Do you think then that the situation in Russia in nineties was worse then during seventies or eighties?
KRAMNIK: Much worse. In seventies you couldn’t choose in shops exactly what you wanted, but everyone had enough money to obtain at least the basic needs. There was one kind of bread, two kinds of cheese, one kind of yogurt and two kinds of salami . But you had enough money to buy it. In the nineties, there were many varieties of everything available, but the vast majority of people could only afford bread and potatoes. If I have to choose between a totally open society, where most of the citizens live in total poverty, and the current system, which perhaps is not so open, but people are simply not dying like animals, then I prefer Putin’s Russia to the one of Jelzin. EURO: And today? KRAMNIK: Nowadays most of the people in Russia are better off than ever before. M aybe for the first time in several centuries the majority of the population in Russia lives as normal human beings, and they’re not afraid that they won’t have anything to give to their kids for supper. All sociological opini
