Courage

With my mission complete, I strolled Red Square for a final time, taking in the ambience of a cold winter day. It was never my intention to return here so soon. I had fulfilled a life-long dream of visiting Russia when I came in August for the Veda Life festival. But like the chill and the cold, Moscow has a way of working itself into your bones. With all the different hardships they face the Russians are a soulful people who love a nice long conversation by the samovar with a hot black tea.

As for authors, you can keep the macho Hemingway with his lust for blood, or the clever Dickens with his Christmas Carol. No one does soulful better than Dosteoyevksy or lost love better than Pushkin with the notable exception of Tolstoy, who left his writing career to begin a spiritual commune in his old age.

And while it may have been a disaster on many levels, the Russian Revolution was an attempt to overturn authoritarian rule and prejudice and create an experimental society based on co-operation. Perhaps the great experiment was not a great success. But at least the Russian people had the courage and the soul to try.