- There is a rhetorical question. You once said, "There's no way back to socialism, but capitalism didn't bring me any good". Why didn't you ask the people?
Vladimir Putin: "First of all, we did, at the beginning of the 90s. Despite the fact that 74% of the population voted for the preservation of the Soviet Union, later on, everyone seemed to forget about that for some reason and the Supreme Soviet voted for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. So they were representatives of the people and they voted for this. I think this is a question from a supporter of some left-wing views, someone from the Communist Party, perhaps. But it was the Communist Party which dissolved the USSR. This is how it was done. General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev and his opponents were from the political bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU. So what? What is the question about? Is it possible to go back? The full restoration of socialism, in my opinion, is highly unlikely. The country is different now. It's possible only at the cost of very serious inner conflicts. Do we really need them? The possibility that some political forces that uphold left-wing views and socialist ideas could control the country and have supreme political power is not something I'm ruling out. Any legal political force in open political discussion, by appealing to the people, to the voters, is able to win their sympathies and find their place in the upper branches of power.
Would it be good for the country though? I don't know. It’s one thing to nationalize everything, and it’s quite a different problem to make the nationalized branches work efficiently. They're not the same. As for the element of government influence and government management, we already have that. But this is a topic for a different discussion".
