The prime minister asked to run for president.
Vladimir Putin played the game of telephone and recalled how his friend Gerhard Schroeder had adopted Russian children. The prime minister spent the Day of Knowledge at school No.29 in Podolsk, in the Moscow Region, where he was given a lesson in tolerance in exchange for a crisis lesson, and was asked to run for president again.
Vladimir Putin spent September 1 in the Moscow Region's most technically advanced school, which has a 3D cinema and a planetarium. He was invited to a social science lesson, at which the teacher decided to talk about tolerance. "After all, everybody on Earth is linked by six clicks," she said, retelling the main theme of the recent Russian New Year comedy Yolki (New Year Trees) – in other words, all people are connected with each other by no more than six degrees of separation.
In a list of xenophobes the students compiled, they included Hitler, Alexander the Great and Napoleon. The teacher hesitated: "I wouldn't be so sure about Napoleon," she said. Putin objected to the inclusion of Alexander the Great. "After conquering Persia, he urged his soldiers to marry local women to give birth to a new generation of ruling elite. How can this be xenophobia?"
Eight people, including the prime minister, were asked to stand up. "What are we going to do?" Putin asked. "Play telephone," the teacher said. "Something better, perhaps?" he sighed. "No!" the teacher replied, and moved on to practical tolerance. "I want to use this game as an example to show how you should treat the media."
After exchanging whispers with upper-class students, yielding unknown results, Putin received a direct question: "Does the government have methods of controlling information in the media?" "Control can always be established," he acknowledged. "But practice shows that if someone chooses to disseminate child pornography or negative political slogans on the Internet, this is impossible to stop. We should learn to play on the same field, to instill a rejection of this in people. Only talented people can accomplish this."
The prime minister devoted his personal lesson to financial crises. "Trading on stock exchanges is detached from real production," he explained. "Real goods account for only 12% of what is traded on the energy exchange. The services sector has shifted towards profiteering." He asked students to think about whether it is worth it to stake bets on the services sector.
They responded by asking what professions were promising. In reply, of course, Putin talked about himself, "'Promising' means whatever it is that you can do best – something that makes you soar above the clouds from morning till night, something that you will be effective at." And if there is no opportunity? "If there is a goal, no obstacles can be insurmountable," the prime minister said, citing the example of Paralympics athletes.
Towards the end of the visit, Putin recalled how his friend Gerhard Schroeder was adopting two Russian children, a boy and a girl. "Our law requires both adoptive parents to be present in court, but Schroeder did not come. The judge asked his wife about him, and she said he was in Istanbul, at a NATO session. And the judge said, "There will be a lot of these sessions, but you are adopting a child for life." There are a lot of little things in life, and each of them has its value, the prime minister concluded.
The group decided that such a little thing as a photo with the prime minister wouldn't hurt. And they asked Putin to run for president.
Inga Vorobyova