The First Colloquium
The New Jerusalem Monastery, Istra, Russia
Friday, June 12, 1998
Session 4
On the second day of the colloquium, the participants' remarks frequently addressed more than one of the questions listed below at a time.
4. Does the concept of "national identity" have in fact historical or contemporary meaning?
5. Which other nations and cultures, or minority groups within Russia itself, are likely to influence Russia's conception of itself in the future, and in what ways?
6. One of the ways that a nation affirms its identity is through public monuments and national holidays. Which of the Soviet statues that were taken down and the post-Soviet ones that were erected are the most significant signs of a change in values? What about Soviet and post-Soviet holidays? Was the 850th anniversary of Moscow celebrated in a meaningful way? Will the burial of Nicholas II in July 1998, and the bicentenary of Pushkin's birth in 1999, serve as unifying events for the Russian people?
Supplementary Questions (most of these were addressed at least briefly)
1. Would you characterize Russia as a "Christian" nation? Do you think that the Orthodox Church, and Orthodoxy among the people, will grow stronger over the next twenty years? Will other religions exercise more influence over Russians, or will religion simply play less of a role in Russian life?
2. In Central and Eastern European countries special laws have been passed to bar some former communist-era officials from further participation in government, a process known as lustration. In Russia there were calls after 1985 for repentance (pokaianie) from certain groups-more than individuals-but in general, significant numbers of Soviet-era officials are still in office. What explains this difference? The length of time the regime was in power? A different religious tradition? A different sense of how a nation achieves justice and finds truth?
3. Which post-Stalinist writers do you think will still be read widely in 2020? Are there writers and works that you used to value that no longer seem so important?
4. The period since 1985 has been called post-totalitarian, post-communist, post-Soviet, post-imperial, post-perestroika, mezhvremen'e [lit. 'between time periods'], and bezvremen'e [lit. 'without time,' but has the added meaning of a period of stagnation, non-movement, when time appears to stand still]. When do you expect Russia to arrive at a new era that can be named and judged in its own right? With a greater focus on the present, will the traditional cultural emphasis on remembering the past and making utopian schemes for the future fade?
5. Are the forces that unite the population of Russia stronger than the forces which divide them?
6. What do American specialists on Russia fail to understand about the state of the nation today, and about the direction and pace in which Russia is moving?
Billington: We have quite a few questions to cover, and they're all interesting, so each person doesn't have to speak at length to each question. The first question is: how can we characterize the present? A lot of names and slogans have been given to this period. Since you're living through it, what do you think?
Aksiuchits: There have been a number of stages (etapy). From 1990-92 we had a capitalism that can be characterized as bandit or nomenklatura. Then it became an oligarchic capitalism, linked to banking and the natural monopolies. The government [in the name of the people] must take control or officials will just do whatever they want. They've already taken so much for themselves-it's unbelievable, and yet I've seen how it happened. For example, [Rem] Vyakhyrev got half of Gazprom by means of a decree that has no legality and yet was still acted upon. When Yeltsin was shown this by Nemtsov he said: "Put them in prison (sazhat')," but Nemtsov explained to him that if he did that, then everyone would have to be arrested. This all took place last year. It shouldn't even be called criminal capitalism, but bureaucratic capitalism. We need to achieve some level of conformity with law, some norms (zakonomernosti). Nemtsov is sincere in his actions, he's a friend, and in 1990 he was a member of my movement [the Christian Democratic Alliance].
We need a popular capitalism, a capitalism for the people as a whole (narodnyi kapitalizm), with property for the middle class, and small proprietors (sobstvennost' dlia srednego klassa, melkie sobstvenniki). It isn't clear yet whether Russia will continue to have oligarchic capitalism. What we need is for each owner and proprietor (sobstvennik) to exercise control over his property, his behavior, and his fate.
Ivanova: George Soros would agree with that analysis, that we have a predatory kind of capitalism (grabitel'skii kapitalizm), and that if we don't change the rules of the game, we have a very scary time ahead of us.
Parthé: You're saying that the worst is yet to come?
Tishkov: This is really a time of trouble (smutnoe vremia, which here has the literal meaning of 'vague, confused'). . . . This is a time of transformation, a revolution of double negatives (revoliutsiia dvoinogo otritsaniia): 1) a negation of the Soviet system; then, 2) a negation of the state system (otritsanie gosudarstvennosti) as a whole. There were other options, for instance, letting the Baltics go, then reforming the USSR, and allowing a freer type of federation. We are experiencing an identity crisis (krizis identichnosti), and a social crisis, and yet the period as a whole is a positive one and there has been substantial material progress.
Shmelev:. . . .Democracy is a noble goal, and yet the government is the number one criminal. So shabby criminal means are being used to bring about an absolutely noble goal. The goal was the liberalization of prices, and the elimination of the deficit, and towards that end Gaidar's policies robbed the people in a way that hadn't happened to that degree since 1917. Even Stalin never allowed himself that kind of theft; his banking changes in 1947 only took 50% of people's savings. In 1992 people were robbed of virtually all their life savings, just like in 1917. There was a law passed by parliament about compensation. It was a law, but the government didn't observe it.
We're moving too fast. Take privatization, for example. In the early 1990s, privatization amounted to either giving enterprises away or the theatrical spectacle of the voucher system, at the end of which factories wound up in the hands of their directors. Some bizarre new phrases have entered the language, for example, "I was appointed a billionaire" (ia byl naznachen milliarderom), and all the ways this worked were criminal. . . .
We have two bandit groups: an Afghan veterans group and the National Sports Foundation-they represent neither veterans nor athletes, and they kill each other over these [business] matters. They were granted lucrative concessions on imports, and I am sorry to say the Orthodox Church was also. This is serious money, much more than the annual budget of the entire Academy of Sciences. You know, I asked Chubais at the beginning of privatization why they were giving away the whole country, and he said that "This isn't important."
In 1995, the situation with the tariffs began to be a little awkward, and the Duma voted on liquidating these privileges, but only six people out of some 400 were willing to go on record as voting to end them. A lot of votes to keep the privileges were bought. Money has been taken from the state budget to help out the banks. There was a significant attempt to cut down on vodka sales, which have always provided a significant percentage of state income, with the result that the underworld has gotten involved in alcohol sales.
. . . Ivanova: We are still at a post-Soviet stage of development.
Anninsky: We've gone from being an evil empire to being an evil democracy (ot imperiia zla do demokratii zla).
Rubtsov: Could things have gone differently? We call what is going on a revolution, but what do we mean by "revolution"? What we have now is all extremely repulsive (vse eto kraine otvratitel'no). What did we want to have happen? Actually, we deserved worse. And how will it turn out? Remember what John Kennedy's father was like. Our tough guys (krutye), well, their children will need a civilized country where people aren't shooting at each other. We want a "normal" government, but we've never really had one, we've just gone from one criminal regime to another.
Shmelev: In 1992-93, 80% of the GNP was stolen. Now the rate is about 15%. The Bolsheviks stole about 12-13% of the GNP, so what we have now is a normal Russian level of theft.
Aksiuchits: Listen, there were no other kadry available at the time. The system could not have produced any other type of reformers. Our Bolshevik-type reformers rushed to create a new social class, and the result are the New Russians. They have children. What could happen, what are the alternatives? (1) There could be the possibility of gaining unlimited riches without any guarantee (bespredel'noe bogatstvo bez garantii) that you can keep it or give it to your children. Or, (2) no extraordinary level of profit (sverkhpribyli), but with civilized rules of the game (pravda bor'by i igry), and guarantees about keeping and passing on what you earn, a more popular (narodnyi) kind of capitalism, and the creation of a middle class.
Shmelev: And how long will this take to come about?
Rubtsov: There was a moment when there were other possibilities, when things could have turned out differently [he uses the word 'zazor,' which participants defined as a brief, critical moment, a very small window of opportunity].
Aksiuchits: There were other models. There were ways to create a middle class without having an oligarchy first.
Ivanova: The absence of a middle class is one of our biggest problems historically. Our capitalism isn't producing anything, that's the most dangerous thing of all.
Billington: Is a middle class appearing or not?
Ivanova: A middle class is slowly growing, but the government isn't coming up with any policies to help and support this development. We are thinking about selling shares in [the journal] Znamia, but we don't know where this will lead-it's all very complicated. . . .
Shmelev: A well-known physicist recently joked that what we were told about Communism was false, but what was said about capitalism turned out to be true.
Anninsky: I don't understand a great deal about economics. . . ,.but I understand a bit more about politics. You know, we have the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party, but it is all the same Manilovs and Sobakeviches [characters in Gogol's novel Dead Souls]. When we talk about theft (vorovstvo), how are we to understand the concept of theft of property, when for seventy years there was no property (ne bylo sobstvennosti), and yet there was no uprising (ne bylo bunta). . . . We don't have the type of entrepreneur now that you find in Gorky's works. The attempts to have a middle class in rural areas are not working. There are those who envy the neighboring farmer if he's doing well, and as a result they set his place on fire. . . .
Parthé: Do you think that your daughter. . . .believes that she is taking part in creating a different kind of society, and that she is part of something larger than herself?
Anninsky: There shouldn't be any talk of building or planning a society or creating a future; we've had too much of that in the past, and now we need just to live our daily lives. She is simply working and living in her own epoch. . . .
Tishkov: We really don't have a conceptual category for national identity (net poniatii natsional'nogo samosoznaniia), and we don't have a national civil society. A symbolic system is very important, but it comes into being with difficulty (sistema simvolov trudno rozhdaetsia). In 1991 the White House as a symbol was borrowed from America. As far as a national symbol (gerb), we have a choice of either improvising, or using the Byzantine two-headed eagle, which doesn't meet our needs and doesn't correspond to the reality of Russia today (ne dostatochno, ne sootvetstvuet real'nosti).
Billington: What symbols and holidays do have meaning for Russians? What about today?
Ivanova: It's an absolutely artificial holiday.
Tishkov:. . . .There was a debate in 1990 about whether to call the country simply Russia (Rossiia) or the Russian Federation (Rossiiskaia Federatsiia). The problem with the former is that Rossiia is associated with the center, with Moscow. You can hear people say on television and on radio "Here in Russia" (A u nas v Rossii...). There's Rossiia plus its edges, the regions. There's a territorial identity. And there are some mutually exclusive loyalties. With our relatively weak state (gosudarstvo), the projection of Rossiia as the center-as against the regions thinking about autonomy-is a serious matter. . . .
Ivanova: What's been lost is the concept, the identity of being Soviet (utracheno poniatie, identichnost' sovetskogo cheloveka). It's left a vacuum. The derogatory term sovok (a person who continues to affect Soviet-era official mannerisms) that you hear is a sign of an inferiority complex. No one talks about being a citizen of Russia (rossiianin). Patriotism is in the hands of the ultra-nationalists and fascists-the intelligentsia doesn't have a vocabulary to talk about patriotism. How do the millions [of Russians] who now live outside the country in places like Latvia and Kazakhstan. . . .relate to Russia? The whole terminology is changing for how to discuss these questions.
Parthé: And if some of these former republics, the Baltics first of all, join NATO, will that make the situation for Russians living there better or worse?
Ivanova: It will be worse.
Anninsky: Yes, much worse. The Russian intelligentsia shouted about freedom, but they didn't think about what that might mean to people in the Baltics. Rus' [the first East Slavic state] is something inclusive ..., a universal term that is now being turned into something ethnic.
Ivanova: Chechnya is small, but it has a strong identity, and it is fighting against a large country with a confused identity. We wind up with "I am a Russian-that means I must repent" (ia russkii-nado kaiat'sia).
Anninsky: A super-idea (sverkh-ideia) no longer works. As far as flags go, the tri-color flag was a commercial symbol in the past. There was another imperial flag, and the two-headed eagle that looks both East and West came from the Byzantine emperor. We need our own flag.
Aksiuchits: The Russian state (rossiiskoe gosudarstvo) was created by the Russian people for the sake of many different groups and religions. There is no other base for the rebirth of Russian national identity. We need a government for the people of Rossiia. Utopian ideas are artificial and wreak havoc on reality (razrushaet real'nost'). A Belorussian people is a fiction. And the Ukrainian people and their language-all this was declared to be a separate entity after 1917. I am Belorussian, I was born in a poor Belorussian village, but Russian identity is the only one I could have. There has been an artificial division of Rossiia into three parts. Russian national identity will be found in uniting a strong central government with either positive or negative forms of nationalism. Our identity will emerge in a large confederation.
. . . Billington: When we talk about "Russian identity," are we talking about an ethnic group, a language, or a kind of spirituality?
Tishkov: We're in a transitional period from the ethno-nationalism that was part of Soviet doctrine to a liberal civic nationalism. The internal passport says "Russian" but there have been complaints about that designation, rossiianin. As for the question of rituals (ritualy) and holidays, there are traditional ones from the religious tradition, both Russian Orthodox and non-Russian Orthodox, like Easter, Christmas-which is celebrated after January 1-and they were preserved. Some of the old holidays have been renamed and reclassified, like November 7-8, which is now the Day of Reconciliation and Accord (den' primireniia i soglasiia), and May 1, which is now the Day of Peace and Labor (den' mira i truda). Some dates are related to important historical events and myths, like May 8-9. Today, June 12, Independence Day (den' nezavisimosti), is in imitation of the American holiday.. . . .Then there are the monuments and the process of renaming (pereimenovanie) cities, streets. . . . The past is eliminated, cast out.
Billington: Does the concept of sobornost' (spiritual collectivity) have any meaning now?
Anninsky: In the West you have the idea of korporativnost' (corporate identity).
Tishkov: Sobornost' is more personal, more local, but it doesn't mean a whole lot now.
Billington: Would you characterize Russia as an Orthodox country?
Tishkov: It's an atheistic country. Daghestan is the most religious place. Everything depends on whether the Russian Orthodox church reforms itself and is able to nurture parish life. And for that to happen, they have to make a greater effort with young people, to attract them to parishes, and they need to simplify the liturgy.
Ivanova: There are formal and informal kinds of religiosity. At the informal level, Christian culture is part of our consciousness, or subconsciousness. . . . The Orthodox church doesn't have the influence it could have had, but there is the question of ties with the KGB and the government. But there's a new generation, and the new clergy are better educated, and they can create a different context.
Aksiuchits: Changes in religion will be more substantial in the next century. . . . Religiosity is growing, as you can see from the number of active churches, monasteries, and church-related communities (votserkovlennye obshchiny). We see people who are believers, but not yet formally part of the church. Then there are the many other sects. And we see a genuine Russian Orthodox interest in the intelligentsia and among the reading public, the beginnings of belief. The Russian Orthodox church has not fulfilled its missionary role-it was to be a preaching and missionary church. Government atheism destroyed people, leaders, the system. The church was weakened by repression. Baptists sent help [to their people here], but not the Orthodox who live abroad. There is a lot of proselytism by other groups, but not by Russian Orthodoxy.. . . . Other Christian churches seem to be taking advantage of the weakness of Russian Orthodoxy, instead of helping the church get back on its feet.
. . . Billington: What about the lustration laws in Eastern Europe, which you don't find in Russia?
Shmelev: Repentance (pokaianie) is spiritual, moral, personal, and it is a process, not just one act (dukhovnoe, moral'noe, lichnoe, i protsess, ne odin akt). Even Germany wasn't able to do it completely. Lustration would be really stupid, since one in ten people were in the Party, and one in ten or fifteen was working with the organy (organs of state security).
Aksiuchits: . . . .In the Baltics, repentance is what Russians are expected to do.
Tishkov: Why of all the fifteen republics should Russia be the only one to apologize? The Baltics haven't apologized to the Jews. There are various elements to repentance. There have been acts passed that express regret for and annul deportations, that rehabilitate and offer compensation for victims of political repression; there is a memorial plaque on Kropotkinskaia Street to the Anti-Fascist Committee and to [Solomon] Mikhoels.
Billington: Will there be a Russian variant of capitalism and democracy, and what will the principal differences be?
Anninsky: There will be a very clever (lukavyi) variant.
Billington: I've been thinking about this a lot for the television series and book I just finished. There has been a three-step process in the past: (1) imitation of foreign models, as in Kievan art; (2) then the stage where you see originality, suddenly there is Rublev; (3) then the tradition is demolished. That's what happened in the mid-17th century, when the naturalistic approach to painting began to appear. More recently Gaidar, for instance, was for a rapid repetition of Western models. In music, something Russian began to appear in the 1860s. Verdi was invited to St. Petersburg and wrote La Forza del Destino, and Wagner came, and then you have the Mighty Five [the Russian composers Cui, Balakirev, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Musorgsky].
Rubtsov: Capitalism and democracy will have the special characteristics of the people of each country. What will it be like here? How will it form? In 1991, it was more like the West. There was talk of simply copying, but in the early 1990s there was hunger, and there had to be variations. It only seems like we are copying the West, but there is less of a move to capitalism than there was in tsarist Russia. The Soviet influence is still great. There has been a lot of change in the center and some of the regions, but it has to get out to the rest of the country.
Billington: Would you like a Russian version? The phrase popular capitalism (narodnyi kapitalizm) was used here.
Rubtsov: You know we can't use words ending in -ism publicly. The people don't want to hear about any more -isms.
Shmelev: We can use -shchina [a suffix that denotes a trend more than an organized movement].
Billington: What is it that American experts don't understand?
Rubtsov: They were not able to see everything falling apart.
Anninsky: They don't see that there is more socialism [in the sense of social safety nets] in the U.S. than here. You are trying to use logic with us, but we don't use logic on ourselves. We ourselves don't understand what's going on. We're just acting instinctively.
Ivanova: U.S. Slavists have such a narrow focus. They pay lots of attention to writers like Prigov, Sorokin, Pelevin, whom no one is reading here. We call it Literature for Slavists. . . . Many lines of Russian culture aren't seen in the West.
Shmelev: Very little is understood about economics. The Western specialists, the super-theoreticians, put the patient on the operating table and started operating, and it turned out there was a different kind of anatomy, and we didn't know what was happening to us.
Aksiuchits: What interests are Americans coming here with?
At this point, Grigory Yavlinsky arrives, explaining that he was delayed by the investigation into the murder of a Yabloko party activist in Ingushetia, but that he didn't want to miss what was clearly going to be an unusual gathering. Because of the late hour, he is given the floor.
Yavlinsky: The question concerns the Russian variants of democracy and capitalism. What is taking shape here (chto u nas skladyvaetsia)? Isn't it a semi-criminal, monopolistic, oligarchic system (polukriminal'naia, oligarkhicheskaia, korporativnaia sistema)? It's incestuous, and not much better than what there was before. It's like Indonesia, where Suharto killed off the Communist Party and established a crony capitalism that's been around for thirty years. The shadow economy here amounts to 40% of the GNP. The other 60% can be shown. There's no separation between business, money, and power, and between them and the means of mass information. Everything is in the same hands, like the old Soviet monopolies.
In what direction are things going? There have been many positive developments, a lot of self-organization (samoorganizatsiia) in society, and self-management (samoupravlenie) going on a low level. The first step is to neither offer nor accept bribes. The first political parties are appearing. Children have wider horizons and possibilities and a different set of values. There are two elements to the struggle that is going on now, a criminal tradition that is a thousand years old, and the new directions in which we are moving. Will Russia be preserved as a distinct kind of identity (sokhranitsia li Rossiia kak samosoznanie)?
My constituents ask me whether things will get better. Have we really changed the paradigms? There is a paternalistic habit that was strengthened during the Soviet period. In 1990 we kept these paradigms. We voted in different leaders, but we wanted to know what they would do for the people. In our thinking process we are pessimists, but in the way we act freely we are optimists (pessimizm mysli, optimizm voli). I am tempted to use the English phrase "Just do it!" to help them get moving.
Russia could break apart, just like the Soviet Union, but in a more dangerous way. So what will the Russian variant be? I am reminded of the fairy tale where a knight comes up to a boulder on which are written three different directions. If you go to the left, you lose your head, if you go to the middle or to the right, other things will happen because there are dangers in each direction. But before Russia can choose one of three directions we need to learn how to walk. It's early to talk about what variants [of democracy and capitalism] we will have. We need to focus on fundamentals and take small steps. What can you do with bricks? You can make them into an old Russian palace, or the Cologne Cathedral. There will be a Russian variant; we just don't know yet what it will be. We don't have to be Bolsheviks. Chubais looks at the goals as everything and thinks the means aren't important. But Russia will not accept that kind of reform. The Russian government asks the IMF what we must do to get the money, but that is the wrong process.
America has exhibited contradictory behavior towards Russia. It has not acted with complete sincerity and at times has deceived us. America says that Russian reforms, the development of democracy, and the election of a president are all fine, and turns around and expands NATO on the excuse that there needs to be a strong hand in the world. This is contradictory. Don't give us advice and don't give us money. We are doing a lot of investing outside of Russia. And it is a bad idea for Russian politics to become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. Russia has its own ideas. The U.S. needs to understand that it should not give advice that America itself wouldn't follow. So first there is support for Yeltsin, and now highly-placed officials meet with Lebed'. There is too much of a focus on one person at a time. The American officials need to meet with a wider range of people.
Billington: There have been quite a few exchanges involving Russians coming to the United States and Americans going to Russia to work on joint projects. Some people think that substantial U.S. help to Siberia is a good idea, and I myself have suggested this when I speak to groups of businessmen, as I did recently in Texas. What would you like to see happen?
Yavlinsky: I think we should proceed gradually. You need a president who understands what's going on and doesn't make Russian policy part of U.S. politics. Clinton tries to reassure us that NATO rockets will not be aimed at us. I understand that there is a gap between what people in the U.S. feel towards Russia, and how U.S. politicians act. (1) There needs to be a new U.S. president and a new set of people creating policy, and these advisors and policy-makers need to talk to Shmelev and others. (2) There must be a change in strategy. Before 1990, representatives of the U.S. talked to a wide range of Russians. [Jack] Matlock's embassy was like a club and everyone was invited, and Russians of very different opinions were seated next to each other purposely. These kinds of channels closed down in 1991, and the U.S. began to focus on just a few people-Yeltsin, Gaidar, Kozyrev-as if Russia were like Switzerland or Germany, where a couple of people can be said to represent the nation for the most part. They are developed societies. We need 20-50 years before we will have a president who is really representative, before there is a national identity that could be represented by one, two, or three people in the government. In the meantime, the U.S. should talk to a wide range of people at lower levels as well. Talk to Lebed' by all means, but not as a leading contender for the presidency.
Parthé: It's clear that the NATO question is very important for Russia, and that most U.S. experts on Russia don't favor expansion either. But in a sense, the reason that expansion may have passed through Congress so easily is precisely because it isn't seen as being such a big deal, or as a way of deliberately provoking Russia.
Yavlinsky: Symbols count for the East and the West, but they count differently for each side. The U.S. must be more honest with us about why NATO is being expanded. When Russia becomes less stable, then you'll understand. Mrs. Albright talks about NATO tanks as if they are really friendly things. And I talk to my constituents about these friendly, rose-colored, flower-strewn tanks, but if there is one thing a Russian understands, it's a tank aimed at our country. What is needed is a pragmatic, straightforward, anti-ideological approach. The U.S. should send the message: we will not deal with crony capitalism-as Camdessus has said [about the IMF] to the Russian-American Business Council-or with the semi-criminal aspects of the system. Help us figure out how to fight the robber barons. Yes, you had robber barons at one point in your history, but they invested in America, while ours invest outside of Russia. We need to develop anti-trust laws. We need to develop a capitalism that isn't just for the benefit of a narrow group of people with limited interests.
Lunch and Concluding Discussion
It wasn't possible to capture the entire lunchtime discussion, but Yavlinsky continued to be the dominant figure and his comments are summarized below.
Yavlinsky: How can we characterize this stage? It might be (1) the conclusion of the period when the former ways came to an end, or (2) the beginning of new things, or (3) the end of the new developments, or (4) the beginning of the end for the old ways (konets kontsa, nachalo nachala, konets nachala, ili nachalo kontsa).10
We have Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and they're all different, but they are all part of Russian identity (russkoe samosoznanie). It's not just one thing, but includes the territory, the government, and culture.
I don't know if there is a particularly Russian path (osobyi russkii put') to the future. There are things that are common to all people, like human rights. There are things that we need to do the way they are done in Europe.
Let's take today, Independence Day. The rubles that were spent promoting this holiday could have served more practical needs. I grew up in this country, and I would like to know: who are we now independent from? We were already independent. We need to attend to simpler matters, to help people do what they need to do. We have to make mass information more effective and more competent.
When Russia can explain itself to itself, then we will be making progress. It's too soon for there to be a clear Russian identity. We have a Politburo identity and a criminal identity in government and society. And we had a velvet revolution, which kept us from really examining ourselves. The president who is behind the burial of the tsar is the same person who once ordered the house where they were killed in Yekaterinburg to be demolished.
Dr. Billington is a person who has seriously followed developments in Russia and has supported Russians. Americans and Russians have to understand each other before one side can offer help to the other. Russia has its own (sobstvennye) interests, and in the world today there are no permanent (postoiannye) enemies and friends. We are the largest country [in the world] in terms of territory. We have a lot of problems-the suicide of the head of a nuclear research facility is indicative, and there are ecological problems, and the question of nuclear weapons.
The romantic period in the relationship between the U.S.A. and Russia is over. Europe doesn't understand us either. Our histories are different, but we are part of a single civilization. Yes, you have a foreign policy person [Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott] who turns out to be a specialist on Tiutchev [a highly-regarded, nationalistic, 19th century poet], but we have Tiutchev himself. You know, when people start talking about a special path for Russia, that's actually a good sign. When you love something, it becomes special.
