Peskov: For my generation the collapse of the Soviet Union was quite logical because it was one of the initial failures of integration processes in Europe. The EU was gaining power, it was institutionalizing and so on and so forth, and, to the contrary, the Soviet Union witnessed total disintegration.

So actually it was a disaster, because there was the first, let’s not say experiment, but the first precedent in the history when a huge country started to disintegrate and the whole structure of the economy, of industry, of the social system of the country was tailored to be a single country system and then all of the sudden it’s disintegrated, causing huge problems and humanitarian catastrophes towards the region, from one hand, but from the other hand you cannot compare that situation with the modern tendencies and integration process, if you see the integration processes that are occurring within CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States].

CIS is a very good base and it is still around, but at the same time we see the customs union that that occurred between three countries and that will be enlarged by another one or two--I mean the customs union between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. So those processes have a brand-new nature; it’s not a system where one country is trying to keep the other dependent on it. It’s a totally equal environment: equal in possibilities and equal in revenues of that union too, that is quite promising and it can be the only chance for those countries to become prosperous in a very hard international economic environment. So we hope that these tendencies will continue and those tendencies are being integrated into one that has nothing to do with the history of the Soviet Union.

Heilbrunn: I was curious about the extent to which history plays a role in your thinking. I know President Putin frequently invokes the past, whether it’s the Hitler-Stalin pact, or what he saw as—

Peskov: Well, every wise man, every politician, every leader of a country, especially leader of a country like Putin, leader of a country like Russia, the biggest country of the world, so being a leader--next year he will celebrate fifteen years after his first inauguration as president--so I have no doubt that he deeply believes that you cannot make plans for the future without knowing your history.

Heilbrunn: You were just in India and concluded a sweeping economic deal there. How helpful is that for Russia, and do you believe that if necessary, Russia could even to some degree bypass the United States and intensify its relations with China and India and not be really all that dependent on good relations with the United States?

Peskov: It’s very primitive to think that, being on bad terms with Europe or the United States, Russia will look for different alternatives. That Russia will show its back to Europe and look to China and India--and that this is a new dimension in Russia’s policy. Russia has always attached the utmost value to historic and strategic relationships with India and China.

We’ve been very consistent in our attempts to develop every possible part of our relationship with India and China. Again, it would be extremely primitive to think that it will be only for the sake of competition with any other country, the United States or whatever. Every country, first of all, is thinking about its own profit, and wise countries are thinking about a joint profit, developing relationships with neighbors, and not about competition with a third country.

Heilbrunn: As a final question, then, what would it take, or what would create the conditions for the United States and Russia to return to the warm relations that they’ve enjoyed in the past?

Peskov: Soberness and diplomacy. Soberness and understanding of each other’s concerns.

Heilbrunn: Thank you for the interview.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/kremlin.ru The Presidential Press and Information Office/CC by 3.0