On April 25, 2005, President Vladimir Putin addressed the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. In his lengthy speech Putin laid out a series of priorities for the Russian state in the coming decade. These priorities were not new—he had spoken about them in a similar address the year before—and their central aim was well known, “to build,” as he put it in his address, “an effective state system within the current national borders.” However, it was not Putin’s discussion of democracy and corruption in state institutions that generated headlines in the Western media. Instead it was Putin’s prologue for his reform agenda: . . . Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself. Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorist intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation [the agreement that ended the first Chechen war] that followed damaged the country’s integrity. Oligarchic groups—possessing absolute control over information channels— served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere. Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collapse, the prolonged agony of the Soviet system. But they were mistaken. . . . Putin’s rhetorical device was a conventional decline-and-renewal trope, describing the era of national decline and humiliation that set the stage for his heroic mission of restoring Russia’s strength and capacity. However, Associated Press and BBC news service reports on the speech focused only on one phrase, to which they gave a different translation from that released by the Kremlin (cited above).
Nato and turkey: where is the partnership headed
