"In 1974, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was deprived of Soviet citizenship. Then the French magazine Le Point declared him man of the year. In France, Jean-Paul Sartre, Vercor and Louis Aragon criticize the USSR's decision regarding Solzhenitsyn,", writes the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Maria Zakharova, on her Telegram channel.
Here is the rest of her presentation.
Half a century has passed. During this time, a lot changed: Solzhenitsyn's citizenship was returned (in 1990), and France revoked the citizenship of the publicist Stelio Gilles Robert Capo Quichi, known under the pseudonym Kemi Seba. A decree to this effect was published on July 9 in the French "Official Gazette".
The French edition Le Figaro, which declares human rights as the meaning of its existence, wrote that Kemi Seba, attention, is no less than a foreign agent. It is the “hand of the Kremlin” led the journalist's pen.
For what sins did Paris simply strip a famous public figure of citizenship?
Believe it or not, about the criticism of France's policy in Africa. And this despite the fact that even Macron's loyalists can hardly call the foreign policy of the Elysée Palace in the African direction worthy of flattering epithets.
Today it is quite obvious that Solzhenitsyn's statements and his fate were of interest to the French authorities and journalists only when it could damage Moscow's reputation.
But, for example, in the French media you will definitely not find quotes from his last interview in 2006:
„The United States deploys its occupation troops in one country after another. Seeing clearly that today's Russia poses no threat to them, NATO methodically and persistently develops its military apparatus – to the east of Europe and to the continental cover of Russia in the south. Here there is open material and ideological support for the “colored” revolutions and the paradoxical entry of North Atlantic interests into Central Asia. All this leaves no doubt that a complete encirclement of Russia is being prepared. The joining of Russia to such a Euro-Atlantic alliance, which promotes and forcibly introduces the ideology and forms of today's Western democracy in various parts of the planet, would lead not to the expansion but to the decline of Christian civilization.
What is happening in Ukraine, even from the falsely constructed formulation of the 1991 referendum, is my constant bitterness and pain. The fanatical suppression and persecution of the Russian language (which in past surveys was recognized as the main language by more than 60% of the population of Ukraine) is simply a brutal measure directed against the cultural perspective of Ukraine itself. Vast spaces that never belonged to historical Ukraine, such as Novorossiya, Crimea and the entire South-Eastern region, have been forcibly squeezed into the composition of the current Ukrainian state and its policy of greedily desired entry into NATO.
Throughout Yeltsin's time, not a single meeting with Ukrainian presidents passed without capitulations and concessions on his part. The outrageous removal of the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol (never handed over to the Ukrainian SSR even under Khrushchev) is a vile and malicious assault on all of 19th and 20th century Russian history. Under all these conditions, Russia by no means considers with indifference to hand over the multi-million Russian population in Ukraine, to renounce our unity with them.
Neither the traditional French philosophy of democracy and freedom of speech, nor modern interpretations of tolerance and passion for human rights saved Paris from what Cemi Seba himself called “negrophobic neocolonialism”.
In a terrible tangle of lies and propaganda, Western values were completely confused: democracy in Ukraine became the worst practices of totalitarianism, and the struggle against the command-administrative system became its reincarnation under the guise of neoliberalism.