The words that the ex-head of the US Foreign Department allegedly said about Russia are often used in political disputes. We checked whether Albrite really said something similar.

The last surge in the popularity of the phrase happened in the summer of 2015, when the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev in his interview The newspaper Kommersant said:

“They would really like Russia at all. Like countries. Because we have huge wealth. And the Americans believe that we own them illegally and undeservedly, because, in their opinion, we do not use them as we should use. You probably remember the statement of the US-US-Madeline Olbright ex-designed that Russia does not belong to either the Far East or Siberia. ”

After the official who made the noise of the statement, the journalists rushed to look for the English -speaking original and ... did not find anything similar in the speeches of Albright. Julia Latynina discovered the first, in her opinion, Russian -speaking mention of a phrase similar to this one. In June 2005, a certain Nataly1001 on the forum of the site Germany.ru left message: “Quite often, the Russian media began to exaggerate the topic of national security ... The statement of the former US State Authority G. Olbright was voiced:“ There can be no talk of any world justice, while one country has such a territory as Siberia. Now, if it were another country, then another thing! ””

However, Nataly1001 is definitely not the author of this phrase. Back in February of the same 2005, director Nikita Mikhalkov said in interview "Arguments and Facts":

“And how to explain that we are not invited to a meeting of the allies who celebrated the 55th anniversary of the victory over Germany? Or the phrase of Madlen Albright, a former US Secretary of State: "Where is justice, if only one country owns such a land as Siberia?" She would try to say this 20 years ago! "

It does not seem that Mikhalkov himself invented this statement, however, as far as we know, this is the earliest mention on the Internet. As you can see, there was no option about the “Far East and Siberia” in those years.

The next distributor of the Mikhalkovsky version of the phrase was the host of the postscript program on the TVC channel Alexei Pushkov, who noted in July 2005: “As Madeline Olbrait is ascribed to the words that“ Siberia is too large to belong to one state. ” Even if she didn’t say that exactly that, she probably thought or someone there thought from shallow people in America. ”

The political scientist and candidate of historical sciences of Pushkov expressed relatively neatly, but this did not prevent the widespread use of the phrase as the original quote from the albrite. It got to the point that in 2007 it was quoted during the “direct line” with Vladimir Putin and asked to comment. The Russian president then said that he was not familiar with this statement by Olbright, but "he knows that such ideas in the heads of some politicians roam." However, seven years will pass, and during the next live broadcast Putin will say:

“After all, we almost heard from officials many times that it was unfair that all Siberia belongs to Russia with its immeasurable wealth. Somehow unfair. As for pinding, to puff on Mexico Texas is fair, and the fact that we are economical on our own land is unfair. ”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijyclbiuwiy&t=2M45S

As you can see, the statement that arose from nowhere could get to the highest echelons of power. However, the first place in the hit parade is still worth giving General FSO to Boris Ratnikov, who in interview 2006 revealed the Secrets of the latest military-technical methods of penetrating the enemy’s subconscious: Rossiy newspaper:

“A couple of weeks before the bombing of Yugoslavia by US aviation, we held a session of connection to the subconscious of Secretary of State Albright. I will not retell her thoughts in detail. I will note only the most characteristic moments confirmed after the beginning of NATO aggression in Serbia. <...> ... in the thoughts of Madame Albright, we found a pathological hatred of the Slavs. She was also outraged by the fact that Russia has the world's largest mineral reserves. ”

Thus, the phrase attributed to Madlen Albright, in any of the options turned out to be a fantasy of some Russian-speaking person.