The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

We think about time as something not to waste, not as something to invest.

I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy.

I think we have very steady records of President Putin, who inherited the country with democratic values.

I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention.

Like Dvoretsky, I think that (all other things being equal), the analytical method of studying chess must give you a colossal advantage over the chess pragmatist, and that there can be no certainty in chess without analysis. I personally acquired these views from my sessions with Mikhail Botvinnik, and they laid the foundations of my chess-playing life.

I wouldn't place much stock in numbers. I don't believe that they reflect Putin's true popularity. Just think about how the pollsters proceed. They call people and they ask them questions on the street. In today's Russia, it takes a lot of courage to tell a stranger something critical about the head of the Kremlin. And yet more than 20 percent do so nonetheless.