Stalin is the most popular figure in all of Russia.

If the world economy is divided into isolated economic blocs of this kind, it will be rather difficult to achieve the same interpretation and application of international rules of economic activity and world trade.

We discussed this very important issue yesterday over a beer.

How can a bureaucrat or a politician be trusted if he says loud words for the sake of Russia's good while trying to take his funds, his money abroad?

This, for instance, is what Egon Bahr said on June 26, 1990: "If we do not now undertake clear steps to prevent a division of Europe, this will lead to Russia's isolation."Bahr, a wise man, had a very concrete suggestion as to how this danger could be averted.

I think that rather than talking about particular models, of which there could be a huge number, we should talk about basic principles of democracy. After all, even within the West, there is no single standard and single model.

When you start to meet with ordinary people you understand that a Russian person, really any person from Russia, a Tatar, a Mordvin, a Chechen, a Dagestani, they are very open people, even a little naive. But there's one defining trait that probably all peoples have, although it comes out especially strongly in us. That's a drive toward fairness. It's one of the dominating, I think, traits in the mentality of a person from Russia, a Russian person.