Now when I'm writing this letter, it's become clear that we've been bad pupils again. We can't change. We're lost. Never again will you invite us to your civilised world, yet let me tell me you something: we can live without it. Russia has once again found its own self and once again refuses to join the civilised world. Even the intellectual, on whom you placed your hopes, doesn't want to.

"They've stopped inviting me to come to the West, and I can't care less!" says the intellectual and decides to rejoin those in power, from whom he hadn't strayed all that much, anyway. Indeed, the authorities themselves appear to have become more progressive.

The intellectual understood this in good time. Not only does the West not need him any longer, but the mission that was confined to him by the Russian authorities has been completed and it's time to return to base. He's not good for anything else, after all.

As to free thought, Russian intellectuals are not known for it, and, before enough courage is plucked up for a new dissident movement, nothing earth-shattering will take place in Russia. A new rise of the strong-state policy and a new confrontation with Europe is in the works. The two-headed eagle, somewhat battered but still strong, will spread its wings over the meagre wastelands of Russia. After all, Russia is in a permanent state of war with the West and, in its course, sometimes identifies herself with the West for the sake of convenience. These are periods of rearmament. The westernisers are the supply detachment. The rebellious intellectuals are the production base. Europe thinks that Russia is sending suitors to it, yet in fact they are nothing more than drab engineers and supply agents on a mission. The state machine needs to replace its gearwheels, get new parts, order computers, etc., and it sends bustling loud-mouths wearing glasses and with a feeling of wounded pride on cultural missions. They're the ones who renew our defence complex. When we once again reach world standards in computerisation, conceptualism and ideological mobility, the agents return home. The supply mission is complete, and Russia takes off its bridal veil. That's all there's to it. This was precisely the way in which Peter the Great, our teacher of Europeanism, quietly adopted Western weapons in order to launch a more determined attack on the West. I've always been surprised, dearest friend, by your well-considered love for Peter the Great given your equally well-considered dislike for Lenin. You believe that Peter promised something that Lenin subsequently took away. This "something" never existed. I'm not inclined to look for contradictions in the actions of those who are in power.

You'll ask: what sort of period did you live through in that case? How can one explain the Russian desire to become a European country? Didn't you want to learn democracy? Were you pretending? After all, there were a lot of sincere faces and ardent words.

Ten liberal years, which regularly repeat themselves in Russian history, are the necessary period for a large body to turn over from one side to the other and get ready to fight. The civil servant class is simultaneously renewed, and privileges and lands are redistributed. Why didn't we want to learn? We did ? and we learned everything there was to learn. Why do you think that we didn't become a democratic country? On the contrary, we did.

Russia makes any given ideology serve state interests. Didn't it adapt Christianity to the idea of the Russian state? Didn't it adapt communism to it, too? Could we have expected anything different from what we see today? Russia adopted a new blueprint ? market democracy ? and made it serve its own needs. That's the way it's always been, and there's nothing new today. Just don't tell me that we're abandoning democratic principles! Not in the least. We're out to build the most democratic country in the world, and we'll build it without fail. Russia's building a democratic society on the same principles as it built a communist and a Christian society. Russia's already created the apotheoses of Christianity and communism, and there's no doubt that she'll become more democratic than all other democratic societies. Ten years from now, Russia will show the entire world what democracy is all about. Communism was built by a secret police agent, whereas democracy will be set up by KGB officers. Is that surprising in the least? Did you ? yes, you ? strive for anything different? No, you didn't, admit it. After all, you wanted to teach us to be realists and to reject utopias. And isn't this what reality is all about?

You've always called communism a utopia, and, so doing, you emphasised that we should build a realistic, down-to-earth and rational society, just like yours. This is just the sort of society that we've built. This is the most patent reality, and we've never had, nor will have, any other one.

Admit it, you made mistakes yourself. When you designated democracy as the goal, you naturally used this notion not in a real but in a symbolic sense (after all, you didn't have in mind the democracy that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima or sentenced Socrates to death but a different, more equitable one). We must therefore admit that both democracy and communism are symbols or signs and not things. Consequently, we may ask why one utopia is worse than another one. Isn't it due to the fact that different realities created them? Yet no one wanted to admit that. They all wanted to compare the communist reality and the democratic ideal. Didn't you want to do as much?

Any analysis that takes one of its objects in its factual state and the other in its ideal state will be inaccurate. (For example, if we were to use your reasoning, a democratic society killed Socrates, whom it sentenced to death through a fair voting procedure, whereas the communist system never killed anyone, for such a system never existed ? what existed was only a utopia.)

Today when for the nth time you see that there's nothing one can do to change our reality and that the Russian soil swallows up every utopia, you are prone to accuse us sluggards of being unreceptive to your semiotic system. All your hopes in us were vain. It was useless to tell us about the truth or to educate us, for a swine will always be a swine.

Nevertheless, allow me to say, dearest friend, that in my opinion you never told the truth to this swinish people (including me). That's nothing to be ashamed of: everyone else does the same thing. Soviet propaganda tried to do something similar itself, yet it couldn't possibly compete with you. When we read George Orwell's works, we had the feeling that we were finally seeing the real truth about our regime. Here's a portrait of Big Brother and a representation of us proles. Who else predicted so exactly what would happen to us (down to the smallest details)? This was the way in which we, and you, read Orwell ? as a definitive condemnation of communist Russia. We were only surprised by his knowledge of our life: where did he find the models for his depictions, which made our hair stand on end? We later understood that he took them from the Spanish Civil War. It was there that Eric Blair (who was later to write under the pseudonym of George Orwell) got acquainted with communists and got to see what the Trotskyist POUMs were all about. We were stunned by his perspicacity and by Hemingway's blindness. Yet the surprising thing is that a doubt crept into our minds: how could he study working-class neighbourhoods in hot and dusty Spain? They didn't exist there; there was nothing but small white houses. The point, dearest friend, is that 1984 is not a study of Soviet life. It's a book about the West and for the West. And the West refused on purpose to see it as such and redirected it (quite successfully it must be said) to Soviet Russia. As to the latter, it was foolish enough to read everything that came its way. Didn't you know that? Didn't it occur to you that the heart-breaking film with Richard Burton, dressed in the uniform of a Russian combine operator, would have been more authentic had it shown proles dressed in clothes from Woolworth? Indeed, there had never been any proles in Russia, and the life depicted in 1984 is wholly foreign to her. Where could the proles come from if the proletariat had never existed in Russia? After all, Orwell did not depict the drama of a peasant country, the expropriation of lands and whole villages dying from starvation. A Russian boy (for example, I), who hid under his pillow a novel that he had been allowed to borrow for a single night, did not know about the existence of South Bronx and Harlem and the slums of Southern London and thus could not suspect that it was these places, and not dingy communal flats or freezing barracks, that Orwell described. Russian modular housing (which could indeed remind one of scenes from the novel) appeared later and was built according to Western models. Orwell could write only about things that he knew at first hand: walls of brown English brick pierced by small windows, windowless rectangular buildings in working-class neighbourhoods, cheap multi-storey housing with cage-like flats for individual use, and the smell of cheap food that pervaded buildings ? bad soups prepared in huge kettles and old potatoes fried in cheap oil. He could write about the horror of plywood walls, low ceilings and cramped rooms; the horror of the lack of privacy, the constant exposure, the constant running, the constant debts and the constant dependence on work; and the horror of the conveyor belt of life, working without a break ? the conveyor belt which one wasn't able to set up in Russia yet which turned successfully in the West ? and continues to turn to this day. Orwell did not describe rubbish heaps or wastelands, i.e., Russian life. He described a well organised, mechanised hell, which never existed in Russia. There were labour camps in Russia, described by Shalamov; there was the hell of communal flats, described by Zoshchenko. However, telescreens never existed. Here any telescreen would have gone out of order in a week's time. The book's protagonist Winston Smith, who aspired to a bucolic, pre-civilised existence, couldn't have imagined in his worst dreams what it was like to find yourself in a Russian village, where not just telescreens but also roads were absent. Of course, informers and executioners existed, but not of the O'Brien type. The reason for this was that the famous Orwellian phenomenon of doublethink did not exist in Russia. Yes, there was lying and false slogans, yet doublethink ? when you're shown four fingers and you see five, when freedom is slavery and war is peace ? didn't exist. It didn't exist for the simple reason that you don't have to convince a Russian that although life's bad, it's also good in a way. This construction, which appears absurd to a European, is realistic in the eyes of a Russian. Where the doublethink described by Orwell tries to bring together two contradictory terms, a Russian sees only a single, coherent reality. In order to see why it's impossible to apply the notion of doublethink to Russia, one has to understand the cardinal difference between Russian and Western mentalities. Russians live for the future. The present for them is like a rehearsal, which they live any old how; they're constantly in wait for something, be it a respite from feudalism, revolution, peace, communism, the end of a five-year plan or civilisation. The future will never come, and so one can manipulate a present that's been stretched out to infinity. In Europe, a continent which is proud of its past, one can say that "he who controls the past controls the present." Yet what can one control among loam and salt marshes? Were Orwell really to write about Russia, he would have to change his slogan to read "he who controls the future controls the present." Russians view their squalid existence as something temporary. They'll see four fingers even if you show them all five, for they know that five fingers at once is just too good to be true. And now let me ask you: 1984 depicts the West and draws on Western ideology to depict the “Angsoc.” Why then was it necessary to pretend that the book was about Russia? After all, you suspected it, you knew it, didn't you? Then why did you transfer your fears to me?

Dearest friend, I write to you and am amazed by my daring and impudence. After all, your opinion about me and my country has always been of particular importance to me. We barbarians always wanted to know what we're like when seen from a distance and what people say about us in civilised countries. We studied our history through the works of Richard Pipes and Robert Conquest, and we believed that Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov had less to say about Russia than Arthur Koestler and George Orwell. We were taught from childhood on that Russian chronicles lie and that there exist no reliable eyewitness accounts except for those of Marquise de Custine and Herberstein, whom we believed to be sources of genuine knowledge. Yet would you be willing to study your country using Russian sources? Or, if nothing else, to take the Russian viewpoint into account? You liked the way Solzhenitsyn and Zinoviev cursed Soviet Russia, yet, as soon as they began to criticise the West (having lived there for twenty years ? more than Custine in Russia), you (and, following your example, we) called them insane. Tell me, how is it that we all agree that the charges of insanity against Chaadaev were absurd, yet every democrat considers Zinoviev to be mad? Is it because Chaadaev criticised only Russia, while Zinoviev criticised both Russia and the West? Why didn't you take a simple fact into account: when Zinoviev came out against the Soviet system, he became isolated in a cowardly country, yet, when he came out against the world order, he, once again, became isolated in a cowardly world? The world, just like Russia, doesn't like it when you analyse it. Do you really think that a new flag makes the plebs stop being the plebs?

Please tell me: why is something permitted to Marquise de Custine and not permitted to Solzhenitsyn and Zinoviev? In what way are they his inferiors? Do they have lesser talent, perspicacity or authority? Why didn't it bother you in the least that the leading combatants against the Russian regime ? Solzhenitsyn and Zinoviev ? didn't accept the West? Why didn't it make you prick up your ears?

Did Eurasia identify itself as being such? No, it was you who gave it its name. Orwell's division of the world into Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia is noteworthy: he, a humanist, made such a division, and not Russian nationalists. He, an Englishman, said so ? and Trubetskoy has nothing to do with it. The novel on which Russian intellectuals were reared is an account of the structure of the world written for Eurasian proles by a member of the Oceanian inner party. In Orwell's terms, the world is now witnessing the triumph of Oceania, the decline of Eurasia and the awakening of Eastasia. We cowardly Eurasian intellectuals thought that the novel that reached us from Oceania was a call to humaneness and reason. Yet, in the best tradition of O'Brien, its author mislead us. The main paradox of 1984 is the following. This terrifying book was written by a mortally frightened man, and nothing that is born of fear can teach love, compassion or freedom. This isn't possible by the very nature of things, for goodness and love originate in fearlessness.

I know that I'm being too severe, and I can imagine your reaction to this letter: I see in my mind's eye, dearest friend, your kindly and ironic smile. Why such vehemence? you will ask. It just serves to show a lack of maturity. Why set upon Orwell, settle scores with your youth, hide from your own fears? You're right, that's part of it, too. However, imagine the destroyed world of Winston Smith, the ruins of an empire, and him, standing amid the ashes. The nightmare's passed, and the sun's shining. And suddenly he sees a hand stretched out to him. Perhaps, it's the hand of a god. Yet, Smith thinks, it may be the hand of O'Brien ? of a different O'Brien, from Eastasia or Oceania this time.

This is exactly what happened. I used to think, dearest friend, that you were inviting me to renounce Eurasia in favour of Oceania. Yet that wasn't at all the case! In the spirit of O'Brien, you made me understand that one doesn't have to choose: I can serve both you and the Eurasian authorities at the same time. There's nothing paradoxical here. Eurasian proles are loyal to their leaders and, for this reason (and not despite it), they're loyal to you. The West is but another incarnation of the authorities. The West is the supreme authorities. Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania are arranged geographically in the order of increasing authority. It makes no difference to people (who are nothing but beings serving utilitarian ends) which authorities are at the origin of any given decree. And the authorities will always come to an understanding, for they know who's boss.

Let me illustrate my arguments by the fate of the writer Zinoviev, whom I mentioned above. He brought the seditious talk of half-drunken intellectuals (this is what made the free-thinking intelligentsia interesting) to its logical conclusion and said it for all to hear, without worrying about the consequences. The main reproach that people directed against him was: "Didn't we say the same thing ourselves in the caf?? What an upstart!" Intellectuals sought compromise, and appeasement became a code of ethics ? something like chains worn by ascetics: you just had to put up with it! Zinoviev's act resembled a sly manoeuvre: he defied his immediate superiors in order to please an even more powerful authority ? the West. It was therefore all the more painful for intellectuals to find out that Zinoviev began to criticise the West. Not only did he push himself forward (we're just as good!) and get established (who wouldn't want to?), he now dared to criticise the West! Just think, the West publishes his works, and he criticises the West! It was particularly offensive to hear from someone who got established in the West that Western life was not absolute bliss. The free-thinking intellectual couldn't (and can't) imagine that someone could aspire to anything else except Western civilisation, because the only career he knows is the usual ascension of the hierarchic ladder that ultimately leads to the rank of Academician. Western civilisation and its blessings are simply a superior and more desirable hierarchy. Yet how can one betray both hierarchies at once? How can one live without hierarchy and authorities? What a crazy idea! To our ears, the words "Europe" and "civilisation" sound just like "Kremlin" and "communist party." We serve you so well, for we've been trained to please. No one knows better than us that one must kiss the giving hand and not bite it. Zinoviev offends against the common sense of the liberal intelligentsia, which rejects the caressing hand of the West. The intellectual exclaims: we used to be friends! Yet he's completely mistaken. The Western form of consumption and distribution not the only thing that's worth fighting for. Are you not surprised that Zinoviev was and remains alone, whereas his critics were and remain part of a crowd?

Yes, you have triumphed, dearest friend, and you deserve devotion, yet are you sure that such servile devotion is what you wanted?

This is what I want to speak about today: the West's great victory and how I waited for this victory and how proud and how ashamed I'm of it. I can't avoid telling you all this, dearest friend, precisely because I dearly love you and, what's more, because no one except for you will ever understand me.

The day will come when great Troy will fall and, along with it, Priam and his people. This was decided ahead of time and long ago, and it was known even at the time of the Trojan victories. Already at the time when Count Tolstoy compared Russia to Troy and Napoleon to Agamemnon, it was clear that the Russian victory of 1812 was only the battle next to the ships. One day the Achaeans would reduce the Asian empire to ruins. This day has now come.

One day, a superpower which controlled half the world's territory and whose name signified might and menace fell on her side and began to die. Her death was not pretty. If you're so mighty and such a hero, grit your teeth and die silently. However, this superpower wasn't able to do that. It would have been best for her to turn aside and pass away without a moan or shout. Yet she rolled about in the loam and fell down in a fit of hysteria, dying, and it was disgusting to look at. Hoarse, agonising, and with her nose running, she was surrounded by the civilised world, which squeamishly watched her die. And it became nauseating to stand next to the civilised world and look at her writhing.

It's too easy to come out for a victorious civilisation and is, for that reason alone, unseemly. It's ugly to join the winning side, and it makes you feel ashamed to look at your clumsy motherland writhing. There's always something dubious about a victory, especially about such a territorially extensive victory, a victory of social systems and ideals and not arms. It's not that I'm unhappy that you won ? on the contrary, I predicted your triumph and longed for it with all my heart ? yet something casts a shadow over my happiness. Today, in the days of the Achaean victory celebration in which you propose to me, dearest friend, to join the triumphal procession behind the chariot of progress, I've got something to tell you: there's something dirty about your victory.

Although I'm at a loss where to begin, I'll start by saying something that you won't like immediately but which must be said, however. After all, one should start with what hurts the most. My reasoning can be entitled "emigration and betrayal." How dare you, you'll shout in my face, how dare you pose the question in that way! What a Stalinist thing to say! Yes, it doesn't sound all that great, I admit, yet what can I do if this is what I really think? After all, I'm not accusing anyone; I just want to understand. Like you, I'm against declarations. I'm only trying to clarify what I think. I grew up at a time when emigration to the West was considered desirable and honourable. I envied those who succeeded in shaking the dust of their fatherland off their feet. I considered people who were able to dissolve in a foreign culture and forget their native language to be heroes. Oh, how appealing were they who had been bold enough to escape! At one time, no title seemed more honourable and desirable to me than "inner emigrant." It was a flattering mark of distinction. Today, this expression seems meaningless to me. Today, when I've become more mature, I'd like to ask you frankly: do you like emigrants?

I for one don't. That is, I liked them a lot before, but now I don't. I don't like those who left in search of happiness; those who say, "the first five years were difficult, but then we assimilated"; those who read Nabokov and Dovlatov and say that that is the real Russian language; those who recount, laughing, how they used to stand in line for sausage; those who do a turn when they're invited over by well-to-do Europeans and tell stories about how their rights had been violated; and those who watch television news about Russia with a knowing look: you're telling me! Women in thick padded jackets, drunk men, grey fences, and dirt everywhere… It's a good thing we left! Nothing'll ever change, life won't ever improve! How perspicacious and far-sighted we were to escape! These are the people whom I don't like. I don't like them for having made the psychology of the enterprising dentist a principle of culture and (God help them!) a paradigm of freedom.

It doesn't matter, dearest friend, that they had the right to happiness and self-determination. What difference does it make? I can't help myself. I don't like them, and that's all there's to it. Yet the most interesting thing is that you don't like them, either. Despite the fact that you were the one who made them what they are today ? you trained them. Yet you don't like them all the same. And it's clear why. You don't like them for being undignified. In order to acquire dignity, an individual must be responsible for something and be ready to defend something. For example, his native country. However, you were the ones who taught us that patriotism is something vile. It's honourable to be a cosmopolitan ? more precisely, a special type of cosmopolitan who goes from East to West, and not vice-versa. You would hardly approve of an Englishman who wants to become an Indian or a Frenchman who runs away to Cairo. However, Europeans have something they can love: they can be cosmopolitans in their own countries. Yet what can you love, Russian bastard?

Nevertheless, I'm not against with this state of things. I accept it. Are you to blame? Did you make us become intellectual sycophants? Are you responsible for having made the love for one's native country petty and shameful? And, on the contrary, for having made the search for shelter and victuals in foreign lands honourable? "I beg for your soil and honeysuckle, France, like for pity and mercy" ? who among us freethinking intellectuals did not recite Mandelstam's verses? All that was given for the sake of pity and mercy became an object of pride, for the simple reason that there is nothing that we can be proud of in our own country (where could it ever come from?). We recited these verses as a protest against totalitarianism without noticing that they were, to put it mildly, somewhat cowardly. At the same time, the verses "a land where the air's like sweet juice you'll abandon and tear along, going about, yet a land along with which you froze you'll never forget in your life" seemed shameful, vulgarly patriotic and servile to us. Yet they're fine verses, and one needn't be ashamed of them. On the contrary, Mandelstam's verses are more or less disgraceful. Still, just as intellectuals were profoundly influenced by Gogol's Greatcoat in nineteenth-century Russia, we have all been deeply marked by Mandelstam's yearning for foreign grants.

I'm accusing you, dearest friend, of having encouraged this bastard mentality. Of having intentionally made "inner emigrants" of us, despite the fact that you knew very well that the position of an emigrant is unenviable and wretched. I'm accusing you of having made emigration, which in itself is a misfortune and an abnormality, a privilege. White-army officers, who had plenty of good reasons for fleeing Russia, pined away from boredom and went mad, while the Soviet liberal easily abandons everything ? you've only to beckon him ? and never thinks again about his native country, unless it's to reproach it for having limited his self-expression. You've educated (or contributed to the development of) a type of Russian intellectual who considers that individual privileges are a cultural and historical necessity and the goal of culture. You've created this new sort of Russian intellectual almost from nothing, from an emigrant bouillon, from the already formed Struve, Stepun, Berdyaev and Frank ? confused and weak individuals with mutilated lives, who deserve pity yet should not be taken as models. After having devoted their entire lives to settling their scores with Bolshevism, they tolerated Hitler, and, if one of them did have his rations cut back accidentally, it was not the result of having braved bullets, exploded bridges, printed leaflets or saved Jews. Such deeds could only have been performed by real people with real lives and not by anaemic or artificial ones. Yes, Fedotov did write a few lines about the European darkness; yes, Stepun did say a few words that could be interpreted as being anti-fascist. Yet that was all. At a time when your country's burning and people are dying by the millions, what self-restraint must you have in order to do nothing to share your fellow countrymen's fate! And if one considers the emigrants' work from the unbiased perspective of a schoolboy, it's impossible not to be struck by their flagrant error: less than fifteen(!) years of their European work, directed against Russia, had passed when it became clear that Europe was the source of horror and death and that Russia was the world's salvation.

It was a bit of a miscalculation on their part, to be sure. Only Berdyaev, if I'm not mistaken, said something about the Soviet army carrying the sword of Archangel Michael and exchanged his League of Nations passport for a Soviet one ? an act that was considered insane at the time. Were there many emigrants who joined the Resistance like Gazdanov? Mark my words: history made great demands on Russia and Russians; the best among them died, laying down their lives for others ? irrespective of the regime under which this took place, for courageous deeds smooth out differences of opinion. Courage is the most important thing both in politics and art. These people made up the generation that was Russia's pride and joy. This was the generation of Tvardovsky, Solzhenitsyn, Simonov, Platonov, Zabolotsky, Shostakovich, Zinoviev, etc. As you can see, this list includes both opponents and supporters of the regime. This was a generation of unruffled men in suits and hats, who had a sense of responsibility for their work and who did it well. Like the generation of Decembrists, which was composed of the heroes of the War of 1812, this generation was made up of people who had fought in World War II. Emigrants had no chance of joining them, for they had not been with them in battle. It's one thing to save your skin, and another to live a real life and to die for it. You'll ask: what about labour camps? Yes, the labour camps, too. A particularity of Russian history is that the tragedy of the war counterpoised the tragedy of labour camps and that the victims of the Gulag also became victims of World War II. I don't mean to say that the war justified the camps; on the contrary, it became a labour camp itself, just like the camps were a sort of war. The camps were the front, and inmates were front-line soldiers. The soldier who returned from the war recognised them as comrades-in-arms. In this way, those who fled Stalin and the camps by emigrating also deserted from the battlefield. When Vysotsky sings, "you are victims, too, and this makes you Russian: mine are missing in action and yours were unjustly imprisoned," he not only depicts a conversation between a Russian and a Jewish mother; he also describes how Russia was made. And it's been forming like that for a long time.

"What a barbarous thing to say!" you'll reply. "It's inadmissible to ignore completely individual destinies and liberty and to consider everything in tribal terms. A civilised individual chooses his own fate." However, you would surely go a lot further. I suppose you'd say something like this: emigrants gave the twentieth century its best artists, writers and scientists. The emigrants so glowingly depicted by Remarque and Chaplin and emigrants like Chagall, Einstein, Picasso and Mann are the pride and joy of the twentieth century. Moreover, the migration and movement of peoples have made the world what it is today and help save it from determinism. Migration and emigration ? i.e., the refusal to accept the conditions offered to you by nature, society and culture ? are the embodiment of freedom. You'll say that the generation of Decembrists who had fought against Napoleon remained obedient. What became of them? And where is the generation of veterans of World War II? Those who managed to avoid the labour camps went to the dogs. What does dignity have to do with it? Why seek to justify pits and mass graves? You'll say that I've practically managed to vindicate labour camps and war as means for moulding character. How else can one prevent people from fleeing this arid land? You're right. Our courageous stocky fellows could never have become Picassos or Chaplins. They only became drunkards with battered faces. And there was nothing they wanted in this world except for a glass of vodka. I must say that my heart doesn't go out to them. When I hear your calm voice and see your cathedrals and paintings, I'm filled with despair and hatred ? hatred of the wasteland that makes me try to account for ugliness and make excuses for all the mess we're in. You're absolutely right: after all, I've said nothing that contradicts the thesis that Russians are barbarians. Russia's a savage country, and today it's been defeated by civilised peoples. It serves her right, for she's deserved it, and I hope that it's for ever, for it's difficult to imagine anything uglier than triumphant Russia.

Yes, you're right: I longed for your victory and called for it many a time. Yet you'll understand, I hope, that I can't rejoice or be merry now when I see my brothers ? miserable drunkards and beggars ? lying amid the filth. Moreover, I'm like that myself: I've no right to make a distinction between them and myself. I know them so well only because I'm one of them. They didn't become Picassos or Chaplins, for too much vodka was poured down their throats, and they never considered emigrating, for they were too drunk to move. And yet there's something wrong about this way of looking at things. There's something majestic about the bearing of a drunkard and the movement of his hands that lift a glass like a banner.

They're boozers and fools, yet do you know why they drink? Vodka is a way to put a person to the test; it's like fighting a war in peacetime. You have to drink vodka standing shoulder to shoulder. When drinkers tell someone that he doesn't respect them, they mean that he's a deserter, that he's fleeing from danger and betraying those who remained behind and managed to look vodka straight in the eye, as it becomes a man, as it becomes a Russian. Vodka hits hard, and you have to take this blow without showing it and without eating. When we drink vodka, we issue a challenge to life, for vodka is the embodiment of the hardships of Russian life, vodka is Russia. You don't hide or elude the blow when you drink vodka, but you drink it at one go, at a single draught, bottoms up. People don't drink it for pleasure or to get drunk, but they drink it out of daring and in order to experience danger that can only be faced in the company of others. One gets drunk on vodka just like one gets drunk from battle. One drinks it not to forget his troubles but to pour out the hardships of everyday life into a glass and to see who will get the better of whom. Drunkards are soldiers who drink for their wives and mothers and who vomit and sleep in gateways, covering themselves with their jackets as if with greatcoats. They die young, with bad livers and atrophied brains, yet they would have died in any event from senseless work, poor food and boredom. They drink vodka just like they drink in the air of their native country. They don't try to elude it, as they wouldn't have eluded being sent to take a useless stronghold or serving a term in a labour camp. Just like fighting a losing battle, drinking vodka gives one a feeling of doom, and it fills one's heart with a bitter pride that connoisseurs of Bordeaux have never experienced. A Russian doesn't drink vodka for oblivion, for his consciousness is never so lucid as at the moment when vodka burns his innards. A European who brings a goblet of wine to his lips hails the gifts of the earth contained in it, while a Russian emptying a glass of vodka takes upon himself all the evil of nature and his native land and issues a challenge to the futility of being. These two ways of drinking are incompatible, and the personalities to which they give rise differ profoundly.

The Holy Grail's been lost, and along with it the Saviour's blood, so who are we to know what's more fitting to pour into a cup ? Bordeaux wine, similar to blood in colour, or vodka, which is as strong as blood? And who can say why we drink?

I admit that I've painted a picture of a quasi-bestial existence. War, labour camps and vodka are the only means of introducing a bit of meaning. So be it. It would have been a good thing for Winston Smith to try such a life, which lacks supervision yet is entirely meaningless. If you were to call such an existence barbaric, you'd be right. You must admit that it's impossible to defeat such a nation. A Russian doesn't know what defeat is all about, for he lives in a permanent state of defeat: he'll never be able to sink any lower than he already is. Russians may be compared with burdocks, which are the principal form of vegetation growing in wastelands. The wheels of dictatorship and even the Caterpillar treads of civilisation can roll over a burdock and tear off three-fourths of it, yet it'll still be good for something. You can apply it to scrapes or use it to wipe yourself, if you've had to answer a call of nature.

I don't known whether civilisation will bring this wasteland and these burdocks any benefits. I doubt it. Is it a good thing? Certainly not. Can it be changed? I don't think so. Believe me, I feel neither joy nor gloating in saying this. I only think that it's not the most important thing in life. The burdock has a different destination than the rose, yet it's no less significant.

Russia is an unfair country, and the lives of Russians are unfair. We deserve a life that's no worse than that of Europeans, yet our destiny has been a much more dismal and repellent one. That's vexing. I can say all of this very simply: we aren't any worse than others, and we've been shown what it's like to live better, so why isn't this better life attainable and why are we so miserable? Things wouldn't have been so bad if we didn't know what it's like to live well, yet we do. And that's all the more vexing.

Things can't be changed now, we can't start life anew as Europeans, so we'll have to carry our wretched ? and majestic ? burden to the end. I hope that we'll able to do so without tears and with as much dignity as possible. Over the years, I've stopped being embarrassed about admitting that I wouldn't want my native country to have a different biography, a different appearance or different heroes. Her shameful and pompous history is no worse than European history, just different. Her culture is different, and it's given rise to a different civilisation and completely different habits. However, that's of no importance, either. The main thing is that this land is just as suited as any other to performing one's duties and experiencing feelings, i.e., to do what one learns not from civilisation but simply by being a part of mankind. In wishing you farewell, I raise my glass and drink to your health.