The Age of the Dragon - Lessons for Russia and the World in 2026
DeepSeek - The Age of the Dragon: A Spiritual-Psychological and Historiosophical Essay-Study
Based on the article "The Fate of a Storyteller in the Age of the Dragon" (Novaya Gazeta Europe, March 22, 2026)
Introduction. The Return of Meanings
In 2026, decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet project, we are once again forced to peer into texts written in the mid-20th century as if into mirrors. An interview with literary historian Natalia Gromova about the fate of Evgeny Schwartz returns us not simply to the history of the creation of the play "The Dragon" (1944). It offers a diagnosis of the present. The title "The Age of the Dragon" today sounds not as a metaphor, but as an accurate designation of the historical period which the world — and especially Russia — entered by the mid-2020s.
This essay is an attempt at a spiritual-psychological and historiosophical understanding of how evil ceases to be an exception and becomes everyday life, and why a fairy tale proves to be the most precise tool for describing reality.
Chapter 1. The Genealogy of the Dragon: From the Kremlin to Berlin
In her conversation, Natalia Gromova offers a key research hypothesis: the impetus for Schwartz to create "The Dragon" was not Hitler, as was commonly believed in the Soviet censorship tradition, but a personal encounter with Stalin at a banquet for the "Decade of Arts." This is a fundamental clarification. It shifts the problem from the plane of external threat (fascism) to an internal, anthropological, and political ontology.
The historiosophical lesson: Dictatorship is not an export commodity. The Dragon does not come from outside; it is born within, "ripening slowly, like gangrene," in Schwartz's words. The mindset that evil is always "over there" (in 1930s Germany, in Kyiv in 2022, in Washington) is a psychological defense that Schwartz destroys simply by the act of writing the play. For Russia in 2026, this lesson is critical: The Age of the Dragon did not arrive due to external invasion, but as the result of a long, decades-long refusal to resist the "slow gangrene" within its own culture and statehood.
Chapter 2. The Spiritual Anatomy of Betrayal: "A People That Has Let Itself Be Subjugated"
The harshest and most bitter fragment of the first draft of "The Dragon," which Gromova cites, sounds like a verdict: "A people that has let itself be subjugated is no longer a people." This thesis was removed from the final version of the play due to censorship, but it constitutes the nerve of the spiritual-psychological conflict.
Schwartz, who lived through the repression of his friends (Oleinikov, Kharms, Zabolotsky) and witnessed how "the building superintendent recruits maids," understood the main thing: tyranny rests not on fear of the Dragon, but on the city's consent. The psychological drama lies in the fact that people get used to it. What Gromova calls "rebirth" occurs: evil becomes mundane, part of the social contract. The city's residents begin to sincerely believe that "the Dragon does a lot of good" (a parallel with Stalinist industrialization) and that sacrifices are a reasonable price to pay for stability.
The spiritual-psychological lesson: In 2026, we are witnessing not just a political crisis, but an anthropological one. The key problem of the Age of the Dragon is not the cruelty of the monster itself, but that the city has learned to love its chains. Schwartz shows that the only thing left for a person in this situation is dignity, embodied in the figure of the archivist, Charlemagne. Not the heroic feat of Lancelot (who, in modern interpretations, easily turns into a new Dragon), but precisely the ability to preserve memory and not to betray.
Chapter 3. The Crisis of Humanism and the Illusion of "Shades of Grey"
The central polemic of the interview revolves around modern interpretations of Schwartz, particularly Konstantin Bogomolov's 2017 production, where Lancelot is portrayed as a semi-delinquent in a Red Army greatcoat, and the boundary between good and evil is blurred.
Gromova is categorical: this aesthetic of "shades of grey" is a product of peacetime and postmodern fatigue, which does not stand the test of war. For Schwartz, who was completing the play during World War II, good and evil are absolute. In her words, he was a "humanist for whom Lancelot was unequivocally on one pole and the Dragon on the other."
The historiosophical lesson for 2026: The illusion of relativism is an intellectual trap set by the Dragon. When the cultural elite asserts that "everything is relative" and that "there is no pure truth," it disarms society in the face of obvious evil. The Age of the Dragon, which began for Russia in 2022 and continues in 2026, demands a return to modernist, rather than postmodernist, ethics. Schwartz's fairy tale, unlike Bogomolov's deconstructions, provides a clear moral compass.
Chapter 4. The Storyteller as an Anthropological Type: Between Consolation and Testimony
Why did Schwartz choose the fairy tale genre? Gromova convincingly shows that it was not a compromise or Aesopian language in its pure form. It was an organic development of a talent that felt confined within the framework of "adult" realist literature, which was already under surveillance. The combination of the everyday with the fantastical (a technique akin to Bulgakov) allowed for a deeper discussion of humanity than newspaper chronicles would permit.
But for today, another thought from Gromova is more important: "Who will remain in the role of the cunning storyteller if, beyond the wall, there is a world of emigration where one can and must write directly?" In 2026, the situation of cultural schism has reached its peak. Some artists find themselves in exile, others remain inside, forced to balance. Gromova predicts a "cultural dead end" where allegory loses its power because "the cannibals have long ceased to pretend; they are now outright cannibals."
The spiritual lesson: The role of the storyteller in the Age of the Dragon is mutating. If in Schwartz's time riddle and allegory preserved meaning, today, when evil has named itself openly, the only form of resistance is testimony. Gromova calls this "memory as the last degree of despair." It is no coincidence that her alter ego in this story is not Lancelot, but Charlemagne. In an era of total history rewriting, destruction of archives, and diaries, preserving memory (personal, cultural, historical) becomes an act of spiritual survival.
Chapter 5. Schwartz's Hope and the Reality of 2026
At the end of the interview, the question of the first draft of "The Dragon" is raised, where Lancelot and Elsa leave, abandoning the city to its fate. Schwartz changed the ending, allowing hope in: Lancelot stays to heal the crippled souls.
Gromova, however, leaves this optimism in question. She reminds us that the world is held together by "the connections from one beautiful person to another" and by the image of Don Quixote, which exists in culture. But she immediately states: over the last 50 years, Christian humanistic culture has been exhausting itself and disappearing.
The historiosophical conclusion: For Russia and the world in 2026, the main question is not how to kill the Dragon. (The experience of the perestroika-era film "To Kill a Dragon" showed that you can kill the monster but not eradicate the dragon within souls.) The main question is how a person can survive when the Dragon already rules and previous moral authorities are discredited. Schwartz's answer, actualized by Gromova, is paradoxical: one must remain a "storyteller" in the sense of preserving the ability to distinguish good from evil, to preserve memory, and not to allow the gangrene of ordinariness to infect one's own soul.
Conclusion. The Archivist's Light
The essay-study "The Age of the Dragon," based on a conversation with Natalia Gromova, offers us not a political program, but a spiritual optics. In 2026, Russia and the world are at a bifurcation point where old fairy tales gain the power of prophecies.
Schwartz's lesson for today is formulated by Gromova harshly and clearly: "A people that has let itself be subjugated is no longer a people." But this is not a verdict; it is a challenge. To remain human when your humanity is being eradicated — that is the very "pipe" the storyteller played.
The Age of the Dragon is a time when the illusion of "peaceful development" fades. It is a time of choice between serving the monster (even if that service looks like intellectual play with postmodernism) and serving memory. In her interview, Natalia Gromova shows that the only path of resistance that has proven effective over a century of totalitarianism is the path of Charlemagne: not heroic assault, but persistent, daily preservation of dignity and truth.
In 2026, when hope for quick liberation seems utopian, it is precisely this "archivist's path" that becomes the last bastion. And in this sense, "The Age of the Dragon" is not a name for a time, but a diagnosis of a state of the soul that can still resist.
"The storyteller consoles. But his main consolation lies in his refusal to consider evil the norm."
THE AGE OF THE DRAGON
A Spiritual-Psychological and Historiosophical Essay-Study – Claude AI
Lessons for Russia and the World in 2026
Based on a conversation with Natalia Gromova (Novaya Gazeta Europe, March 22, 2026)
March 2026
"The Dragon does not come. The Dragon already lives.
He lives in us — in our silence,
in our consent, in our fatigue."
— Evgeny Schwartz, "The Dragon" (first draft, 1944)
Preamble: Why Fairy Tale is More Precise than History
When literary historian Natalia Gromova speaks about Evgeny Schwartz in March 2026 — not in an academic auditorium, but in the space of the émigré press, after four years of war — this in itself is not a cultural event, but an ontological one. A conversation about a play written in 1944 is taking place at a moment when the words "Dragon," "citizens," and "Lancelot" have ceased to be metaphors. They have become names for reality.
This essay is born from two sources: Gromova's interview and its analysis performed by the DeepSeek neural network. The analysis is accurate in diagnosis but dry in spirit. It correctly identifies the illness but does not touch the wound with a hand. This present study is an attempt to do precisely that: to touch what hurts, not only to describe the illness from the outside.
Schwartz chose the fairy tale genre not out of cowardice and not only out of caution. The fairy tale is the only narrative genre where the categories of good and evil can be called by their names without immediate refutation by "the complexity of reality." In a realistic novel, the villain always turns out to be a victim of circumstances. In a fairy tale, he remains a villain — and this is more honest. Gromova confirms: for Schwartz, good and evil were separate and absolutely real. This is not naivety — it is the courage to call things by their names.
We live in an era that systematically destroys the capacity for discernment. Relativism has become the official epistemology of cultural elites. "It's all complex." "Every side has its own truth." "There is no pure good." Schwartz — and through him, Gromova — responds to this quietly and unyieldingly: there is. And when it exists, it must be called out.
Chapter I. The Genesis of the Dragon: Internal Evil as a Historical Category
1.1. Where the Tyrant Comes From
Gromova offers a key historical hypothesis: the impetus for writing "The Dragon" was not Hitler, but Schwartz's personal presence at a banquet with Stalin — at the so-called "Decade of Arts" in the 1930s. This clarification changes everything.
If "The Dragon" is about Hitler, then the play is about foreign invasion. If it is about Stalin, then it is about the nature of power itself: how it is born from within the body of the people, feeds on it, and returns to the people its own darkness in the form of orders and fear. The difference is not in scale — it is in the diagnosis.
"You cannot resist this; it develops slowly, like gangrene." — Natalia Gromova on Schwartz's notes
Gangrene is the perfect medical metaphor for understanding how totalitarianism is established. It does not break in one night and destroy everything at once. It seeps into the fabric of everyday life: the building superintendent recruits maids, neighbors begin to speak more cautiously, pauses appear in conversations where there were none before. People do not notice the moment they ceased to be free — because freedom left drop by drop.
The historiosophical lesson for 2026 is not that "this is always what happens with tyrants." It is that the Dragon is primarily a psychological, not a political, phenomenon. Political tyranny is the crystallization of spiritual tyranny that has already occurred. Russia did not wake up one day in February 2022 as a totalitarian state. It had been moving towards it for twenty years — through small betrayals, small consents, small silences.
1.2. The Tyrant's Mirror: The People as Accomplice
The most dangerous phrase in Schwartz's text is the one censored: "A people that has let itself be subjugated is no longer a people." It is dangerous because it shifts responsibility. Not only onto the Dragon — onto the citizens.
What does it mean to "let oneself be subjugated"? It is not a single act of capitulation. It is a series of small decisions: to remain silent at a meeting, to sign a letter "from the collective," to not attend the funeral of an arrested friend to avoid being noticed. Each of these decisions seems reasonable. Collectively, they form a new personality — a person who is no longer capable of saying "no" because they have unlearned how.
Schwartz — unlike most of his contemporaries — did not say "yes." He wrote, in his own words, "everything except denunciations." This formula sounds modest. In reality, it describes heroism — not the kind that requires barricades, but the kind that requires daily preservation of one's inner core under conditions where everything around demands its breaking.
Chapter II. The Psychology of the Dragon Within: The Spiritual Anatomy of Submission
2.1. Stockholm as the Norm
There is a phenomenon that psychology calls Stockholm syndrome: the victim begins to identify with the aggressor. On the scale of an entire society, this syndrome takes the form described by Schwartz through his characters: "Mr. Dragon does a lot of good. He fights for peace, factories are being built, education is free."
This is not hypocrisy or stupidity. It is a defense mechanism of the psyche, unable to bear the cognitive dissonance between the horror of what is happening and the impossibility of resisting it. If I cannot stop the Dragon — then the Dragon is not so bad. Then the victims are to blame themselves. Then it must be so.
When a person cannot distinguish between good and evil — they accept the version of reality that relieves them of the unbearable guilt for their own silence.
2.2. Three Types of Citizens in the Age of the Dragon
Schwartz's play presents a precise anthropological typology of human behavior under tyranny. In 2026, this typology works with frightening accuracy.
The first type is the Burgomaster. This is the person who does not believe in the Dragon as a value, but uses him as an instrument of their own power. In contemporary Russia, this is the official, the security officer, the media figure, who perfectly understands the absurdity of what is happening — and precisely for that reason participates in it with particular cynicism. The Burgomaster is more dangerous than the Dragon: the Dragon at least is convinced of his own righteousness.
The second type is the citizens. Those who "let themselves be subjugated." They are not bad people — they are just tired. Tired of being afraid, tired of resisting, tired of being human in inhuman circumstances. Fatigue is not a sin. But it becomes complicity when it turns into a philosophy: "nothing can be changed."
The third type is Charlemagne. The archivist. A man without heroism, without a sword, without wings. Simply a person with memory and dignity. Schwartz — by Gromova's admission — identifies himself precisely with him, not with Lancelot. And this, perhaps, is the most important admission in the entire interview.
2.3. Why Charlemagne is More Important than Lancelot
We live in a culture that glorifies heroes. Lancelot kills the Dragon. Lancelot saves the girl. Lancelot changes the world. But Schwartz, through Gromova, says something uncomfortable: Lancelot easily becomes a new Dragon. The liberator becomes the tyrant — this is not an exception in history; it is almost the rule.
Charlemagne does not become a tyrant. Because he does not strive for power. He strives for memory. These are fundamentally different vectors.
In the conditions of the Age of the Dragon, the main spiritual task is not to win. Victory may or may not come — that is beyond our control. The task is not to become the Dragon in the process of fighting it. Not to adopt its logic. Not to start believing that the end justifies the means. Not to believe that to save people, one must first decide who is worthy of salvation.
"When everything mixes with everything, good with evil — who benefits from that?" — Natalia Gromova
Chapter III. The Crisis of Relativism: Why Postmodernism Capitulated
3.1. Shades of Grey as the Dragon's Weapon
Bogomolov's 2017 production is not just an artistic interpretation. It is a symptom. The cultural elite, tired of Soviet moralism, concluded that "everything is relative" — and decided this was liberation. In fact, it was capitulation.
Relativism is a philosophy of peacetime, when evil is far enough away to be discussed. When evil arrives — at your home, in your city, in your life — relativism reveals its true nature: it disarms. If there is no pure good — there is no reason to fight for it. If there is no absolute evil — there is no need to defend against it.
Bogomolov's Lancelot in a Red Army greatcoat is an artistic argument that any resistance is itself violence. This argument is very convenient for the Dragon. That is why Gromova says such interpretations are hard for her to watch — not from aesthetic snobbery, but from ethical clarity.
3.2. A Return to Modernist Ethics
What does Schwartz offer instead? Not a return to Soviet didacticism. Not poster morality. He offers something more complex and more demanding: moral certainty while preserving artistic depth.
His Lancelot is not the ideal knight without fear or reproach. He is a living person who is afraid, who doubts, who gets tired. But he knows whose side he is on. This certainty is not simplicity. It is a hard-won stance.
In 2026, the intellectual community — the Russian one in exile, the European one, the global one — stands before the necessity of returning to this hard-won certainty. Not because the world is simple. But because some things are truly simple, and pretending they are complex is intellectual cowardice disguised as the language of complexity.
Chapter IV. The Storyteller in Exile: Between Testimony and Consolation
4.1. The Schism of Culture and the Dead End of Allegory
Gromova raises a sharp question: who today will be the "cunning storyteller" if, beyond the wall, there is a world of emigration where one can and must write directly? This is not a question about literary genres. It is a question about the meaning of cultural resistance.
In Schwartz's time, allegory was a necessity: the direct word cost one's life. A play about the Dragon could only exist under the guise of a play about Hitler. Aesopian language was not capitulation, but a strategy for the survival of meaning.
Today, the situation is fundamentally different. Those in exile can call things by their names. Those who remain inside Russia cannot. This creates a rift that is not only political but spiritual: two communities speak different languages about the same reality and hear each other less and less.
Gromova notes: when "the cannibals are outright cannibals" — allegory loses its power. The Dragon has stopped pretending. This is not the storyteller's liberation — it is his crisis. Aesopian language worked while the Dragon pretended not to exist. When he declares himself directly, the language of hints becomes inadequate.
4.2. The Witness as an Anthropological Type
What remains? Gromova calls it "memory as the last degree of despair." It can be called otherwise: testimony as a spiritual act.
Schwartz wrote: "God has placed me as a witness to many misfortunes." This is not a passive position. In the biblical tradition, a witness is one who bears responsibility for what they have seen. They cannot recant. They cannot say "I did not know." Their knowledge is their cross and their calling.
In an era of total history rewriting — the destruction of archives, diaries, testimonies — in an era of war on memory as a tool of politics, preserving the truth about what happened becomes an act of resistance. Not because it will change the course of the war today. But because future generations will not be able to heal without knowing what they are sick with.
The archivist Charlemagne preserves documents not because he is sure they will someday be read. He preserves them because without them, reality ceases to exist. A document is not just information. It is an ontological affirmation: this happened. This existed. This is the truth.
Chapter V. The Historiosophy of the Dragon: Lessons for Russia and the World
5.1. Russia: Diagnosis and Task
Russia in 2026 is a society that has experienced almost the full cycle of Schwartz's play. The Dragon has established itself. The citizens have adapted. The Burgomasters are thriving. The Lancelots are in exile, in prisons, or in graves. The Charlemagnes are writing diaries in kitchens and on messengers.
The historiosophical question is: what happens to society after the Dragon dies or is killed? Schwartz gives the answer in the play's finale: the hardest part begins afterward. The citizens need to be healed — because they have become a non-people. Not in one day. And not through someone else's fault.
This is the key lesson for those thinking about post-Dragon Russia. Liberation — if it comes — will not be the end of the problem. It will be its beginning. A society accustomed for decades not to think, not to choose, and not to take responsibility will not automatically become democratic after a change of power. It will need a long, painful, honest conversation with itself about how it let itself be subjugated.
This conversation is the hardest. And the most necessary. Because without it, the new Dragon will arrive faster than the ashes of the old one can cool.
5.2. The World: The Temptation of the Observer
The global community in 2026 has its own version of Bogomolov's staging: the diplomacy of shades of grey. International institutions, Western governments, transnational corporations — all, to varying degrees, try to preserve room for maneuver, without calling what is happening by its name to the end.
This is understandable. It is sometimes even pragmatic. But Schwartz warns: this is precisely the logic of the citizens. "The Dragon does a lot of good. Let's not rush to conclusions. It's all complex." When world diplomacy speaks the language of the Burgomaster — it becomes part of the Dragon's system.
The lesson for the world is simple and harsh: neutrality in the face of an obvious crime is not neutrality. It is complicity. Schwartz understood this in 1944. Gromova reminds us of this in 2026. History does not forgive those who remained silent when they had the opportunity to speak.
5.3. Hope: The Anthropology of Resistance
The ending could be optimistic. But Schwartz — and, following him, Gromova — does not give us cheap optimism. She speaks of hope through the image of Don Quixote: he did not exist, but he exists in culture — as a dream of a person who sees giants where everyone sees windmills. And this dream holds the world together.
This is not consolation. It is a demand. The dream of a person capable of telling the truth to the dragon's face is preserved only when there are people ready to embody that dream. They do not necessarily have to win. They must not betray.
In 2026, resistance to the Dragon does not look like a heroic assault. It looks like a daily choice: to speak or to remain silent, to sign or to refuse, to remember or to forget. These small choices — that is the real history. Not the one written by the victors. But the one that lives in the archivists' diaries.
Conclusion: The Light of the Storyteller
Evgeny Schwartz wrote in 1944 — a year of greatest darkness and greatest hope simultaneously. He chose a genre that allowed him to speak the truth without dying for it immediately. He chose an alter ego that does not win — but does not betray. He chose an ending in which hope exists — not given, but set as a task: as an assignment, as a question, as a challenge.
Natalia Gromova, in March 2026, speaks of him from Jerusalem. This, too, is symbolic: from a city that itself has survived so many ages of the dragon that its very existence is proof of the possibility of survival. Not victory over evil — but the survival of human dignity in spite of evil.
The Age of the Dragon does not end with Lancelot's victory. It ends — if it ends — because enough people turned out to be Charlemagnes. Because memory was not completely destroyed. Because someone preserved diaries. Because someone did not sign denunciations.
"The storyteller consoles. But his main consolation lies in his refusal to consider evil the norm."
In 2026, this refusal is the hardest and most necessary political, spiritual, and cultural act. Harder than barricades. Because barricades are a single moment. But refusing to consider evil the norm — that is every day. Every conversation. Every word.
And as long as there are people capable of this — the Dragon has not won completely.
The essay was written on March 22, 2026
based on an interview with Natalia Gromova (Novaya Gazeta Europe)
and analysis by DeepSeek
Genspark AI - I have read Natalia Gromova's original article and compared it with the AI analyses from your file — primarily the versions by DeepSeek and Claude AI. They reveal an important difference: one text is stronger as a diagnosis, the other as an existential deepening. Below is not a retelling, but my own synthesis: a spiritual-psychological and historiosophical essay based on the article and these AI analyses, with an emphasis on the lesson for Russia and the world in 2026.
Evgeny Schwartz (image caption)
The Age of the Dragon
A Spiritual-Psychological and Historiosophical Essay-Study
Lessons for Russia and the World in 2026
Introduction. When Fairy Tale Becomes More Precise than Chronicle
There are epochs in which journalism ages in a week, and a fairy tale suddenly begins to speak with frightening precision. In 2026, this is precisely what is happening with Evgeny Schwartz's "The Dragon." Natalia Gromova's conversation about Schwartz's fate returns us not only to the history of Soviet literature, but also to the question of the nature of evil: why it so rarely comes under its own name, why it first seems tolerable, then habitual, and then almost native. The AI analyses correctly noted the main point: "The Dragon" is read today not as a literary monument, but as a spiritual diagnosis of a society in which evil has ceased to be an exception and has become a regime of everyday life.
The main nerve of the original article is that, for Gromova, Schwartz is not just a satirist or merely an author of allegories. He is a humanist for whom good and evil do not dissolve into one another. This is particularly important in an era of intellectual fatigue, when cultural fashion inclines us to think that "everything is ambiguous," "everyone has their own truth," and "there is no pure good." Gromova directly opposes this: in war, in dictatorship, in an era of mass humiliation of human dignity, the discernment of good and evil does not become primitive — it becomes a condition for the soul's survival.
I. The Dragon is Born Not from Without, but from Within
One of the strongest ideas emerging from both the article and the AI analyses is that the dragon is not merely an external enemy. Gromova puts forward an important research hypothesis: the impetus for Schwartz to create the play was not so much Hitler as his experience of the Stalinist atmosphere of fear, power, and deified violence. This shifts the center of gravity: the source of trouble is not somewhere beyond the border of history, but in the very fabric of society, in its habits, fears, compromises, and spiritual concessions. The dragon is most convenient precisely when it is declared foreign; but the true tragedy begins where it becomes clear that it grows from within — from consent, servility, and the slow numbing of conscience.
In this sense, the image of "gangrene" that Gromova associates with the description of how evil develops is almost more frightening than the image of open terror. Gangrene does not convince — it infects. It does not always come with a scream; more often it comes with the formula "that's how it's done," "nothing terrible," "but at least there is order," "but factories are being built," "but at least there is security." Tyranny is almost never built on fear alone. It rests on moral rationalization: on the ability to explain to oneself why humiliation can be endured, denunciation forgiven, truth postponed, memory shortened, and dignity exchanged for comfort.
II. The Main Defeat Occurs Not in the Square, but in the Soul
From a political perspective, the dragon is dictatorship. But from a spiritual-psychological perspective, the dragon is the inner adaptation of a person to unfreedom. In the first draft of the play, as Gromova reminds us, there was a phrase: "A people that has let itself be subjugated is no longer a people." This is a harsh thought, and that is precisely why it is so important. It does not absolve the tyrant of guilt, but it does not allow society to hide in the role of eternal victim. Schwartz's most painful lesson is that people not only suffer from the dragon — they gradually learn to live with it, justify it, and then love their captivity as a familiar order of things.
This does not mean everyone becomes monsters. On the contrary: the tragedy is that the majority remain ordinary people. They get tired, they get scared, they protect their loved ones, they try to survive, they try not to look around. And it is precisely this ordinariness that becomes the breeding ground for evil. The dragon wins not because everyone believes in it, but because too many decide that internal resistance is futile. The soul capitulates before the walls crumble. Therefore, the main struggle of the Age of the Dragon is not only for institutions, but also for a person's ability not to consider evil the norm.
III. The Mistake of the Century: The Conflation of Good and Evil Under the Guise of Depth
One of Gromova's most precise observations is her polemic with modern interpretations in which Lancelot and the Dragon mirror each other, and the boundary between good and evil is blurred as if for the sake of artistic complexity. In peacetime, such an aesthetic may seem sophisticated. But during war, repression, and moral catastrophe, it begins to serve evil. Because when the victim and the executioner are declared equally problematic, society loses its moral compass. In this regard, the AI analyses correctly grasped the nerve of the article: relativism turns out not to be a sign of wisdom, but a form of capitulation to the obvious.
The spiritual error of late culture is that it began to confuse the complexity of a person with the indistinguishability of good and evil. Yes, a person is complex; yes, the liberator can degenerate; yes, revolution can give birth to new oppression. But it does not follow from this that all resistance is equal to tyranny. If we lose the right to call evil evil, then we also lose the right to demand moral choice from ourselves. Schwartz is important today precisely because he restores the basic, almost forgotten courage of moral clarity.
IV. Why Charlemagne is More Important than Lancelot
The deepest point in Gromova's conversation is her thought that Schwartz's alter ego is not Lancelot, but Charlemagne, the archivist. Not the vanquisher of the monster, but the preserver of memory. This flips the usual perspective. We think that history is made by heroes with swords. But in an era when evil has become everyday, the decisive figure may not be the one who strikes the blow, but the one who does not let the truth disappear. The archivist is modest, vulnerable, almost ridiculous against the backdrop of great forces. But it is he who preserves the thread of reality. Without him, after the dragon's fall, there will be emptiness, in which a new dragon will very quickly rewrite the past and call itself the savior.
Here lies the most important lesson for Russia in 2026. When direct action is impossible for millions, nothingness is not all that remains. The work of memory remains: a diary, a letter, testimony, the refusal to lie, the refusal to participate in the ritual of collective self-deception. This looks weak. But in the historiosophical dimension, this is precisely how humanity is preserved. Empires fall not only from defeats on the front lines, but also because inside them, people stop believing their own lies. And they stop believing when at least someone preserves the truth not as a slogan, but as an inner duty.
V. The Crisis of Humanism — and Why There is No Way Out Without It
Gromova speaks of Christian humanistic culture as a foundation that is running out. This is one of the most alarming tones in the article. It is not about confessionalism or nostalgia for the old canon. It is about the fundamental idea: a person should not be a means; death cannot be a cult; evil cannot be normalized for the sake of the state, for the sake of history, or for the sake of grandeur. When this ground disappears, a world grows in its place that deifies strength, despises weakness, and admires the dead more than the living. Then the dragon ceases to be merely a political being — it becomes an anthropological ideal.
Therefore, Schwartz's lesson concerns not only Russia. The world of 2026 also lives in the temptation of the dragon: the temptation to tire of freedom, to exchange dignity for efficiency, tragedy for entertainment, moral discernment for endless irony. Any civilization that becomes accustomed to looking at suffering as content, and at lies as one of the equal narratives, takes a step towards inner savagery. The world is mistaken if it thinks the dragon is a problem only for authoritarian regimes. No: the dragon arises wherever cynicism begins to be considered maturity, and memory a burden.
VI. Russia in 2026: Not the Question "Who is to Blame," but "What Not to Let Die"
For Russia, the lesson of "The Age of the Dragon" cannot be reduced to moralizing or political technology. The main question today is not only who created the monster, but also what has not yet perished under its rule. If the country ever wants to emerge from this darkness, it will have to begin not with self-admiration or new mythology, but with the penitential work of memory. Not with the formula "we were deceived," but with the difficult admission: we allowed the ordinariness of evil to take root in language, daily life, school, screen, culture, and the conversational norms of families for too long.
But it is precisely here that Schwartz's hope remains. Not optimism, but hope. Not belief in a quick ending, but belief that a person is not exhausted by their era. The dragon may subjugate the city, but it does not have to subjugate every conscience. It may infect language, but it cannot ultimately abolish the word of truth. It may impose fear, but it cannot make fear the final truth about a person. This hope is not romantic. It is ascetic. It rests on small loyalties: not to sign, not to denounce, not to lie, not to call black white, not to participate in the deification of violence.
VII. Lesson for the World: The Dragon Wins First in Language
If the universal lesson of 2026 is to be formulated, it sounds like this: the dragon wins not when it captures a fortress, but when it changes the vocabulary. When murder is called historical necessity. When cowardice is called realism. When denunciation is called civic responsibility. When oblivion is called reconciliation. When lies are called complexity. Therefore, the very first line of resistance is not always political, but verbal and spiritual: to restore weight to words, to give guilt its name, to give evil its contours.
The world must understand one more thing: moral judgment cannot be postponed indefinitely under the pretext of expertise. Schwartz's historiosophy is not that history is simple; it is that in history there are moments when evading moral clarity itself becomes a criminal form of complicity. Therefore, the lesson for the world in 2026 is not only to protect institutions, but also to restore a culture of inner discernment: to cultivate people who can recognize the dragon before it begins demanding human sacrifices.
Conclusion. The Archivist's Light
"The Age of the Dragon" is not only a political time. It is a state of the soul in which a dispute takes place between memory and comfort, between dignity and adaptation, between humanity and that within it which wants to become compliant material for evil. Schwartz, read through Gromova and reinterpreted in the AI analyses, returns us to an almost biblical simplicity: not everything can be changed quickly, but one can always refrain from bowing to the dragon internally.
Therefore, the main lesson for Russia and the world in 2026 is this: salvation begins not with a triumphant myth, but with the refusal to consider evil the norm. Not with the roar of the crowd, but with the quiet fidelity to truth. Not with Lancelot's sword, but with Charlemagne's lamp, which preserves memory in the hour when the whole city has become accustomed to the darkness. And if the Age of the Dragon has a limit, it begins precisely there — in the person who is still capable of saying: no, this is not the norm; no, I will not call chains freedom; no, I will not lease my soul to fear.
