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Hervé Mariton: "Is it fair to support Vladimir Poutine?"

2022-01-03T13:55:34.361Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - On December 28, 2021, the Russian Supreme Court dissolved the NGO “Memorial”, the organization for the defense of human rights and the preservation of the memory of victims of Soviet power. The former Russophile minister addresses these right-wing friends who persist in ...


Hervé Mariton is mayor of Crest and former minister and deputy LR.

I love and know Russia well.

I am outraged by the banning of the "Russian Memorial" organization which carried the memory of Soviet crimes.

And I note, alas, the repeated speeches of political leaders of the right - not all but too many - who call for being more conciliatory with the authoritarian and negationist regime which reigns in Moscow.

These speeches are unjustified, inappropriate and fundamentally unnecessary.

I will not say anything about the business relationships that are sometimes forged.

But what is it that makes part of the French right so benevolent towards the current [Russian] regime?

Herve Mariton

But what is it that makes part of the French right so benevolent towards the current regime? She approved that we and others were carrying Alexander Solzhenitsyn's message for his centenary. How to honor a memory and those who, in truth, deny it?

Several misinterpretations are at work. We should recognize a reality, a continental neighborhood, a European cousinhood. Indeed, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy were in Europe… We should not despise a great power. But then our will to defend will do better than an admission of inferiority. This accommodation with a great power would go well with a posture of non-alignment (France between the United States and Russia, between the United States and China…). But are we or are we not allying with the United States? Charles de Gaulle had not left NATO.

Some think that our economic and commercial interests require great benevolence and great silence.

False.

The firmest, including in symbolic and political positions, gain more respect.

During Mikhail Khodorkovsky's trial, I was the only French public official present.

At the same time, the British or the Americans sent high-ranking diplomats and even members of their governments.

At the same time BP won a large oil contract with the Russian company TNK.

France's great caution on human rights issues in the Soviet Union or in Russia has never been profitable to it economically.

Some friendly conservative circles, in good faith, see in today's Russia the bulwark of the West, of its values, of its Christian identity.

Herve Mariton

One can also imagine, among some, a fascination with the vertical of power, at work in Russia today.

But the economic and social results are bad, the worrying health situation, the life expectancy decreases… The problem of France is not to impose a will, it is to know and want what one wants as one must be able to see what we see.

The strength of a democratic government has little to do with the imperium of an authoritarian and ineffective government.

Finally, some friendly conservative circles, in good faith, see in today's Russia the bulwark of the West, of its values, of its Christian identity.

I do not know how to fathom the sincerity of the convictions of the current Russian power, but I know its communist history and the result of a policy which mixes a materialism carrying the excesses of capitalism (even in the business of surrogacy) with a great contempt of the individual and his freedom.

I'm not sure Solzhenitsyn would have approved ...

See alsoSergei Parkhomenko: "The criminal nature of the Putin system is revealed in all its crudeness"

Yes, many of us love Russia, its people, its art, its genius.

But it is not honoring him to be an accomplice in the abuses of a regime.

Twenty years ago, hope was born.

It is our duty, especially for men of the right, not to extinguish it, to maintain a flame of memory, of action, of hope.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-01-03

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