Your Excellency,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Friends,

We have come here today to refresh our memories about one of the most tragic events in the history of the 20th century. Fifty years ago, the events in Chile caused repercussions in the international community. People all over the world watched the footage of the military coup in Chile. People of my generation remember the photographs of President Salvador Allender in front of the La Moneda presidential palace holding a gun which he took up to protect his country, his people and those who supported him. Blood was shed.

The documents from that era that you will see at the exhibition have been provided by the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation, the archives of the Moscow Government, the Ilya Glazunov Gallery and the Foreign Ministry’s Latin America Department. We remember a great deal about those events. Many books have been written and films made about them. People of our country, the Soviet Union, felt sincere sympathy for the Chilean people and their democracy.

Salvador Allender was fixated on the idea of justice, which he wanted to realise through democracy, a new organisation of society and national peace that did not include a civil war. This did not sit well with those who wanted and still want Latin America to remain their backyard. The supporters of the Monroe Doctrine used a classic scenario, a “colour revolution,” relying on and financing radicals, supplying them with weapons and inciting them to start a mutiny. Regrettably, we know what happened next, and we are not alone. In 1975, these and many other facts were made public in a congressional report on the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Pablo Neruda, the great Chilean poet and a Nobel Prize winner, described the Chilean venture as “a quiet Vietnam war.” The United States, which suffered a shameful defeat in Vietnam, decided to take revenge on and implement their evil plans in anther independent country. Chileans remember this. I know that the victims of the dictatorship will never be forgotten, including in Russia. At that time, the presidential palace and the stadium in the capital, which was turned into a prison camp, became the symbols of public protest. People remember those events and bring flowers there, which is extremely important for the nation to preserve its identity and to uphold its rights and independence.

I will not talk here about the other tragedies that the United States and its allies organised under similar scenarios around the world, including closer to us, namely in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq.

I hope that today’s event will encourage us to more resolutely use all the diplomatic methods available to us to promote peace and agreements based on equal security and respect for the legitimate interests of all countries, which will protect the world from repeating tragedies such as the military coup in Chile. I would like to point out that conflicts can only be avoided in the modern world on the basis of equality, mutual respect and a balance of interests.