Try to understand

Under communism will national characteristics remain?

No. They'll disappear.


That's too bad.

Why? We will enrich ourselves. you think the German or the French have no good qualities?


Then we will never have a new Pushkin, Tchaikovsky, or Surikov. It will be on international culture.

You can't limit your vision to what has already been created. It's time you learned to be more broad-minded. If you don't understand this you'll remain a narrow-minded, semicommunist Russian and nothing more. No one wants to take away your national identiy, but you will advance to a higher stage. If you remain where you are you'll become a good poet of the Russian Federation but not of the USSR. Tvardovsky fights for the Russian Poetry, and he is the best Russian Poet now. I remember him. He is very talented but narrow-minded. Like many of us he is limited to the Russian horizons where peasant life prevails -- which Marx called the idiocy of the village. The peasants' limitations shade into idiocy. The peasant likes narrow horizons, be he Russian, Georgian, or German. I had a little book which I picked up somewhere after war. It was the correspondence between Tchaikovsky and Taneev. Taneev admired Tchaikovsky's music and was proud of Russian culture. That's fine, said Tchaikovsky, but I also admire German, Italian, and French music. Wasn't he a nationalist? Very much so. But one doesn't limit oneself only to Russian. The most talented people never limit their field of vision. They add useful aspects from their neighbor's work. this is what's truly wonderful.

[12-12-72]



excerpt from Molotov remembers.

芥菜

有的菜很苦. 大家所熟知的就是苦瓜和芥菜. 我老媽都很喜歡吃的. 但是我就受不了了.

但是有一次, 媽媽把芥菜拿去醃了醃. 醃過兩天後, 芥菜的苦味去掉了. 非常好吃. 吃起來好像是吃過的一種菜. 原來就是外面賣的酸菜, 或者是鹹菜!! 真是有趣極了!!

exercise: body and knowledge

it is important to exercise. but it is also important to exercise while gaining knowledge of anatomy, physiology, food, knowledge of the exercise, and the limit of one's self.

most of athlete will have knowledge of the benefit of warm up, stretch, and strength training. but it's not enough. they have to make reading and updating their knowledge a habit. athletes, no matter which level, are group of people who are at least interesting in exercise. they use their own body to do a set of movements, simple or complicated. it will always involved with risks. to minimize risks, any athletes will need to have knowledge from human anatomy, physiology, food, one's self, and the exercise they are doing.

what's the benefit of this are: minimize over exerting one's self, provide body enough food and rest, to realize what benefit the chosen exercise could provide, and what's the risk it involved. and do not forget that, any human being will get old one day physically. but if one made searching those knowledge as a habit, it will serve well even when the body is less capable than younger.