The freedoms we have in Russia are just leftovers. Freedom of travel, which was completely nonexistent in the Soviet Union; artistic freedom - so far, that's doing fine too, virtually everything can be published. Although with some books that are too edgy politically, or are especially undesirable, the authors are already running into difficulties. Theaters that produce provocative plays, or clubs that host undesirable events often find themselves on the receiving end of fire safety inspections and fines.

Russia may soon get another chance to move closer to the West, to make a step - I do believe the first step toward democracy was made in the 1990s, and perhaps the next step can happen now. If this happens, the West needs to see it in time and support it in an intelligent way.

When the regime changed in Japan, the Japanese changed; Russians too can change, as long as the conditions for it are present once again. Today, we are on the verge of a very uncertain situation when either everything will end in catastrophe, or better people will come to power.

A real dictator usually isn't interested in money or women, just pure power. But Putin - I don't know about women, but it looks like he definitely likes money quite a bit. He's painted himself into a corner; he has committed so many sins and crimes, he has no choice but to hold on to power. No matter how he leaves, his policies will definitely be condemned as bad and wrong, and everything will be blamed on him, just as he now blames Yeltsin. It could be done by someone who, at this moment, is professing boundless love for Putin.

After all these recent events in Russia - "Crimea is ours!," Donbas, all that - I realized I could get back into the business of forecasting. Until now, I didn't feel up to it. I actually was wrong about one thing: I predicted that Putin would be forced to leave soon, but he's still there. Generally, once again - this time not in seventy years but in a very short time - the President and the Duma have reached the stage of such idiocy that they are constantly taking actions which are not simply pointless but harmful, to Russia itself.

Putin got lucky with the Sochi Olympics - it didn't fail, it was a great spectacle - and then he thought, "Why not grab Crimea?" And ended up getting stuck. If he had been a wise man, he wouldn't have done that. Of course, then he wouldn't have held the Olympics, either.

They say that generally, rulers - dictators - tend to be short, like me. It gives them an inferiority complex; when they were kids, they wanted to be big and to crush the small, but they were small themselves. Lenin was short, Stalin was short, Putin...