Transcript of Putin's Press Conference

[Moderator] The next question, please.

[Question, off microphone] The first question, the first question.

[Question] AFP.

[Putin] The first question? I shall try to do it regularly. But let us not make it too frequent, as, were you now to ask all your questions, we would have to cover the same ground all over again.
 

The Communist Party and Lenin

[Question] Agence France Presse: Do you, Mr President, think that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in its present form has a future in Russia? Second, how do you feel about Lenin's burial? Thank you.

[Putin] I think that the leftist movement in Russia has a future, as has social democracy as a whole. What is more, there is a great tradition of social democracy in Russia, in particular the Communist movement.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation functions legally in Russia. I simply have no right, either morally or legally, to state from this rostrum that one of the political parties that function legally in Russia has no future.

It is another matter how the party leaders will build the activities of that organization. My view is that if they are oriented towards modern values and do not clutch to what is no longer effective and what has been discredited, then the party no doubt has a future. If, on the other hand, they fail to do it, fail timely to realize that times have changed and what political organizations are required to do has changed, then they are in for some hard times.

As a first step, at a meeting with one of the party's leaders I proposed reviving historical justice by giving the party back the name given to it by its founder, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. That would be a good sign and a step in the right direction.

With regard to the burial of Lenin, I am opposed to this and I shall tell you why. Our country lived in conditions of the CPSU's monopoly control of power for 70 years. This is the life-time of a whole generation. Many people link their own lives with the name of Lenin. For them the burial of Lenin means the following: for them this would mean that they had worshipped false values, that they had set themselves false tasks and that their lives had been lived in vain. We have many such people in our country.

I believe that the greatest achievement of recent times is the stability and the well-known consensus in society. It is precisely this, and I wish to emphasize this, which helps us to implement decisions which are extremely necessary for modernizing the political sphere and the economy of the state. I greatly cherish this and I will try to do nothing that would wreck our present state of civil calm and the consolidation of society. I think that such actions could lead to the destructive state of affairs that we have already lived through and they would hinder the real modernization of Russia

But if we do this, if we change the economy and the political sphere, this will inevitably lead to a change in the mentality of an absolute majority of people. And then, leaning on a new perception of life on the part of an absolute majority of the population - let me reiterate this - we will fulfil the will of the Russian people. And we will see in the future what it will look like.