Dear readers,
You have received the “Russian Mind”’s 5000th issue. You know what “Russian Mind” is today. It has always been extraordinary. Moreover, its significance has never been determined by a “large circulation” or its “mass character”. Instead, it has always, at all times, been a highly-demanded mass medium. The pre-revolutionary “Russian Mind” was distinguished by its “intelligent free thinking” without any signs of radicalism or maximalism. Its liberal positioning was perceived in Tsarist Russia as a form of honesty and revelation, as a belief that God created a human to be free to choose between good and evil. Everything changed with the appearance of the Bolsheviks. In contrast to the tsarist government, they did not cater to the “rotten intelligentsia” and simply ceased the “Russian Mind”.
Being revived in 1947 in Paris, the newspaper “Russian Mind” had nothing to do with a thick literary and intellectual pre-revolutionary magazine. It originally fitted into the ranks of those who fought against Soviet totalitarianism.
The post-war émigré was no longer as active and diverse as in the 1920s or the 1930s, but it was still vibrant and active. Unlike their predecessors, its representatives no longer believed that “the Soviet power was about to collapse”. On the contrary, it was perceived by them, like by everyone else, as victorious and seemingly invincible power. Therefore, emigrants struggled bitterly and painfully like vanquished people, who, like true Russians, knew and believed that “God is not in power, but in truth”.
Sometimes I think that being Russian in the West today is not always comfortable, but always ever so significant.
Happy New Year, dear readers!
Victor Loupan
