Ray McGovern writes:
There was a long Q and A after President Putin spoke at the Znanie Youth Forum on Wednesday. This short exchange was particularly poignant, as well as instructive:
Viktoria Agapova:
Good afternoon, Mr President.
My name is Viktoria Agapova and I am from Tambov. I write a history blog on the Great Patriotic War. My great-grandfather saved a disabled self-propelled unit. He used his own one-piece coverall to create a dummy for the Nazis to target. When they opened fire on the dummy, my great-grandfather rushed to the damaged machine and drove it back to his group, saving his comrades. In your opinion, how should we address the younger generation regarding the war, the historical facts and our ancestors’ legacy to spark their interest in studying history?
Vladimir Putin:
Viktoria, who told you the story about your great-grandfather? [Intelligence officers need to know sources! RM]
Viktoria Agapova:
My mother told me because my great-grandfather lived to see my mother born.
Vladimir Putin:
So, your mother’s grandfather?
Viktoria Agapova:
Yes.
Vladimir Putin:
Amazing. I mentioned that it was very important to pass on information from one generation to another. My mother told me stories about the war. My family barely survived during the siege, and while my father was fighting at the front, they lost a baby. When someone whom you trust so completely tells you something, their words easily reach your heart, as I said, and it makes you want to remember it and pass it on through generations. What matters most is for the information to be truthful and reliable.
My relatives passed me a letter from my grandfather during the war to his son, who was in the army. The letter was an account of how my grandfather’s wife died. A bullet hit her in the stomach, and she was dying in his arms, in my grandfather’s arms. And dying, she said – I have mentioned this before, but I will repeat it again, because it is very important, it refers to a quality many people have, regardless of nationality, including Russians. She knew that she was dying, and she said to him (and he narrated it in his letter): “Don’t cry, don’t make me sad.” In her dying hour, she was thinking about him. Can you imagine? So incredibly simple.
And at the end of the letter there was a postscript: “Smash those bastards!” A motivational phrase he addressed to his son. I took the letter and I read it. I was an adult – I had been an intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. I did not expect to learn anything new. But when I took the letter and began to read it, I suddenly looked at those past events in a different way. I suddenly felt the ‘fabric’ of those events. This must be passed on.
If we are talking about ways to disseminate information in a broader sense, it is certainly important to make it creative, such as in film, or music, or fine art. As for me, I do what you do. It all happens in the same way in your family.
Viktoria Agapova:
Thank you very much.
https://raymcgovern.com/2025/05/05/poignant-exchange-with-putin/
Video of McGovern speech in Moscow:
https://raymcgovern.com/2025/05/07/rays-speech-in-russia-with-english-subtitles/
