Everyone is familiar with the effect of engaging with texts from the past, much like conversing with venerable elders: here we love them, there we respect them, and elsewhere we tactfully turn a blind eye, as everyone understands. In Green's fictional country of Greenlandia, there is no need to overlook anything from any perspective. It does not become outdated; rather, it grows closer and more contemporary.

Greenlandia is a realm of freedom, having withstood the test of time and any of its challenges. It is no coincidence that its hallmark is one of the main symbols of freedom in world culture: the sea. And it is no coincidence that in "The Shining World," it is combined with another main symbol of freedom — flight.

"The Shining World" by Alexander Grin is a seminal novel about freedom, published exactly one hundred years ago, in 1923, when freedom in Russia was catastrophically disappearing. This is a socially acute text, as relevant now as it was during the times of the NEP, grain requisitioning, and the formation of a new empire.