Notes of a 74-Year-Old Professor of Philosophy

July 2026

Today I want to entrust my diary with reflections on what is happening in Russia. Not only on the course of events themselves, but chiefly—on their causes. Why has the Special Military Operation been ongoing for over four years now, when our country's military potential absolutely exceeds that of the opponent?

Do I have the right to ask such questions? Yes. Because Russia is my homeland, and I love it. I am a philosopher, and I shall write without rousing incantations, but with that unhurried deliberation befitting my age and life experience.

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Essay: "The Ontological Meaning of the SMO. Russia's Path to the Future"

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The philosopher's advantage is that one can think anywhere and at any time, at any age. Even now—a warm summer day, the sun slanting toward sunset. I sit on the veranda of my small but cosy dacha and watch my grandson Andreyka: he is busy with a wooden sword, battling the burdocks that have grown tall by the fence. And I think: this little fellow is already breathing the air of a completely different era. He does not know or remember how we used to bow to foreign lands. "McDonald's" is for him something like the myth of the Golden Calf—a story from his elders' tales. And with childlike simplicity and rightness, he believes in his own future.

And yet, not so long ago, we all lived in a different, strange world. The nineties. We were told, as it were: "History is over. You are late to the feast of civilisation, and now you will sit in the corner, eating from others' plates whatever you are given. And do not even think of standing up to your full height." Everyone knows who led us into this state. That was our "Egypt"—not geographical, but spiritual. And it is precisely this problem that we must solve today on our path to the future.

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Egypt Within Us

The Jews in Egypt were slaves. But imagine a slave born in chains. He knows no other life. The overseer beats him—it hurts. But in the evening, he is given lentil stew and an onion, and sometimes even a piece of meat. And he thinks: "Such is life. Not everything is good, but at least it is stable, and look at those beautiful pyramids we are building. Just look!"

That is how it was with us. Our "Egypt" was beautifully decorated: Hollywood films, credit for iPhones, Western academic degrees, the sweet whisper of "universal human values," and, of course, McDonald's. We gave the West our resources, agreed to be the "junior partner" at that table. We even allowed ourselves to be called "Upper Volta with rockets" and "a gas station." Many sincerely believed: now, for our obedience, they will pat us on the head and admit us into the European family. I must say, that was not quite how Peter the Great cut his window to Europe.

But let us return to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt.

Moses, you will recall, did not begin with rebellion. At first, he simply asked Pharaoh: "Let my people go." And Pharaoh only tightened the yoke. So too, the West responded to every concession of ours by pushing back our culture and advancing NATO toward our borders.

The West thought we would remain a nation of shuttle traders and imitators. But within us lived a genetic memory of something else: of how our ancestors went out with prayer to the Kulikovo Field, how they burned bridges behind them, how they crushed the Hitlerites who fancied their racial superiority, how they raised the country from the ashes of the twentieth century.

And then thunder struck.

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The Crossing of the Sea

They say the SMO could have been finished in two weeks—by blitzkrieg. But that is precisely the point: a blitzkrieg is a military operation, whereas here, according to my hypothesis, an ontological crossing began. A quick exit from "Egypt" to "Canaan" was impossible for Moses—not physically, but spiritually. You cannot enter the sea as a slave and emerge on the other shore as a free man. Outwardly you have left, but within you there remains fear, the habit of bowing, and the absence of self-respect. Not in everyone, of course, but in many.

Remember the biblical story? The sea parted. It seemed like a miracle! Flee, run while you can! But no. Forty years were needed. Why?

Moses required the death of an entire generation—not a physical death as punishment, but the death of the slave consciousness within each person. The generation born in the wilderness did not know the taste of lentil stew from Pharaoh's hand. It breathed the air of freedom and divine law, even when all around were only sand and stones.

The SMO may become our forty-year wandering in the wilderness, compressed in time. In an instant, we were cast out of the zone of apparent "global world" comfort into a reality where one can rely only on oneself and on God. Not all at once, but gradually.

And, as in the wilderness, a great murmuring and a great division began.

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The Golden Calf on Suitcases

In the wilderness, the people murmured: "Why did you bring us out of Egypt? There we sat by the pots of lentils and meat!" We still hear this cry from abroad—from those who left. It is the voice of people who could not walk even a single kilometre with their people. They made themselves a golden calf out of Facebook likes and European shop windows.

Their departure was predictable. The wilderness is needed to separate the wheat from the chaff, so that those who considered themselves an elite merely because they could imitate the Western master would leave. It was an exodus of "internal ;migr;s" who had always lived in Russia as if on a temporary assignment, dreaming of a transfer to the "centre."

Russia conducted the most honest, full-scale, and harsh sociological study in its entire history. It was determined who was who: for whom the guiding principle is to live by conscience, and for whom—cunning, deceit, hypocrisy, and mimicry. And it turned out that Russia's true elite are not those sitting in London, but the silent young man from Irkutsk who went as a volunteer, and the teacher who, in place of the departed professor, reads real literature to the children.

In the wilderness, the essence of things and people is always laid bare.

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Heavenly Manna and the New Law

When Western companies left Russia, many cried out in panic: "We will starve! There will be no aeroplanes, no iPhones, no yoghurts! How are we to live? Everything is lost!" That was the fear of the wilderness. But God sent manna from heaven.

Only now it is called by other names: parallel imports, revived factories, the breeding of seeds that we no longer buy from the Dutch, IT technologies that suddenly turned out to be ours, not merely "localised." It turned out that we have hands, heads, and land. It was only the slave consciousness that whispered: "Why make your own when you can buy someone else's? We have so much oil." In the wilderness, you begin to understand many things.

It was in the wilderness that Moses received the Tablets of the Covenant—the body of laws by which one should live.

The SMO forced us to begin writing our own Tablets. The Tablets of the restoration of sovereignty. This is not merely slogans. This is a new Law of life:

— Stop selling crude oil—sell technologies and finished products.
— Stop worshipping the dollar—create your own settlement system.
— Stop teaching children that the West is always right—tell them about Pavel Nakhimov, Sergei Korolev, and the truth that leads into battle.
— Russia's culture is equal among equals.
— To be Russian is a source of pride.

This is the birth of a new ideology—not in the offices of political scientists, but in the fire. Harsh, but necessary.

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So what is happening in Russia today? A question that is very difficult to answer. But the time will come, and we will receive that answer. Then we shall give our final assessment of what is being accomplished now.

Why This Cannot Be Undone

Forty years were needed for the Jews so that among them there remained not a single person for whom it was "normal" to kneel.

The SMO cannot be "cancelled" or "finished in a week," because its main goal is not a geographical boundary on the map. Its goal is anthropological. In the fire of the conflict, the old Russian man is being melted down—dependent, forever looking back for approval from Paris, London, Washington—and a new one is being born. Here too, a new elite of Russia is maturing in all spheres of life.

My grandson Andreyka will not immediately live in the "beautiful Russia of the future," to which we shall all one day come. He will build it. And the wilderness is precisely our life right now. Living in the wilderness is hard: sand, wind, sometimes thirst torments, and fear grips you. But whoever walks through the wilderness grows muscles and sharpens their eyes. They begin to value a sip of water and a friend's loyalty, not the glitter of glass beads.

We are now in the very heart of the Exodus—Russia's Exodus from slavery. We are the generation of Moses. Perhaps we are not destined to taste all the fruits of victory in full measure. Our lot is to stand firm, burn the ships, pass on the Law, and lead the people to the threshold.

Not everyone in Russia understands what is happening and why the SMO is unfolding as it is. Western leaders and analysts—even less so. For Russia, strange as it may seem, this is rather a blessing. If the enemy understood the deep, ontological meaning of these processes, they would not simply fight our army—they would seek to poison the very source of our transformation. But they see only a protracted conflict, "aggression," and a "failed blitzkrieg." They think in familiar categories of territory and politics, not of being. And in this lies our strength and protection. Even our own murmuring and weariness are part of this long path. The meaning of what is happening does not have to be clear to everyone this very minute; it ripens in the silence of the people's heart, not in the speeches of pundits. But for that, time is needed.

Andreyka is already the generation of Joshua. They will enter that Promised Land that we cannot even imagine. They will build spacecraft on new physical principles and plough the fields without looking back at shouts from across the ocean. But their right to that Land is paid for by our forty years.

That is precisely why there are no rough drafts in this confrontation. Every prayer of the mothers, every shift at the factory, every poem of a trench poet, every child born in these grim years—is a brick in the foundation of a Kingdom that no enemy can shake.

The USSR was a fully sovereign state for a long time. However, after the crisis-ridden 1990s, the new Russia started from different positions—a significant part of its previous gains had been lost. Therefore, today's task is the restoration of sovereignty.

In this, as I see it, lies the ontological, existential meaning of everything that is happening. That is how I can explain it. This is my hypothesis. If this is not the case, then what? How correct it is—time will tell.