Andrey Konchalovsky's thoughts on the role of religious idea in the life of Russia

The difference in time zones can be felt by being instantly transported by plane to another part of the world, because the time difference causes physical discomfort - biorhythm disorder, the person suffers from headaches, falls asleep in the wrong time, etc., and one needs some time to get used to a different hour of the day (in English it is called jetlag). So, in respect of the difference in levels of development of different nations I would use the term "historical jetlag".

Russia has not "milled the flour", of which one can bake a "pie of socialism" yet - this phrase of Russian Marxist Plekhanov is still vital for me, and I'll explain later why.

The title of this article may come as a great surprise to anyone who is not a student of late Soviet history. For many of my fellow countrymen (not to mention most foreigners), the name of Yury Andropov is firmly associated with the sinister abbreviation K-G-B. Yet what I write here is from the perspective of a witness (much of what I will say has also appeared in various source materials, particularly in Gorbachev's own memoirs).

Writing in The Origin and Goal of History (1949), the German philosopher Karl Jaspers said: "We cannot allow the horrors of the past to be consigned to oblivion. We have to keep them in the forefront of the public mind. We have seen that the events of the past were possible and this possibility has not gone away. Only knowledge can prevent it happening again. The danger is that people do not want to know: they try to forget it happened at all."

"A thousand of silly ones fall per one intelligent person,
...and this thousand muffles"
A.P. Chekhov (from recollections by Bunin)