People sometimes ask: Is Putin a clever man? Yes, he's clever in his own way, when it comes to political intrigue, and he's got a good head for numbers. But as soon as he took office, the first thing he did was to institute a new anthem based on the old Soviet one; that was a very major step, not a petty issue. He began at once to appeal to people's basest instincts. It is true that people in Russia are used to obedience.

Generally, if you look at present-day trends, you can predict the future. Very few people do that, because I've been told that only 3 to 5 percent of people are aware of being a part of history; the overwhelming majority think things will always be the way they are now. When Stalin was alive, most people could not imagine that he would ever die. Same under Brezhnev.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.