Russia needs distinct "national identity" - Putin
VALDAI, Russia. Sept 19 (Interfax) - Russia still needs a distinct "national identity," President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
Soviet ideology is gone for good and "impossible to bring back," Putin said during a meeting of the Valdai discussion club.
The idealization of pre-1917 Russia and pro-Western "ultra-liberalism" are also roads to no man's land, he argued.
"It's obvious that we can't move forward without cultural and national self-determination. Otherwise we won't be able to respond to external or internal challenges, we can't be successful in global competition," he said, adding that today there is a new wave of economic competition and competition of ideas across the world.
"Military policies are responsible for an exacerbating situation. The world is increasingly brutal. At times, it is not just international law but elementary decency that gets flouted," he said.
Russia needs to be economically, militarily and technologically powerful, he insisted. However, it is the "acquisition and strengthening of national identity" that "is of fundamental significance to Russia," he said.
He accused Russia's state of doing no work after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to build the country's new identity.
The absence of a national ideology served the interests of the part of the elite that "preferred to steal," while "the people didn't accept crude borrowings and attempts to civilize Russia from without," he said.