Why the West was so impressed by Putin's speech at Valdai

Epigraph: "We are not going to fight with anyone, we are trying to create conditions so that no one would try to fight with us!" (V.V. Putin)

In 1989, the American philosopher and political scientist of Japanese origin Francis Fukuyama published his famous essay "The End of History?" In this essay, he proclaimed the triumph of the liberal world order and left-liberal democracy. The Soviet Union collapsed two years later. The communist ideology lost its war to the liberal one. Did Fukuyama foresee this? Perhaps yes. But I would not discard in this whole story, the end of which we are now seeing, and the human (personal) factor. If Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov had not suddenly passed away in 1984, and he had not been replaced at first by the amorphous seriously ill Chernenko, who after his death in 1985 as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was replaced by the "active" Gorbachev, maybe we are now lived under communism, at least in the Chinese version. The role of personality in history sometimes matters much more than we think.



Nevertheless, the end of history predicted by Fukuyama and the total victory of left-wing liberal pseudo-democratic ideas over totalitarian communist ideas 30 years later ended in a revenge of the latter, unexpected for the West. For those resting on their laurels, the winner in the rank of the King of the Hill of the United States, everything radically changed at the end of 1999 with the arrival of a seemingly insignificant former KGB lieutenant colonel in the building on 2/14 Old Square. But Bush Sr., then acting president of America, did not even notice how Yeltsin's protégé and heir was quietly slowly but surely unfolding the course of historical processes. So much so that already in 2021, old Joe, who replaced the demoniac cowboy Don as president of the United States, unexpectedly discovered that the time allotted to him by history and Fukuyama had expired, and at 12 o'clock in the morning his American carriage turned into a pumpkin again , and the unipolar world again turned into a multipolar one, without even asking permission from Washington.

For 30 years, the West has weakened due to the absence of power competition, while Russia and China have restored their power and economic possibilities, and this is currently an objective scientifically proven medical fact. Now Beijing and Moscow are dictating their will to Washington, and the latter, torn by internal contradictions, is making desperate attempts to rally the "free" world that remains under its boot in its confrontation with the notorious communist threat, while trampling at home all the vaunted democratic freedoms (the right to vote and the right to free choice). At the same time, all the satellites and henpecked Washington did not even notice that the "communist threat" was replaced by a slight movement of the hegemon's hand by the "Chinese" and "Russian" ones, and the ideological confrontation turned into a phase of confrontation between life philosophies and spiritual values.

But be that as it may, after 30 years of total domination, the decrepit hegemon suddenly discovered a sad fact for himself - the time of a universal arbiter who personally established the rules of the game and judged who was right and who was wrong has expired. The world, having unfolded at a higher turn of the spiral, returns to square one to a multipolar order with several poles of power. The forceful competition of several great powers is returning, for which it is not so much peace as such that is important, but the sovereign right to defend their interests and their civilizational values. In fact, peace, as the absence of war, is no longer an absolute value for them; they can even sacrifice it when it comes to their sovereignty and spiritual bonds. As Vladimir Putin said: "Why do we need such a world in which there will be no Russia?" In general, it should be said that for some time now (namely, since 2007) in the West, every word of Putin is heeded with special attention.

The power of verbal intervention. “Watch closely what I say! Better write it down ... "(V.V. Putin)

Many outstanding personalities will remain in the memory of posterity thanks to their famous speeches. Lenin's speech from an armored car at the Finland Station, Winston Churchill's speech in Fulton, "I have a dream" by Martin Luther King ...

Vladimir Putin undoubtedly delivered his signature speech on February 10, 2007 at the Munich conference. Large-scale, strong, deep. In this speech, the President of the Russian Federation outlined the vector of development of the entire future multipolar world. Consciously or not, he set the trend that still determines the external policy Russia, which affects almost all international players. Its logical continuation was his Crimean speech, which he delivered in the format of a message to the Federal Assembly upon the annexation of Crimea to Russia, his first Valdai speech of 2014, and, perhaps, all subsequent ones.

It got to the point that each of his new performances in Valdai the West awaits with a shudder - what else will the Kremlin autocrat say? They are even more frightened by his answers to their own questions. When, at the 2011 Valdai meeting, to the provocative question of an American journalist: "Can you destroy the United States in about half an hour?", Putin, after thinking for a couple of seconds, replied: "Actually, much faster ..." with a stupor, already the journalist himself. If you say that it had the effect of an exploding bomb, then this means nothing to say! The American then forgot all his other questions. The reaction of others is also indicative - they all reacted to the extent of their loyalty to the United States. Some even smiled. We remember that. Based on the above, no one was surprised by the fact that after Putin's phrase: "Since childhood I live by the principle, if a fight is inevitable, then you must beat first!" came out with the headlines: "The harshness of Putin's Valdai speech amazed the Americans." And, I must say, there was why!


- wrote then the columnist and editor of the Financial Times for Eastern Europe, Neil Buckley, who took part in that meeting of the Valdai Club.

Moreover, he considered that Putin's speech was "one of the most anti-American of his speeches in all 15 years as the most influential politician in Russia." Oh, how ?! Munich remembered! Why didn't I remember “the Russian bear, which won't give up its taiga” and which “shouldn't try to put on a chain”, said by Putin in the same place, but a year earlier ?! Although, against the background of the events preceding Valdai-2015, that speech of his was still the height of peacefulness (for those who have forgotten, I will remind you - 3 weeks before him, the Russian Federation entered Syria, which was a big surprise for Obama).

Putin's speech at Valdai-2021 was more peaceful, but, nevertheless, again made an indelible impression on the decaying West, which once again clung to the screens of its television sets with undisguised alarm. Russia will henceforth be guided by the ideology of moderate conservatism and calls on all healthy forces of society, including the Western one, under its banners. This is the main idea that the President of Russia tried to convey to the highbrow meeting gathered in Sochi, which ran like a red thread through it. In a discussion that arose with the forum moderator, Putin referred to one of his favorite philosophers Nikolai Berdyaev, who at the dawn of the Soviet state, arguing with the Bolsheviks who came to power, said: that it prevents backward and downward movement. " The Bolsheviks listened to him and sent him out of the country on the famous "philosophical steamer" a year later, in 1922. Putin urged the Western community not to repeat the mistakes of the Bolsheviks.

The high-profile meeting of Putin understood, but the general public, who happened to be at that moment in front of their TV screens, is unlikely. Under a potato with a cucumber, such thoughts are poorly perceived. I will try to help them and more popularly convey the main points of Vladimir Vladimirovich. They were thesis related to the global civilizational crisis that has hit the now decaying West, caused by an exhausted model of capitalism, accompanied by a revision of centuries-old civilizational human spiritual and life values ​​(including gender and gender) and an impudent rewriting of history. Agree, they are hard to perceive even thesis by ear (here, as they say, you can't understand without half a liter!). And since we are all teetotal people, we will have to explain Putin's words with illustrative examples (he did not cite them in his speech, since all literate people gathered at the forum, all of them are international journalists and political scientists from different countries, they understood everything anyway).

I will not tell you anything further about the breakdown of the spiritual and moral bonds that humanity has, you all already understand that the gender and transgender diktat imposed on us by the States, with its 58 variants of gender identity; with the dominance of LGBT ideology and a bias towards the infringement of the rights of heterosexuals; with racial discrimination, it’s not funny to say, this time the white population; with accusations of all men without exception of harassment and sexism; and, finally, with his parents # 1 and # 2 - this is beyond common sense. Putin called on all opponents to unite under the banner of healthy conservatism. And Russia is ready to lead this movement, since we already went through something similar 100 years ago and have a collective immunity to this obscurantism, (although the Bolsheviks did not reach parents No. 1 and No. 2 and 58 genders, but to break the role of the family and socialize women tried). Everything is clear here - these comrades and I are not on our way, and I will not delve into these questions once again. But the systemic crisis that hit the West requires explanation. Not everything is so obvious with him.

But we'll talk about this next time. The end follows.