An unexpectedly resonant ceremony marking the 125th anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the most renowned U.S. presidents, took place in Moscow on February 8.
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A conference commemorating Roosevelt’s anniversary was held at Moscow Institute of Foreign Relations. According to Americans who took part in Moscow conference, it exceeded similar functions held in the U.S. on the occasion. The conference was attended by the State Duma deputies, political scientists, historians, and the U.S. Ambassador to Russia William J. Burns.
One of the speeches was delivered by Vladislav Surkov, Russian president’s deputy chief of staff. His speech was probably the highlight of the event. In his speech, Surkov drew a parallel between the situation in the U.S. during Great Depression and that in today’s Russia which is recovering from troubled times of the 1990s.
Below are several excerpts from Surkov’s speech.
The poor cannot be free
“There are some points of similarity between the situation in the U.S. and Russia though I am pretty skeptical about history repeating itself. More or less the same number of people lived in the U.S. in the late 1920s and a present-day Russia. America’s gross national product had decreased nearly twice by the end of the 1920s, while per capita income was halved in times of the Depression. We experienced the same in the 1990s. As a result, about half of the Russians categorized themselves as poor. Not unlike Franklin Roosevelt in his time, Vladimir Putin should strengthen administrative control and make maximum use of the presidential powers’ potential in order to overcome the crisis these days.
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