So called “middle culture ‘,’ literature of adaptation”, which I wrote (and which caused a law-governed criticism very distinguished philosopher Boris Kagarlitsky me), I understood not as a replacement for culture, but as a bridge for a scaled-back one and a half generations not read the culture of a big, present. … “The required minimum library” – a thing more daunting than it might seem. General books to read (literature of the nineteenth century) – is was the glue that holds heterogeneous country in the Soviet Union a unified cultural whole, gave a strange feeling of community, belonging to a single country. General books – this was our true collective morality: the only alternative to synthetic and semi-decomposed Communist morality, in which nobody believed. It is this obligatory “book-minimum” of Soviet society had access to universal humanistic values and thus extended a further 20 years after the collapse of the last illusions, after the last burst of genuine enthusiasm in the 1960s. Not to mention the fact that overall the book – it was the way in artistic, unbanal form of transfer from one generation to the national values, that is, the country code.

Finally, it was burdening the humanitarian and purely practical benefits and meaning: it did not give “direct knowledge”, but due to of the property rights literature has taught abstract, associative, nonlinear thinking, develop intuition, teaches distinguish nuances and shades; taught the strategic thinking. What, for example, has always been famous Russian science – “artistic thinking,” the general cultural, humanities approach to the problem, the ability to see beyond and above their own specialty. Today’s man is proud of the highly specialized knowledge – and underestimates the importance of “extra” knowledge and skills. This person only reads two reasons: to acquire knowledge or to forget (entertaining reading).