Grigory Yavlinsky’s answer to a student about Russia’s foreign policy became a hit on the Internet and collected 1.5 million views
Text, video, 15.12.2015
A student of the Higher School of Economics at Grigory Yavlinsky’s seminar asked the professor why he was criticizing Russia’s foreign policy, as, according to the student, “our country did not quarrel with the world on its own initiative”. The video and the text of the dialogue was published on Grigory Yavlinsky’s Facebook page. The post caused great interest among the audience of social networks and in few days collected nearly 1.5 million views.
“The task of the Russian leadership is not to quarrel with anyone, despite the fact whose initiative it may be. Politics means finding friends rather than creating enemies. If one fails to avoid quarrels, then one should leave politics. Quarrels are a disadvantage to us. To behave like a superpower one should be a superpower. Let us build an economy of a superpower, and then may we will be able give advice to Syria, Libya and others.
Stop talking about Americans. The United States has 22 per cent of world GDP, Russia accounts to only 1 per cent. Together with Europe the United States has 43 per cent of the world GDP. When a boy is going to fight with other kids in the neighbouring yard, he has to count: how many of them are there against him, how many allies he has, what he is and what they are, what they have in their hands and what he has in his pockets. And on the way there he will change his mind! It is a simple logic of life. And in our case they are responsible for a big country.
But we think, “Russian and Chinese are brothers forever!” But the Chinese completely ignore us. They have their own agenda. They conduct “winter” military training exercises. And here comes a question what for?
[In Russia] politics came into conflict with its economy, and it will kill the economy. We need 20 years to create a strong economy. Then we will have an army, the security services, then we will have secure borders, then we will have everything. And if there is no economy, then we will not have anything!”
Within five 5 days, from 11 through to 15 December, the post has collected about 1.5 million views, 10,000 likes and 11,000 reposts, and the video collected 400,000 views.
For the complete video of the lecture and seminar by Grigory Yavlinsky see the link:
Posted: December 13th, 2015 under Economy.