Jean Thiriart: We belong to different political currents united by a common enemy: globalism. This enemy is organized on the global level, like the international Catholic structure that permeated the whole of society’s organization in its time. That’s why the struggle against globalism cannot be exclusively conducted in Russia by the Russians alone or in France by the French alone. It cannot have a local character: in order to oppose this threat directed against all the peoples of the world, it is necessary to establish a type of cosmopolitan organization, but cosmopolitan in the positive sense, not in the negative sense. Our response should be, in the measure where the challenges and attacks of which we have been the object impact the entire planet, planetary as well.

Yegor Ligachev: We live – when I say us, I mean Russia, our country – in a particular period. Three possible ways to exit this crisis situation into which our country has plunged present themselves. The first way consists of emulating a foreign model, the Western model in this case, without taking social and national traditions or concrete reality into account. Another way consists of going back, that is to say to the state socialism elaborated in the past. This is by no means a feudal or barracks socialism, but precisely a state socialism. The privatization (de-nationalization) of public properties has been felt in a particularly negative manner. State socialism permitted us to concentrate forces and means towards the principal orientations of social development, permitted us to resolve considerable social and economic problems. Afterwards, however, this state socialism’s potentialities (creative possibilities) were extinguished.

In any case, the two first ways I spoke of represent a movement backwards, a social regression. Nevertheless there exists another alternative that one could characterize in the following manner: take and conserve everything that was positive in our Soviet system while democratically reforming in an original way that takes national and foreign experiences into account. I am a resolute adversary of the unification of the world on the basis of a single social system. For Western politicians and ideologues, Russia and the other CIS states’ entry into the global community can only start, at present, from the restoration of capitalism. From my point of view, such a way is irremediably condemned because the capitalist system has, like the socialist system, good and bad sides. That’s why I think that our task consists of assimilating all that is positive in the human situation, both European and global.

Jean Thiriart: I perfectly agree with attributing Russia a particular meaning and place in the measure where it’s still this space, this territory best suited for organizing the resistance to globalist forces.

Yegor Ligachev: At the present time, calls for Russia to enter into global civilization frequently resound among us. However it suffices to scratch the surface of this idea to immediately realize that this entry into the global community supposes nothing other than the destruction of the entire Soviet social system. We can also ask ourselves why our country’s entry into the global community matters when it’s been present there for a long time and has provided – and continues to provide – a gigantic contribution to the development of global civilization.

Jean Thiriart: In reality, the United States doesn’t demand Russia’s entry into the global community; they quite simply want to dominate the whole planet from a political, military, and technological point of view. In the West, those who have governed European countries since 1945 are not politically independent since they depend on Washington entirely and exclusively. That’s why it’s suitable to focus attention, not on what the marionette European governments say, but on those who hold their strings.

Yegor Ligachev: Recently, the one who, according to your evocative expression, pulls the strings, basically declared the following: “We give ourselves the task of accomplishing the liberation of the whole world in the nearest future.” You see, it’s nothing less than the question of the liberation of the world! So what is the mindset in Europe regarding the intrusion of the United States which, in the domain of global politics, claims hegemony.

Jean Thiriart: Actually the situation is quite complex. There exists determined revolutionary forces both on the “left” and the “right” that very well understand what is at stake and take the stage against globalism and American-Zionist hegemony. It is possible that we underestimate the strength of American propaganda; this remark goes particularly for you; the Russians.

As Europe itself has lived under American occupation for a long time, it fully feels the strength of American and Zionist propaganda which, from morning to night, through all the means of television and the press, subjects the public to hypnosis.

Yegor Ligachev: I am also deeply convinced that the collapse of the Soviet Union, the present collapse of Yugoslavia, and its possible propagation to other European countries is the work of determined subversive forces. They understand to that to succeed – as they have already succeed – at dividing the Soviet Union, at disorganizing Yugoslavia is essentially to succeed at eliminating the only system capable of effectively opposing their planetary hegemony. This wasn’t done in order to offer independence to the former republics of the Soviet Union or those involved in the composition of Yugoslavia. The rationale is actually very simple: it’s easier to defeat fragments than a large one, a unified continental bloc.

Jean Thiriart: Today, the Americans want to do the same thing with everyone: defend the Croats solely in order to be guarantors of anarchy in this region. In central Europe there exist peoples with the same culture, the same language. So why are they separated into micro-states? Simply because that corresponds to the fundamental policy of the United States, which consists of preventing them from uniting to realize their own political line. It’s a classic process in political history; a historical constant.

Yegor Ligachev: They present us, since it’s a matter of attracting us into the international community, as a nearly barbaric society without realizing that our country has saved Europe and the whole world many time from invasions that threatened all of civilization. The Soviet Union saved the world from the brown plague, German fascism, as it saved it from thermonuclear war.

Jean Thiriart: I think that you’re committing the same error Hitler committed in his time because I am convinced the the common enemy of Russia and Germany is American capitalism and the war between Russia and Germany was an erroneous war. A truly just war should have been directed against American capitalism. The most just idea was the joint struggle of the Soviet Union and Germany against Anglo-Saxon imperialism. Had they realized what the power of Anglo-Saxon civilization had become, Germany and Russia could only have won.

Yegor Ligachev: The essential thing is not blocs but the reconstitution of our great union. Here it’s important to concentrate our forces. Concerning Germany, independently of the strong positions of democratic forces, it is nevertheless impossible to ignore both its past and present. We must bear in mind that present day Germany was born through force: one German state absorbed the other. I think that we must unite all the social and governmental forces against the diktat and intrusion.

Since 1988 I’ve considered national-separatism as the principal danger for our country. If we thus formulate the question: what is the principal, fundamental cause of our decadence, I would respond that it is national-separatism and the betrayal of the country’s interests by a considerable part of the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with Gorbachev at its head. These last years, the struggle against national-separatism has been interrupted as much by the party as by society.

Jean Thiriart: Cardinal Richelieu did the same thing with Germany. He declared to the Germans: “Be free, you no longer have an Emperor,” and stimulated nationalist and separatist tendencies in this manner, likewise destroying a great state. With us, in Europe, the same problems appear, namely the Corsican, Basque nationalists, whose demands always become more serious and behind whom the same enemy always stands. Soon after dismemberment this sector will be commanded not so much by the United States as by the representatives of McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Marlboro, because effective political leadership has been conferred to these firms – in Latin America they already control the majority of national economies. In all likelihood, the same thing will soon happen in both France and Russia.

In Central America and South America, distinct republics exist: banana republics, others produce coffee or tobacco. Three thousand years ago, Carthage pursued the same policy in the Mediterranean, creating similar economic colonies from Turkey to Spain. It’s a historical constant. The Americans are doing the same thing today.

Yegor Ligachev: Now I would like to proceed to another question. I think that an authentic unification of Europe would only be possible once we’ve reestablished the Soviet Union. It could certainly have another name it would nonetheless remain a unified political and economic alliance.

Jean Thiriart: I agree with that, although from my side I only consider the reunification of the Soviet Union possible and necessary in a process of European integration. We must create a unified European empire from Vladivostok to Dublin.

Yegor Ligachev: The sine qua non condition is the reunification of our country. Two powerful movements are developing among us, as I now represent. One aims for the conservation of a reformed social system while opposing the barbaric, ferocious, and violent reforms that our president and government are trying to implement. Our second current is a purely national movement: it’s the struggle for the reconstruction of a unified state. It’s been a little over a year since the people spoke in favor of retaining the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Unfortunately, the politicians of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus didn’t consider it; the Belovezh Accords sealed the liquidation of the Soviet Union. Here’s what the competent president Nazarbayev declared in an interview accorded to the Independent Gazette on May 6^th 1992: “Without Russia, there would be no Belovezh Accords; without Russia, the Union would not have disintegrated.” Also, the people – and not only simple citizens, but even the politicians – are beginning to understand that it is impossible to survive alone.

Jean Thiriart: The fact that the initiative to dismember the USSR came from Russia effectively equates to suicide. But in the West, we know nothing about all that. The Western press presents a fundamentally different version of events: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, etc, demanded to quit the Union themselves, while Russia wanted to preserve it.

Yegor Ligachev: They started by outlawing the communist party. So who outlawed the party if not the same people who dismantled the USSR. If the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, even in its weakened form, had existed in December, the Soviet Union would have been maintained because the principal force that impeded the dismemberment of the latter was none other than the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Jean Thiriart: I am convinced that it’s worth the trouble to present your position to the European public. In Europe, actually, no one suspects that the “agents of influence” acting in the former USSR, nor the initiative of presidents have lead to the dismemberment of the Union.

Yegor Ligachev: Having recently traveled to America and Japan, I am convinced that our democrats have opened a broad channel in the direction of the West, of America and Japan, but access to it remains forbidden to people with an alternative positions, to us patriots, to the representatives of popular and patriotic movements. The information is unilateral.

Jean Thiriart: From the instant where Russia failed to condemn American aggression against Iraq, objective observers must have perceived that we were reaching the end of the repartition of forces in the world. Theoretically, it should have been possible to abstain from any sanction. But the support for American sanctions was the political suicide of the Soviet Union. The last obstacle to American global domination today is China. The Americans have tried for the past few years to buy Chinese industry, to implant themselves through technology, but it seems that it’s not so easy to achieve.

Yegor Ligachev: It is still too soon for the internal and external enemies of Russia to proclaim victory.

Jean Thiriart: Nevertheless, the very fact of the Soviet Union’s destruction caused serious damage to the defense of European independence and particularly Arab independence. The Iraqis, the Palestinians, and the Libyans felt it as a personal tragedy because it upset the global balance.

Yegor Ligachev: I would like to conclude by developing my thought: every passing day, the fiasco of today’s democrats underlines the success of the policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The world is proceeding through integrative processes. Europe is uniting; a veritable objective law of unification is at work. Beyond the actions of these objective forces, specific factors still exist among us as well, which unify us. People are beginning to compare the past with what has happened; life today with the era where “the communists governed,” as they say. All our present independent states or former republics of the Union are multinational. The only homogeneous republic is Armenia. We understand the complexity of the work required and the long term efforts. All that will not be so simple.

The present governing class hammers into the heads of our people that we can only extract our country from its economic and political situation with millions of dollars of aid, that is to say with the aid of the West. They even add that not a single major social or economic problem in our country can be resolved without the resources of the West. They are ready to sell the Kurils, they’ve already surrendered Yugoslavia. On the contrary we are convinced that we cannot rely on our own strengths. It’s not that we are against foreign loans, against external aid as support; on the other hand, we are opposed to the political, cultural, and economic colonization of our country.

Jean Thiriart: Starting from 1946, the Americans have chased the Belgians from the Congo, the French from Algeria, the Dutch from Indonesia, and have taken their places there. Yeltsin’s position is the position of president Mobutu, president of Zaire; he wants to make a Zaire of Russia. As for Western aid it goes directly into the pockets of the leaders of these republics, like in Brazil or South America for example. It represents a simple gratuity.

It’s also through this mechanism that the Americans create puppets of every political stripe, on the “right”, the “left”, or center. They can buy communists, nationalists.

A Dutch prince during the Renaissance said where there’s a will, there’s already a way. Everything is in the will. We will win if we have the will to fight against globalism.

Yegor Ligachev: Our great reformist Stolypin said that “all liberty demands further abundance.” Our democrats want to give us the liberty of poverty.

Jean Thiriart: The liberty that supposedly reigns in the West is only pure comedy. In reality, the press is completely controlled.

Yegor Ligachev: We observe the same thing concerning our press. Dyen [Translator’s note: Nationalist paper directed by Alexander Prokhanov that would be banned in 1993] is an admirable newspaper that doesn’t benefit from any subsidies and, moreover, they strangle it economically. But other publications receive colossal subsidies. We have been too careless. I say it regarding myself. For sixty three years the party was in a monopoly situation. That’s what engendered the carelessness, a certain political fatigue.

Jean Thiriart: The man who has no adversaries is a bad combatant. But now we find ourselves in an extremely dark situation, we must learn to be more reasonable. To a certain extent, it’s a remedy and an advantage that we will draw from our stay in the opposition. It’s a treatment method. That said, as long as the war endures, the war is not lost!