Vladimir Putin’s opening remarks:

Ladies and gentlemen, today we are attending a meeting of the committee set up to organise celebrations of Pyotr Stolypin’s 150th birthday anniversary.

Stolypin played a crucial role in Russian history, yet his activities and indisputable achievements were disregarded and overlooked without a reason by both his contemporaries and subsequent generations.

Pyotr Stolypin served his country for a long time and was its prime minister at a very difficult, truly dramatic period in Russia’s history, a time of political and social turmoil...

Vladimir Putin’s opening remarks:

Ladies and gentlemen, today we are attending a meeting of the committee set up to organise celebrations of Pyotr Stolypin’s 150^th birthday anniversary.

Stolypin played a crucial role in Russian history, yet his activities and indisputable achievements were disregarded and overlooked without a reason by both his contemporaries and subsequent generations.

Pyotr Stolypin served his country for a long time and was its prime minister at a very difficult, truly dramatic period in Russia’s history, a time of political and social turmoil. The consequences of the Russian-Japanese war, revolutionary upheavals and economic decline presented a real danger to Russia’s territorial integrity and even sovereignty. Society was searching for answers to questions of fundamental importance to Russia’s development, including the perennial question of land ownership. The prime minister needed not only a will of iron but also personal courage and readiness to assume responsibility for the country at that time. Pyotr Stolypin had all of these qualities in full measure.

A true patriot and a wise politician, he saw that both all kinds of radical sentiment and procrastination, a refusal to launch the necessary reform were dangerous to the country, and that only a strong and effective government relying on business and the civil initiative of millions could ensure progressive development and guarantee tranquillity and stability in a large multinational country and the inviolability of its borders.

Furthermore, he thought that the state and society should not be divided from each other, that the state in the form of government and society in the form of public institutes should be united by a common responsibility for the country. When it served the interests of the state, he always assumed an uncompromising and tough stance and was never afraid of making decisions that were considered unpopular.

Pyotr Stolypin formulated the ideology of reform and also launched large-scale change in nearly all spheres of life in Russia. He believed that the main goal was to remove all obstacles and limitations to the development of productive forces. He thought it was necessary to release the nation’s creative energy and direct it towards creation. He achieved many of the goals he had formulated.

More to be posted soon...