At least in people's memory
Vladimir Putin has publicly declared himself a counter-revolutionary, promised to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Russian Empire at a dignified level, and threatened the Council of Europe and the OSCE to end its existence. However, this was not without liberal bias: law enforcement practices in relation to recent “foreign agents” have been promised to be revised to eliminate abuse, and the possibility of introducing compulsory covid vaccination in Russia is in principle ruled out. . . As GDP solemnly declared: “Any imposed decision can be circumvented. The help will be redeemed! “This is roughly what the most important moments of the VVP's program speech at the annual meeting of the Valdai Club look like.
foto kremlin.ru
Although not, I probably was still a little wrong in terms. During his programmatic speech, Putin was only able to declare himself an ideological counter-revolutionary. And all the other statements of the president mentioned above were made during his discussion with the members of the club – a discussion that was twice “blown up” by the Kremlin's ingenious domestic preparations. But first. The word “revolution” remained a fetish in our country even after the collapse of the USSR. When Putin has spoken many times in the past about his adherence to the “evolutionary path of evolution,” Putin made it clear that he did not understand such fetishism. But this time, everything was said in a completely open text: “Revolution is not a way out of the crisis, but a way to deepen the crisis. No revolution was worth the damage it caused to human potential. ”
After a fundamental condemnation of the GDP revolution, he went on to stigmatize the revolution currently taking place in the West, in the sense of a radical revision of moral rules and values: in the interests of minorities or the demand to abandon the usual understanding of such basic things as mom, dad, family or even gender differences. in their view, milestones in the movement towards social renewal. ”Have we heard all this? There is such a thing. We have even heard a chorus of voices of particularly concerned “supporters of traditional values” advocating the deliberately failed idea of ”making Russia the leader of family relations in Europe.”
Putin abandoned the quixotic attack on windmills. With just two points, he formulated a much more realistic concept. Point one: “The socio-cultural upheavals that are happening in the same states and in Western Europe are not our business, we are not going there.” Point two: “We just ask you not to go to our house separately. We have a different point of view. In any case, the vast majority of Russian society. After the VVP thus promoted the moral “Putin doctrine” in this way, it soon acquired a very spacious name for it – “moderate and healthy conservatism.” How moderate and healthy is it? The president's statements said that no distortions were taking place, or at least should not take place: own shell. It is mainly about relying on years of proven tradition, preservation and growth of the population, realism in the evaluation of oneself and others. “
All of this has been very euphonic (as I have already written, I have also increasingly felt like a “moderate conservative” lately) – but at the same time very predictable. And a predictable show (as long as we can talk about the speech of the head of state in this way) is, as you know, an indistinct show. Apparently it was not just me who thought it, but the VVP itself together with the members of its narrower circle. The show quickly added to the “pepper grains”. The right to ask a question to the president was won by Dmitry Muratov, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2021, Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief. And he made full use of this right: he pointed very convincingly to the vagueness of Russian legislation on foreign agents. When I used the value judgment “very convincing”, I did not mean only myself. Among the “convinced” Muratov was Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a citizen of the Russian Federation.
The president spoke of some of his “acquaintances who are involved in charity” and who are in danger of being sidelined: they are “brought to the Foreign Agents Act.” Putin's conclusion: the law needs to be improved. “The beautiful Kremlin has prepared homemade preparations!” – I thought, but after a while I realized that this was only the first part of an elegant maneuver by the presidential administration. A real “foreign agent” was invited to talk to Putin, Russia Today's editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan. And she said she was forced to refrain from traveling to the United States for fear of falling victim to the obsessive “hospitality” of American law enforcement for several years. This did not blur the effect of Putin's dialogue with Dmitry Muratov. But on the other hand, the “other side of the coin” was convincingly demonstrated.
This ended the delivery of the Kremlin's homework, but the discussion was not less interesting. State Duma MP Konstantin Zatulin, for example, excelled in sharing his confusion with Putin. As! At the beginning of November, it will be three hundred years since Russia was declared an empire, but it is not celebrated at the state level in our country! Given the tendency of the leaders of some former fraternal republics and states of the Soviet Union to accuse modern Russia of “imperialist politics”, the topic raised by Deputy Zatulin was very slippery. But Putin, as a traditionalist politician unencumbered by complexes, it seemed to me, was seriously thinking and even upset. Representative Zatulin was promised that the Russian state would correct its omission – with his direct personal participation.
Putin also confirmed in response to the question of whether Russia is going to withdraw from the Council of Europe and the OSCE. that such a possibility exists: “Nobody needs morality!” This was followed by the announcement of the presidential hypothesis: because moralizing against Moscow has long become the only raison d être of these two organizations, if Russia leaves them, they will soon die a natural death. Almost immediately afterwards, the president's many-hour communication with Valday came to the end. As every successful speaker knows, you have to end up positive!