I was born in Russia and studied Russian literature at Moscow State University. One day I met a Dutch photographer in whom I recognized a kindred spirit. We became partners for life and have lived together in the Netherlands ever since. In the 1980s we founded the magazine Koorddanser (Tightrope Walker), which we subsequently published for twenty-one years.

Koorddanser magazine

At that time, many people were finding that they were no longer satisfied with the old answers to questions such as ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is the meaning of my existence?’ They went on spiritual quests in the most diverse directions and were very interested in philosophical traditions from other cultures.

New forms of psychotherapy with a focus on personal growth emerged. There was a great desire for lifestyles that were more free and environmentally friendly. Experiments were conducted with alternative medicine and there was much more experimenting in general. For many, all of this was still very unusual. Koorddanser collected information about all these developments and provided a monthly overview of all kinds of activities taking place in the Netherlands.

I am grateful that I was able to contribute to this journal and thereby aid the search for contemporary answers to essential questions about the meaning of life.

Inner quest

My own inner quest had many similarities with that of the readers of Koorddanser. I attended activities that were mentioned in the monthly agenda and interviewed pioneers in all kinds of areas. I tried out different forms of meditation and methods for personal growth. As I became acquainted with various traditions, I found that some insights as well as spiritual practices from Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta and Sufism also appealed to me. Nowadays Koordanser is in new hands and the magazine has changed in nature, in line with the spirit of the times.

My experiences with spiritual traditions from other cultures raised questions about the value of the Christian part of my own cultural baggage. The existential meaning suggested by the Biblical gospels has had a great impact on Russian culture. Does this mean that I myself have ‘Christian roots’, since this culture has partly shaped my mentality? Theoretically speaking, must this be the case, and what did this actually mean to me, as someone who grew up in an atheistic environment?

The Netherlands and Russia

At the time, this question interested almost no one in the Netherlands. However, in Russia, which had just abandoned its communist ideology, the meaning of the spiritual basis of its own culture became an important issue. The Russian Orthodox Church wanted to convince society that traditional faith offered the best support in uncertain times, but this was not the direction I wanted to go. I had no need for a church with its associated religious dogmas, but I did need a Christian spiritual tradition that does not force a specific confession of faith from its followers. What I desired was something that could also appeal to secular people looking for a new life philosophy, as, for example, the Buddhist vipassana does.

This desire became an underlying theme of my first novel Откровение огня (Revelation of Fire), in which a previously unknown 18th-century mystical manuscript disappears from a Russian monastery and comes to play an important role in the lives of the people who end up with it over the next two hundred years. In this way, the theme of the ‘spiritual quest’ appeared in my literary prose, alongside my texts on contemporary philosophy of life and meaning.

I became increasingly convinced that nowadays people looking for more meaning in their life, based on their personal experiences with various spiritual traditions, can experience the value of the Christian heritage in a new way and communicate this to others.

Looking for existential meaning

I usually write in Russian but some of my books have been translated and published in Dutch. In both languages, I focus primarily on those who desire a secular but meaningful life (spiritual but not religious): people who do not need a specific religious belief, but do need deeper answers to their life questions. They seek these answers in various sources and spiritual traditions. I myself was and remain such a person.

My second book became a symbolic novella, the Dutch translation of which was published by Samsara under the title Nog een messias (Another Messiah). The story is set in Russia in the 1990s, among people who have lost their self-confidence and their future prospects. The main character is a messiah, with a lowercase m. In his own words, he is to become one of the minor messiahs in a long line of men and women who embody the contemporary, living connection with the essence of the Christian philosophy of life.

Christian baggage

Then questions arose in my mind about the extent to which you can reconcile a free attitude towards Christian beliefs with the essence of the most important statements of Jesus. This resulted in a personal study of the Biblical gospels, after which I wrote a report on my findings that was entitled Evangelische rapsodieën voor spirituele grensgangers (Evangelical rhapsodies for spiritual border crossers).

I also gave workshops at the Vrije Gemeente Amsterdam for everyone who, like me, wanted to investigate the personal value of Christianity in their own cultural baggage. This project became the starting point for my book on the Gospel for secular people looking for existential meaning and cultural Christians.

In it I wanted to demonstrate that the core statements of Jesus (and especially those about agape: unconditional love for everyone), approached from a secular perspective, can be seen as the expression of a philosophy of life that remains relevant at all times. Kok Boekencentrum  published this book translated into Dutch under the title Mijn evangelie. Zelf ontdekken wat Jezus jou te zeggen heeft. (My gospel. Discover for yourself what Jesus has to say to you.)

Cultural Christianity

More and more people are calling themselves cultural Christians. Why? What do they want to emphasize? What do cultural Christians need from the Christian heritage, and why is it this and not something else? Is it a higher meaning based on Christianity that they want to uphold? In recent years I have searched for answers to these questions and written about them. In the meantime, a Cultuurchristendom (Cultural Christianity) section has appeared on my website, where my articles and essays on this subject are collected.

Unconventional interpretations

My views on the essence of existential meaning in early Christianity, as it can be found in the Biblical gospels, and its significance for our time, differ greatly from church doctrine and the social mentality of contemporary Russia. I was told this by Russian publishers when I offered Mijn evangelie (which was originally intended for a Russian audience) for publication.

The same thing happened to me with Nog een messias. The dominant position of the Russian Orthodox Church and prevailing Russian laws on legal liability for insulting believers have made administrators in the Russian cultural sector nervous about unconventional interpretations of existential meaning in the Christian source texts. Nog een messias and Mijn evangelie, which are characterized by such an unconventional approach, are therefore only available digitally in Russia.

In my native country, I am known primarily as a literary author. My debut novel about the mystical manuscript Откровение огня (Revelation of Fire) was my breakthrough. This book appeared in three Russian editions and was translated into German and English. The novel’s characters live in different eras, but the questions about the meaning of their lives always remain the same.

This also applies to my new novel Исчезнувшая сестра (The Missing Sister). As in Revelation of Fire, Christian and Buddhist views on life come together, but here it happens in a slightly different way. This is because my personal spiritual quest and the insights I gained from it have left their mark. Just before the war, I found a Russian publisher for this book and it was published in 2023 after the war had started. In Russia, there is still a Reader’s Prize which consists of a list of the titles that were most requested in libraries. In 2024, my novel The Missing Sister was also on that list. This came as a surprise to me because I doubted whether the book had been published at the right time.

• Novel Откровение огня (Revelation of Fire / Das Buch des Feuers). 1997:   Neva, Sankt-Petersburg (literary magazine);    1998: Blitz, Sankt-Petersburg (1e edition);    •  1999: Bertelsmann/Goldmann, Munich;    • 2005: Amphora, Sankt-Petersburg (2e edition);     • 2008 : The Permanent Press, New York;    •  2022: T8, Sankt-Petersburg (3e edition).
• Novella ‘Nog één messias’ (One More Messiah). 2005: Uitgeverij Samsara, Amsterdam.
• Novel И полетела Зоя в Амстердам (Zoja went to Amsterdam). 2009: Olympus-Eksmo, Moscow.
• Mijn evangelie. Zelf ontdekken wat Jezus jou te zeggen heeft (My gospel. Discover for yourself what Jesus has to say to you. 2018: KokBoekencentrum, Utrecht NL.
• Gebeden voor lichte en donkere tijden (Prayers for light and dark times). 2020: Uitgeverij KokBoekencentrum, Utrecht NL. (Credited as one of the authors.)
• Novel Исчезнувшая сестра (Disappeared Sister). 2023: Fenix, Rostov-on-Don – Palmira, Sankt-Petersburg.