to the intersection overgrown with burdocks and covered with the vomit of drunkards. I knew, however, that all of this ? civilisation, culture and self-expression ? just wasn't for me. I was sitting in my shabby flat, listening to my neighbour belching, the radio blaring and water gushing in the toilet, and I was reading Hemingway's The Movable Feast. I was reading it for the nth time and thinking that I would never see this magic world and that I was destined to die here, shut up in my flat. Who among us thought back then about the fact that, in addition to the West, there also exists the East? The world drew itself up and stretched out in a single direction: from non-being to being, from lawlessness to constitution, from the wasteland to the cathedral, and from barbarity to civilisation. And when you stretched out your hand, like God giving life to Adam on the vault of the Sistine Chapel, it was as if the entire world acquired meaning. It was as if Russia awoke from sleep ? in which it had dreamt of Europe. And it became clear why we were so backward, why we were still living in the feudal past. Bolsheviks and the Revolution, Stalin and Lenin (the successors of Genghis Khan), the damned Golden Horde, the inept collective paradise, the equality of inmates: yes, these are the reasons for our plight. We told ourselves and you that, after all, Russia in 1913 was practically a European country. Just look at the villas along Ostozhenka Street. They're the equals of those in Vienna and Paris. Just recall Peter the Great, Pushkin the European, and you'll see that hope's not lost entirely. We wandered among the defiled remains of art nouveau buildings just like among the ruins of Pompeii: what a culture had been swept away by the lava of barbarity! And we reread Chaadaev and Orwell in order to drink in contempt and fear. Yet we knew how to live without Orwell's help, too. The main thing was not to let you down, dearest friend, and not to make you feel ashamed of us. Thank you for giving us another chance; we'll try not to let your hand go this time, we'll hang on tighter. We've disappointed you a lot in recent times, as it is, and we've done a lot of vile things. As it is, we've shown our stupid, Asiatic countenance to the world. All we can do is to try not to spoil it all now. We became accustomed to dividing our history into periods of apprenticeship from the West and periods during which we returned to our Slavic roots, i.e., into periods of excellence and mediocrity. We became accustomed to viewing life as an opportunity for changing our nature ? an opportunity that was most likely a vain dream. We became accustomed to dividing society into advocates of the European path and those favouring Russian ways, progressives and nationalists, liberals and supporters of a strong government. We said that it was impossible to take an intermediate stance, for it was necessary to decide clearly whether we'd go left (i.e., in geographic terms, to the west) or right (i.e., to the east). Either trial by jury or the Gulag. Either a market economy or famine. I know what I'm speaking about, for I shared these views for much of my life.

The day when I could at last be among Parisian intellectuals, Berlin progressive artists, London social scientists, Harvard professors and Frankfurt bankers ? a day for which I waited all of my life ? came too late; I had already become Russian. I longed to become a member of elected nations; I did my best, yet the poison of Russia had penetrated too far in my body. I saw Berlin thinkers, who were always went around dressed in black; London social scientists with a joint in one hand and a cup of tea with milk in the other; and French intellectuals, who displayed compositions of carelessly piled-up books and sea shells in their flats. I went to their clubs and caf?s, I heard their summons to "share ideas," and how I, a savage, wanted at last to share ideas with them, who had been born free! Yet I wondered: share ideas? What kind of ideas? Democracy, constitution, progress? How to be even more radical and avant-garde? That's what you call ideas? No, really: that?

Soon I stopped sharing ideas. I'm writing this letter not only to you, but also to myself ? to that young man who identified civilisation with the good. I'm writing it in the name of your magnanimous friendship and my submissive love ? a love which led me to despise my own native country so that you would believe that I truly love yours, which never had any intention of becoming my country and couldn't have done so anyway. My love was blind, my dear friend, and ? admit it ? you encouraged it. It flattered you that I was willing to renounce my own mother and father in order to please you and to make you believe in my sincere commitment to democracy and European liberties. As to me, I tried to justify myself by repeating the words of Chaadaev that one can't love his fatherland with his eyes closed, his mouth shut and on his knees. So I told myself, and such were the relations that I aspired to have with my native country. However, it was all a lie.

It was a lie, for I've never loved my native country ? neither on my knees nor standing up, neither with closed nor with open eyes. I simply did not love it. All that I've ever loved in my life was you, your country, your culture and your civilisation. And for this very reason, I'm entitled to say today that I don't want to love you on my knees, with my eyes closed and my mouth shut. I want both of us ? both you and I ? to be worthy of the love of my childhood. It took me too much time to grow up. And I'm no longer sure today that the unreflecting feeling that I had as a child can be called love. After all, love is first and foremost responsibility, yet you wouldn't have let me be responsible for Europe, whereas I didn't wish myself to be responsible for Russia nor did I know how. For a long time, I used to think that happiness is democracy, civil rights and a place in Hyde Park where one can express himself; now I know that it's simply one woman. Forty years passed before I understood the meaning of simple things. I now want to learn to love for real ? to love not an abstraction, but reality ? and, if I succeed, I would perhaps be able at last to love not only your native country but also mine and, most importantly, to be worthy of that love for the sake of which I live and write.

Permit me to say certain things today which do not abolish the love of my childhood nor call it into question but which clarify the subject of our discussion, my faith, and your lessons.

I doubt today ? and I say this with sadness ? that the hopes which you inspired in me were justified in the least.

I find it difficult to believe that a country which was destined to become part of Europe couldn't do so for such a long time. If it was Russia's lot to join Europe, she would have certainly done so by now. Moreover, she clearly has a different purpose ? namely, to connect Europe and Asia. If we were to suppose for a moment that she became part of Europe, what place would then become the junction of Europe and Asia? How would they fit together?

Imagine that the world is a large body and that this body is structured in a certain way: the hands play one role, the head another, the kidneys or the heels yet another, etc. And all of a sudden the stomach, say, or the spinal cord (or any other organ whose role is to connect parts of the body) becomes self-important and decides that it wants to be the head. The problem is not just that it won't succeed but that there wouldn't be anything else which would perform the functions of the rebellious organ. What country, if not Russia, could become a place where the East trades with the West? What country, if not Russia, could become a marketplace where Asians trade their customs for European currency, where Europeans sell democracy for Asian oil and where Eastern power and Eastern indolence goes hand-in-hand with Western ambitions? Where could you find another market where Western faith was exchanged for Eastern splendour, and where faith was able to remember its origins?

We were given the role of the intestines or the spinal cord, and so let's treat our role with respect: the anatomy of the world may well not be to our liking, yet it has meaning and purpose. Please show understanding for our lot.

Of course, it's much nicer to be allotted a distinct function by nature. The role of a connecting link is less appealing. We are neither fully European nor fully Asian but a mixture, a mongrel. The lot of a mutant is precisely what you've often referred to as the "Russian extreme."

If we were to understand Russia as a country of extremes, an existential country (as one often does in the West), we would have to admit: she has no need of borderline situations. She's always on the border. In fact, she's the embodiment of the border between North and South, between West and East ? in other words, she's the embodiment of no-man's-land, i.e., a wasteland. All of us are representatives of natural (and not abstract) existentialism. Such a situation is habitual for Russia and her inhabitants. This is a special kind of existentialism ? Russian existentialism ? in which there is no catharsis, moment of truth, etc. No deus ex machina ever appears. This is no European drama, tragic yet vivid; this is Russian life, tragic and dreary. There is, a priori, no way out, no matter how things turn. This is neither good nor bad: it's just the way things are. What does it matter whether serfdom was abolished or not, whether a new constitution is adopted or not: the effect on the biography of an ordinary citizen is negligible. What is there to say then about the fate of an individual, about heroic acts? It's bad if General Kornilov takes St. Petersburg, and it's not good if he doesn't. Regardless of whether the right-wingers or the left-wingers come to power, be prepared for trouble. It matters little whether the Russians conquer Chechnya or not: no one will be better off. One of Camus's essays offers the life-asserting image of a blossoming almond tree: he writes that, during a very cold month of February, he recalls that in a certain valley (I've forgotten the name) the almond trees will soon blossom. It's Russia's specificity that even if the almond trees blossom, you must never forget that February is the normal state of things. Actions have no results in Russia. Yet does this depreciate the significance of actions? No, by no means: on the contrary, the significance of actions grows. One acts not out of consideration for utility but for didactic reasons. No activity could ever change the order of things. There's but one thing to go by in performing actions ? duty. The criterion by which one judges the acts of Russians is not utility but exclusively honour. In other words, the activity of Russians is not, by definition, of a material nature.

You will reply that it is, after all, from Europeans that we Russians learned the notion of honour itself. Did not conversations with Europeans give Russians a taste for independence and a culture of individual self-awareness? I agree with everything you've got say, yet, when discussing the notion of honour, I can't avoid touching on the theme of the "independent individual in Russia": is such a thing possible in the European sense of the word? I must say, dearest friend, that this expression, which occurs so frequently in our conversations, has begun to seem paradoxical to me over the years.

The question "is the European independent individual possible in Russia?" reminds me of the sophism "one Greek says that all Greeks lie." After all, if he were independent, he wouldn't be European, and, if he were European, he'd necessarily be dependent ? on the criterion of assessment, if nothing else.

I'm very much in favour of the independent individual, yet I'd like to ask: why must he necessarily be linked to Europe? For example, Avicenna and Confucius were independent individuals yet not Europeans. The problem lies elsewhere: when one tries to adapt talented Russian individuals to Europe, it becomes clear that they are (a) of no use to anyone there and (b) inconvenient to deal with. The moderate humanism which is so widespread in the West ("humanism with a human face") changes its appearance in Russia and acquires threatening prophetic traits. The so-called "great Russian literature" was perceived on a different scale by Europeans.

Pushkin is usually called the first Russian European. However, it's much more important to note that it was a European who killed Pushkin. The prosaic killing of the leading Russian poet by a French tourist at a duel (without trickery and by European rules) reveals the essence of Europe's attitude towards Russia and of the European individual's attitude towards the Russian individual. How many of Pushkin's duels ended with his opponents firing into space, for they found it impossible to shoot at their country's pride and joy. A European, however, couldn't care less about this, and he was right in his own ? European ? way. You've challenged me to a duel and now be kind enough to fight! Everyone's equal, we're all individuals, and all of us are taking risks! Europe did away with Russia's first poet ? not with a poet, of course, but with an individual. After all, he wanted to be an independent individual, didn't he? Russians adopted a European pastime ? the duel ? that has its own European rules: everyone's equal in it. An accepted challenge makes people equal. And, at the same time, they pretend to use a different measure: "he was unable to understand in that bloody moment on whom he was raising his hand." No, sir, that's not the way people do it in Europe.

In my opinion, it's noteworthy that Pushkin died as a result of a duel and that he was shot by a Frenchman in accordance with European duelling rules. He didn't die as a soldier nor in a penal colony nor in prison nor in a labour camp. These forms of death have always been a sort of recognition in Russia: torturing people for creative work is a national custom, an internal affair ? we'll kill 'em and we'll learn their poetry by heart. However, Pushkin didn't die for his poetry, and his death wasn't a form of recognition. Dant?s won't ever be forgiven for this. For this reason, people keep trying to show that Pushkin died a Russian death, not a European one: they say that it was the Tsar who sent Dantes, or that Dant?s wore armour under his clothing, or that it was society which drove Pushkin to his death, etc. When Russians come up against European customs or laws, they try to adapt them to their own way of doing things and translate them into their own language. This is very unlike Pushkin, who always did the opposite. What's particularly regrettable about Pushkin's death is that the final chapter of the life of a poet who had assiduously rewritten Russian history in a European manner turned out itself to be written in a foreign alphabet.

You'll say that I'm exaggerating. Is it fair, after all, to make a symbol out of a chance occurrence? You'll say: didn't I try to give you the basics of knowledge and education? Didn't I take a real interest in your achievements? Didn't I sympathise with you in your grief?

What can I say today, dearest friend? Will you understand me if I replied "no"?

Gone are the days when Europeans came to Russia for the thrill of conversations about the essence of life. They came for intellectual safaris and were ready to sleep on dirty linen just to meet well-known philosophers, writers who had fallen out of favour with the regime and underground artists or to drink vodka with rebellious bohemians. Now there's no more demand for such safaris, for Russian philosophers, writers and artists have come to Europe themselves, believing that people are still interested in them. This is equivalent (in terms of good sense) to a hippopotamus from Africa coming to a drawing-room on Park Lane and saying: why should you travel so far to photograph me? Look, I've come to visit you myself! Russian philosophers and poets looked good in tiny kitchens in low-class flats; in Paris, they made an entirely different impression. Paris is a place for serious matters, real life, business, whereas safaris are good during the holidays. Russian intellectuals couldn't grasp this. They couldn't understand why people didn't want to have anything to do with them any more and stopped inviting them over.

People stopped inviting them over for a simple reason: Russian intellectuals evoked interest only for having publicly denounced their own culture, having publicly repented of it and having described its elemental and quasi-pagan nature. As you well know, dearest friend, all cultures without exception are subject to elemental forces, and paganism is no less characteristic of your culture than ours. So tell me, why do you take particular delight in Russian complaints? Europeans like it when Russians repent, when they tell the whole world how worthless they are and come to learn about democracy. Europeans were probably spoiled by the Russian emigrant philosophers of the twenties, who criticised Bolshevism in Russia yet managed to tolerate European fascist regimes. The stereotype of the Russian bellicose philosopher and intellectual ? la Berdyaev, Bunin, Denikin or Krasnov is both familiar and convenient. Contacts with Russian intellectuals should give one a pleasant and soothing feeling: "how can they live there after all! How terrible! It's a good thing we've returned home! Yet why take this Russian mess along with us?" A place for everything and everything in its place. Russia is good and useful when she performs her role of a not-quite-Europe, an almost-civilisation and a tortuous history, which only serve to highlight the rightness and righteousness of Europeans.

You ask: won't you ever become civilised people and agreeable neighbours? Won't you ever become assiduous and patient students and adopt our ways and customs so that your children will know them from birth? No, we never will. In fact, we'll only become worse.

Let's consider the hero of our time and the man of your dreams, who lives for civilisation, who doesn't wish to be a part of the masses and to merge with the wasteland: let's consider the Russian who's keeping an appointment. How can one characterise the proud individual, who believes in progress and haughtily looks over the heads of his fellow tribesmen towards the horizon, beyond the heaps of refuse? As a Slav with a European face-lift. That's the type who's keeping an appointment with civilisation. Homo refectus, he's tidied himself up, put on make-up, learned to use a knife and fork and got himself views on things. He redid himself just like his flat: no one can replace the foundations, straighten out the walls, or move the building to Paris. Yet it's possible to install a Jacuzzi. What does it matter if the roof leaks and that homeless people sleep in the basement? What difference does it make if the building is about to be torn down? The only thing that matters is that you've installed sound-proof windows and suspended ceilings. Recently, someone in my neighbourhood installed a pool on the third floor of a building, yet, being an idealist, he didn't account for the fact that the floors were rotten. He hardly had the time to enjoy Mediterranean comfort in the midst of Moscow's cold and damp winter when the wooden beams beneath him broke and he plunged downwards along with thirty tons of filtered water. As the bubbling torrents carried deformed corpses out of the main entrance, we his neighbours thought about the fate of the European individual in the savage Russian steppes. This is precisely the way, we thought, that Peter the Great tried to give Russia a European face-lift. Was it, we wondered, something good or promising for the future? One of the neighbours said that the deceased (the owner of the pool, not Peter the Great) should have changed the floors in the building before installing the pool. Many agreed. Yet, as someone objected, he was in a hurry: he wanted to have time to enjoy the pool while he was still alive. And there was a lot of truth in that, too. Was the unfortunate man to blame for having trusted a sly realtor who told him that the ceilings in the building were made of reinforced concrete and not of rotten wood? And for having refused to put off his dream? We thought about these and other matters, which brought to mind the classic rhetoric of times past ("a feat of expectation or a feat of impatience?"). Some recalled the senseless self-sacrifice of the Decembrists, while others thought about Marxism, which never took root on Russian soil. Yet others blamed the idea of European-style rebuilding as such. If you don't like living in a flat, they said, why don't you move somewhere else or construct yourself another building next door? It doesn't make sense, after all, to polish the floors and install a pool when the basement's full of rats and filth. It was hard not to agree with them. Yet our unwillingness to give historical and cultural determinism the final say did not allow us to accept their arguments entirely. True, one should start by laying the foundations and hooking up the utilities, i.e., with education and the study of history, yet there's never enough time for it all: you can spend your entire life doing it. By contrast, it doesn't take any time at all to acquire views and preferences. Yet these views are just as suited to Russian conditions, Russian prospects and possibilities and, above all, the responsibilities imposed by Russian life as new wallpaper to crooked walls.

I'm sure that you know me well enough not to think that I revel in Russian life and its singular ways. Not at all ? on the contrary. I'm not an adherent of the Eurasian idea; I only know that it exists, and I'm afraid that it may turn out to be more persistent than other ideas in this vainglorious land. That will be a result of your refusal, my friend, to take into account the nature of our country. I only want to say that the dichotomy that you proposed in a conversation that we had a long time ago has nothing to do with Russian reality, with the phenomenology of the wasteland. All these oppositions (last chance/death, slavophile/westerniser, barbarity/civilisation, progress/backwardness) and all this Prussian militaristic way of thinking not only does not strengthen our minds but makes us obtuse. Let me try to explain.

Russia hasn't got a last chance and never will. Every day, Russia finds herself in a position in which she's given an ultimate opportunity to change herself ("things can't go any further!"), and, if this opportunity isn't seized, something terrible would surely happen. Unless the population stops drinking, it'll soon become degenerate. Unless we stop polluting the environment, we'll suffocate and poison ourselves. If we don't permit the private ownership of land, the economy will never improve. If the Western European model of democracy doesn't triumph now, we're hopelessly lost. Russia keeps getting a final, ultimate warning. Yet she does nothing. Russians, too, are frightened: this is our last chance! And, having said this, they go to bed. This happens for two reasons, one of which is physiological and the other philological in nature. First of all, bustle and haste are not Russian traits. Russians are stocky and inclined to corpulence; they aren't made for racing. Moreover, they understand instinctively that there's nothing more permanent than the threat that tomorrow will be judgement day. Why hurry?

The second reason is that the famous ma?ana ("tomorrow!") of Latin-Americans allows them to observe the siesta eternally. Russians have their permanent "last chance," which they never make use of. Do something at once, or all's lost! Vote, or it'll be too late! When we make such appeals, we contradict ourselves. If we really had to do something at once in order not to let a chance go, any debate, appeal or discussion would only make us waste time and miss our chance. When we say a motto, we place its intended action into the past, and this is what saves us: along with the lost chance, we go back to the past, where life's not all that bad after all. "What I'm saying is that I've still got a last chance while I'm speaking, but, now when I've finished, the chance's been lost": there's nothing more powerful than this spell with which Russians try to stop time and looming hardships. Another last chance will come, and we'll treat it in exactly the same way. Russians are just as much hostages of time as they are of space and language. We're always living in the past and therefore aren't particularly afraid of the future. Of course, tomorrow's our last day, yet tomorrow will never come.

Now let me say something about slavophiles and westernisers, i.e., about those whose conflict is taken to be a measure of Russian history.

The polemic between slavophiles and westernisers is considered important to this very day, as if the victory of one of these parties over the other would make the situation change dramatically, and Russia would either become part and parcel of Europe or, on the contrary, would flourish on the wastelands of Asia. Some consider Russia to be just a luckless and backward part of Europe. If one gives Russia a chance, they say, she would run after Europe and eventually catch up with it. This point of view surprises me. Russia will never catch up with the West. It won't even try, for it's travelling down a completely different path and in the opposite direction. What a strange fancy to imagine that two fully-formed organisms, that are well known to everyone, resemble each other and will someday reunite! This would be dishonest with regard to the West, which has long become what it wanted to be. And this would be particularly dishonest with regard to Russia, who is constantly being told that she still hasn't realised her potential, although she'll certainly do so in the future ? if she tries, of course. Yet, both Russia and the West have long fulfilled themselves. So have Russians and Westerners, whose destinies are naturally very different. Then why do people continue with such enthusiasm to pass the Russian condition for a not-fully-realised European one? Why address the noble appeal to "become like Europeans" to a people which has always lived very differently from the latter? A man without arms couldn't play the violin even if he learned to read music.

By force of circumstance, the position of a westerniser has become morally untenable in Russia today. Of course, this is the most understandable and excusable of all Russian delusions, and, of course, wonderful people and individuals famous for their righteousness shared it, yet how much evil has come of it! This is due to the fact that there's no way out of Russia, and there never will be. One can try to find it for a selected few, yet wouldn't this be the same thing as feudalism? It is due to the fact that all lies are useful to someone. And it's no secret that in this case they serve those who are in power. Westernism furthers the consolidation of feudalism in this unfertile land and nothing more. To Europeanize is not Russia's goal but a means (a form of government), and the westerniser is nothing but a Mongol intendant. No one isolated Russia so well from the West as westernisers, for the idea of Europeanization was used as a justification for coercing the Asiatic populace. It suffices to cite the example of Peter the Great, although westernism is, on the whole, not an ideology but a phenomenon of everyday life.

I admit that I don't find westernism particularly pleasant. However, it would also be wrong to call me a slavophile or an adherent of the Eurasian idea. I can see no advantages in Russian life ? only misfortunes. Russia hasn't got wonderful prospects; in fact, what it's got isn't prospects but a perspective ? a reverse perspective, to be precise. This reverse, unnatural perspective is the world in which people and things live here. And it would be strange for somebody who lives in a reverse perspective to reject his destiny. If it falls to someone's lot to play the role of a Russian in the scheme of things and that someone's you or your brother, you've got no other choice than to play it with dignity. This is a foul place, and the air's foul here, yet is that really so important, dearest friend?

The history of the transformation of Russia into a European country brings to mind the well-known parable about the wolf, the goat and the cabbage. How can a peasant take a wolf, a goat and a cabbage across a river if only two of them fit into his boat at a time and if he can't leave the wolf and the goat (or the goat and the cabbage) alone on the bank? If we were to consider the cabbage as representing freedom, then the wolf represents a slavophile, the goat a westerniser and the peasant embodies the whole nation. There you have, dearest friend, a practical exercise for a course on Russian history. Can they all fit into one boat? They're sailing towards the European shore, and the main goal is to keep the cabbage intact. Should one perhaps take the cabbage and the goat and leave behind the peasant and the wolf? You'll get a headache thinking about it. At the same time, a simple idea suggests itself: those in power have known the answer for a long time, for they've taken a look at the answers in the back of the textbook. Why sail at all? Why sail to Europe? Who will benefit? Europe? No, she wants to have nothing to do with it. Russia? No, she can't. Particularly deserving goats? They're not worth the trouble.

Let me make another comparison.

The slavophile, the westerniser and the Eurasionist are like the characters of a Russian commedia dell'arte who're wearing masks resembling those of Pulcinella, Tartaglia and Truffaldino. They have characteristic manners of speaking, grimaces and rhetoric, yet you shouldn't try to find living beings behind the masks: they repeat their roles from century to century, play similar scenes, call each other names in the press and take sedatives. "We have to become part of Western civilisation!" shouts Truffaldino. "Russia will save the world!" screams Pulcinello. "Mongols are our brothers!" cries Tartaglia. They believe that their debate is real and that the fate of enormous cold expanses will be decided here on the stage; reciting lines that they know by heart, Truffaldino, Pulcinello and Tartaglia continue to scream at each other. This comedy enlivens to a certain degree the Russian tedium yet has little to do with real life. There is but one reality: the authorities. The comedians toady to them in any way they can. Today, it seems that the authorities are favouring Truffaldino. They call for an encore and invite him into the president's box. Truffaldino is delighted and goes around saying that times have changed and Russia wants to become a civilised country. The authorities, too, have seen the need for progress. Yet that's not the case. The authorities don't, by definition, favour anything or anyone. The authorities are the authorities ? it's as simple as that. They are a majestic and unalterable phenomenon just like climate and geography. They're eternal, and nothing has any significance in comparison with them, including Truffaldino's and Tartaglia's lines. It doesn't matter in the least who was invited into the president's box today and who was encored; tomorrow, he'll be sent backstage. He'll go around downcast and perplexed, he'll get drunk, and he'll lament that the slavophiles have triumphed. However, comedians never triumph, and the play's been on every night for centuries; on stage the masks jerk and scream, while the authorities snooze in their box, scratch their stomachs and count their money.

There are no right-wingers or left-wingers in Russia: it's all a lie. You know, dearest friend, I've come to think recently that you're the one who's responsible for it. There are no right-wingers or left-wingers in Russia, for only superiors and inferiors exist here. All other constructions and decorations are designed to conceal the only structure that really applies. "What purpose can these mirages serve?" you'll ask, rejecting that you're their author. They have a very simple purpose: to give Russian history the direction which it lacks. You want to trace with a free hand a line of development for this place and to put up signs along the path. It's of no use. The way from Scandinavia to Byzantium is but a name for a closed curve. It circumscribes a closed territory, an enclosed wasteland. It's meaningless to look into the distance and predict the future; nothing but a reverse perspective exists here.

A friend of mine, a historian, once told me that the most democratic thing Russia can do is to admit that it's an Asiatic country. And why not? This assertion naturally won't make Russia become Asia: Russia will still be itself. Yet how noble would such a step be with respect to Europe and how necessary with regard to the Eurasian chimera!

What can you expect from us and what can we expect from ourselves? I believe, dearest friend, that the ontological hopelessness of our history creates the conditions for the development of a practical, everyday stance, which I'll describe below. I repeat that I don't have anything mystical in mind nor am I referring to anything like a separate way (such a way doesn't exist). I'm only speaking about a certain type of behaviour in everyday life, nothing more. Yet also nothing less. I'm speaking about a code of behaviour which is essential for life in our wasteland.

Of course, this code is linked to the notion of "dignity." However, I've come to dislike this word over the years. When we refer to "human dignity," we want to emphasise that we deserve to be no worse off than others. I prefer the hackneyed term "duty," even if it does have something military about it. Russia is a military country, like it or not. Life far removed from active duty differs little from army life. If it fell to your lot to fight in a certain place, you've got to fight there, and, if it's your lot to defend a certain flank, you've got to defend it. A fine soldier who would rush about, looking for a place which would fully live up to his expectations! He'd like someone to find a redoubt for him that's no worse than that of his neighbours and that would be worthy of his inherent merits. Russians find themselves in a certain position, which, just like the position of Europeans, is fairly well defined and has its own specifics. Russia's place is where she was meant to stand; this would not only benefit her but the whole world. A soldier who fights well on his redoubt benefits not only himself but the whole front. Russia is a frontier zone; it's a no man's land that separates not only Europeans and Tatars but also two different histories. For example, socialist Russia is a frontier zone between the capitalist world and communist utopia. When it became a battleground for these two worlds, Russia did nothing more than perform its usual duty. Chaadaev once said that we exist only as a lesson to other nations, so that they don't repeat the same mistakes or step into the same crap. I don't agree. I believe that the October Revolution is not a lesson to the world showing it what it should or should not do but, on the contrary, is Russia's discharge of her frontier duty, the fulfilment of her destination. This is something to be proud of, not something to laugh at. In the general battle, of which we are participants by right of birth, we are at our post, in these very ranks, in this very army, and it'd be a sin to desert. And if someone were to ask, "what kind of war is this?" "what duty must we perform?" and "what enemy are we fighting?" I'd answer: non-being and death. The fulfilment of human duty is bound up precisely, and exclusively, with these notions. It matters little where one fulfils it, yet it's better to do so in the place allotted to you by destiny.

The purpose of Russian history is not to demonstrate the superiority of Western history. The purpose of Russian history is not to teach the world a lesson. Russian history exists only because there are people whose fates, affections and lives are not part of Western civilisation. Yet they're just as much people for all that.