PUTIN EXPLAINS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OPPOSITIONAL PATRIOTS AND TRAITORS

When asked by a reporter what he, Putin, had meant when he said at his last speech that ” the fifth column” was was the force opposing peace and humanity, paraphrased, Putin stated this:

“Everything I do is aimed at consolidating Russian society, not dividing it. If you think it did happen, I believe you. It’s probably the way things really are. Maybe you have an even more acute feel for it than I do. However, in my public statements I have to be more cautious. I’ll think about that. That said, we can’t mask the truth indefinitely and sometimes it is our duty to call the things by their names. This is an extremely complex issue. I’ll be totally frank: answering your question isn’t easy, since we’re walking a very fine line here. It would probably be very challenging to come up with an academic definition of where the opposition ends and the fifth column begins.

This very year, and by the way the year 2014 is the Year of Culture, we celebrated the anniversary of Mikhail Lermontov, the genius of Russian poetry. We all remember his lines. We remember what he wrote about the Borodino battle: “By Moscow then we die // As have our brethren died before.” But he also wrote: “Farewell, farewell, unwashed Russia, // The land of slaves, the land of lords, // And you, blue uniforms of gendarmes, // And you, obedient to them folks.”

Was he an opposition activist? Of course he was. He was an opposition activist. As you may be aware, and probably a lot of you know, when he wrote “The Death of a Poet” on the death of Pushkin, one of his relatives saw the text and asked Lermontov to soften it a bit. Lermontov was so infuriated, that he actually made it even more bitter and edgy. The poem ended with “And your black blood won’t wash away // The poet’s sacred blood.”

He was definitely opposing the authorities, but I think he was also a patriot. This is very fine line. After all, he was an officer, and a very brave and courageous one, who wasn’t afraid to get into the line of fire in the country’s interests. By the way, in the last movie by Nikita Mikhalkov, such officers, who actually brought these efforts to their logical end, the revolution, were later killed by revolutionaries. Maybe if they could get a second chance, they would not have done what they did from the outset to destroy Russian statehood.

After all, the line that separates opposition activists from the fifth column is hard to see from the outside. What’s the difference? Opposition activists may be very harsh in their criticism, but at the end of the day they are defending the interests of the motherland. And the fifth column is those who serve the interests of other countries, and who are only tools for others’ political goals.”