For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.

Justness exists, even if few people exist who feel it.

European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests.

As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.

It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

If state, party and social policy will not be based on morality, then mankind has no future to speak of.