Putin’s Lasting State

by Vladislav Surkov

Notes

“It only seems to us that we have a choice.” Strikingly profound and daring words. Spoken a decade and a half ago...

It is not immediately clear whom Surkov is citing in this unascribed quotation. There has been much discussion on the question in the Russian blogosphere. Yuri Shelyazhenko, who reports from Kiev, seems to have discovered the likely source:

“Putin, of course, never said ‘it only seems to us that we have a choice.’ But on TV on Sept. 4. 2004, the day after the attack on the school in Beslan, he said, word for word, the following:

‘Terrorists think that they are stronger than we are, that they can frighten us with their cruelty, that they can paralyze our will and demoralize our society. And, it would seem, we have a choice: to fight back against them or accede to their demands. But to give in, to allow them to destroy and pull Russia apart in the hope that, in the end, they will leave us in peace? As President, head of the Russian government; as a person who took an oath to defend the country and its territorial integrity; and simply as a citizen of Russia; I am convinced that, in reality, we simply have no choice. Because as soon as we allow ourselves to be blackmailed, as soon as we give in to panic, we plunge millions of people into an endless series of bloody conflicts...’”

Cleisthenes — A lawgiver credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508 BC.

The “art of the possible” — A quote from Bismarck: “Politics is the art of the possible.”

“anti-Kemalists” — Kemalism, also known as the Six Arrows, is the founding ideology of the Republic of Turkey. Kemalism, as it was implemented by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was defined by sweeping political, social, cultural and religious reforms designed to separate the new Turkish state from its Ottoman predecessor and embrace a Westernized way of living, including the establishment of democracy, secularism, state support of the sciences and free education.

“The people say nothing.” — The last line of Boris Godunov, by Pushkin, following the poisoning of Godunov’s wife and son, and the proclamation of the new Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich.

Munich speech — given by Putin on February 10, 2007 at the Munich Security Conference. Putin used the speech to express significant points of the future direction of politics as it would be directed in Russia by himself. He also criticized what he called the United States’ monopolistic dominance in global relations, and its “almost unrestrained hyper use of force in international relations.”