Three lives of Ekaterina Shapinskaya (for the release of the book "Time and Fate. Stories of my life")

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

I want to explain my attitude to the author of these stories right away.  Ekaterina Shapinskaya is my friend and co-author of the book "The Nature of Love", published in the very perestroika. My wife and I admire Rina (that's her family's name); and how not to admire ? a clever, beautiful woman, a brilliant performer of Indian dances in the past, currently a well-known culturologist (Doctor of Philosophy), in fact, she raised and raised her grandson Sasha alone, is always ready to help her friends. We can say that we are friends at home, especially since we live within a fifteen-minute walk. But at the same time, Rina's personality was not fully understood by my wife and me, I wanted to decipher some of the oddities of her actions. So after reading the book I had just been presented with, I found myself in the same position again: I understood a lot, but there were still questions.

For example, how did a Muscovite, an English translator and an active Komsomol organizer who grew up in the USSR, manage to master Indian dances so deeply that she not only became a sought-after artist in many cities of India, staged the play "Lu'na" at the Tagore Theater, but was also accepted as a member of the Indian Academy of Music and Dance? 

How did an artist who did not receive an ordinary academic education (profile university, graduate school, scientific environment) become an excellent philosopher and scientist? I say "beautiful" not for the sake of a red word, but because I read many of Rina's articles, was an opponent at the defense of her doctoral dissertation on the discourses of love, published an analysis of her book "Faces of Love in Discourses and Narratives" ^[3].  

The vicissitudes of Rina's life resemble a detective novel, and she explains this by the vicissitudes and vagaries of fate. But, reading her book, I did not see any fate, on the contrary, everything looks like that the main (as they write "fateful") decisions were made by Rina herself, quite consciously and intelligently. Reflecting on the fate of his university teacher, Alexey Vladimirovich, who played an important role in Rina's life (she became his mistress, and her "lover" became her teacher and friend for almost all her life), Rina writes: "His whole life was a lesson for me – how important it is not to lose yourself in the quest to assert yourself, how it is important to make the right choice between what is really important and valuable and what attracts the brilliance of success. In my quest for self-realization, I have never accepted any leadership positions, but I have always had a permanent place of work, and this gave me the opportunity to write my books and say what I consider valuable for myself and for others" ^{[8, p. 199]}. So is it fate or an independent choice?

Rina, of course, can object, saying that her choice was determined by her fate. But I recall the reflection of Eva Egert, who survived the Nazi death camp Auschwitz as a teenager. "... I read these lines, which contain the whole essence of Frankl's teaching: ... Everything can be taken away from a person, except for one thing ? his last freedom: to choose his attitude to any given circumstances, to choose his path. Every moment is a choice. No matter how destructive, insignificant, unfree, painful or painful our experience was, we always choose how to treat it. And I'm finally starting to realize that I have a choice, too. And the realization of this will change my life." ^{[10, p. 199]}

 I also don't understand how Rina understands love, which is the highest value for her ("for me," she writes, "the greatest values in life are art and love." ^{[8, p. 209]}). On the one hand, for Rina, love is gorenje, passion, tragedy, but always the ideal, the highest state of a person, on the other ? almost chemistry, physiology and also a utilitarian attitude, well, yes, the fulfillment of marital duty, it is possible without any feelings. "What can I say? ? she writes, telling about her strongest love for M. Sharma. ? The passion of love sweeps away everything in its path, knowing neither pity nor nobility, and this passion was already burning so much that it was impossible to stop it. He came to me that night, and for so long pent-up feelings poured out in such a flood that I was even scared. And now, in my declining years, I cannot forget the fire of love that was ready to burn all the obstacles in its path – but fate prevented it. There was no place for us in this world and we were not destined to share our fate. Maybe we will meet again in another place, at another time?" ^{[8, p. 100, 134]}

And at the same time, Rina, though earlier, calmly and without any worries, went to seduce her dance teacher (guru-ji) in order to activate the suspended education process. "That's exactly what happened – the nanny was putting her daughter to bed, his arrival was completely normal, because he had visited us before, and the status of guru gave him great respect. From that time on, I followed exactly the injunction of the Indian tradition regarding the guru, to whom I should give Tan, man, dhan, that is, body, heart and wealth. For him, these relationships were both carnal joy and the consciousness of his superiority, although he constantly told me that the main thing was to obey and respect Dr. Saab, that is, my husband <...> My husband also endured the antics of my teacher, even laughed at them, it would not even occur to him that I had he had a relationship that went beyond the teacher-student" ^{[8, pp. 80, 87]}. However, it may not have been love, but after all, as they say, in the people ? "we will have to sleep together."

It is also not very clear to me how Rina came to a feminist and postmodern worldview, despite the fact that at the same time she shares the values of traditional art and culture. It seems that one denies the other. In the online encyclopedia Britannica, we read: Postmodernism is "a movement of the late twentieth century characterized by pronounced skepticism, subjectivism or relativism, a wary attitude to rational thinking and a high sensitivity to the establishment and preservation of political and economic power" <...> Walter Truett Anderson identifies such a pillar of postmodernism: "Deconstruction of Art and culture: the emphasis is on endless game improvisation, the impermanence of plots and the mixing of "high" and "low" cultures <...> psychologist Steinar Kvale "highlights doubt about the ability of any human truth to reflect objective reality, focusing on language and how it is used to create its own local realities, and also the negation of the universal" ^{[2, pp. 33-34]}. But Rina thinks quite rationally, for her culture and art are the realm of the universal, and the deconstruction she proposes clarifies the universal rather than dismantling it.  

Let's try now, starting from the text of the book, to discuss not so much these issues as the personality and life path of our heroine, which still sheds light on the questions raised.

Is Sigmund Freud right when he claims that all the most important things are laid in our childhood?

Rina's childhood seems to confirm this theory. "Family life,? recalls Rina, "was hard ? my parents quarreled all the time, I didn't like and was afraid of my father, I was scared of his imposing appearance and constant orders regarding the daily routine, food and other household chores. Mom often cried, and I dreamed that she and I would leave him... she and mom were such different people – she was brought up in an intelligent family where they loved and knew literature, music and theater, and he ran away to the front as a boy, to the Finnish War, then went through the entire Patriotic War…Holidays certainly included drinking, and my mother couldn't stand alcohol" ^{[8, p. 9-10]}. But at the same time, Rina was very much loved by her grandmother, and all family members, being teachers, invested a lot in the child. The result is a solid cultural foundation of Rina's life world. "With my grandmother," writes Rina, "we read a lot ? both plays and poems. I owe her absolute literacy and love for Russian literature. With what pleasure during the holidays, at the dacha, I read Ostrovsky, Goncharov, Turgenev, Leskov, Melnikov-Pechersky and other writers, many of whom are now forgotten ... A lot of things were laid down in childhood – love of music and languages, distrust of the ideal of family happiness, the desire to travel – they have been preserved with me on all my life, as well as the dream of a beautiful love that has nothing to do with family obligations" ^{[8, p. 19]}. Rina writes that perhaps under the influence of the reading of "Tristan and Isolde" that struck her, her "dreams of love were connected with the irresistibility of passion and the rock that plays with the destinies of people," and love was opposed to family ^{[8, p. 13]}.

So, but not so, reading the following chapters of the book, you are convinced that Alexey Vladimirovich, Komsomol, life in India had no less influence on the evolution of Rina's personality. For example, the peculiar duality of her personality is more the result of the institute period than childhood, a certain humility and a decrease in prestige requirements is the result of understanding the fate of her daughter Nina. When, having lost her husband, Rina was forced to go to work at the nearest school, to teach English, she received an offer from the university to develop and teach a course in the sociology of culture for a good salary, allowing her to take a nanny for little Sasha. To this she replied that "she is not going to leave the child to anyone. I don't regret it at all," Rina explains, "because I perfectly understand, using the example of my own daughter, what the shifting of parenting to other people, even relatives, even the best leads to" ^{[8, p. 231]}.

Childhood, of course, puts a lot into a person's personality, but not everything, and often no less its features are influenced by subsequent circumstances and actions.  

Two personalities of Ekaterina Shapinskaya (first life)

Rina studied at the Institute of Foreign Languages. Maurice Thorez and there met with Alexey Vdadimirovich and actively joined the Komsomol. There she also passed her universities of life, which can be called the introduction to duality. Perhaps this way of life was the main one for many people of that time. Of course, Alexey Vladimirovich loved his beautiful talented student, but not so much that he divorced his wife and ruined his career. He helped her in every possible way, even in order to pick up a promising groom at the end of his studies at the institute. "Somehow, later," Rina writes, "I told him that if he wasn't afraid to change his life and was with me, everything would have happened for him. He sighed sadly – the past cannot be changed, and for him a divorce would mean the end of his career at the academy. Then he added: "But I loved you..." ^{[8, pp. 147-148]}.

There is no doubt that Rina loved him, but she understood the rules of the social game no less. Rina satisfied her vanity in the fact that such a person loves her, without hiding much. Probably, she considered deception (for example, the wife of Alexander Vladimirovich) as a kind of tactic of Soviet life. Rina's mother also understood her daughter. "She treated him (Alexey Vladimirovich. ? V.R.) with piety, guessing about our relationship, although it was not openly discussed. Apparently, vanity spoke in her, and seeing her daughter next to such a man flattered her .... In the history of A.V., everything went according to the rules and laws of the time, so there was not only a tragedy, but even some inconvenience" ^{[8, pp. 147, 148]}.

Komsomol life contributed no less to duality. On the one hand, Rina liked to participate in organizing meetings with the leaders of communist parties friendly to the CPSU, translate, travel around the country and later abroad; less to write reports for their superiors. On the other hand, drunkenness, intrigues, secret love affairs ? all this she did not like and partly learned to avoid. It was a time precisely expressed by Erich Solovyov's quatrain

And there the guys are ruddy and left

More and more Gariks, Arnolds and Glebs.

And in their eyes ? Togliatti and Torres

And a healthy sexual interest

These leaders of the Komsomol did not believe in communism and other ideal values for a long time, they did not believe in anything except a career and benefits that had to be earned, often stepping over morality and even close friends. Drunkenness in those days was a form of escapism (so well described later by Rina), in which people hid from their duality. "Childhood memories of my father,? writes Rina, "who turned all the holidays into drunkenness, then the flourishing "fun of drinking" in Komsomol times, the alcoholism of guru?ji in India and - finally – Boris Petrovich (Rina's second husband. – V.R.), who after one glass demanded more and more, then he got drunk, read poetry in this state, then suffered from an exacerbation of the ulcer, and all this had to be restrained so as not to disrupt the concert or not to reach the hospital" ^{[8, p. 163]}.

Later, during a difficult period of entering Indian culture and life, Rina recalls: "External circumstances – the increasing hostility of a rival, the visits of guru-ji and his drunkenness, the conversations of her husband's comrades about political events and their role in another mass event, the routine of working at school, which was then my only real income – only increased the desire to immerse myself into the magical worlds of ancient mythology and respond with every cell of your being to the rhythm of dance and poetic lines. (Apparently, then I had escapist tendencies that accompany me to this day and help in many ways)." ^{[8, p. 81]}

 Finally, I can't help but recall Alexander Zinoviev, who wrote: "... Russian drunkenness is not a medical phenomenon, but a kind of religion. Drunkenness gave communication. It was easier, when you drink, to endure everyday difficulties, life was seen in a different light, it seemed not so gray. But drunkenness did not interfere" ^{[1, p. 289]}.

The question arises, is it impossible to live without having, as my teacher, Georgy Petrovich Shchedrovitsky, said, "ideal content", which, in his opinion, was laid in childhood (for Shchedrovitsky, the ideal content was set by his family, where there were solid cultural traditions, as well as reading historical and philosophical books in adolescence ^[9])? I think it is possible, but this life is very difficult and unstable. The duality of the Soviet era of the 70s and 80s did not contribute not only to the formation of ideal content, but also to any solid social reality in general. It is no coincidence that the ideas of postmodernism are gaining ground among the intelligentsia at this time, within the framework of which objective reality has been successfully deconstructed. 

Life without ideal content and social reality may entail some national character traits. Is this the reality of the phrase that Alexey Vladimirovich has repeatedly uttered: "If you trust the Russians, be prepared that you will be betrayed at any moment. If you are friends with a Jew, you can rely on him" ^{[8, p.145]}.

I want to be understood correctly: duality is not a deviation, but the norm of social life. In my opinion, most people are more or less ambivalent. And I had a period, at least ten years, when I was also seriously divided: I lived with my first wife, but loved another woman. I understood that it was wrong to deceive my wife, but I couldn't help myself, and not that I justified my behavior, but I turned a blind eye to it, at the same time realizing it. There was a similar period in Rina's life when she really fell in love for the second time. "This time," Rina recalls, "I was welcomed at Dr. Sharma's house as a family, I was allocated a room on the second floor, we greeted joyfully, I felt completely at home in this lovely family, in which the main values were music, education and kind attitude to each other. Now I think, how was it possible to betray this kindness, this sweet and modest woman, the wife of my beloved, those who let me into their family with such love?" ^{[8, pp. 99-100]}.

Indian culture through the prism of dance art (second life)

Rina decided to marry the head of one of the Communist parties of India (there were, it seems, four in total) quite deliberately and with a cool head. After graduation, she had to determine her fate and, most importantly, get out of the trap of the Soviet Komsomol, the falsity and emptiness of the functioning of which she was already aware of. In search of activities that would satisfy her and give her income, Rina turned to art in India, namely traditional dance, which she mastered with hard work and quite quickly. It affected both the culture inherent in the family and then developed at the institute, and Rina's bright talent.  But here's the question: has Rina fully entered Indian culture, has she become, so to speak, a real representative of India? At first glance, yes, otherwise how to explain her success, not only in traditional dance, but also in immersion in Hindu folklore, languages and other Indian narratives.

However, I would doubt it, and here's why. Rina still communicated among educated Hindus, many of whom received a European education. But the main thing, in my opinion, is something else. Rina entered the culture of India through art, and the latter suggests, as Mikhail Bakhtin writes, the position of "non-necessity". In this position, which presupposes detachment, culture, on the one hand, according to Bakhtin, is completed as a whole, on the other hand, it is taken largely as an object of imagination. Indirectly, this is evidenced by Rina herself, telling the following.     

"I realized that if I want to make this world my own, I should not have another world of my own – they are too different to live in them at the same time. It was necessary to forget Tchaikovsky's music and Ostrovsky's plays, they simply did not exist in the world, but there was a magnificent southern sky, rhythmic sounds of percussion instruments and Krishna dancing his wonderful dance with his beloved somewhere… I realized that if I wanted to make this world my own, I should not have another world of my own – they are too different to live in them at the same time ... <...> I was so obsessed with the image of Krishna that sometimes, looking at the starry southern sky, I saw Krishna dancing there. I no longer tried to correctly depict a veil or a jug of water on Radha's head ? I was her, I danced with a beautiful lover on the banks of the Yamuna River. The more I read Indian poetry, listened to recordings of outstanding musicians that were often broadcast on the radio, the more I felt like a part of this boundless and beautiful world <...> the ancient temple dance goes back to the mythological origins of the dance of the god Shiva, Shiva-Nataraja, who creates the universe with his rhythmic dance. No culture attaches such sacred importance to music and dance as in India, and no dance has retained such a close connection with the ancient tradition as bharat natyam" ^{[8, pp. 76, 81, 105]}.

I would say that Rina has become a real "mediator", a "communicator" of two cultures ? European (Russian) and Indian, and the intermediary-communicator in a certain sense does not belong to either of them, belonging to each at the same time. Of course, this is a contradiction, but meaningful. As a mediator-communicator, Rina was able later, returning to Russia, even to present to our public in 1998 "the legendary South Indian dance theater Kalakshetra, founded in the 30s of the last century by the dancer Rukmini Devi, who devoted her life to the revival of classical Indian dance… "These tours," Rina writes, "have become not only an interesting trip for me, but a real school. We drove from Leningrad and Minsk through Novosibirsk to Alma-Ata and Frunze (now Bishkek), and everywhere we received a high-level State Concert, which meant the best hotels and stages. I met with the leaders of the troupe and asked them to tell me about the program and attend the rehearsal. The program included several numbers based on Indian mythology and epic poems "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana", they were performed not only in the style of Bharat natyam, but also contained elements of kathakali dance, which belongs to the southernmost state of India Kerala. My task was to make an introduction to the numbers, briefly telling their plots, completely unfamiliar to the Soviet audience <...>

In the Kalakshetra concerts, I admired the dancer who played the role of Krishna, which was quite understandable, given my long-standing fascination with this character. He, in turn, liked the way I conducted concerts, and we developed a mutual liking. I told him about the dance of my dreams, which would contain elements of bharat natyam, would be within my power and, moreover, understandable to others. And such a dance was staged, it tells about a girl who goes out into the garden in the morning, sees the beauty of blooming flowers, hears birds singing and dreams of a lover. This was all expressed in sign language, "mudra", which in bharat natyam are very expressive and can "tell" whole stories. Later I found a suitable instrumental music, and I got just such a number, which was missing in my program" ^{[8, pp. 176, 177, 178]}.

"Aphrodite vulgar" and "Aphrodite of Heaven"

This distinction belongs to Plato. In the Feast, he contrasts two forms of love: ordinary sensual love and spiritualized sublime intellectual love, characteristic of the emerging antique personality, which itself chooses a lover (beloved) ^[4]. Time shifted the emphasis: in the culture of modern times, sublime love began to be understood not only as spiritual, but also accompanied by passion, and vulgar settled in the family as a completely quiet occupation. Rina writes that for her love is almost the main value of life. But the question is, what kind of love are we talking about here: a prestigious and quite sincere love for Alexey Vladimirovich, a sublime love-passion for M. Sharma, love-respect for the first husband, or love-patience for the second, Boris, or a calm good love for Victor, the third husband, or maybe, but hardly, about the imitation of love for guru-ji?

Right away I would like to breed sublime love-passion, with which romantic love often begins, and calm kindred love in the family. The first is a very special state of a person when he meets someone who fits perfectly into his expectation of love, if there is a response to this expectation, a feeling flares up, desires and motives that have been waiting for this hour for a long time are realized, the whole physicality is transformed and so on. That is, the state is unusual, borderline, close to a mental illness, but which at the same time is realized and experienced as the highest, as love. But when love-passion passes, often from circumstances independent of lovers (as it was with Rina), there is a feeling reminiscent of recovery after a serious illness. "The pain of separation," Rina recalls, "has already dulled, I was cured of love as a terrible obsession that almost ruined me, in its place came the desire to manage my life myself, and treat men only from the point of view of their benefits for my achievements and successes" ^{[8, p. 125]}.     

Love in the family, which often replaces passion, does not involve gorenje and soaring in higher spheres, but a lot of things are required from it: kindred feelings and care, satisfying intimate relationships, the ability to help each other, to run a joint household, to raise children, to resolve disputes and conflicts, and much more ^[5]. It seems to me that Rina's love for M. Sharma belonged to the first type, and to Alexey Vladimirovich and partly to her first husband – to the second.  

This opposition of love-passion and family love, despite the centuries that have passed since antiquity, has proved to be very stable. For example, the famous Israeli writer Meir Shalev, who fell in love with Natasha and me, displays exactly such love in the novel "Fontanella". His hero Michael loves Anya all his life, who, as a young woman, saves him, another five-year-old child from a fire, and this love is closest to love-passion. But he lives with his wife Alona and loves her very calmly. Here are two short fragments from Fontanella.

"Many years have passed since then. Time has invested in me a little experience, a little understanding, a few thin layers of knowledge. And this trio, with the mockery of three old psychologists, is now asking me:

— Michael, how old were you then? Five? Six? What did you know about love then?

What do I know about her now? And what do you know, highly respected experts on the human soul, ? Knowledge, Experience and Understanding? You know nothing but the facts: that I besieged her house; that I measured its perimeter with steps; that I pressed my ears to its walls, lying under them; that I drilled them with my eyes until they dissolved and the door became transparent. And all this, gentlemen, I have done, completely-knowing-nothing-about-love" <...>

I agree ? I was then some five-something years old, but tell me yourself, you who are smarter than me, you honorable and law?abiding people, you adults who are destined to live to old age and noble gray hairs - if it wasn't love, then what was it? Tell me, my daughter, from whose belt hang the scalps of the “cavaliers". Tell me, my son, you are the only person who can penetrate my secrets in my absence. Tell me, my wife, an expert on love, if it wasn't love, then what was it then?" ^{[7, pp. 34, 38]}

"We've been married for thirty years, and for thirty of those years?although she doesn't believe it?I haven't slept with any other woman. Thirty years, and my surprised body is still, as before, awakening to meet her, but like an automaton. Like an allergic person sneezing at sunrise, like hair standing on end from a threat…

– Calm down, Michael, ? I say to myself, fearing what is about to happen, ? other men are afraid that their body will not support them, and here I am, standing at attention, tense and ready for battle, anxiously waiting for my heart to join me? Will my soul also fly out and walk in front of me like a squire before Goliath, or will I have to go into battle alone again?" ^{[7, p. 29]}.

Having experienced love-passion, Rina, judging by her statements, revised her attitude to love and happiness in general, limiting them to friendship and creativity. "After that," she writes, "my interest in romantic adventures completely disappeared, and there was no sentimentality in my relationships with men – there were novels, there was friendship, there was competition, but nothing that hurt me <...> That's the answer to the question – is happiness possible without love? Yes, it is possible that the happiness of achievement and success is no less than the happiness of a love union, in any case, for me it has become so for many years" ^{[8, p. 128, 130]}. 

Victory of reason and duty over passion, vanity, desire for success (third life)

Kant defines personality in two ways: on the one hand, it is freedom over natural necessity, on the other – voluntary self-limitation by morality and duty. According to Kant, man is doomed to an uncompromising struggle of his rational principles with the feelings and desires raging in him. Already in India, Rina found herself in the fire of such a struggle, she was forced to part with a loved one, realizing the possible consequences of this love for her husband and M. Sharma himself. When Rina's husband found out about the betrayal, "he said that in the morning we would all meet at Bankura, a restaurant in the center of Delhi (the one I loved so much) and we would decide everything. I don't know how I survived until the morning, my husband managed to talk to my beloved, we met and went as if for a morning coffee. I managed to have a word with him only a couple of phrases. "And what did your wife say to you?" – "If you don't come back, I'll drink poison"...we were in India, and, like Lu'na's story, our love did not end tragically, in any case, everyone remained alive. How many years have passed since then, how many things have happened in my life – both joyful and sad – but I will never forget the heart-rending farewell, which looked like a meeting of acquaintances, well-dressed, sweetly chatting, over morning coffee" ^{[8, p. 120]}.

 However, in India it was just one episode. After returning to Russia, Rina got into the maelstrom of events that required her to make a very definite choice and preference. At first I had to keep my second husband, Boris, a weak, drinking man afloat, later I had to raise Sasha, who had a serious heart disease, and help Victor, the third husband, with all my might (he went blind). It was necessary to radically restructure in order to master a new profession and enter the environment of philosophers and humanities. Here is just one episode from the third life.

"Once again, fate threw me from the positions I had achieved with such difficulty into a completely different reality, but I was glad that I had earnings and supported my loved ones.  It was much more painful how I was greeted at home – my daughter looked into my bag to see if there was any shortage there, and Boris shouted that people like me were a disgrace to high art, that because of such people, no one needed poems and poets, and so on. I tried not to pay attention, because I was very tired, and I was not up to a showdown. Lessons were another source of income, I took 10 rubles for a lesson. (For comparison, imported chicken in the store cost 3 rubles). Usually there were a lot of lessons on Saturdays and Sundays, the girls put these dozens on the nightstand. After a few lessons, I was terribly tired, because I myself showed all the elements, only then played on the table or put a record. Sometimes the lessons went from morning to evening, my legs were bled, I could only fall on the sofa and ask to rub my legs. And then I missed dozens – Boris and Nina quietly “took them away” from me, thinking that my mother would not notice. Later, my daughter told me what kind of feasts they had, they went to the cinema, took with them all sorts of delicious things that they could get, arranged a feast there, and then returned in a completely complacent mood. I didn't have the strength to deal with it, and they got used to such a sweet life" ^{[8, p. 181]}.

And all this despite the fact that Rina was ambitious, focused on success, used to success in India. We must pay tribute to our heroine: she was able to subordinate her life and freedom to social necessity, temporarily (and it seemed forever) refused to teach at the university, twisted her ambition into a ram's horn, set herself up for a long menial job in high school. It was very difficult for her. "So," Rina recalls, "I became a "teacher" for several years, which was very difficult for me mentally. At that time, I was not only a doctor, but also received the title of professor, I was invited to prestigious conferences, I was published in good magazines…I hated this teaching with all my heart, felt humiliated and infinitely unhappy…It was especially bad when I came home after feeding and putting the baby to bed, I was left alone in complete insensibility, I just lay there, feeling nothing but some enveloping darkness and hopelessness" ^{[8, pp. 222-223]}

Interestingly, Orthodoxy helped Rina cope with these experiences, to which her friends introduced her. "We found consolation in religion and a sense of the existence of higher powers, who understand the twists of fate that seem unfair to us. At that time, the church gave us the strength to accept the state of things, and our life continued... besides, turning to religion and conversations with Father Stefan changed my attitude to this work, I stopped perceiving it as humiliation, but treated it as a test that must be experienced" ^{[8, pp. 214, 225]}.

Can this complex process of personality restructuring be called a quiet "spiritual revolution"?  I don't know, but it's very similar.

Dance, culture, postmodernism – three immediate realities of the personality of our heroine

Rina's consciousness is based on these three whales. Here, indeed, it is quite possible to talk about the foundations of the evolution of her personality. Carl Jung described one of the important directions of personality evolution in a general way. "At the same time, between 1918 and 1920," he writes, "I began to understand that the goal of mental development is self–sufficiency. There is no linear evolution, there is a kind of closed self. Unambiguous development is possible only at the beginning, then the center clearly emerges"^{[11, p. 200]}. Dance, culture, and postmodernism constitute such centers of self-sufficiency for Rina.

In India, she found herself as a fairly cultured, educated and very talented person, having mastered Indian dance. It turned out that this kind of ancient art became an "immediate reality" for Rina, although she had to go through a lot of work, study, immersion in Indian culture (I call an immediate reality one on which all other human realities are based, and which is perceived as something that exists, certainly exists, for example, God for believers or nature for a scientist ^{[6, pp. 350-397]})

As a mediator-communicator, Rina began to feel and understand that it is culture that underlies history, art, science, the relationship of peoples, even the life of an individual. This coincided with the formation of knowledge about culture: the third stage of her life after returning to Russia is the time of the formation of cultural studies. It was at this time that Evgeny Yakovlevich Basin, a well-known aesthetician, recommended Rina "head. Department of Cultural Studies of the Pedagogical University Tatiana Fedorovna Kuznetsova. So I, – writes Rina, – began to teach courses on art culture, on the history of culture at this university, about which I keep the best memories… I finally found a place to apply my knowledge of music and literature, I could share my experience of mastering a completely different culture" ^{[8, p. 208]}.

But why postmodernism, which is associated with deconstruction, non-recognition of meta-narratives, discourses and language games, pluralism and relativity of everything? But let us recall Rina's duality, immersion in Indian culture through art, cultural mediation, the illusory nature of the Russian ideal reality, the tragic perception of love ("regardless of time and space," Rina notes, "love is tragic in its essence, because it seeks to overcome what is disconnected by nature itself, and to know the eternity in which mortals refused" ^{[8, p.210]}), numerous, almost fantastic vicissitudes of her life.

It seems that with such a diversity and heterogeneity of life, what can be done and have time? And Rina has done a lot for her men, for her family and for culture. For me, the book I read is "Time and Fate. The Stories of My Life" is also interesting because it presents a different model of life, very different from the model we are used to, where a person uniquely defines his life, clearly feels the social reality, understands what needs to be done. Such was my teacher Georgy Shchedrovitsky. But I do not know whose life I like more, Shchedrovitsky or Rina.