I make/made more for Russia by not being in Russia.
Look at the changes in Moscow after I left it.
...
Russia is better without me.
Or because it changed its ways "shocked" my rejection? :)
Too bad, it's too late, mother.
And not radical enough, father.
I still do not want to be your comrade, brothers and sisters.
Not Soviet, nor Russian.
And you are not ready to be humans.
Well, perhaps, never you will be ready.
I will never know, because mortals die.
I lost interest in future, never mind, the past.
...

[ a note for my Russian Diary ]

I do not know where this note belongs; somehere in Antohins. The pages I was supposed to work on this summer. My Russian Pages...
Simple questions. One of them:
So, it wasn't the system or sensorship...
why don't you tell it?
You are still here, not in Moscow.
Thanks a lot, one cannot hide behind the stupid formula "in search of freedom of artistict expression". (The reason for my defection I had to write on advice of the little CIA officer in Rome, when after many hours of my explainations, they still asked -- why do I want to leave Russia?)

I do not know which blow is harsher -- the first, that you have to leave, or, the second, the realization that you cannot come back.
Why?
Well, I am more than a Russian, for one. I cannot be consumed by "being Russian", I am a human.
I want to write in Russian because it's beautiful, not because I have to. ... Do I feel more Russian in US than in Moscow? ... Are you saying that you can't be "human" in Russia? Don't be rediculous! Read Max Stirner. I can't be own even by my own Self. I am weak. It's difficult for me to be good. It's easy for me to become corrupt, I know that. Especially in nowaday Russia, more cynical than ever. Perhaps, the most cynical place in time today.
"Where is he from? Dante - must be from Italy, I am not sure..."
I do not have time to open "Russian Being" chapter in Father-Russia and check what I was writing there...
I guess, I was traumatized by the adaptation I wrote in 1975 "We, the Russian People" -- ...