MOSCOW, December 19. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that it is important to protect the Russian society from aggression against Russia’s traditional values.
“It’s not the criticism of values of the West that is important to me. What is important to me it’s the protection of our population from some quasi-values that are perceived with great difficulty by our citizens, our population,” he said at his traditional annual “grand” news conference.
“The point is not to criticize somebody, but to protect us from the rather aggressive conduct of certain social groups, which, in my view, don’t just live as they like, but try to impose their views rather aggressively on other people in other countries,” the Russia's head of state said.
Putin believes that more attention should be given to Russia’s traditional values. He recalled that “there had been quite understandable quasi-religious values” in the Soviet Union. He cited as an example the ‘moral code of the builders of communism.’ “Reading it, you can realize that it’s a caricature of the Bible... It has all the (biblical principles), only primitively worded and wickedly abridged,” the president said. But there is no communism builders’ code any more, and “it can be replaced by the same traditional values.” “The society will degrade without these values,” Putin believes. He added that the society should return to these values and go ahead on their basis.
Russia's president stressed, referring to Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev, that although he proposed a conservative approach, “it is the thing that does not prevent the forward and upward movement, but impedes the backward and downward movement.” “Only looking to the future and relying on the tradition and culture we can be on firm ground and steadily advance and develop,” the Russian president concluded.