The Russian operation in Syria is an act of desperate passion for Europe.

Recently I was in Baku for reconnaissance purposes. About a possible job there. Apparently, nothing will work out with work, but I don’t regret these four days of my life at all.

Firstly, I heard about Baku as perhaps the most complete Russian-speaking city of Soviet civilization in terms of urban life. Secondly, if you live by the social passions of your country, or at least they are somehow capable of changing your mood for more than five minutes, there is nothing more useful than looking at your homeland from an unusual angle. Not from the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building. It is from there that the all-too-familiar views of the homeland open up.

This is a very useful exercise, whether for stormy love or for a stormy social temperament - a temporary break with the source of your suffering/pleasure (in this case it’s the same thing, any psychiatrist will say). Because there is nothing worse for the consciousness of a person or even an entire nation than the absolutization of emotional experience.

What views of Russia do you have from Baku?

On the first evening, tender, velvety warm, Baku seemed to me like Genoa or Naples, where everyone speaks Russian and no one will steal your wallet. I got drunk from Baku. Morning, the sun, as often happens, dispelled the first love. There's really no need to worry about your wallet here. But the construction of palaces along the sea boulevard turned out to be mostly tawdry Stalinist architecture and, even worse, an example of their elegance. Yu. M. Luzhkov and the favorite city of Yu. M. Luzhkov’s favorite Russian artists - Miami. And here it is - the effect of a change in point of view. From Baku, the urban planning activities of the former mayor of the Russian capital suddenly appear not as an absolute evil, but as a quite moderate one. Baku used to have a genuine medieval city, but now it doesn’t exist. It is Baku that you can see in the “Istanbul scenes” of “The Diamond Arm”. Now no “Diamond Hand” is possible here. On the site of the demolished oldest blocks, buildings are being built (from good materials, yes) on a completely different scale. Moreover, eclecticism triumphs, that is, a superficial, “anniversary” understanding of the national style in architecture.

Fake, fake - this is one line of development of the image of Baku. But there is a second one, it pulls the city in the other direction. All enlightened foreigners coming to Azerbaijan, of course, are closer to this side. This is cosmopolitan ultra-modernity of the Shanghai-Middle Eastern variety. Skyscrapers are burning above the city, and the cultural center of the canonized Heydar Aliyev was built by the main artist of our time, Zaha Hadid. But the center itself is functionally more like sculpture than architecture. Inside the space ingeniously conceived by Hadid there is an ethnographic museum with two pots, three blades and four moth-eaten national costumes, as well as a museum of official cars and personal belongings of Heydar Aliyev. It looks as if St. Peter's Basilica in Rome served as a railway museum.

In some ways, Baku is more modern than Moscow 2015. Like is described through like. And it is absolutely impossible to describe Russia through Azerbaijan. There are no committees to save the historical center in Baku. There are no media resources that would describe schemes for the distribution of financial flows for the construction of facilities for the European Olympics. Here they don’t even slander about this over gatherings in a teahouse. There is no parliamentary politics here, even in the imitative, parodic spirit of the Russian State Duma. A parody always implies the presence of an original.

The most acute form of opposition in Baku is a restrained, meaningful smile: “Well, you understand everything. ..” Nope, we don’t understand anything. Baku is something completely different, very alien. It faces other originals - Dubai or Malaysia.

And it is in Baku that it becomes irrefutably clear which world Russia belongs to, where it is always looking. What facet, shade of this world she is and what feelings connect her with this world. “I don’t walk past my mother-in-law’s house without jokes...” And this house is not in Beijing, not in Rio, not in Dubai. Those mothers-in-law don't understand our jokes.

“Touchy touchy, touchy touchy, sit with me for a while.” You are cold and hypocritical. Frigid, yes, frigid! You're probably a lesbian. I can live calmly without you, without your hams and cheeses. And in general you believe that the Spirit comes from the Son. What nonsense! You're lost, confused, messing around with bandits. You are defenseless! I am more generous than you - so be it, I will help you. Because I can’t live without you, fool. It’s bad with you, but not at all without you. “Without you, w...t,” as Shnur sang at the final party of the London Economic Forum. Remember how we famously wooed Europe in London?

Thousands of clear words were spent by the best Russian minds explaining why Russia went to Syria, making for itself the most dangerous, most vindictive enemy in the world. But these rational arguments are exhausted by one reckless word. Or rather, two. Great love.

The young lady and the bully