Carried by his thunderous Slavic accent, the character is as media-friendly as he is verbose. A figure of perestroika, Ukrainian on his father’s side and Russian on his mother’s side, Vladimir Fédorovski likes to say that he has had several lives.
Diplomat, politician, writer… This absolute Francophile proves it again this week, by announcing his move to Var in… Saint-Raphaël where, before his speech at the 10th Villeneuve-Loubet History Book Fair on Friday, he held a conference on Monday, in front of a packed convention center.
Meeting at the seaside the next day, where he arrives on foot, in a sailor shirt. Way to take off, far from the boxes of his new Var apartment, by approaching his 57th book, theater à la Fédo, which stages the dialogue from beyond the grave between Stalin and Putin (1).
Direct echo of ambient neo-Stalinism in Russia with, at the end, a well-documented light on the crisis in Ukraine and its global consequences. Far beyond the gesticulations between the Russian bear, the American eagle and the European sparrows…
First of all, what is this Var installation worth to us?
For over 40 years I have been coming to the area regularly. Chagall, Maeght, Aragon, Dali… I knew all the artists! I was very friendly with the Tropézien André Thomazo [figure du PCF et homme de culture qui fit tourner le Bolchoï, les chœurs de l’Armée rouge, etc., Ndlr]. I’m also from Cannes… Concerning Saint-Raphaël, I knew the current mayor when he was a lawyer. I like this city, where I come regularly with my wife. She was the one who wanted us to move there. In terms of quality-price, it’s unbeatable! I now share my time here, about five months, with Paris and Normandy.
Is it also comfortable to be, for a book, in the shoes of Putin and Stalin?
It’s not me! I slip away in favor of historical facts, deciphered to understand the future, and what I know of their hidden side. Nothing is invented in their dialogue. I use Stalin to say the things no one wants to hear!
“Your” Putin begins by saying that the “real number” Ukrainian victims is unspeakable, even unbearable. What is it?
[Gêné] I don’t want to go any further on this subject… My Ukrainian blood forbids it! It is a people who are suffering, and the interpretation could be unfortunate…
According to “your” Stalin, the USA is ready to “sacrifice” the Ukrainians to serve their cause. Is it so Machiavellian?
It’s Stalin who says it, but I’m not making this up: there is a plan by the Americans – Ukraine is just part of it – to weaken Russia and remove Putin. Turnaround: 80% of Russians consider Stalin to be the most popular character, all eras combined! As he predicted three months before his death in 1953: “After my death, heaps of garbage will be poured on my grave, but the wind of History will disperse them… ” On the contrarythe perception of Gorbachev in Russia is that of the “felon” who should be tried posthumously for high treason!
Is Stalin a tutelary figure for Putin?
Since the war in Ukraine, neo-Stalinism has been present at all levels of society, civil and military. Hence a Putin who primarily contemplates Joseph Stalin, seeing him less as a bloodthirsty dictator than as a leader in the tradition of the great monarchs of eternal Russia. Result: Putin retains the support of the people, without even being isolated elsewhere, since 85% of countries do not support international sanctions. And what’s more, it’s little publicized, but the Russians are advancing dramatically in Ukraine, a pivotal country for security in Europe!
L’Ukraine “instrumentalized” by the United States to accelerate the Europe-Russia rupture and symbol of the NATO-Russia war, just as true?
It’s obvious! But now the Americans, who once so feared a Russia-Germany rapprochement, are going to hand the baby over to Europe, because they no longer want to pay – whether it is Trump or Kamala Harris elected, for that matter –, and as Europe does not have the means… The Russians are looking towards Asia anyway. This is the end of “European Russia”.
Join François Mitterrand, who said: “France doesn’t know it, but we are at war with America […]. Americans are voracious and want undivided power over the world.”?
This is also what Stalin says in my book… But my opinion is more “sophisticated”… No primary anti-Americanism, you know, I am a diplomat. We are faced with a choice. We must find the “balance of interests”. Including with China. The Americans cannot “get rid of” this major player like that. It’s over, one power dominates! From now on, the main enemy of all is the world war towards which we are heading straight! The situation is worse than during the Cold War, because contacts between the two blocs no longer exist.
The Kursk offensive is presented as a “Himalayan” error in your book. Do you assume?
Militarily, there was great interest, between the nearby nuclear power plant and military-industrial complex, but the Ukrainians took none of that! Nor did their intervention weaken the pressure on Donbass by diverting Russian forces from this region. On the other hand, the operation cost 15,000 men from the best Ukrainian brigades, and once again, the episode strengthened the Russians’ pro-war commitment!
The boycott of Russian culture abroad, an unspeakable stupidity?
Absolutely! This lack of distinction between Russian culture and Putin is yet another way of reinforcing it at home. You know, there is a gross ignorance of Russian authors on the part of current Western decision-makers, while I still see my friend Chirac in the South, declaiming Pushkin in Russian! [rire]
What’s the next literary escape?
Jean Armand de L’Estocq (1692-1767) nicknamed “the d’Artagnan of Saint Petersburg”. A Frenchman who arrives in Russia to escape justice and becomes friend of Peter the Great, lover of tsarinas, and carries out two coups d’état! A crazy story, totally unknown and which, after the book, could also make a good film. I’m also working on a musical around Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
1. Stalin and Putin, Dialogues from Beyond the GraveBalland, 330 pages, 20 euros.
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