"My worst life was under Yeltsin. I walked around with a pistol in my pocket." The late Roy Medvedev gave a very interesting interview a year ago.

The Russian writer Roy Medvedev who has just died at 100 was little more than a name to me till today. He was born into a Jewish family in Tbilisi (Tiflis) and became a Marxist-Leninist which is very bad indeed and a historian of Stalin. In an interview a year ago with Moskovskij Komsomolets, a daily newspaper with a million readers, he professed his admiration for Vladimir Putin.

He is very right about the decline of Europe, the failure of the EU (but it will drag on its useless existence) and the lack of great artists and novelists but the same is true throughout the world. He is mistaken if he thinks colonies made Europe rich, something Communists think and Eastern Europeans too. Robert Tombs for one has shown that the British empire cost Great Britain money.

What kind of leader do we need?

"Personally, I'm happy with a leader like Putin. Who will come after him, I don't know. I like Mishustin, too, but for all his qualities, he doesn't have Putin's charisma. People like Putin are rare; they're very hard to find."

...The West is currently waging a war against Russia—both in Ukraine and beyond, using the Kyiv regime's forces. Do you think we could have avoided this war? If so, at what cost? And was it necessary?

"We didn't start this war. The West did. America is already withdrawing from it because it has realized its futility. Therefore, America has a future, while Europe finds itself in a difficult situation. The countries of Europe were great, but they are no longer so. The population of each European country is smaller than that of a single province in China. They have failed to create a united Europe; on the contrary, the European Union is essentially doomed. France and Germany can no longer resolve their own problems independently. They have enormous debts, including to America."

In short, Europeans face a very bleak outlook. They no longer have colonies, and their own resources are long since running out. Europeans still have wealth, but it's a bygone era. And they're no longer creating anything new, including new cultural achievements. New writers and sculptors aren't growing there. There aren't even any good novels... That's why I feel sorry for Europe rather than have a bad attitude toward it. I feel sorry for it. Europe is dying out. For example, Spain was once a great country. But now its population is just over 40 million people (47 million - Author ). That's slightly more than Poland (38 million - Author ). Not to mention Vietnam, for example, where it has twice as many (101 million - Author ).

In general, Europe is now the weakest part of our planet.

— Let's return to Russia's special operation in Ukraine. What's your take on it?

"The special military operation is called a special operation because it's not our war. Let me repeat, we didn't start it. We're waging it slowly because we're forced to be very gentle: for example, we encircle cities, but we don't storm them. That's why our losses aren't very high. We don't bomb residential areas, we don't hit hospitals, kindergartens, and schools with missiles. The Ukrainians do that: they wage war more brutally. We, on the other hand, only strike military targets. And we wage war with minimal losses."

I feel sorry for Ukraine: it's dying, of course, but it will eventually come under Russian rule. No one but Russia will restore it.

— In what era did you live best?

"I lived very well as a child. I was unaware of the political repressions and knew nothing but my parents and school. This tranquility ended with Kirov's assassination—after that, our life became worse."

I've been living well for the last 15-20 years, too. I'm enjoying my old age. The government has started caring about me, and I still work and write a lot. I have a nice home. I'm respected, I publish frequently, and I've published several books. I eat well, and my health is well-cared for. Even Putin has sent me to a sanatorium three times. So I'm happy.

— And when was life more difficult?

— My worst life was under Yeltsin. It was an era not of capitalism, nor of a market economy, but of a real criminal revolution. I walked around with a pistol in my pocket (my brother sent it to me) because my country house was robbed twice—even though I asked for bars on the windows, burglars and drug addicts still broke into the bathhouse and other outbuildings. I was afraid to sleep at night. Things were bad under Stalin, but under him, things like this never happened… And under Yeltsin, no one thought about me: he’s an old man, let him die. All the old people in our village had already died. I was the only one left. The locals would come to me and ask for fifty rubles for vodka—they knew I was earning something from royalties. It was a time of famine. It turns out it’s bad when people think about you too much, but when they don’t think about you at all, that’s even worse. I had a large vegetable garden, and I ate from it. That's how he survived.

When Yeltsin was being elected president, a car arrived at my place with four sacks: flour, sugar, buckwheat, and some other stuff. And I refused. I didn't want any gifts from Yeltsin. And, of course, I didn't vote for him. The very fact that Yeltsin bought votes during the elections is a disgrace.

— What would you propose to change in Russia’s future development?

"It's hard for me to predict anything right now. I don't know who will replace Putin. It's unpredictable. And a lot depends on that in Russia. I don't have any particular ideas here: I think, first and foremost, we need to develop the economy and the armed forces—that's enough. Russia will survive for thousands of years. And we don't need to follow someone else's path—China's, for example. We have our own path. We're searching for it, and we haven't found it yet in everything."