In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.

My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.

Photographing expresses human desire to preserve passing time. It is like a man struggling with time that elapses, and in general - a desire to preserve oneself.

In the Russian experience, although the Russian state is oppressive, it is their state, it is part of their fabric, and so the relation between Russian citizens and their state is complicated.

Pack the one bag. Unpack it, pack it, unpack it, pack it: passeport, ticket, book, taxi, airport, check-in, beer, announcement, stairs, airplane, fasten seat-belt, air born, flight, rocking, sun, stars, space, hips of strolling stewardesses, read, sleep, clouds, falling engine speed, descent, circling, touch down, earth, unfasten seat-belt, stairs, airport, immunization book, visa, customs, questions, taxi, streets, houses, people, hotel, key, room, stuffiness, thirst, otherness, foreignness, loneliness, fatigue, life.

First you destroy those who create values. Then you destroy those who know what the values are, and who also know that those destroyed before were in fact the creators of values. But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what he does is barbaric.

A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles - whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled - is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these ''anti-conditions,'' your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.