This book has three primary subjects: Russia, America, and the Soviet Union. At first glance, the relationships comprising this triangle might appear to be asymmetrical in nature, since Russia will be examined, on the one hand, in relation to a civilization that is both geographically distant and culturally alien, while on the other hand it will be examined in relation to itself, to its former Soviet hypostasis. However, as Montaigne observed, "There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others."  This is a rule that can also be applied to the personality of a nation or a people.  Over the past few years Russia has become no less different from itself than from many other countries. Indeed the differences that formerly defined Russia's relationship to the United States--the oppositions between totalitarianism and democracy, market and planned economies, commerce and ideology--are now being used to define the parameters of the political struggle and confusion occurring within Russia. The quality of "Americanness," that is to say "the most alien, antagonistic, and antithetical," has become a more and more integral part of Russia's relationship to itself, embodying a growing level of self-estrangement, of distance from Russia's Soviet past.

It is for this reason that "America," as a sign of cultural alterity, of "difference" and "foreignness," appears between "Russia" and "The Soviet Union." And it is this America that Russia is trying to internalize during the current period of its cultural self-definition. I make no claim in this book to describe American civilization as such: what interests me are those signs of Americanness that can act as potential landmarks along the route of the Russian nation's self-knowledge and its potential entry into the circle of "other," "developed" and "serene" civilizations.

The book will thus explore some of the contrasts between: 1) the Russian and American idea; 2) the Russian and Soviet idea; and, arising from these explorations, 3) seek a reconciliation of Americanness with Russianness. Sometimes this discourse will take on the qualities of a somewhat cacophonous and amusing conversation between deaf men who can not understand and therefore talk past each other; at other times there will arise, from within the discord, an unexpected exchange of ideas, an involuntary and surprising exchange given the absence of direct dialogue.

Roughly and somewhat schematically speaking, we can say that Russia functions as the intermediate term in the intellectual opposition between the former Soviet Union and the United States, between totalitarianism and democracy. As it attempts to make the transition from one form to the other, Russia finds itself embedded in a bizarre semiotic system, which has emerged as a result of the superposing of totalitarian and democratic codes. For instance, the idea of the marketplace, which in principle rejects ideology as such, has become its own form of ideology; and the free press, breaking with the cheerful didacticism of the Soviet model, nevertheless can not tolerate the neutral, "Western" model of information dissemination and gives the news either a playfully sarcastic or gloomily apocalyptic coloring.

These transitional social structures, which have arisen in the process of the accelerated modernization of Russian society, have been aptly described by the culturologist Gregory Pomerants when he speaks of their "grotesque" nature.  If the new Russia is in the process of a complex and multi-phased mediation between the Soviet and American models, then the intermediate results of this process can only be termed grotesque: a democratically-thinking head affixed to a totalitarian body within which a heart burning with ideology still beats. Perhaps the most useful model to apply to contemporary Russian reality would be that of "serious parody," demonstrating the simultaneous absurdity and necessity of translating one set of structures (totalitarian) into the language of another (democratic).

Sometime in the future, as Russia is restructured, this grotesque quality will dissipate, making possible the application of a more rigid and uni-dimensional model for describing this new country. In the meantime, however, it would be unpardonable for today's researcher to miss the opportunity to address this often comical and confused mixture of signs; to neglect the grotesque as an appropriate method for describing an emergent eclectic culture: postcommunist but precapitalist.

Looking over these essays, written in the course of 20 years, I was unable to find a way of ordering or orienting them toward some final epiphany in which everything was clarified. On the contrary, what seemed important was not to smooth out but rather sharpen the zig-zags that marked the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period. Every month produced epochal changes, even in the meanings of words: for instance, in July 1991, the word "putsch" was still only associated with the histories of Germany and Latin America: by September 1991, that word was firmly stitched within the associative fabric of Russian history.

The book is divided thematically, into eight sections, and within each section the essays are accompanied by their date of composition. Logical and chronological order are often at odds here, revealing an inevitable discord between thought and action, or, to use solemnly Hegelian terms, between reason and history. History, as always, is unpredictable, sometimes incredible; but in this period it was scandalously so, its instability confounding all theoretical calculations and fracturing the linear sequence of the text.

                                                    Moscow - Atlanta

                                                    Transl. by Thomas Epstein

2. Blaise Pascal. Thoughts (#122).

3. Samosoznanie. Sb. st., New Yoprk, Khronika Press, 1976, s. 234.