I Was Always Optimistic. And

Who Has The Skill To Make A Narrow, Obstinate Human Being Aware Of Others' Far-off Grief And Joy, To Make Him Understand Dimensions And Delusions He Himself Has Never Lived Through? Propaganda, Coercion, And Scientific Proofs Are Powerless. But Happily, In Our World There Is A Way. It Is Art, And It Is Literature.

Why Can't You Understand? The Stars Fall Down Now And Then. The Gaps Have To Be Filled.

Religion Itself Cannot But Be Dynamic Which Is Why "return" Is An Incorrect Term. A Return To The Forms Of Religion Which Perhaps Existed A Couple Of Centuries Ago Is Absolutely Impossible. On The Contrary, In Order To Combat Modern Materialistic Mores, As Religion Must, To Fight Nihilism And Egotism, Religion Must Also Develop, Must Be Flexible In Its Forms, And It Must Have A Correlation With The Cultural Forms Of The Epoch.

On The Way From The Renaissance To Our Days We Have Enriched Our Experience, But We Have Lost The Concept Of A Supreme Complete Entity Which Used To Restrain Our Passions And Our Irresponsibility. We Have Placed Too Much Hope In Political And Social Reforms, Only To Find Out That We Were Being Deprived Of Our Most Precious Possession: Our Spiritual Life. In The East, It Is Destroyed By The Dealings And Machinations Of The Ruling Party. In The West, Commercial Interests Tend To Suffocate It. This Is The Real Crisis.

A Great Number Of Publications And Movies On The History Of The 20th Century - Albeit Of Uneven Quality - Are Evidence Of A Growing Demand. Quite Recently, The State-owned Tv Channel 'russia' Aired A Series Based On Varlam Shalamov's Works, Showing The Terrible, Cruel Truth About Stalin's Camps. It Was Not Watered Down.