Did Margaret Thatcher say that the economically appropriate population of Russia is 15 million people?

The former British Prime Minister is often attributed to the phrase that in Russia it could live many times fewer people than now live in reality. We checked whether Tatcher claimed.

On June 15, 2018, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova during a briefing with reporters Reasoned On the manifestations of Russophobia by British politicians. In particular, Zakharova said: “1991, Houston, ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain Margaret Thatcher, literally the following:“ According to the world community, only 15 million people are economically advisable. ” If someone can say that there was no such statement, we will only rejoice in this. But, unfortunately, the documents prove that this statement was. Fine?" This quote is found in earlier performances and texts of Russian politicians and officials: so, it Curses The Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov in his 2009 book “Stalin and Modernity” (though there is no longer about 1991, but about 1982). Some scientists are not behind: in 2004 this statement attributed Former British Prime Minister Vladimir Dobrenkov, Dean of the Faculty of Sociological Faculty of Moscow State University.

All famous public speeches of the British Prime Minister collected On the website of the Margaret Tatcher Foundation. This Internet resource is a public collection of tens of thousands of documents related to Thatcher and the UK of its life. Almost 8,000 were collected alone, statements and interviews on the site. In 1991, the former prime minister was already in Houston. Spended At the conference American Petroleum Institute, the full text of her speech has not been preserved.

In 2018, shortly after that briefing of Maria Zakharova, with the fund Contacted Journalist Alexei Kovalev. The organization’s employee Chris Collins said that he had already encountered this phrase allegedly Thatcher in Chinese sources, but considers the quote “an obvious fake”. Collins suggested that the politician spoke “with some short impromptu and did not say anything significant”, and considered it amazing that none of the journalists present paid attention to such a bright phrase (if she really said it). It is noteworthy that at first the fund's employee claimed that the performance was completely in Chicago, but as the journalists dealt with the origin of this story, Recognizedthat events really unfolded in Houston.

The conference held in November 1991 is known from notes in two American newspapers: The Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. In the first of them, the content of speech Thatcher stated quite full: basically she talked about the situation in the Middle East (shortly before that ended War in the Persian Gulf). About the Soviet Union or Russia, according to the author, Tatcher did not say anything. In the article The New York Times her performance Daid much less attention, but the journalist notes an interesting detail: at the conference in Houston, many meetings were planned with the participation of a Russian delegation of 50 people. It is difficult to imagine a situation in which Thatcher really uttered a passage about 15 million people, but none of this delegation was indignant in the press or left the corresponding memories. We could not find such evidence. The author of the note at The New York Times Matthew Wald. reported Alexei Kovalev that "he certainly does not remember that Tatcher said something like that."

Where did this quote come from, and even with quite accurate dating and the place where that that supposedly uttered it? Its earliest mention that we managed to discover is the book of publicist Andrei Parshev “Why Russia is not America”, which was published in 1999. In this text There is Such a fragment: “In the late 80s, I heard just one phrase, which, perhaps, led to the coup of my ideas about the world around him. Then I studied English, and once I came across in the sound recording some public performance by M. Thatcher on foreign policy. <...> So, speaking of the prospects of the USSR, it announced approximately the following, without explaining this in any way: "In the USSR, 15 million people are economically justified." I scrolled the record again, maybe at least Fifty ("fifty")? No, like Fifteen - "fifteen", I did not rush. "

It is noticeable how (apparently, the first in Russian), the presentation of the quote differs from what Zakharov spoke about. Firstly, Parshev is not talking about Russia, but about the USSR. Secondly, the publicist does not clarify about Houston and 1991. Thirdly, unlike the speaker of the Foreign Ministry, Parshev still puts the reliability of the phrase some doubt: not only accompanying the quotation he heard a few years ago by the words “ approximately The following ", but also Adding: “She (Thatcher.-Approx. Ed.) In my memory, no stupidity blurred, from which not a single English-speaking politician talking about Russia is not safe-in this regard they are all as for selection. It was even more surprised that in our press neither about this or other such statements of Western figures was reported. I even phoned some editions of our newspapers - no one could explain to me what Tatcher had in mind. ”

Apparently, given by Parshev in 1999 in his book, the quote already caused an ambiguous reaction. In 2000, in an interview with the portal "Orthodoxy" he set out Already a slightly different version of Tatcher’s record he heard: “It was her speech on foreign policy. I heard him in the sound recording. It was not directly said that 15 million people should be left in the USSR, but it was said more cunningly: they say that the Soviet economy is completely ineffective, there is only a small effective part, which, in fact, has the right to exist. And in this effective part only 15 million people of our population are employed. This is the meaning of Tatcher’s statement, which was then interpreted differently. ”

Simultaneously with the “adaptation” of quotes to modern realities (replacing the USSR with Russia), Houston also mixed up with it. This happened, probably, in the mid-2000s-in October 2006 on one Internet forum appeared The message of a certain graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University, whose acquaintance was allegedly at the same conference of oil workers in November 1991. His retelling of Tatcher’s performance is strikingly different from the reports of the American media: supposedly the former British prime minister only said that about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Interestingly, there is nothing about the “15 million expedient population” in this retelling.

Thus, the verified statement was the first to attribute to Margaret Thatcher Purse Parshev in the late 1990s, who over the past years was not provided by the source from which he learned about this phrase. Over time, the phrase overgrown with details about the 1991 conference in Houston, however, the journalists who worked there refute that Tatcher who spoke at the congress said this. Finally, the life and public activity of the policy are documented quite well. At the same time, experts on her heritage from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation did not find a quote in the archives attributed to the former British prime minister (neither among the speeches and speeches of 1991, nor any other collections of documents), as reported by journalists. However, in 2019, a year after the famous briefing, Maria Zakharova She said: “We contacted the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. <...> We have a newspaper in which this quote was given, and the fund did not answer us, neither yes nor no, which it would be enough just to do. ” Over the past year and a half, Zakharova did not introduce this newspaper to the public.

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Foundation Margaret Thatcher
2. Fake | Margaret Thatcher wanted to reduce the population of the Earth by 90% and believed that only 15 million people were justified in Russia
3. Did the US-US-Madlen Albright ex-user say that Siberia should not belong to only one Russia?