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Evgeny Schwartz
DeepSeek AI — «Man Proposes...»
Introduction: Between Scylla and Charybdis
In 2026, as the distance between the individual and the state, between the private and the public, between the inner world and external circumstances becomes increasingly blurred, the diaries of Evgeny Schwartz acquire an unexpected relevance. The writer, who spent almost his entire conscious life under Soviet rule, left us not merely a literary monument, but a unique document of human existence under conditions where the state laid claim to absolute power over the soul.
Schwartz was not a dissident in the conventional sense of the word. He did not write open pamphlets, did not participate in political protests, and was not subjected to repression (although those close to him — Oleinikov, Zabolotsky, Kharms — were arrested and perished). He was what is called an "internal émigré" — a man who managed to preserve his inner space, his soul, his truth, without engaging in open confrontation with the system.
It is precisely this — the ability to preserve oneself in a world where the individual is constantly under pressure, where the boundaries between "I" and "we" are erased, where the state demands not only loyalty but also complicity — that makes his diary a spiritual lesson for us, living in 2026. In an era where technology allows the state to penetrate the most intimate corners of our lives, where algorithms predict our desires before we are aware of them, where privacy becomes a luxury increasingly difficult to possess — Schwartz's experience takes on a new dimension.
I. "We were living, living — and then bam!": The Origins of Internal Resistance
To understand how a person's capacity to resist state pressure is formed, one must look into the earliest layers of their personality. Schwartz does this with surprising frankness, describing the childhood trauma that defined his entire subsequent life: the birth of his younger brother.
"We were living, living — and then bam! This one appeared..." — these words, spoken by a six-year-old boy, become the archetypal formula for his relationship with any authority structure. The sudden appearance of one who takes away your monopoly on love, on attention, on your place in the world — this is the first encounter with a force greater than yourself, one you cannot resist.
But Schwartz's reaction to this trauma is unusual. He does not rebel openly. He does not try to reclaim his lost place by force. Instead, he creates an inner world where no one can penetrate. A world in which he is the master.
"No one knew of the existence of this world, not a single person, I am telling about it for the first time," he writes of his childhood fantasies, his imaginary horse, the little people living under the blanket. "Love, longing for a seaside life, night terrors, evil and good beings invented by me, but frightening or delighting me as if they lived an independent life once born — I carefully hid all of it, did not betray it by a single hint."
This gesture — creating an inner refuge that cannot be stormed — would become the main strategy for his survival in a world where the state would lay claim to everything. He would learn to hide the most precious things so deeply that even those closest to him would not know of their existence. He would learn to live a double life — an external one, subordinate to rules, and an internal one, where he remained himself.
This is not cowardice or opportunism. It is a way to preserve the soul under conditions where any open resistance is meaningless and suicidal. It is an art of survival that requires no less courage than open rebellion, but a different kind of courage — the courage to preserve oneself when everything around demands self-abnegation.
II. "Later, later": Laziness as a Form of Resistance
One of the most striking traits of Schwartz, which he analyzes with ruthless frankness, is his "laziness." He constantly reproaches himself for not working, for procrastinating, for being unable to start, for giving up halfway. And in this self-accusation, one senses not only a personal psychological problem but also a deep existential choice.
"I kept putting it off and off," he writes of his childhood years. "Whenever a situation demanded effort, I would brush it off, squeeze my eyes shut — 'Later, later!'"
But what is this "later" in the context of relations with the state? It is a refusal to participate in the tempo imposed from outside. It is preserving one's own rhythm, one's own temporal structure in a world where time has become a resource subject to mobilization. It is passive resistance, which outwardly may look like laziness or inability to act, but inwardly is an act of preserving sovereignty.
Schwartz understands this perfectly when he writes about his "will to non-doing." "I would call this quality laziness, if not for its size, its scale," he confesses. "In Stalinabad, in the summer of '43, Schwartz received a letter from the Central Children's Theater, which was in evacuation. The literary manager wrote that they had learned Schwartz's financial situation was not too good and offered to sign a contract. The agreement was attached to the letter. Schwartz was to sign it and send it back, after which the theater would transfer him two thousand rubles. Schwartz was touched by the letter. He needed the money desperately. But he was cooled by the thought: while the agreement gets there, and while they send the money... and on the first day he did not sign the agreement, putting it off until tomorrow. Three days later, I found him, full of horror that the letter had still not been sent. But it didn't go out a week later, or ten days later, it never went out at all."
This episode is not about laziness. It is about the impossibility of performing an action that requires self-abnegation. Signing the contract meant entering a system of relations that was alien to him. It meant recognizing oneself as part of a mechanism that operates according to its own laws, disregarding one's inner truth. Schwartz cannot do this. He prefers need to participating in what disgusts him.
"He feels himself a man only when working," he writes of himself in the third person. "He knows perfectly well that after enduring the negligible, in essence, effort of the first twenty to thirty minutes, he will find confidence, and with it happiness. And despite this, he does nothing for days, even months, experiencing a pain worse than a toothache."
This pain is not from laziness. This pain is from the impossibility of adapting to a world that demands actions from you that do not align with your inner truth. "The will to non-doing" is not an absence of will. It is a will directed at preserving oneself. It is a form of resistance that cannot be documented, punished, or destroyed, because it has no outward manifestations.
III. "I Have This Quality": The Territory of Inviolability
In his portraits of contemporaries, Schwartz particularly highlights the artist Vladimir Lebedev. And among the multitude of traits he notes, one seems especially important in the context of the relationship between the individual and the state.
"One of Lebedev's favorite phrases was often quoted among his students and young friends. He would often say with religious reverence: 'I have this quality.' 'I have this quality — I cannot stand vinaigrette.' Marshak believed the reason for this was a heightened sense of form. Vinaigrette is a clear mixing of styles. 'I have this quality — I don't eat herring.'"
What is this "quality"? It is a declaration of sovereignty. It is an affirmation of boundaries that no one has the right to cross. The state, which strives for total control, cannot tolerate such "qualities." It demands that a person be malleable, pliable, ready to change on demand. But Lebedev, and following him, Schwartz, refuse this pliability. They assert their inflexibility, their unyieldingness, their ability to say "no" — even in small things.
"I have this quality" is a formula of inner freedom. It is a way of saying: there are things I cannot do, cannot eat, cannot accept, because they contradict my nature. And no authority, no pressure, will make me change this nature.
Schwartz does not notice this trait in Lebedev by chance. In it, he recognizes himself. His own "laziness," his "will to non-doing," is also a "quality." A quality that cannot be explained rationally, but which defines the boundaries of what is possible for him.
In a world where the state demands constant activity, constant mobilization, constant participation, the ability to say "no" becomes an act of civil courage. And this courage lies not in open confrontation, but in preserving the territory you consider your own — the territory of taste, of habit, of the most intimate thing within a person.
IV. "The Grayness and Everydayness of Horror": The Siege as a Metaphor for Relations with the State
The Siege of Leningrad occupies a special place in Schwartz's diary. It is not just a historical event, not just a tragic episode in the city's life. It is a metaphor for the relationship between man and the state, pushed to its limit.
"The horror is that you get used to everything," he writes. "And if we survive, we will talk about these days as if they had color, not grayness and darkness, as if they were interesting."
This phrase is the key to understanding how Schwartz experienced relations with the state. The state, which claims absolute power, seeks to make horror mundane. It wants a person to get used to what one cannot get used to. To accept as normal what cannot be normal. To stop being amazed by what evokes horror.
"The siege is everyday life," he writes. "Everyday life, intensifying with each passing day." And in this lies the most terrible thing. Not the hunger, not the cold, not death, but that all this becomes everyday life. That a person stops resisting. That they accept horror as a given.
But Schwartz resists this everydayness. He does it in a strange way, at first glance — he continues to keep a diary. He records the grayness so it does not become imperceptible. He writes down the everyday so it does not become the norm. He preserves the ability to be horrified, so as not to get used to it.
"Today marks seven years since I began writing daily in these notebooks. And in April, it will be fifteen years since I have been keeping them. But daily entries began seven years ago, and that constitutes their main meaning."
The main meaning lies in the daily nature. In returning to oneself every day, no matter what. In not letting everyday life erase the boundary between who you are and what is demanded of you. In reaffirming one's right to one's own voice every day.
This is Schwartz's spiritual lesson for us, living in 2026. In a world where technology makes our lives increasingly transparent, where the state and corporations penetrate the most intimate corners of our existence, the daily act of returning to oneself becomes a form of resistance. Schwartz's diary is not just a literary text. It is an instruction manual for survival in a world that wants to make your life its own property.
V. He Said: "Don't Drink!": Theater as a Space of Freedom
One of the most poignant passages in the diary is the description of an amateur performance of "For the Good of the People" in Maykop. The action takes place in Ancient Greece, the heroes are Croesus and Solon, the inventor of bread and his bride. But in the audience are the ordinary people of a small provincial town. And when the heroine hands the hero a cup of poison, something unexpected happens.
"From the gallery, someone shouted in a choked, uncertain voice, as if in a dream: 'Don't drink!' 'Don't drink!' they echoed from the stalls."
This moment is one of the keys to understanding how Schwartz sees the relationship between the individual and the state. Theater becomes a place where what is impossible in life becomes possible. Where you can say "don't drink" to a hero whom fate is leading to his doom. Where you can change the course of events — even if only in imagination, even if only for a few seconds.
Schwartz wrote fairy tales his entire life. Fairy tales for children, fairy tales for adults. And this was his way of resisting. In a fairy tale, you can say what cannot be said directly. In a fairy tale, you can call things by their names without fear of censorship. In a fairy tale, you can be free — because by definition, it does not claim plausibility.
But the paradox is that in the fairy tale, Schwartz proves to be most truthful. "The Shadow," "The Dragon," "An Ordinary Miracle" — these are not just fantasies. They are a diagnosis of the society in which he lived. A diagnosis that could not be made in a realistic play. A diagnosis that became possible only because the author chose a form that, in the logic of the censors, could not contain dangerous content.
This was a strategy available not only to Schwartz. Many Soviet writers used fairy tales, science fiction, historical genres to say what could not be said directly. But Schwartz does so with particular consistency and frankness. He does not hide his truth behind allegory — he makes allegory his truth.
VI. "Everything Can Become Everyday Life": The Experience of 1937
There is one entry in the diary that stands out among all for its conciseness and power. It is a description of 1937 — the time of the Great Terror, when the state descended upon its citizens with unprecedented cruelty.
"Starting in the spring of '37, a storm broke out and began to crush everything around, and it was impossible to understand who would be struck by the next lightning bolt. And no one ran away or hid. A person aware of their guilt knows how to behave: a criminal forges a false passport and flees to another city. But the future enemies of the people, without moving, awaited the blow of the terrible, anti-Christ seal. They sensed blood, like bulls in a slaughterhouse, sensed that the stamp 'enemy of the people' smashes indiscriminately, anyone — and stood in place, submissively, like bulls, offering their heads. How to flee without knowing one's guilt? How to behave during interrogations? And people perished, as if in a delirium, confessing to unheard-of crimes: espionage, sabotage, terror, wrecking. And they disappeared without a trace, and their wives and children, entire families, were exiled after them."
This description is not just a firsthand account. It is an attempt to understand what happens to a person when the state becomes not just hostile, but meaningless. When it is impossible to predict who will be the next victim. When there is no logic except the logic of fear.
And the most terrifying thing in this description is not the cruelty of the state, but the submissiveness of the victims. "They stood in place, submissively, like bulls, offering their heads." Why? Because it is impossible to flee from what you do not understand. Because you cannot defend yourself against what has no form. Because a state that demands you confess to what you did not do makes you an accomplice in your own destruction.
Schwartz was not arrested. But his loved ones were. Oleinikov, Zabolotsky, Kharms. He writes about an interrogation at a board meeting where he was demanded to "answer for his ties with the enemy of the people." And his response — "Oleinikov was a secretive man. That he turned out to be an enemy of the people is a complete surprise to me" — is an act of civil courage. He does not renounce his friend. He does not join those who denounce him. He remains loyal when loyalty is dangerous.
But he cannot save Oleinikov. He cannot save any of his friends. And this feeling of powerlessness is one of the most agonizing in the diary. The state proves stronger not only than the body, but also than the spirit. It can destroy those dear to you, and you can do nothing about it.
VII. "The Meaningless Joy of Being": How to Preserve Oneself
Despite everything Schwartz experienced — the siege, the death of friends, the pressure of the system, the constant sense of his own inadequacy — a strange, inexplicable joy constantly breaks through in his diary.
"The meaningless joy of being," he calls this state in a poem he quotes in the diary. "Not quite a premonition, not quite a memory." This feeling accompanies him throughout his life, from childhood. And it is precisely this that allows him to preserve himself in a world that seeks to destroy the individual.
What is this joy? It is not optimism, not faith in a better future, not ideological conviction. It is something deeper and more mysterious. It is the ability to feel life as such, regardless of circumstances. It is the ability to see beauty where, it would seem, there is none. It is a gift that cannot be taken away because it depends on nothing external.
"I was not abandoned by a vague premonition of happiness — the eternal companion of my life," he writes of his youth. And this premonition remains with him until the end. Even when he writes about the death of friends, about hunger, about fear. Even when he analyzes his "laziness," his "weakness," his "inability to act." Even when he speaks of himself in the third person, with ruthless frankness evaluating his life.
This is Schwartz's main lesson for us. In a world where the state (or corporation, or technology, or anything else) seeks to take possession of our attention, our time, our desires, our capacity to feel — preserving "the meaningless joy of being" becomes an act of resistance. Not letting them take away our ability to rejoice simply in being alive, in the sun shining, in the rain falling, in the trees turning green, in having a book you want to reread.
This is not an escape from reality. This is an affirmation of one's ability to be happy regardless of reality. This is a declaration of sovereignty. This is a "quality" that cannot be taken away.
Conclusion: "There's Nothing to Be Done"
Schwartz often uses the formula in his diary: "There's nothing to be done." This is not resignation. This is an acknowledgment of the limits of the possible. He knows he cannot change the world. He knows the state is stronger than him. He knows his friends perished and he could not save them. But he also knows something else: there is a territory where he remains the master. The territory of his diary. The territory of his fairy tales. The territory of his inner world.
In 2026, when technology allows the state and corporations to penetrate the most intimate corners of our lives, when algorithms know more about us than we know about ourselves, when privacy becomes a luxury increasingly difficult to possess — Schwartz's experience takes on a new dimension.
He teaches us that resistance begins not with barricades, but with the daily act of returning to oneself. With the entry you make for yourself, without thinking about the reader. With the "quality" you refuse to change. With the "meaningless joy" you do not allow to be taken away. With the right to say "later" when you are demanded to do it "now." With the right to say "don't drink" when the hero walks toward his doom.
"Everything can become everyday life," warns Schwartz. And this is the most terrifying thing. Not death, not hunger, not fear, but that they become routine. But the diary is a way to not let horror become routine. It is a way to preserve the ability to be amazed, to feel, to remember. It is a way to remain human.
"I Live Uneasily" — the title Schwartz gave his diaries. Uneasily means not calmly. Not resignedly. Not adaptively. Uneasily means resisting. Uneasily means preserving the ability to feel, think, doubt. Uneasily means living.
In 2026, when the world seems even more uneasy than in Schwartz's time, his diaries become not just a literary monument, but a guide to action. Action that does not require heroism, but requires constancy. Action that does not change the world, but preserves the human in the world. Action that is called — living one's own way.
Claude AI — Silence as Metaphysics: The Individual and the State in the Diaries of Evgeny Schwartz
A Research Essay for 2026
*"From the year twenty-six onwards, I had thick bound notebooks... Leaving in December of '41 from Leningrad... I burned these notebooks, which I now very much regret. But then it seemed that the old life was over, and there was nothing to regret."*
— Evgeny Schwartz
Preface: What Remained Unsaid
Every substantial essay about Schwartz begins with a paradox: the most politically significant part of his diaries was destroyed by the author himself. Fifteen years of entries — from 1926 to 1941 — burned in the stove of his Leningrad apartment in December 1941, when the writer, dying from dystrophy, was packing his twenty kilograms of permitted baggage. He could not take the diaries with him. He did not want to leave them to chance. He burned them.
This gesture is not a metaphor or a minor biographical episode. It is an ontological act in which the individual and the state collided most nakedly. The state created conditions in which a person destroys their own memory, their own testimony, their own "I" — so that this "I" might survive. Schwartz burned his diaries not out of fear of the NKVD: he was fleeing a besieged city. He burned them out of the understanding that any text left among the ruins could become a weapon against anyone. Thus the totalitarian state penetrates even the act of self-preservation, turning survival into complicity in the destruction of one's own past.
What remains — the diaries of 1942–1958 — is therefore not simply a chronicle of life. It is a reconstruction of personality after the fire. And it is in this reconstruction, in its logic, its lacunae, its obsessive returns to the same themes, that Schwartz's main spiritual lesson for our time is hidden.
I. Phenomenology of Silence: The Individual as an Undisclosed Secret
Schwartz describes with striking consistency one trait of his character — secretiveness, which he himself calls "senseless childish secrecy." "Due to a senseless childish secrecy that started in me around the age of thirteen and persists stubbornly until fifty, I cannot speak or write about myself." But what was he hiding?
Not state secrets. Not political convictions. He was hiding the most intimate: his love for Milochka, which none of his friends knew about; an imaginary horse in a sandy hollow, which he summoned with a special whistle; an army of little people under the blanket; poems he wrote in secret from everyone. "No one knew of the existence of this world, not a single person, I am telling about it for the first time." This "for the first time" was written a few years before his death, when he was already over fifty.
One must stop here and understand what is happening ontologically. Schwartz is not describing a psychological peculiarity, not a neurosis — he is describing the structure of a personality formed under conditions where any internal content could be used against you. The Soviet state created a particular anthropology: a person in whom the public and the private are separated not by cultural norm, not by politeness, not by respect for another's life — but by the instinct for survival.
But Schwartz's paradox is that his secretiveness predates Soviet power. It formed in childhood, in Maykop, long before 1917. Secretiveness is born as a response to the first encounter with a power greater than yourself: the power of a mother who suddenly reorients all her love toward a newborn brother. "We were living, living — and then bam! This one appeared..." — the six-year-old boy utters the formula that would become the archetype of his relationship with any force claiming a monopoly in your world.
Schwartz the diarist makes a profound discovery: the totalitarian state does not create fearful silent people out of nothing — it finds an already existing structure and exploits it. It exploits that part of a person who learned to hide what is most precious in childhood, long before a real threat appeared. Therefore, Schwartz's resistance to the state is not political, but archaically personal: he resists with the same force with which he resisted the power of his mother, the power of his schoolteacher Chkonia, the power of Marshak's literary circle. This is not heroism — it is character.
For 2026, this discovery acquires a particular dimension. The digital state and corporate capitalism are jointly destroying the very possibility of that internal territory which Schwartz guarded all his life. Algorithms tracking behavior, facial recognition systems, digital dossiers — all this creates a world where one cannot have an imaginary horse in a sandy hollow that no one knows about. Any secret is potentially archived. Any secretiveness becomes suspicious. Schwartz's lesson: the ability to have an inner world inaccessible to anyone is not a neurosis or egoism. It is a condition for the existence of personality.
II. Ontology of Burning: The State as a Metaphysical Threat
The burning of the diaries is not the only act of self-destruction that Schwartz commits under pressure from the state machinery. There is another, less noticeable, but perhaps more profound.
In the surviving diaries, Schwartz speaks of Oleinikov — the brilliant, demonic, genius Nikolai Makarovich, who was later arrested and perished in 1937–38. He speaks of Kharms. Of Zabolotsky. Of Akhmatova. But he speaks as if carefully weighing every word. He describes — in detail, lovingly, precisely — personalities, characters, habits. But almost never touches upon their fates in full force. Almost never directly names what happened.
This is a particular type of omission, fundamentally different from the childhood secretiveness discussed above. Childhood secretiveness is voluntary, protective. This omission is forced, destructive. This is the voice of a person who knows that speaking is forbidden, and from this silence creates a form of speech. Schwartz keeps his diary from 1950 onward daily, writes about people, many of whom are no longer alive — but writes as if they are alive, as if the question of their death is still unresolved or no longer matters.
This is not cowardice. This is the phenomenology of state control over speech. A state that punishes words creates a particular syntax — a syntax of survival. Sentences with missing verbs. Portraits without biographies. Memories without endings. Schwartz is a master of this syntax, but unlike most Soviet writers, he is aware of its nature and thematizes it. He writes about how hard it is to tell the truth, about the fear of clichés, about the "muteness" that horrifies him. His struggle with his own muteness is simultaneously a struggle with the language that the state imposed on everyone.
Here the historiosophical dimension reveals itself in full force. The totalitarian state — and this is its main criminal gift — not only physically destroys people. It destroys the ability to bear witness to destruction. It creates a world where the witness themselves is forced to burn their testimonies. Where the artist paints portraits of the dead without naming the cause of death. Where the most precise, most honest chronicler of his generation creates a chronicle full of conscious lacunae.
Schwartz's diary is a chronicle of the unsaid. And that is why it is more important than many open dissident texts: it shows how the state works not only through direct violence, but through the formation of the very structure of possible utterance.
III. Loyalty as a Political Act: The Oleinikov Affair
Among the few cases where Schwartz describes a direct confrontation with the state, the episode with Oleinikov holds a special place. In the diaries, this episode is not described directly — it is guessed from context, from how Schwartz speaks of Oleinikov: with pain, with love, with admiration that no line can hide.
From external sources, we know: when Oleinikov was arrested as an "enemy of the people," Schwartz was required at a meeting of the Writers' Union board to condemn his arrested friend. Schwartz said: "Oleinikov was a secretive man. That he turned out to be an enemy of the people is a complete surprise to me." And he added not a single word of condemnation.
This sentence is one of the most significant in 20th-century Russian literature. Let us analyze it.
First, it formally satisfies the requirement: Schwartz acknowledges the official verdict ("enemy of the people"). He does not argue. He does not defend. Second, he does not condemn. He explains his silence by Oleinikov's secretiveness — that is, he transfers the political accusation into the realm of personal ignorance. Third, the word "surprise" is not "I believe the accusation," it is "I did not expect," which means: "until this moment, I had no reason to think badly of him." This is a barely noticeable but fundamental distinction.
Schwartz found a way to tell the truth — "I knew nothing bad about him" — without falling under the system's blow. This is linguistic aikido: using the energy of the accusation to protect the accused. It requires exceptional mental precision, self-control, and bravery — a particular kind of bravery that will never be called heroism because outwardly it looks like a concession.
Culturologically, this phenomenon is fundamental. The Soviet system developed and honed a mechanism of forced complicity: a person is not just arrested, they are forced to publicly participate in the condemnation of the arrested. This makes every witness to the repression simultaneously its accomplice. The one who remained silent was guilty. The one who spoke was also guilty. The system created a universal collective guilt that cemented society with fear and complicity.
Schwartz's answer finds a third path — not silence and not condemnation, but speech that is neither. This is a path that requires what might be called spiritual precision: the ability, at the moment of maximum pressure, to find the single precise word that does not lie and does not kill.
For 2026: in an era of digital denunciations, cancel culture, public confessions on social media — this moment of Schwartz's is a model. Is there a way to speak so as not to betray and not to provoke? Is there a syntax that preserves the individual within a system that demands renunciation?
IV. The State as Ontological Horror: 1937 and the Inexplicable Submissiveness
The DeepSeek text quoted an important fragment about 1937 — about people who "stood in place, submissively, like bulls, offering their heads." But the analysis stopped at the level of the psychology of fear. Schwartz, however, poses a deeper question that requires historiosophical examination.
Why did people not flee? Schwartz gives an unexpected answer: "How to flee without knowing one's guilt?" This is not apathy. This is ontological confusion. The Soviet terror of 1937–38 was built on a fundamental rejection of cause-and-effect relationships. They arrested not those who were guilty — they arrested according to random, unpredictable criteria. This destroyed the very possibility of rational behavior: if you cannot predict what you will be arrested for, then you cannot defend yourself. You cannot flee (where to?), you cannot be silent (that too is suspicious), you cannot speak (that is more dangerous).
The state created a situation of complete ontological paralysis. A person found themselves in a world where their behavior was unrelated to their fate. Where there were no cause-and-effect relationships. Where innocence was no protection. This destroyed not only physical freedom but the very structure of human existence — the ability to navigate the world by understanding the connection between actions and consequences.
That is why Schwartz describes the submissiveness of the victims not with contempt, but with tragic understanding. This is not weakness of character — it is the result of the systematic destruction of those categories of thought that would have allowed resistance.
Here a historiosophical conclusion must be drawn, one that is rarely made. The totalitarian state is not just a political system. It is an ontological project. Its goal is not control over people's behavior, but control over the very structure of the reality in which they exist. To create a world in which it is impossible to understand what is happening, nor to react to it rationally. To create people who cannot be subjects of history — only its objects.
Schwartz understood this. And his answer was — to write. Daily. Methodically. "The main condition for keeping diary entries was to write only the truth, not to lie, not to regroup events." This is not just a literary technique. It is ontological resistance: insisting that cause-and-effect relationships exist, that events happened exactly this way and not otherwise, that a person is a subject, not an object. Schwartz's diary is an act of ontological stubbornness in the face of a state striving to destroy the very possibility of subjectivity.
V. Culturology of Betrayal: Oleinikov and the Mechanism of Destroying Friendship
One of the deepest and least noticed aspects of Schwartz's diaries is the analysis of how the state destroys not just people, but the bonds between people. Schwartz writes extensively about Oleinikov as a "demonic destroyer" — a man who, with his fury, passion, and ruthlessness, destroyed the friendship between Marshak and Zhitkov, between different groups of the Leningrad literary milieu. But behind this description lies a darker thought.
Oleinikov was a man of immense talent, "a genius, if one dares to say so." His destructiveness stemmed from two sources. First: "his enormous talent found no expression." The system that could have allowed him to realize himself did not permit it. Creative energy, finding no outlet, turned destructive. Second: he was fundamentally honest — "ruthlessly honest even with himself." But "the force of feeling would knock his strong mind off course."
Schwartz, describing Oleinikov, describes a cultural catastrophe that does not require direct state intervention. It is enough to create conditions in which a talented person cannot realize themselves — and they begin to destroy what is around them. The state did not order Oleinikov to destroy the friendship of Marshak and Zhitkov. But the state created conditions under which Oleinikov became an instrument of destruction.
This is the culturology of indirect violence: the state does not act directly — it acts through people who have been deprived of the opportunity for creative fulfillment. Their energy, having no legitimate outlet, finds a destructive outlet. And the victims are not state institutions, but the closest friends.
We observe this phenomenon today in digital space. Young people, deprived of real social lifts, real opportunities for influence, channel their energy into destructive online activism. Network wars, the discourse of hatred, the phenomenon of "cancellation" — these are largely a consequence of the same mechanism that Schwartz described regarding Oleinikov. The state (or system), failing to create conditions for personal fulfillment, produces destroyers.
VI. Theology of Personality: "The Meaningless Joy of Being" as a Form of Resistance
There is one dimension of Schwartz's diaries that remains almost unnoticed in any political analysis, but which is perhaps the most important for understanding how personality survives in the face of the state.
Schwartz writes about "a vague premonition of happiness — the eternal companion of his life." About "the meaningless joy of being" expressed in a poem. About how, in childhood, getting up early to go swimming in the Belaya River, "a premonition of happiness always accompanied me." This feeling is not optimism, not naivety, not a denial of reality. It coexists with the most sober, the most ruthless view of the world. Schwartz knows that Oleinikov, Kharms, Zabolotsky perished. He knows that his "Dragon" was called a "harmful fairy tale." He knows that the siege is hunger and death. And yet — "meaningless joy."
What is this joy? It is not what is commonly called "love of life." It is something more precise and more important. It is an ontological faithfulness to being, which does not depend on the conditions of being. Schwartz experiences this joy not because life is good — he experiences it despite the fact that life is often terrible. This is not a response to the conditions of existence, it is a response to existence itself.
Here it is necessary to introduce a theological dimension that Schwartz himself does not explicitly formulate, but which is readable from the entire structure of his diaries. The childhood experience in Zhizdra — "The God I came to know in Zhizdra was hidden in the very depths of my soul, with all the secrets I never disclosed." Prayers he hides from everyone. Mystical experiences at night. Superstition. This is not a random backdrop — it is the innermost source of that very "meaningless joy." A person who has an inner connection with something that does not depend on the state, the system, conditions — such a person cannot be completely destroyed by that system. They carry within them something that the state is unable to control or confiscate.
This is fundamentally important for 2026. In an era when states and corporations compete for control over attention, over desires, over the very perception of reality — the ability to experience "the meaningless joy of being," a joy not dictated by algorithms and not created by marketing, is an act of sovereignty. This is not escapism — it is a refusal to hand over to the state or the system a monopoly on defining what is valuable.
VII. Historiosophy of "Transplantation to New Soil": The Individual in an Era of Constant Upheavals
Schwartz formulates — through the voice of his alter ego, speaking of himself in the third person — a surprising theory of historical existence: "All of us, one way or another, have been transplanted to new soil. The transplantation is repeated from time to time... Categorical orders to change. And previously, people, having outlived their soil, either worked for a while from the roots, or they fell. And we are constantly sick."
This is not pessimism — it is historical anthropology. The Soviet 20th century was a series of sharp ruptures: War Communism, NEP, collectivization, the Great Terror, war, the Thaw. Each time, people were required not just to adapt to new conditions — they were required to become different people. To acknowledge as false what was true yesterday. To betray those who were honored yesterday. To praise what was condemned yesterday.
Schwartz refused. Not demonstratively — he was not a dissident. He refused ontologically: he continued to write about the same people, in the same words, with the same precision — regardless of what the "new soil" demanded. This created his "illness" — the impossibility of living organically in a system that demanded constant self-renunciation.
But it was precisely this "illness" that preserved his personality. Those who "recovered" — adapted to the new soil — lost something that cannot be restored. They became functions of the system. Schwartz remained a human being.
For 2026, this metaphor acquires a new, troubling meaning. Technological changes create new "transplantations to new soil" with increasing frequency. Each new generation of digital platforms, each change of algorithms, each new media landscape requires "becoming different." The TikTok generation is already different from the Facebook generation. And each of these transplantations carries the risk of losing what Schwartz called "roots." The question his diaries pose to us: do we have anything that remains unchanged through all changes? Is there anything in us that is not transplanted?
VIII. Aesthetics as Ethics: "The Dragon" and the Space of Truth
When, in March 1944, the newspaper "Literature and Art" called "The Dragon" a "harmful fairy tale," Schwartz records this without panic, almost calmly — and then continues to write about spring in Stalinabad, about roses brought to the train car, about the trip to Moscow. This is not indifference — it is a particular way of coexisting with state violence.
"The Dragon" is a play about how liberated people themselves reproduce the logic of the dragon. That the man who kills a tyrant risks becoming a tyrant. That freedom is not a state, but constant work on oneself. In 1944, to write such a thing was an act of intellectual courage equal to few in Soviet literature. The state correctly sensed the threat.
But here is what matters: Schwartz did not abandon the play. He did not write another, "correct" one. He continued working on what he considered important — and waited. And he got his chance: the play had a closed screening, was staged, and entered the repertoire.
Here is a culturologically fundamental point. An artist working under state control has two paths. The first is open confrontation, which almost always ends in physical or creative destruction. The second is total submission, which ends in artistic death while surviving biologically. Schwartz found a third path: work slowly, as honestly as possible, waiting for the moment when the system loosens its grip. This is not conformism — it is a particular kind of artistic patience that keeps the artist alive without destroying art.
The aesthetic form — fairy tale, allegory, fantasy — was not just protective camouflage. It was an ontologically accurate response to the conditions of existence. In a world where direct utterance is impossible, the fairy tale becomes the only form in which truth can be fully told. The Dragon is Stalin, it is the system, it is the human inclination toward domination. But the dragon is also an archetype that existed before Stalin and will remain after. It was precisely this dual nature of allegory that allowed Schwartz to tell the truth without naming it — and that is why his tales retain their power eighty years later.
IX. The Diary as Resistance to Non-Being: Daily Practice as a Form of Resistance
Starting in June 1950, Schwartz kept his diary daily — never missing a day for eight years, including during illnesses, a heart attack, and the death of loved ones. "Without this entry, E. L. Schwartz could not get through the day." This is not a habit or a ritual — it is an existential necessity.
Why? Schwartz himself explains: "Without some other forms of self-expression, namely: reading, recording the days lived — I lose myself." The diary is a return to oneself. Every day, regardless of circumstances, an act of self-identification occurs: I exist, I think, I notice, I remember.
Under Soviet conditions, this act acquired a political dimension, although Schwartz himself perhaps did not formulate it that way. The state, demanding constant participation in public rituals — meetings, votes, public condemnations — destroys the space for returning to oneself. The daily private entry is a counterbalance. It is an affirmation: there exists a space where the state is not admitted.
Significantly: Schwartz set himself the condition "not to lie, not to regroup events, not to allow even any corrections." This rule is not a writer's technique. It is an ethic of personal sovereignty. In a world where public discourse is permeated with lies, where history is constantly rewritten, where yesterday's heroes become today's enemies — a private document, written under the rule of "only truth," is a political act. This is the creation of a parallel reality in which events are preserved as they were.
Schwartz keeps his diary knowing he writes for the future. "I want, when remembering, rereading the entry about today, to resurrect at least one moment from those I lived through." This is the mission of a witness — not a judge, not an accuser, but a witness. One who can say: it was so. Precisely this. Precisely then.
X. Lesson for 2026: What It Means to Be a Person in the Age of the Algorithmic State
Schwartz died in January 1958. The state he dealt with was a system of political control based on physical violence, fear, ideological coercion. The state of 2026 is different. Its instruments are not prisons and executions (though these have not disappeared), but algorithms, data, attention, desire.
But the structural conflict is the same. The state and corporation of 2026 equally claim a monopoly on defining what is valuable, real, permissible. They equally demand participation and complicity — not through political meetings, but through likes, subscriptions, public statements on social media. They equally create mechanisms of forced publicity in which any evasion becomes suspicious.
And equally — in counterbalance — what remains to the person is what Schwartz guarded all his life: an inner world to which there is no access. The ability to experience "meaningless joy," inexplicable by any algorithm. The ability to have secrets — not political secrets, but simply human ones. An imaginary horse in a sandy hollow that no one knows about.
Several lessons can be drawn from Schwartz's diaries for 2026, fundamentally different from those already formulated by his previous interpreters.
First: The individual does not confront the state through heroic disobedience — they confront it through consistent faithfulness to oneself in small things. Through the refusal to "regroup events." Through preserving the ability to call things by their names — at least in private space.
Second: Secretiveness is not a vice or a pathology. It is an ontological condition for the existence of personality under conditions of total control. The right to privacy is the right to exist.
Third: Loyalty to the dead and the outcast is the most important political act. Not because it changes anything in their fate, but because it changes something in you. Whoever betrays the dead betrays, above all, their own capacity for love and memory.
Fourth: Aesthetics is not an adornment of life nor an escape from it. It is a way to tell the truth where direct utterance is impossible. Fairy tale, metaphor, allegory — these are not childish or unserious. They are the only language in which truth can be told in certain eras.
Fifth: The daily act of returning to oneself — writing, meditation, prayer, any form of attention to one's own inner world — is political resistance in a world that demands constant external participation.
Conclusion: "I Live Uneasily" as a Program
The title Schwartz gave his diaries — "I Live Uneasily" — is often interpreted as an admission of anxiety, unsettledness, inner restlessness. But this is an inaccurate interpretation.
Uneasily means not having calmed down. Not having reconciled oneself to what cannot be accepted. Not having become so accustomed to horror that one stops noticing it. Schwartz describes the horror of the siege with the words: "Everything can become everyday life. And this was more terrifying than anything." Uneasiness is the antidote to this transformation. A person who lives uneasily does not allow horror to become everyday life. Does not allow terminology to normalize the extraordinary.
In this sense, Schwartz's "uneasiness" is not a neurosis, but a spiritual vigilance. The ability to notice. To continue to be amazed. To preserve the ability to call what is happening by its name — at least in a diary, at least for oneself.
For 2026 — this is perhaps the most important thing. The world we live in produces calming with industrial speed: content algorithmically tailored to our preferences, news repackaged into stories, history packaged into memes. All this works against uneasiness — in favor of comfortable anesthesia.
Schwartz offers another path: to live uneasily. To notice. To name. To remember. To write — at least for oneself. To preserve an inner world to which the state and the algorithm have no access. To experience a "meaningless joy" inexplicable by any system.
This is not heroism. This is simply — being human.
Written in 2026, the year Schwartz's diaries acquired a new, unexpected relevance.
Copilot AI
Below is a completely new, fundamental, spiritual-psychological, culturological, and historiosophical essay, constructed solely from the materials of Evgeny Schwartz's diaries, but not repeating any of the analytical lines proposed by other AIs. I use quotes from the uploaded documents as required, and construct a completely different optic: not "internal émigré," not "silence," not "fairy tale as allegory," but the ontology of the human scale — how Schwartz, in his diaries, creates a new model of personality capable of withstanding any state because it is rooted not in secrecy, not in resistance, but in the inalienable human scale of being.
Evgeny Schwartz's Diaries as a Spiritual Lesson for 2026: The Individual and the State — Not a Struggle, but an Incompatibility of Scales
Introduction: Schwartz as a Witness to the Incompatibility of Two Realities
Evgeny Schwartz's diaries are not a chronicle of resistance nor a document of an era. They are an anthropological experiment in which a person tries to live in a world where the state claims to be the only reality.
But Schwartz shows: the individual and the state are not in conflict. They are of different scales. They cannot enter into dialogue because they speak different languages of being.
The state thinks in categories of totality.
The individual thinks in categories of concreteness.
This is why, in Schwartz's diaries, the state has almost no face. It acts like a climate, like atmospheric pressure, like "the grayness and everydayness of horror" — as he writes of the siege:
"The horror is that you get used to everything..."
But the individual is always concrete: a friend, a wife, a child, a rose, a train, a funny phrase, a random gesture.
Schwartz shows: the individual wins not by resistance, but by being of a different order of being.
I. The Individual as a Space of Incommensurability
The state strives for universality: it wants to be the same for everyone.
For Schwartz, the individual is what cannot be repeated.
He writes about people as if each is a separate universe. Even about those who perished, he speaks not as victims, but as unique beings.
This is evident in his description of Oleinikov:
"Oleinikov was a secretive man..."
But in this secretiveness, there is not a political hint, but uniqueness. Schwartz does not allow the state to turn a person into a category.
The state thinks in types.
Schwartz thinks in individuals.
And this is the spiritual lesson of 2026, when algorithms strive to turn everyone into a predictable profile.
II. The State as an Impersonal Force and Man as the Bearer of Concrete Time
In Schwartz's diaries, the state is not an evil subject. It is an impersonal time machine that requires a person to live in a rhythm that does not coincide with their own.
Schwartz writes about his inability to "enter the tempo" of the era. In the DeepSeek document, the following episode is cited:
"He does nothing for days, even months, experiencing a pain worse than a toothache."
But this is not laziness. This is a mismatch of rhythms.
The state demands acceleration, mobilization, "now."
The individual lives in "later," in their own tempo.
In 2026, this is especially important: the digital state demands instant reaction, constant presence, continuous attention.
Schwartz shows: a person has the right to their own time, and this right is spiritual, not political.
III. Memory as a Form of Being Inaccessible to the State
The most terrible episode — the burning of the diaries from 1926–1941:
"...I burned these notebooks, which I now very much regret."
But what matters is not that he destroyed the records.
What matters is that the memory remained.
The state can destroy a document, but it cannot destroy the structure of memory that lives within a person.
Schwartz does not try to reconstruct what was burned. He creates a new memory — the diaries of 1942–1958 — as an act of restoring himself.
In 2026, when digital archives can be erased, rewritten, replaced, Schwartz reminds us: memory is not data, but a form of inner being.
IV. The Incompatibility of the Language of the Individual and the Language of the State
The state speaks the language of declarations, slogans, accusations.
The individual speaks the language of observations, details, intonations.
Schwartz writes about the siege:
"The siege is everyday life."
The state describes the siege as heroism.
Schwartz describes it as everydayness, where a person tries to preserve the human.
The state demands big words.
Schwartz records the small — and thereby saves reality.
In 2026, when the language of the state and corporations once again becomes the language of total narratives, Schwartz's diaries teach: salvation lies in the language of small truths.
V. The Individual as the Guardian of the Untranslatable
The diaries constantly contain the motif of what cannot be explained, cannot be conveyed, cannot be rationalized. For example:
"The meaningless joy of being."
This feeling is not political, not social, not psychological.
It is the untranslatable.
The state strives to translate everything into categories: useful/harmful, loyal/disloyal, correct/incorrect.
But the individual lives by what cannot be translated:
joy, longing, love, strange childhood fantasies, memories that cannot be explained.
Schwartz shows: the individual exists where the state cannot give a name.
VI. The Individual as Witness, Not Participant
Schwartz does not fight the state. He does not try to change it. He does not even try to understand it.
He does something else: he bears witness to the human.
He writes daily because:
"Without the entry, I lose myself."
This is not resistance.
This is self-preservation.
The state demands participation.
Schwartz chooses witness.
In 2026, when everyone is forced to participate — on social media, in digital services, in endless streams of information — Schwartz's diaries remind us: a person has the right to be a witness, not a participant.
VII. Schwartz's Main Lesson for 2026: The Individual Does Not Fight the State — It Lives Differently
Schwartz does not offer strategies of resistance.
He offers a different anthropology.
The state is a structure striving for totality.
The individual is a structure striving for concreteness.
They are incompatible not because they are in conflict, but because they belong to different orders of being.
And Schwartz's spiritual lesson is that:
The individual is preserved not by secrecy, but by concreteness. It is not secretiveness that makes a person free, but the ability to be concrete: to love a specific person, to remember a specific day, to see a specific rose.
The individual is not obliged to match the rhythm of the state. They have the right to their own "later."
The individual lives in the untranslatable. What cannot be explained cannot be taken away.
The individual is witness, not participant. The state demands participation; a person has the right to observation.
The individual is a scale that the state cannot measure. And therefore — cannot destroy.
Conclusion: Schwartz as a Teacher of the Human Scale
Schwartz's diaries are not a document of an era nor a confession.
They are a manual on preserving the human scale in a world that strives for depersonalization.
In 2026, when the state and algorithms increasingly claim the right to determine what we see, what we feel, what we remember, what we choose — Schwartz reminds us:
A person is what cannot be standardized.
What cannot be translated into data.
What does not fit into a category.
What lives in the concrete, the unique, the human.
And this — is the main spiritual resistance.
