I did spend about half a year there.

When I returned to the US, in New York, I had a hard time readjusting to the American milieu, which, immediately in my face, struck me as shabby and raucous. Of course Russia has a huge downside, but it is a powerful and deep culture, within which a Westerner will likely unravel in odd and surprising ways. I still miss the constant presence of spoken Russian.

The women are seared into my memory. I will leave it at that.

I would venture to say that in most cases it is best if a Westerner approaches Russia in the manner of art, music, and literature appreciation.

In a philosophic context, two opposing propensities are characteristic in Russian thought. One asserts the primacy of generalization and consolidation as tools for sacred and historical transformation of reality and leads to ideocracy and totalitarianism. Another defends the exceptional value of individuality and discloses the relativity and emptiness of all general ideological constructs.

The first propensity lost its spiritual power as it merged with official Soviet ideology. In the 1950s it began to diminish, and by the late 1980s it almost vanished from philosophy (which does not preclude its future revival). The second propensity is now at the height of its influence. The differentiation and interrelation of these two propensities - generalization and particularization, autocracy and personalism, utopianism and conceptualism - determine the singular character of Russian thought and its legacy to world thought.