MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Summary of Remarks by
the Minister of Foreign Affairs
Sergey Lavrov at MGIMO
September 1, 2009

Dear colleagues and friends,

I would like to congratulate the veterans, faculty and junior and senior students of MGIMO and the Diplomatic Academy on the start of the academic year. By tradition, the Day of Knowledge provides a good opportunity to review the current international situation and to have a talk about the most topical issues of world development.

Political events of the past year suggest a marked acceleration of the pace of change in international relations and world development.

A growing number of partners acknowledge the new reality: a polycentric world order is forming before our eyes. Its contours are more and more visible. Accordingly, we can judge the global situation with a greater degree of clarity, including everyone’s awareness of the intransient importance of the sovereignty of independent states – after a long period of disunity and vacillation typified by speculations about “limited sovereignty,” “the last sovereign,” “postmodernism,” etc. This provides a general framework for a view of the modern world where sovereign states continue to be major, irreplaceable players.

The world has accumulated a substantial potential for change. Under its influence world politics begins to operate in a new coordinate system, leaving in the past the mentality and politics of the Cold War, its instincts and prejudices. At the same time, one cannot help but see that the change for the better does not suit everybody, and this leads to inconsistency of the current situation in global and Euro-Atlantic politics.

The Yekaterinburg SCO and BRIC summits became a vivid example of multipolar diplomacy, and convincing evidence that multipolarity is neither chaos nor a programmed showdown among leading states of the world. There grows the attractiveness of the SCO, and more and more countries want to join projects of this organization in the realm of security and development. The ties of SCO with other regional entities, particularly CSTO, CIS, Eurasian Economic Community and ASEAN, are strengthening. With regard to BRIC, it is so far only a dialogue format. Its agenda is relatively modest, mostly covering global financial and economic issues. But what’s important is that this format, like the above-mentioned associations, sets a certain standard of equal, cooperative relations among states. The same principles underlie the various regional groupings in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Arab and Islamic world with which Russia is developing mutually beneficial cooperation.

Multipolarity or not – no matter how called. We do not cling to the words. The main thing is that this should work – the only criterion of truth. In any case, it is about the network method of doing business in international relations, which opposes all kinds of hierarchical structures that dominated world politics until recently. The reason, primarily, is that the extent of international cooperation has sharply increased, and the range of topics that make up its subject has widened. No country can cope with all these issues single-handedly.

Related to this is the regionalization of global politics, which means multiple events. In particular, we are talking about finding regional solutions to conflicts and crisis situations. On the other hand, the strengthening of regional-level management in an environment where the mechanisms do not work worldwide, serves as a safety net in case of development of processes of “deglobalization,” ensuring that the fragmentation does not go deeper, where each state would defend itself against all others. This, incidentally, is also the meaning of our choice in favor of accelerating the establishment of a customs union with Kazakhstan and Belarus in the framework of EurAsEC development.

It is significant that the awareness of the inevitability of joint actions and the counterproductiveness of unilateral decisions is increasingly evident in the US establishment. I refer to the conclusion of Brent Scowcroft that power lies in a collective effort, the ability to mobilize partners to work together. And let it be a “coalition of the willing,” which, in principle, fits into the network diplomacy. The main thing is that they should operate within the framework of international legitimacy and not put themselves above the law.

Leslie Gelb has thoughts in the same vein, observing in the magazine Foreign Affairs (May-June 2009) that force does not work anymore as it did before. We must focus on how to be on the crest of “economic and diplomatic waves,” which requires patience. It is also difficult to disagree with David Greenaway that “overreliance on the use of force and threat as a substitute for foreign policy has exhausted itself” (International Herald Tribune for June 16, 2009).

Indeed, the use of force as a means of achieving foreign policy goals is counterproductive. Mikhail Saakashvili proved this once again when he gave his criminal order to kill expecting a blitzkrieg and the assurance of his political survival, tearing up the international agreements that obliged him to negotiate rather than fight.

The key to success in solving problems of the modern world is the ability to organize international cooperation. Today, forcing others to cooperation no longer works; you must prove that you do not look after your own selfish interests, but after the common good. If you fail to prove it – serious business partners won’t cooperate with you, and refusal to cooperate is sufficient to condemn any undertaking to failure. Iraq provides a vivid example of this, when those disagreeing could neither be forced to participation in this war nor punished.

As for Iran, we see no reasonable alternative to a politico-diplomatic solution to the problem of its nuclear program. Whatever aspects of Tehran’s behavior you take, the best way of outside influence on its intentions is not isolation, not the threat of force, but full-scale involvement in cooperation. Only thus can we objectively count on stability and security in the adjacent region and the wider world. By the way, engaging Iran in European energy affairs, which is an exciting prospect for many, provides an opportunity for a responsible and comprehensive look at things. Here again the choice is between power scenarios and the willingness to seek a balance of interests for all players.

Response to the post-election events in Iran leads us to think afresh about revolution as a means of resolving social contradictions and as an instrument for transforming society. History, including recent memory, shows that any breach in the legal space is fraught with unpredictable and often disastrous consequences, which distort the process of internal development and set back the achievement of the objectives declared by leaders of revolutionary movements. Even Freedom House was forced to record the rollback in democratic progress in countries that had gone through the so called color revolutions.

In general, I would like to again note the wise essay by Leslie Gelb, his call for a “foreign policy based on common sense and recognizing the diversity of the world of the 21st century.” He rightly points out that there is no subject for ideological confrontation, because no one has an ideological enemy. Like us, Leslie Gelb considers it necessary to judge each issue “on its merits,” that is, without ideological enthusiasms and artificial linkages.

The global financial and economic crisis raises several fundamental issues. So is it possible to overcome the crisis without any painful effects? We know how it was in the 30s of the last century. Then the second wave of crisis in the US, as some experts believe, was linked to the premature withdrawal of the state from the game. And if you draw this lesson, you must summon the political will for the efforts of the G20 to culminate not merely in the harmonization of the parameters for a “soft landing” of the existing system, but to lay the groundwork for its radical reform, adequate to the new relationship of financial and economic power in the world.

The crisis has demonstrated that liberal capitalism is just a stone’s throw away from socialism. As noted by Jacques Le Goff in his book “The Birth of Europe,” only political power is in a position to provide the organization of economic space. We already know from experience what happens when the state “washes its hands” in economic affairs. Now we have additional grounds to argue that the current stage of world development – not only economic but also social – necessitates categories such as convergence, synthesis, fusion and requires overcoming the old antagonistic ideological constructs.

I will refer to the authority of Pitirim Sorokin, who in the 60s identified elements of convergence between the US and Soviet experiences and predicted the failure of liberal capitalism – as a particular case of un-viability of “pure types” of social structure. He predicted not only the “integral” type of society, but also the formation of a multipolar world with a shift of “the creative leadership of mankind” to the vast Asia-Pacific Region.

The Russian-American summit in Moscow has shown that both Russia and the United States are tuning in to a wave of, to use German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phrase, “constructive pragmatism.” We see that the demand for confrontational politics is falling, especially in the Euro-Atlantic area. We associate this with the change of administration in the US, which has in a positive, realistic manner recast the foreign policy philosophy of America.

In his speech to the League of Arab States (June 23 this year), President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed the fact that the US is beginning to comprehend what is happening in the world in universal terms, such as justice, tolerance, respect for the sovereignty of states and the maintenance of international order. There is also an awareness that any claims to universality of specific models of development do not work and turn into utopias, and sometimes disasters. This opens up additional possibilities for the formation of a unifying agenda in international affairs.

Speaking in Moscow, President Barack Obama pointed out that America’s interest lies in an international system that advances cooperation while respecting the sovereignty of all nations. The common denominator in our interaction in international affairs is reinforced by the realization that no state can meet the challenges of the 21st century or dictate its terms to the rest of the world alone.

This philosophy is consonant with Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept, approved by President Medvedev in July last year. This allows us to jointly set a positive tone in world politics and at least turn it toward constructive dialogue and cooperation which would be done on each particular issue from beginning to end, including a joint assessment of threats and joint decision making.

I once spoke about the fact that in the aftermath of the Cold War nothing separates Russia and the US. On the contrary, we share a common responsibility for the destinies of the world. The results of the Russian-US summit in Moscow suggest only one thing: everything is possible when interests coincide, and where there is agreement on the principles and legal basis for cooperation. The challenge is to translate this reality into concrete decisions and joint actions.

What used to be passed off as the notorious “anti-Americanism in Russia” was simply the fact that we did not agree with the Americans under the previous administration. But many of its approaches were also rejected in a number of other countries, including Europe. A considerable role was also played by the US reaction to the Saakashvili regime's aggression in South Ossetia, especially as everyone understood that the previous administration could not have been unaware of what was actually happening and how it had been prepared. Such a frank attempt to “manage the truth,” to quote one of the American movie heroes, could not but cause an explosion of indignation in the most diverse sectors and groups of Russian society.

So I do not see any systemic problem with the so-called anti-Americanism. At issue are the reactive accretions in public consciousness. The grounds will disappear – the attitude to America will change in Russia accordingly. It is already changing. Both sides are conscious of the benefits of interaction for themselves and the rest of the world, as indicated by our joint striving to ensure the success of the next NPT Review Conference and to place a reliable legal barrier to nuclear proliferation.

In line with our publicly stated position, we will honestly strive to achieve a full-fledged agreement to replace the START Treaty which would ensure strategic stability based on, among other things, recognition of the inseparable link between strategic offensive and defensive arms. We know that it will take time to overcome the resistance of certain forces within the United States, which by inertia are not inclined to think in terms of equal relations with Russia.

The Moscow summit also showed that cooperation is necessary in spite of disagreements that will linger for a long time between such major powers as Russia and the United States.

The key to new relations between our countries will be a restoration of the trust undermined in previous years. This will require joint efforts to overcome the common negative legacy and to solve existing international problems. This interactivity is important, the spirit of compromise, and the notorious give and take.

One cannot but agree that Russian-US relations, if we want their sustainable positive development, require a long-term strategic vision. This should be one of the main immediate objectives for both sides. The first step was taken in Moscow at the talks between Presidents Medvedev and Obama.

I would like to dwell on the situation in Euro-Atlantic politics, where we have managed to launch a solid thought process around the initiative for a Treaty on European Security. Whether some of our partners would recognize it or not the Caucasus crisis has served as a powerful impetus for rethinking the situation. No one denies anymore that there is a systemic problem with the existing European security architecture as inherited by us from the Cold War era and completed based on unfulfilled expectations of the early 90s. Its essence is the need to overcome the bloc-based, confrontational approaches to security. We believe that this is possible only through the establishment of mechanisms guaranteeing the indivisibility of security in the whole space from Vancouver to Vladivostok. No one should secure himself at others’ expense – this cornerstone principle was endorsed in both the OSCE and Russia-NATO Council, but is not actually being observed. Therefore, we propose to impart to this principle a legally binding character and to agree mechanisms to guarantee its observance by all countries in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Herein lies the essence of our initiative to conclude a Treaty on European Security.

The problem of European unity, something the continent didn’t know during practically the entire course of the century, could have easily been solved in the early 90’s – and even not necessarily through eliminating NATO after the dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. It was enough to coherently institutionalize the OSCE and make it a full fledged regional organization which would address the entire range of issues in the Euro-Atlantic area and especially provide an open system of collective security for the region, based on an integrated approach. Unfortunately, this approach is remembered only now. And then our western partners took a different path, that of expanding NATO, which, according to George Kennan (who is now often quoted, and not without reason) was “the greatest mistake of the West in the last 50 years.” Since then, the existence of NATO in its previous bloc hypostasis has become a problem for all, and above all – for the alliance itself and its members.

What is essentially at issue is the shortsighted old instinctive policy of enlarging NATO into former Warsaw Pact territory with a corresponding shift of the former dividing line to the East, that is, to Russia's borders. Not to mention that this process is fraught with elements of destabilization of the situation in the respective countries, of which NATO in fact demanded that they should make a choice: either you are with the alliance or with Russia. This kind of petty psychology of distrust toward Russia I would say led to counter distrust. In his July lecture in Brussels, European Union Council Secretary General Javier Solana rightly observed that “absolute security for one means total insecurity for the rest.” NATO and then the EU too must understand that they do not operate in a vacuum and that the field of their “missionary” activities is not pagan territory.

Our partners were well aware at the time that they needed to choose between NATO enlargement and a strong OSCE. What choice was made is well known, and that is why today we have a weak OSCE. Now they tell us that European security should be discussed solely on the platform of this OSCE – an organization that does not even have international legal personality! And this is at a time when our proposals for institutional strengthening of the OSCE, including adoption of its Charter, the formulation of clear rules for all of its activities, the assurance in practice of its intergovernmental character, have been on the table for several years now without any desire from the partners to consider these long-overdue reforms.

Our relations with NATO – or rather their state of crisis – also attest to the need for urgent action to ensure equal security for the entire Euro-Atlantic space. We did not freeze the work of the Russia-NATO Council; we did not violate the accords underlying the operation of this important mechanism. Responsible members of the alliance are aware that there can be no kowtowing to the ideological whims of individual recruits and membership applicants, driven by anti-Russian phobias. Real national interests must be the ultimate guidance, and they in contemporary Europe can only be realized by acting together, particularly in cooperation with Russia.

We are ready for honest cooperation where our interests coincide. We will continue to provide transit assistance to the countries that have their troops in Afghanistan, so long as the foreign military presence is acceptable to the Afghan government and corresponds to the goal of reaching a settlement in the country. Russia will increase its participation in collective efforts to address the problems of Afghanistan, particularly in development of the decisions of the special conference held on March 27 this year in Moscow under SCO auspices. One of the promising lines could be interaction between the CSTO and NATO in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking.

Let's hope that common sense will prevail and everyone in NATO will grasp that it is in the interest of the alliance itself to have a constructive relationship with Russia.

Despite all the difficulties, we agreed to start the process of restoring full-fledged work of the Russia-NATO Council. Critical to the success of this process will be the openness of the alliance in connection with the development of its new strategic concept. The National Security Strategy of Russia is an open document. Russia's representatives held a briefing on its contents at the headquarters of NATO.

At the heart of the crisis of confidence in our relations with the United States and the West in general lay a “conflict of expectations.” There was a lack of common understanding about what the end of the Cold War meant. This was the source of all the misunderstandings. There were not only too many “known unknowns,” but also “unknown unknowns” (Donald Rumsfeld). Perhaps this also explains the phenomenon as noticed by Nikita Struve of “the West’s more tolerant attitude towards the Soviet regime than towards the present, much freer Russia” (Russian Journal for June 20, 2009).

Now we are wiser and know more than we did 15 and 20 years ago. So now is the time for a comprehensive review – based on new realities – of the situation in the Euro-Atlantic area. Russia's proposal for a new European Security Treaty gives us all this opportunity.

The discussions of the last few months, including the informal meetings of the RNC and the OSCE foreign ministers with the participation of the heads of CSTO, CIS, NATO and EU in Corfu, convincingly indicate that this view of things is carving its way. There are signs of understanding that the main thing now is to find collective rather than unilateral responses to the challenges and threats we all face.

Nor do we see a reasonable alternative to triple interaction between Russia, the EU and the US, which, as President Medvedev has repeatedly stressed, must become the backbone of political unity in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Today, when there has been a turn towards improvement in Euro-Atlantic and global affairs, those who have lived cozily with the confrontational politics of recent years and who would like to make the destiny of Europe a hostage of its past and jeopardize the pursuit of a forward-looking policy by all have clearly become nervous.

Just look at the attempts to present the very possibility of Russian-US normalization as a threat to European interests. Would the United States really do something behind the backs of its allies? I do not think that America deserves such distrust, especially an America that has acknowledged the need for its own transformation in the spirit of the times.

The dangerous striving to associate their national interests with confrontation has manifested itself in the recent open letter from a number of former state officials of Eastern European countries to the US president. They obviously proceed from the “zero-sum game” logic, that is – if Russia stands to gain, it will be at their expense. In fact, they and their few supporters in Russia, in the sober judgment of Anatol Lieven, by maintaining tension in Russian-US relations, complicate America's relationship with the rest of the world (article in the journal National Interest). The logic is simple: everyone is sick of the tension, everyone wants to cooperate and therefore any return to the confrontation will be further erosion of the transatlantic link. Surely there was not enough of August 2008?

In a bid to defend the confrontational mentality, the Defense Committee of the British Parliament has distinguished itself with its report “Russia: a new confrontation?” But even the authors of the report had to acknowledge the need to build relations with Russia on the basis of realism, rather than “abstract and misleading notions of shared values.”

Today marks 70 years since the outbreak of World War II – one in a series of twentieth-century tragedies that almost turned into a disaster for Europe and the entire human civilization. As with any tragedy, it gave examples of how low man can sink, but also unsurpassed instances of the greatness of the human spirit, the capacity for self-sacrifice in the name of saving “his friends.”

The outbreak of World War II became a prologue to the Great Patriotic War, the 65th anniversary of the Victory in which we will celebrate next year. The Great Victory was the highest spiritual achievement of all peoples of the former Soviet Union. Not only did our fathers and grandfathers uphold our freedom, but they also contributed decisively to the liberation of Europe from fascist enslavement.

It is deplorable and disgusting that diverse political forces have become active in recent years that engage in falsifying history to suit the political conjuncture and revising the outcome of World War II, enshrined in the UN Charter and other international legal documents, by using a selective or even dishonest approach to the events of that period. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which ended the ideological schism in Europe and the world, attempts to politicize history can only be regarded as a desire to draw new dividing lines on our continent. The spearhead of these attempts is pointed at Russia, whose very existence seems to be a source of “nervousness” among those leaders who have been sidelined from mainstream European politics.

The talk about the war’s origins exhibits too much of outright falsehood, political opportunism and selfish interests, an eagerness to absolve oneself of one’s share of responsibility for one’s own past and to tackle one’s current problems at others’ expense, through exhorting – as was the case during the Cold War – for “civilizational solidarity” and by invoking the imperatives of “ideological struggle.” The history of World War II was being repeatedly rewritten. Elements of this approach, dictated by considerations of ideology and political expediency, were present in the Soviet Union too. Yet even during the Cold War no one ever tried to equate the Nazi regime with Stalin’s dictatorship. It never occurred to anyone to compare the Nazi threat, which implied enslaving and destroying whole peoples, and the policy of the Soviet Union, which proved to be the only force able first to resist the war machine of Hitler Germany and in the final phase to ensure its defeat, speeded by the (albeit belated) opening of a second front in 1944. This difference was well understood by those who had been waiting for liberation from the Nazis, those for whom the pace of the Red Army’s advance was a matter of life and death. Freedom came from the East. Its price was the feat of arms and the willingness to die of those very same “unpretentious lads – Vanki, Vaski, Alyoshki, Grishki” – whom Anna Akhmatova wrote about (‘To the Victors’).

The height of historical revisionism was epitomized by an attempt to put an equal sign between August 23 and September 1, 1939: the conclusion of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and Germany’s attack on Poland. These two events are completely torn out of the general historical context, leaving outside the brackets the 1938 Munich Agreement that led to the dismemberment and occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the whole sequence of other events that consistently prepared and directed German aggression towards the East.

The war revealed the invalidity of the European politics, regardless of the nature of governance in specific countries, most of which were authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes. That this was not an accidental phenomenon in the then “deglobalization” is demonstrated by right-wing radical tendencies in the modern political life of those countries and by attempts to rehabilitate the fascist regimes and make heroes of the Nazis and SS men.

Fascism – in varying degrees – was the most common response to the contradictions of European society that World War I failed to resolve and which were only aggravated by interwar deglobalization. The way out of the crisis was found through militarizing the economy and international relations, which constituted a key factor in unleashing World War II. The fallacious Versailles system, to which Soviet Russia bore no relation, by the universal acknowledgement of historians made the next war inevitable.

I would not like to think that, by rewriting history, someone is trying to make up for the assumed loss of ideological ground by the West. How else is one to interpret the recent celebration of the anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy, when practically none of the western leaders, except for Barack Obama, mentioned the Soviet contribution to the victory over fascism? I cannot understand how acknowledging the obvious – the role of the Soviet Union in ensuring the common victory, which served as a powerful rallying point for all nations of the anti-Hitler coalition – can weaken America or “disarm it morally.” But that’s exactly how Liz Cheney tries to present the case in her article in The Wall Street Journal.

All the tragedies of the 19th-20th centuries, including colonialism, the extremist products of European political thought, World Wars 1 and 2, Nazism and Fascism, as well as the Cold War, occurred at a time when the West dominated world politics, economics and finance. At issue more broadly was a crisis of European society, whose traditional foundations had been destroyed by the many revolutions in Europe. Creating a sustainable economic and social development model, socially oriented, with universal suffrage and reliance upon a significant middle class, only became possible in the conditions of the Cold War and on a new technological basis.

History falsifiers tend to forget what they acquired as a result of the liberation campaign of the Red Army, including in territorial terms. The victory over fascism and the events preceding the war, like them or not, gave all the countries of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe as well as the former Soviet space their contemporary borders, which the vast majority of the Euro-Atlantic family does not object to. If they do not suit somebody, one should say so, rather than appeal to history. Do we want to go back into the past – to Europe burdened by territorial issues?

I do not think everybody will like to publicly rake up the past, where there are quite a few pages which many would rather forget. What about the Phony War, which points to the very unseemly designs of the Western allies against the Soviet Union in connection with Hitler Germany’s attack on Poland? What is to be done with ubiquitous collaborationism? In a number of countries, a roughly equal number of citizens participated in the Resistance and served with the Waffen SS, including on the Eastern Front. Some still defend the right to fight for independence in SS uniform.

Who directed the aggression of Hitler’s Germany towards the East? Who thwarted all attempts to secure peace in Europe through guaranteeing the borders of Germany's eastern neighbors, including the idea of concluding an Eastern Pact? This list could go on. If we talk about the Soviet Union, it acted in line with the usual diplomacy for that time. It was not Stalin who won the war, but the peoples of the USSR, paying the bills for bankrupt prewar European politics in the process. And was it not the Soviet Union – with its expanses, towns and villages – that absorbed the brunt of the Nazi invasion? Three fourths of Germany's armed forces were defeated on the Eastern Front. Those were the most combat-capable, battle-hardened units.

In the end, Russia – for the umpteenth time – fulfilled its historic mission of saving Europe from forced unification. Suffice it to recall August 1914, when the self-sacrifice of Russian troops in East Prussia pre-determined the outcome of World War I. It is cynical and blasphemous to compare with the Nazi occupation the events of the postwar period in Central and Eastern Europe, although they were associated with tragedies. Was it not the German invasion (as with Napoleon's invasion in 1812) that became an invitation to Russia and its army into Europe? The ways of historical process are inscrutable; for the Western European model of economic development became “socialized” precisely in response to the “challenge of the Soviet Union and socialism.” And didn’t the postwar experience, including the GDR’s, help reconciliation in Europe, in particular Russian-German reconciliation and that between Russia and the former allies of Germany?

The politicization of history has become a state affair in a number of countries. So the response must be appropriate. We have set up a commission to counter the falsification of history. Russia is not going to censor the science of history, or rewrite history in its own way. We are in favor of its depoliticization, for its comprehensive study, in the entirety of facts, circumstances and cause-effect relationships. This will be done openly, relying upon scholarly cooperation among different countries to clarify the difficult issues of common history, including in the framework of existing bilateral commissions of historians.

We paid too high a price for this victory to allow it to be taken away from us. For us it is a “red line.” If someone wants a new ideological showdown in Europe, then historical revisionism and attempts to turn history into a tool of practical politics is the straight path to it. This will poison the general atmosphere of European politics, and our relationships with the countries involved. It is going to interfere with tackling common tasks and lead nations astray from jointly drawing lessons from the events of the last century and the beginning of this.

Obviously the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the global economic and financial crisis are links of a chain, attesting to the collapse of the old socio-cultural order and the emergence of a new, integral order setting a new coordinate system for international relations too. A major element of such a picture of the world, of its new landscape probably will also be the best things the West gave to the world – time-tested values, truly and generally valid for all, particularly in terms of the present crisis. This will provide the basis for all states to jointly restore governability for world development. Any conservative tendencies, attempts to stand in the way of the historical process, to judge what is happening, including in Russia, from the standpoint of the inviolability of the old order or the inevitability of its restoration are doomed. This is understood everywhere in the world, and now also in America, whose experience embodies everything related to the cultural and civilizational tradition of the West.

Diplomacy at this critical juncture in world development requires the most versatile knowledge, including in the fields of philosophy, economics, sociology and culture, not to mention history. In his time Talleyrand told young diplomats that the diplomat should be able to do everything. This advice acquires special significance in our days. Therefore the multidisciplinary nature of MGIMO and the knowledge received here appears to meet the requirements of the times. There already operate at MGIMO the European Studies Institute and the International Institute of Energy Policy and Diplomacy. In July the agreement was reached with our ASEAN partners on the establishment of the ASEAN Center at the Institute.

The high status and the undoubted authority of the MGIMO (University) of the Russian MFA were corroborated once again this past July. We are sincerely pleased that the best high-school graduates from all parts of our country and winners of all-Russia olympiads competed for the title of MGIMO student. The University’s average pass mark, 335 out of 400 possible, was perhaps one of the highest in Moscow.

Here at this University, which I and most of my colleagues had the luck to graduate from in our time, you will have every opportunity to receive excellent training. I urge you to actively use the creative and scientific potential of the merited faculty team of MGIMO and to get the maximum knowledge required for your future profession.

We hope that the best of you will eventually choose the career of diplomat, a tough but, believe me, thrilling job, especially now.

Allow me to wish the future specialists, bachelors and masters successful and productive learning, and the administration, professors and teachers robust health, much effort and patience.