Whether Russia has a special way or not, it's true that of all the countries, Russia has always been the one hunting philosophers and thinkers all over the world with this strange question: what is wrong with Russia, what makes it the way it is, what is its problem, its special way, its symbolism — whatever you want to call it — what is it trying to say to the world? Philosophers struggle with the answer. Famous russian thinker, Alexander Pyatigorsky, once said⁸:

(quietly, introspectively)
“Russia’s main problem... isn’t thievery, not corruption, not stupidity, not malice…”
(mumbling now, barely audible)
“…not rudeness, not vanity, not ignorance…”
(suddenly explodes in a shout)
“Russia’s main problem is — FUCKING BULLSHIT! JUST SOME FUCKING BULLSHIT!”

Maybe its mission is to manifest, using Dostoevsky's words, how large a human soul is and how far it is possible to go into extremes? ("The human soul is wide — I would narrow it a bit," he said.) This metaphor of the inhuman scale of this land, of its vastness, keeps coming up whenever anyone tries to comprehend it. May be it's the symbol of a Great Abyss devouring its own children, an image Jacob Böhme⁹ saw at the root of all creation. A Tarkovskian "zone" where humanness is curved and bent, governed by some irrational will that stirs in this formless, dark and infinite abyss that lies before any form of self-awareness. This "zone" engenders violence, violence that manifests itself almost innocently — violence that is difficult to condemn, so unaware it is of itself.

It is this force that pushes the guard Nikita in Chekhov's Ward No. 6¹⁰ to beat the patients in the provincial mental asylum every day, without any reason and leaves the director of the asylum helpless and incapable of doing anything about it. It is the same thick, unexplainable, dull force that pushes Leskov's Ivan to lash a monk to death with a whip — just because he felt like it, seeing the monk "in such sweet sleep, even spreading his arms wide — as if hugging the whole cart.¹¹"

It seems impossible to grasp Russian identity and its special way in this world. It is easier to think about the identities of European countries, something immediately comes to mind, images, associations. But Russia is enigmatic, immense, immeasurable. The lack of its identity somehow empowers Russia to be able to grasp and contain all other cultures within itself.   

To the same extent that Russia descends into the Abyss, it also produces in abundance expressions that reach infinitely high into the realms of the heroic, the great, the sensitive and subtle and the self-sacrificing. Russians manifest incredible capacity to deeply feel other cultures, other languages, other ways, other inventions and symbols. It is like if the boundary between the Self and the Other was blurry, non existent, sometimes leading to infinite creativity and openness and sometimes compensating it with closure and bitterness. In this absence of boundaries, swaying between inhuman extremes, Russia seems to be searching for its Self, its true identity and path. 

And this path is thorny. Maybe it’s the one described by Auktyon in the song "The Road" (Doroga)¹²: the joyless, numb and hollow road, without bliss, where the character going down it is not even himself…