Comprehension of Russian Culture (“Theater Review”)

The article analyzes the recently-published third part of Olga Zhukova’s trilogy devoted to Russian culture, Russian philosophy, and the philosophy of Russian culture. The article’s author suggests that this book, as well as previous parts of the trilogy, contains extensive, largely unknown material about the studied area. Besides the richness of the factual material, the advantage of the book is that it encourages a reader’s interest in the considered stories; at the same time, it provokes an internal polemic with Zhukova, produces the desire to reflect on the various statements made, and, probably, even enters the discussion with the author. The cornerstone of Zhukova’s concept is the thesis about the fundamental conditionality of Russian culture and Russian philosophy on Eastern Christianity. According to this concept, there is a direct conditionality in some cases, while an indirect conditionality appears through the dialectical contradiction in some others. The article’s author does not find this thesis to be ultimately correct. Another separate object of the article’s discussion is the reviewed book’s polygraphic features.