EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Mind, Production, and Artistic Imagination Make a Nation Sovereign, Explains Putin in Vladivostok

Sept. 14, 2023, (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin provided a succinct account of what sovereignty of a country means, in such a way that it also most naturally cooperates with other sovereign countries. After his keynote address to the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Sept. 12, he fielded numerous questions posed by EEF moderator Ilya Doronov, also a managing director of the RBC TV channel, about the future of the Far East and Russia over the next decade. Putin was profound and to be the point:

“We are the makers of our future.... Scientists engage in R&D. Industrialists work in the sphere of material production, agriculture, in the industrial sector, etc. Cultural figures create images to preserve our values, which shape the inner life of every person and each citizen of Russia. All of this taken together will certainly yield a result.”

That is, scientific ideas drive R&D. That gets realized in production, the actual transformation of nature. And artists do something similar with the inner life—that is, what Friedrich Schiller famously described as the “aesthetic education” of mankind. Putin continued:

“All of this should become embodied in our country’s self-reliance, including in the areas of security and defense. But this does not mean that this country will go into self-isolation. This means that we will develop our own country and make it even stronger in cooperation with our partners and friends and in integration with the overwhelming majority of countries that represent most of the world population.

“I have already mentioned industry, science, and so on. But in so doing, we must under all circumstances preserve the soul of Russia, the soul of our multi-ethnic and multi-faith nation. This humanitarian component, along with science, education and real production, will be the basis upon which this country will advance, while feeling and taking itself as a sovereign and fully independent state with good prospects for development. It will be this way.”