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stay for some time, if not forever. Indeed, this is what happened in the
nineteenth century. People did come from all countries to Russia. They
contributed to Russian culture and became a part of it. They changed
their language, but language is not all of culture. For us writers, lan–
guage may embody all of culture, but we are not the essence of any cul–
ture, we only contribute to it. Others, such as architects, musicians,
composers, definitely contributed to Russian culture, sometimes without
speaking the Russian language at all.
Consisting of different nations, Russia is now an unhappy and dif–
ficult place to live, but it's impossible to deny that it has a very special
charm of its own and that it has managed to create a great culture. It is
not a Slavic culture, it is a Russian culture, created, I repeat, by many,
many different people, nations, and individuals, in that place, in a certain
time. Thus, for Russians, the question of self-definition and self-identifi–
cation becomes very painful, since whatever you think about yourself in
this respect is denied by others. Take the question of the Crimea. To
whom does it belong? To the Russians, Ukrainians, or Tartars? Or per–
haps to the ancient Greeks, because they discovered that land and built a
wonderful culture? There are still lots of wonderful Greek objects being
found there in the excavations, so perhaps we should give the Crimea
back to those who first cultivated that land. This is somehow not dis–
cussed. The Greeks are not taken into consideration when attempting to
solve that problem.
The question is not just about the Crimea. I was born in what was
Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and then I moved to Moscow. So my
own piece of land, my own little territory, is the space from St. Peters–
burg to Moscow, somehow excluding what is in between, since I travel
between them on the night train. Some places in the Crimea and a few
places I visited in northern Russia are also mine, because I traveled there.
There are no borders, no customs crossing to go through; no one asked
what right I had to go there . Although I did not always understand the
culture, I always understood the language. I was at home not just be–
cause it is my country, but because it also represents a free space; there are
no fences, and it's my planet. I just went there; there I was. But now I
find myself denied a feeling of being at home even in Moscow or in St.
Petersburg. St. Petersburg was founded and built in 1703 by Peter the
Great, and now there are lots of people who say that they are descended
from Finnish tribes who are claiming that the land of St. Petersburg is
theirs. Of course, no one is going to just hand the place to them, but
their claim is no more ludicrous than any others today.
As for Moscow, the first recorded mention of it appears in 1147.
Before that, the area did belong to some Finnish-speaking tribes, cor–
roborated by the coincidence that the very word "Moscow," "Moskva"
