At all times, sleep was rightly perceived by people not only as a necessity, but also as the greatest good. It is no coincidence that various variations of the expression "sweetly slept" are found in many languages of the world.
However, at the same time, sleep as a special state of the body, in which a person, albeit for a time, is completely defenseless and vulnerable in a world full of dangers and enemies, frightened and caused anxiety. Dreams were perceived as journeys of the soul beyond the body, and there were times when people seriously feared that one day she would not be able or would not want to come back. Therefore, it was not recommended to abruptly wake up sleeping people.
In Hellas, the sleep god Hypnos (Somnus among the Romans) was the son of the night goddess Nyukta and Erebus personifying the eternal darkness, the twin brother of the death god Thanatos.
Adolph Senff. Night and Her Children - Death and Sleep, 1822 Alte und Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Hypnos gave sleep, but could also kill (especially those who fell asleep at the post - for example, Palinur, the helmsman of the Trojan Aeneas).
The Sleep God Hypnos, British Museum
His other brother was Charon, sisters - Nemesis, Eris and Moira.
Interpretation of dreams
People have always tried to understand what exactly the gods wanted to tell them, sending this or that dream. For interpretation, people turned to "specialists" (oniromancers). In Babylon, the Chaldeans, the priests who watched the movement of the stars, were considered the best onyromancers.
In the Old Testament there is one of the first descriptions of a dream - the famous dream of Jacob, in which he saw a ladder descending from heaven.
William Blake. Jacob's ladder
Their "schools" of interpretation of dreams were in India and China. In Hellas, there were temples, the priests of which performed rituals of "ritual dreams", which they themselves later interpreted.
But there were not so many oniromantics - much less than people who saw dreams and wanted to get an explanation. Therefore, already in about 2000 BC. NS. in Egypt, the world's first dream book was written (a book for interpreting dreams and predicting the future based on a dream): it contained the interpretation of 200 dreams and a description of magical rituals to protect against evil night spirits.
In the II century BC. NS. Artemidor Daldiansky wrote a five-volume "Oneurocriticism", in which he divided dreams into ordinary and "visionary". Visionary dreams, in his opinion, could be direct contemplative (they contained direct predictions of the future) and allegorical (talked about the future in an allegorical form). The fifth volume of this study contained examples of the interpretation of various dreams.
And in the "Dream Book of Daniel" written by an anonymous author (about the 4th century), dream plots and their interpretation options are given in alphabetical order for the convenience of readers.
But in Hellas, the first skeptics appeared, to whom Aristotle and Diogenes belonged. In ancient Rome, Cicero reacted negatively to the interpretation of dreams. Later, attempts to explain dreams by natural causes were made by Newton and Leibniz.
But the voices of skeptics were almost inaudible to the general public, which with great enthusiasm bought more and more "dream books", among which was a book written by Michel Nostradamus.
Russian dream book, published in 1883
Z. Freud in his work "Interpretation of Dreams" divided dreams into three categories: 1) related to reality, requiring interpretation; 2) logical and understandable, but not connected with reality; 3) "images and symbols that are not related to each other and do not lend themselves to simple logic."
It was the dreams of the last category that he attached special importance to, believing that they can explain human behavior and provide an opportunity to assess his mental state.
The Bible explicitly prohibits any attempt to find out the future, but even some famous theologians of the Middle Ages believed that dreams could contain "divine revelation" - for example, Tertullian, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas.
But special attention was always paid to the dreams of kings and military leaders. In what spirit were their dreams usually interpreted? This is well described in the Avar tale:
What did famous people dream about at different times and in different countries? And what interpretation of dreams did they receive? Were these divinations useful to them? Let's see what is written about this in various historical sources.
I slept a little, but I dreamed in a dream
The very first story about the interpretation of dreams can be read in the Old Testament Book of the prophet Daniel.
As a teenager, Daniel fell into the Babylonian captivity (about 606-607 BC), but nothing terrible happened to him there, he was even recognized "fit to serve in the palaces of the king", received a new name Belshazzar and during for three years he studied "books and the language of the Chaldeans." And everything would be fine if it were not for the strangeness in the behavior of King Nebuchadnezzar II.
Nebuchadnezzar II, image on a Babylonian cameo
The Bible tells that one day the king woke up in an anxious mood because he had some kind of unpleasant dream. It would seem, with whom does it not happen? It was unusual that the tsar did not remember this dream, but very much wished that the "secret men, fortune-tellers, sorcerers and Chaldeans" would remember and interpret this dream for him:
“I dreamed of a dream, and my spirit is troubled; I wish to know this dream."
The problem was posed with a very large "star" - the level "go there, I don't know where, bring that, I don't know what."
The Chaldeans (who were traditionally considered great specialists in dream interpretation) were very surprised and told him:
Tsar! live forever! tell the dream to your servants, and we will explain the meaning of it.
The king answered and said to the Chaldeans: The word has departed from me; if you do not tell me the dream and its meaning, then you will be chopped to pieces, and your houses will turn to ruins."
Having received no answer, Nebuchadnezzar ordered “to exterminate all the wise men of Babylon,” which even then included Belshazzar (Daniel). But Daniel for some reason did not want to be "exterminated", and therefore he very quickly composed a suitable dream for Nebuchadnezzar and successfully interpreted it.
It turned out that the king dreamed of a huge statue, the head of which was made of gold, the chest and arms were made of silver, the belly and thighs were made of copper, the legs were made of iron, the feet were made of iron mixed with clay. A large stone that rolled down the mountain destroyed this statue, hitting the lower part, made of iron and clay.
Erhard Altdorfer. The dream of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. An engraving from a Bible published in Lubeck in 1533.
Daniel identified the golden head with Nebuchadnezzar and his kingdom. Then there was to appear "another kingdom, lower than yours, and another kingdom, of copper, which will rule over the whole earth." Daniel called the fourth kingdom strong, like iron: "as iron breaks and shatters everything, so it, like an all-crushing iron, will shatter and crush." The fifth kingdom is "divided, and there will be several strengths of iron in it … the kingdom will be partly strong, partly fragile … iron mixed with potting clay … will mix through human seed, but will not merge one with the other, just as iron does not mix with clay."
It is difficult to say exactly what conclusions and assumptions Nebuchadnezzar made from this interpretation, and whether it is possible to believe the story of "rich gifts" to Daniel and his appointment as "the chief commander over all the wise men of Babylon." But in the den with lions he threw the prophet, nevertheless, not he, but the Persian king Darius.
The later interpreters of Holy Scripture confidently identified in the silver part of the statue the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, the copper belly and hips, in their opinion, personified Greece, the iron legs - Rome. Well, clay mixed with iron is Europe, formed after the fall of the Roman Empire, some of whose states are rich and strong, others are poor and weak.
Daniel's prophecy, according to tradition, ends with the prediction of the End of the World, the symbol of which is a stone that rolled down a mountain. And the new, eternal kingdom will no longer be erected by people, but by God.
This dream, of course, was worthy of a great king, and its interpretation is beyond praise, but skeptics have some doubts about the belonging of the dream to Nebuchadnezzar. However, here we are talking about Faith, which, according to theologians, should be stronger than reason.
“I believe, for it is absurd,” Tertullian once said.
Soon Nebuchadnezzar also saw a second dream, which, unlike the first, was able to remember: the saint who descended from heaven ordered to cut down a tree as high as heaven and with many fruits, leaving only the main root in the earth. In addition, he took the human heart from this tree, giving in return an animal heart - "for seven times." This dream was also interpreted by Daniel, who said that for pride Nebuchadnezzar would be punished by the loss of power and excommunicated from the people for seven years.
Nebuchadnezzar allegedly later went insane and, imitating animals, ate grass for seven years, but then his reason returned to him.
Talking about this, it must be borne in mind that modern researchers are sure that the Book of Daniel was created in Palestine in the middle of the 2nd century BC. NS. - almost 500 years after the events described in it.
Now let's move on from sacred texts to historical sources.
Ancient authors argue that the campaign of the Persian king Xerxes to the Peloponnese (480 BC) was provoked by constant dreams in which a certain Spirit demanded to start a war, warning that, otherwise, Xerxes would lose power, and then altogether, began to threaten to gouge out his eyes. In this war, the Greeks won victories in the battles of Salamis, Plataea and Cape Mikale, the Persians lost Byzantium, Rhodes, part of Cyprus, Thracian Chersonesos. Another consequence of this war was the creation of the aggressive Delian League led by Athens.
King Xerxes, bas-relief. National Archaeological Museum, Tehran
Another Persian king, Darius III, was not lucky with the "prophetic dream". He dreamed that Alexander's phalanx was engulfed in flames, and the Macedonian king himself first served him in the clothes that Darius, who was acting as a messenger, had previously worn, and then entered the temple of Bel and disappeared into it. The magicians, of course, predicted the victory of Persia, but everything turned out the other way around. Then the prophecy had to be rethought in the spirit that the Macedonian soldiers would accomplish brilliant feats, Alexander would take possession of Asia in the same way as Darius, who was a messenger, but who became king, took over it.
Alexander the Great attacks the Persian king Darius III, mosaic from the city of Pompeii, National Museum, Naples
Alexander the Great also had a "prophetic" dream during the siege of the city of Tire: he dreamed of a satyr whom he caught in the forest. It would seem, what does this "night adventure" in the style of "fantasy" have to do with current affairs? But the regular royal soothsayer Aristander from Telmesos divided the Greek word "satyros" into two: "sa" and "tyros" - it turned out "Your Tyr". Of course, there is not the slightest doubt that Alexander would have taken Tire without any dreams, but still, it turned out well.
And here is how the dream of the Carthaginian commander Hamilcar (most likely, this is another Hamilcar - not Barca) once deceived during the hostilities in Sicily: a voice in a dream predicted to him that he would dine in the city that was besieging. Hamilcar immediately threw his troops into the assault, but was defeated and taken prisoner. So he had a chance to dine in this city, but not as a winner, but as a prisoner.
Julius Caesar once had such a dream, which a normal person would never dream of telling a stranger: as if he “shared a bed with his mother”. Nevertheless, he told about this dream and received a hopeful "decryption": Caesar's mother, allegedly, symbolized the "mother city" Rome, which this ambitious man was to take possession of.
And here is a story about a ghost who appeared to one of Caesar's killers - Mark Junius Brutus. Roman authors write: “when he woke up, he saw” (his Brutus). But with a high degree of probability it can be argued that everything was the other way around: “I woke up when I saw”.
The ghost called himself an evil genius and said that the second time Brutus would see him under Philippi. However, on October 3, 42 BC. NS. the troops of Brutus won a convincing victory over the army of Octavian, capturing the enemy camp and almost capturing the enemy commander, the losses of the Caesarians twice exceeded the republican ones. Moreover, Brutus sent part of his cavalry to the aid of the army of Cassius, which was pressed by the troops of Mark Antony. But Cassius, a man much more experienced in military affairs than Brutus, took this detachment for the enemy. Seeing him, he panicked and committed suicide. So the ghost, perhaps, should have come not to Brutus, but to Cassius. In the next battle, the flank of Brutus was again close to overthrowing the enemy, but on the other flank the soldiers, who had previously been commanded by Cassius, again fled. The Caesarians did not pursue the retreating army of Brutus, and the war was not yet lost, but a trusted person sent to assess the state of the troops accidentally died on the way. Not waiting for him, Brutus threw himself on the sword, confident of complete defeat and catastrophic defeat.
Death of Brutus. Illustration for the play by Shakespeare "Julius Caesar", 1802, British Museum
Probably, the phenomenon of the "ghost" still influenced the state of mind of Brutus. He then calmly answered him: “I will see”, but the “sediment” in my soul, of course, remained.
Drusus Claudius Nero, brother of the future emperor Tiberius and father of the future emperor Claudius, commanding the Roman troops, refused to cross Elba, having seen in a dream a woman who told him:
“Druz! Where are you going? Aren't you tired of winning? Know that you are on the edge of your existence!"
Drusus Claudius Nero the Elder, bust, Vatican Museums
Septimius Sever saw in a dream the emperor Pertinax, falling from a horse, on which he later sat down. This dream was interpreted to him as a sign that he would replace Pertinax, becoming the next emperor. Septimius did not forget about this prediction, and when Pertinax was killed in Rome, he spoke out against Didius Julian, who was proclaimed emperor by the Praetorians, and then against other pretenders: Pestsenia of Niger and Clodius Septimius Albinus.
Septimius Sever, bust. Rome, Capitoline Museums, Palazzo Nuovo, Hall of the Emperors
According to the Life of Saint Dominic, his mother saw in a dream that the baby she had born lit a lamp that illuminated the whole world, and then also a dog with a torch. She took her dreams more than seriously, and thanks to the upbringing she gave to her son, Dominic grew up to be a religious fanatic. He condemned to death thousands of Cathars during the Albigensian Wars and organized a monastic order, whose members took an active part in the work of the tribunals of the Inquisition.
His contemporary and antipode, Saint Francis, hearing in a dream a voice calling him to restore the "house of God", left home and founded the order of mendicant monks, and at the same time contributed to the emergence of the female monastic order of the Poor Clarice.
The overthrown Japanese emperor Go-Daigo (ruled 1318-1339) saw in a dream a tree around which ministers and aristocrats were sitting, and only on the south side there was an empty seat, which two children called the throne. When he woke up, he folded the hieroglyphs "south" and "tree", and received a new symbol - "camphor tree", which sounds like "kusunoki". The emperor asked: does anyone know a person with such or a similar name? The right person was found - it turned out to be Kusunoki Masashige. Go-Daigo appointed him commander of his troops. Masashige fought honestly for the emperor, but could not win. In 1336he was defeated by the army of the future shogun Ashikagi Takauji and committed suicide. The new emperor was soon proclaimed Komyo, so Go-Daigo had to move from Kyoto to Yoshino. Nevertheless, Kusunoki Masashige went down in the history of the country as an example of a loyal vassal.
Kusunoki Masashige, a monument in Tokyo
Thirteen-year-old Jeanne d'Arc, a girl from the village of Dom Remy, saw in a dream the Archangel Michael, accompanied by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, who called on her to save France. And she remembered the prophecy of Merlin, which said that one day the savior maiden would come from a village in Lorraine, near which an oak forest grows. Everything matched: the order of the archangel, a pagan prophecy, she was a virgin, and the oaks around her native village grew in sufficient numbers. There was no way out, Jeanne went to save France - and saved her.
Allen Douglas, "Saint Joan of Arc in the War with the British"
But then the highest hierarchs of the French Catholic Church and the most authoritative professors of the Sorbonne explained to the girl that the voices calling her to defend her homeland belonged to the demons Belial, Behemoth and Satan. On May 30, 1431, Jeanne was excommunicated and sentenced to be burned at the stake. Before the execution, she asked forgiveness from the British and Burgundians, whom she ordered to pursue and kill. At least somehow only two people tried to help her: Gilles de Rais, who, at the head of a detachment of soldiers hired with his own money, wanted to break through to Rouen, but was late, and an unnamed English warrior who rushed into the fire to give Jeanne a wooden crucifix.
Execution of Joan of Arc, medieval miniature
"Lion of the North", the Swedish king Gustav Adolf on the eve of the battle of Lutzen saw in a dream a huge tree, which before his eyes grew out of the ground, covered with leaves and flowers, then dried up and fell at his feet. The dream was clearly favorable and foreshadowed a victory (which the Swedes won the next day), perhaps this deprived the king of due caution - he was killed during this battle.
Carl Wahlbom. The death of Gustav Adolphus at the battle of Lützen
Oliver Cromwell on the eve of the execution of Charles I had a dream that at the cemetery the executioner was putting on his head a crown made of the bones of the dead. No wonder: what the man was thinking (about the power that awaits him after the execution of the king), then he dreamed.
Paul Delaroche. Oliver Cromwell at the tomb of Charles I
But Charles X (brother of two Louis XVI and XVIII, King of France from 1824 to 1830) had completely different thoughts, and therefore on the night of June 25-26, 1830, he saw in a dream a boar, which wounded him during hunting. A little later, the boar was identified with the rebellious subjects, who forced him to abdicate on August 2 of the same year.
In the diary of Abraham Lincoln, there is an interesting record of a dream that he had 10 days before his murder: in one of the rooms of the White House, soldiers were on guard at a closed coffin. To the question: “Who died?”, He was answered: “President”.
What can I say here? Someday the law of large numbers had to work, and at least one such coincidence in a million other unfulfilled dreams had to happen.
The famous dream of the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu (Chuang Zhou) stands apart, in which he saw himself as a butterfly, as a result of which he thought that “if Chuang Tzu in a dream can become a butterfly, then perhaps now the butterfly fell asleep for her dreams that she is Chuang Tzu. Thus, a new doctrine, imbued with skepticism, was created, asserting that life is limited, and knowledge is unlimited.
Night flights of "witches"
Talking about dreams, one cannot fail to mention the famous flights of witches, which they also performed in a dream, but not an ordinary one, but a narcotic one. The materials of the Vedic processes testify that, going to bed, these women rubbed ointment into the chest, temples, under the armpits and into the groin area, which included aconite, belladonna, speckled hemlock. Opium poppy, hemp, wormwood, juniper, white water lily, yellow egg capsule could be added to them in different combinations and combinations.
Belladonna. Delusional and hallucinating substances are found in all parts of this plant.
Aconite. An extremely poisonous plant, which is sometimes planted in summer cottages as a decorative
Hemlock speckled, in folk medicine, a tincture of its leaves and seeds is used as a pain reliever
In different recipes, additional ingredients such as incense, Spanish flies, wine, vegetable oil, salt, bat blood, fat of the dead (either fox, wolf or badger), cat brain, rust, and soot are indicated.
There was no single recipe for "witches' ointment", only the base was common.
In V. Bryusov's novel "The Fiery Angel", the heroine says during interrogation by the inquisitors:
“We took different herbs: warbler, parsley, calamus, toad, nightshade, henbane, put them into infusion from a wrestler, added oils from plants and bat blood and boiled it, saying special words that were different for different months.”
This, by the way, is one of the original recipes for the "flight ointment" of the German "witches".
Further:
“In the evening, at night, when the Sabbath was gathering, we rubbed our bodies with a special ointment, and then either a black goat, which carried us through the air on its back, or the demon himself, in the form of a lord, dressed in a green jacket and a yellow vest, appeared to us, and I held my hands to his neck as he flew over the fields. If there was neither a goat nor a demon, one could sit on any object, and they flew like the most greyhound horses."
Here the author also does not deviate from the truth: a typical testimony of a medieval "witch" is given, in the archives of the Inquisitional Tribunals you can find many similar ones.
Mass psychosis in the convent caused by the appearance of the heroine of the novel "The Fiery Angel": "The unfortunate girls, one after the other, suddenly fell with a groan and beat terribly against the stone slabs of the floor … calling the archbishop himself a servant of the devil, or … glorifying Sister Mary the bride of a heavenly angel" …
The hallucinations caused by the application of the "witches' ointment" were unusually realistic. This is how the knight Ruprecht, the protagonist of this novel, describes her action:
“Until now, having already moved a long distance from that day, I do not know how to say with complete certainty whether everything I experienced was a terrible truth or an equally terrible nightmare, a creation of the imagination, and whether I sinned before Christ in deed and word, or only thinking …
The ointment slightly burned the body, and the smell of it quickly began to spin my head, so that soon I was already poorly aware of what I was doing, my hands hung limply, and my eyelids dropped over my eyes. Then my heart began to beat with such force, as if it was bouncing a whole elbow off my chest on a rope, and it hurt … when I tried to get up, I could no longer think: so all the tales about the Sabbath turned out to be nonsense and this miraculous ointment is only sleepy potion, - but at the same moment everything faded for me, and I suddenly saw myself or imagined myself high above the ground, in the air, completely naked, sitting astride, as on a horse, on a black hairy goat."
This description is not a figment of the author's imagination, it is taken from the original protocols of the courts of the Inquisition.
Night flight of witches to the Sabbath, engraving
In The Long Journey: A Story of Psychedelia (2008), the modern British researcher Paul Devereaux claims that he tried to test the effect of "witches' ointment" made according to one of the medieval recipes on himself. He describes his feelings as follows:
“I had wild dreams. The faces that danced before my eyes were terrible at first. Then I suddenly felt myself flying through the air for miles. The flight was repeatedly interrupted by rapid falls."
The visions of medieval "witches" were determined by the mood and expectations of women who used this ointment. Now they would probably see themselves not flying on a black goat or on a broomstick to a Sabbath with the devil, but in a "flying saucer" of aliens. Or - they imagined themselves as an elven archer from Warcraft III, who attacks an orc wyvern on a hippogryph.
By the way, the fact that the defendants flew to the Sabbath only in their sleep was not, as a rule, a mitigating factor for the inquisitors.
You have probably heard of the so-called "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce. One could write about him in this article, but I have carried this story to the next, in which we will talk about the "messiahs of recent days", have a little patience.
In conclusion, it must be said that sleep is an extremely complex physiological state, which, moreover, has two completely dissimilar phases - "slow" (deep) sleep and "fast". Lack of sleep is just as damaging as fasting and thirst. Sleep is not just rest: it has a huge number of other functions, the study of which hundreds of scientific papers are devoted to, and it is unlikely that it will be possible to talk about it in a nutshell. But modern somnologists (specialists studying sleep and its disturbances) assure that in a dream the brain does not establish "astral connections" with anyone and with anything and does not receive new information, but tries to deal with what was received during the day. The brain seems to "reboot", trying to remove unnecessary and unnecessary, as well as negatively colored information, and systematizing the useful. This happens during the REM sleep phase. It is in this phase, when the information received during the day is being processed, a person sees some more or less plot-related images, which he then recalls only as an exception - ideally, a person should not remember dreams. And if he nevertheless woke up, remembering the dream, our brain, as if embarrassed by its "rough" work, as a rule, very quickly deletes these memories - after half an hour of vigorous activity we forget about the details of this dream, and then about it most.
If a person has been thinking intensely about something for a long time, during sleep his brain can continue to work in this direction, but already "without brakes." This interferes with good rest, but sometimes it helps to find the right solution - that's why they say that "the morning is wiser than the evening" and "I'll think about tomorrow with a fresh mind." But much more often the result of such overstrain are not "insights", but nightmarish obsessive dreams. And the brain rests, unlike the rest of the body, only in the phase of "slow sleep" (but it is at this time that the pituitary gland begins to produce the extremely important hormone somatotropin). Lack of slow sleep is often perceived as insomnia. This state is well described in a poem by R. Rozhdestvensky:
“I dreamed that it smelled like burning.
I dreamed a blizzard of chalk
I dreamed that she was different -
I was waiting for you at the metro …
Another sat next to me.
The cheeks were pale …
If all this is not true
Why then dream dreams ?!
Why do I need - please tell me -
know the smell of her hair?
And I dreamed nothing.
I just couldn't sleep."
The woman, of course, saw all this painfully jealous of her husband in a dream. The absence of a phase of slow wave sleep led to the fact that these visions were not erased from her memory and the perception of sleep itself was disturbed - a feeling of excruciating insomnia arose.
And nocturnal changes in hormonal balance in combination with an increase in the tone of the parasympathetic system in young and healthy people sometimes cause erotic dreams.
K. Bryullov. "A Young Girl's Dream Before Dawn"
In the Middle Ages, for such a dream, in which a young woman allegedly entered into intercourse with an incubus, she could have been burned - like a witch.
The Fiery Serpent (Lyubavets, Volokita, Lyubostay) is an ancient Russian incubus who visited girls, wives and widows at night, and is visible only by the “victims” of his “lust”. This is how our ancestors imagined the "demon" of female masturbation
Now about some of the causes and mechanisms of nightmares. Sleep is so important for the human body that there are protective mechanisms, the purpose of which is to allow a person to rest and sleep without waking up due to some non-critical situations - an uncomfortable position of an arm or leg, unexpressed and harmless pain in the back, abdomen or in the area of the heart … But, since impulses about pain and discomfort, nevertheless, reach the brain, it reacts to this not by awakening, but by a certain dream - unpleasant and even nightmarish. For example, the fact that a person cannot get out of a snowdrift or from an ice-hole - if his leg is frozen, from which the blanket has slipped. Or - that someone is chasing him, if there are heart problems and an episode of shortness of breath occurs. And severe heartburn in the brain during sleep can be associated with fire.
In this painting by Johann Heinrich Füssli, a woman has a nightmare because she sleeps in a very uncomfortable position.
In any case, in a dream it is impossible to get new information, see a stranger, or “get” into a completely unfamiliar place (which a person has never been to and which he has never heard of). Therefore, it is at least naive and unreasonable to build any guesses about the future, relying on your dreams.
In the final article of the cycle, we will talk about the “seers” and “prophets” who have revealed themselves to the world quite recently, and try to answer the question: is it possible to use their talents for the benefit of society and the Motherland?
