Will Navalny Find Happiness? The Real Enemies of Russia. Putinists in Europe. Adam Michnik
Adam Michnik is a Polish poet and writer, journalist, editor-in-chief of the country's largest daily print publication, public figure, dissident, journalist, and one of the most active representatives of the political opposition from 1968 to 1989. We discussed how Poland views Russia's war in Ukraine, whether all Russians and the Russian language should be abolished, and what Alexei Navalny's happiness will be.
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00:00 The Bolshevik regime in Russia is a threat to us, to Poland, and to the world, but it is also a threat to Russia. But many of us learned nonconformism from Russian dissidents like Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, and others.
04:40 The period of turmoil in Russia has been too long. Military defeats have greatly served the idea of freedom in Russian history. Ukraine is the greatest political mistake and bandit aggression. Ukraine will be Putin's Afghanistan. This will be the end of Putin's regime.
07:10 When your loved ones are killed, it's not the time for high-brow debates. There are many people in Russia who think that Ukraine is a different Russia. I disagree with them. It was the same in Poland, too, when they said that the Ruthenians (that's what Ukrainians are called) were Poles, only slightly different. But they were simply Ukrainians.
10:16 A citizen of an empire often has an imperial mindset. Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Brodsky—they all had the imperial problem that we were all part of an empire. Akhmatova was Ukrainian, Tolstoy was Tatar. They all couldn't understand Ukrainians, who thought they were simply not Russian. And this problem exists today, and will continue to exist after the war.
18:29 Russian history has examples of how to change power. Pahlen killed Pavel. Or the wave of popular dissent against the government. Putin has undermined his image as a great leader in the last four months. Russia's real enemy isn't Ukraine, it's China and the Islamic countries.
8:12 PM When Putin looked at the end of Gaddafi, he thought to himself too. No one knew what Saddam Hussein's end would be like. Milosevic, in Serbia... Putin is already on the road to death, political and human. What could be worse than Putin? It couldn't be worse. As long as Putin is here, all doors to improving the situation in Russia will be closed; Russia will not enter the civilized world.
25:55 Alexei Navalny has political talent, purpose, courage, and a desire to change something in Russia. Will he be happy like Mandela? Putin hates him so much because he's afraid of Navalny.
29:30 No need for lustration! Just watch TV! Russia Today! Margarita Simonyan! The fact that someone is afraid to go out today is not their fault, but their fear. Shenderovich, Sorokin, Yerofeyev, Ulitskaya—that's my Russia. It's obvious to me that Russia is part of Europe. Now, thanks to Putin, they've left Europe, just as Germany left Europe under Hitler.
34:19 Yes, we see an anti-democratic Comintern in Europe. Salvini in Italy. Madame Le Pen. In Hungary, in Spain, the Vox party, in Poland, Kaczynski. The most important conflict will be between the liberal democratic model and the authoritarian state.