Guest
Speech in the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany September 25, 2001 Berlin PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Distinguished Mr President, Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I am sincerely grateful for this opportunity to speak in the Bundestag. This is the first such opportunity for a Russian head of state in the entire history of Russian-German relations. And this honor granted to me today only reaffirms the mutual interest of Russia and Germany in dialogue. I am moved by this chance to discuss Russian-German relations, the development of ties between my country and united Europe and international security problems here, in Berlin, a city with a difficult fate, a city which happened to become the focus of confrontation with almost the entire world on more than one occasion in the modern history of humanity, but also a city in which never, even in the darkest periods, did anyone succeed in stifling the spirit of freedom and humanism that had been nurtured way back by Wilhelm von Humboldt and was that done in the grim years of Hitler tyranny. Our country deeply reveres the memory of heroic anti-Nazi fighters. Russia has always had special sentiments for Germany, and regarded your country as one of the major centres of European culture a culture, to the development of which Russia has also made a significant contribution, a culture which has known no borders and has always been our common asset and a factor of bringing peoples together. That is why today I will take the liberty of delivering the main part of my message in the language of Goethe, Schiller and Kant, in the German language. (Follows translation from the German.) Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I have just talked about the unity of European culture. However, in the past that unity did not prevent two horrible wars from being unleashed on the continent, two world wars within one century. Nor did it prevent the building of the Berlin Wall, the formidable symbol of the deep division of Europe. The Berlin Wall is no longer. It was destroyed. And today it would be relevant to recall why that became possible. It is my conviction that the dramatic change in the world, in Europe and on the expanses of the former Soviet Union would have been impossible without the main preconditions, namely, without the events that took place in Russia ten years ago. These events are important to understanding what precisely took place in our country and what could be expected from Russia in the answer is simple, as a matter of fact. Under the impact of the laws governing the development of information society, Stalinist totalitarian ideology could no longer oppose the ideas of freedom and democracy. The spirit of these ideas was taking hold of the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens. It was the political choice of the people of Russia that enabled the then leaders of the USSR to take decisions that eventually led to the razing of the Berlin Wall. It was that choice that infinitely broadened the boundaries of European humanism and that enables us to say that no one will ever be able to return Russia back into the for European integration, we not just support these processes, but we are looking to them with hope. We view them as a people who have learned the lesson of the Cold War and the peril of the ideology of occupation very well. But here, I think, it would be pertinent to add that Europe did not gain from that division either. It is my firm conviction that in today’s rapidly changing world, in a world witnessing truly dramatic demographic changes and an exceptionally high economic growth in some regions, Europe also has an immediate interest in promoting relations with Russia.
