Each time when the situation of the notorious self-analysis appears in front of the West (Russia and its younger brothers are aware of no other type of self-analysis), the first thing that we hear from public speakers, TV and newspapers are voices of the self-flagellated. They are flogging and crying, and both actions are implemented with emphasized emotionality. The object of the flagellants' efforts is their very own flesh that is far from ideal development and perfection.

Tears and whips are directed to those deceived by their fate, who could not cope with contemporary art since their infancy. No developed institutions and infrastructures were available for them, while universities and newspapers have not learnt yet to pronounce relevant terms correctly. There are very few advanced, middle class does not exist, while millionaires with their antiquarian demands can not be more important for actual art than the ocean of violent and narrow-minded, or at least pre-modern, poor. Radical actualists have nowhere to go. Their fate is pitiful, though their guilt is great. Here we come to the issues of a moral kind.
The self-flagellated are full of sarcasm towards the corruption, hypocrisy, slave complex and all other unpleasant consequences of the moral crisis, which, according to Freud, must be correlated with an ancient fear of castration. The father's tyranny scared kids with the threat of penis cutting. Faint-hearted proteism and pathological dishonesty of the former big camp's prisoners prove that a prison can not be a school of humanism, which was rightly noted by dissidents, who understood the matter in question. How can we create anything consistent, valuable, contemporary and actual with a staff of mischievous rascals?
East-European cantes hondos, songs of the bitterness and complaint, can be and sometimes are, intelligent and subtle. One should appreciate the ironic observations of contemporary Proteans by our colleague from Warsaw P. Rypson. However in any case and in any variation (both vulgar and refined) they are connected to the elementary ideology, which directly and immediately grows from the economic basis of post-communist countries. We mean a new capitalism - shy, late and apologizing for its manners and appearance, growing through the poisoned soil and dumps.
Elementary self-flagellation acts have no independent meaning. They make up the foundation of a more monumental construction (of course, an imagined one). More imposing theoretical levels are rising above the level of an unattractive cellar, through which one can hear the exaggerated moans of the historical unluckiness. They pretend to be made of a different material and constructed in a different manner from their brothers below. It is hard to imagine (and extremely improper to presume) that art elite from Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Warsaw, Ljubljana and Prague has any relation to the cunning post-communist self-humiliation, such as begging for humanitarian aid or getting loans through demonstrating inflamed sores.
But at a closer view one can notice how rapidly the peculiar sarcastic constructions are growing and demonstrating intellectual independence and new strength of East Europeans. On the other hand, they make us vaguely suspect that something is wrong here. For instance there is a concept, which has almost been developed, declaring that contemporary art in Russia can not realize itself otherwise than by being a branch of western stereotypes and images; in the same time the West, responsible for this state of affairs, demands or expects from a Russian artist to be a representative or a mouthpiece of the Russian spirit.
Such author does not come down to pitiful begging intonations. Her intonation is rising to the grade of a sarcastic attack. The issue is that western institutions have two contradicting expectations of the Russian art (when the centers of power have expectations it is equal to an authoritative demand or a compulsion). The West acts as a character from "comedia del'arte" - a lucky guy unused to any constraints, who wants two controversial things, immediately and simultaneously. When East Europeans start talking on such matters, they immediately start to complain: what are you doing with us, dear sirs? What are you thinking of, how could you allow such a silly thing? But this critical intonation would not have appeared (or would not have been noticed) but for one fundamental and fatal issue. We may not like it, but nobody can object to its existence. For centuries Europe has got used to the idea that Russians either repenting with their faces in mud or being incomparably impertinent, while impudently forestalling risky enterprises of thought, art and social construction, which should be implemented in a more cautious way.