''There were always such times,'' he said, ''when the authorities treated their people with unjustified cruelty and when their actions could not be deemed fair.'' He admitted that he might be making a mistake, asking critics to accept the new symbols, including the Soviet ones, and not view them as ''the embodiment of the darker sides of our history.'' Putin argued in a televised address to the country last Monday night, when he unveiled his proposal after months of public debate, that Russians had lived through low moments and repression in both eras, from the slavery of serfdom under the czars to Stalin's death camps. Before that, ''The Internationale'' had served as the Soviet anthem. It was played on state radio for the first time on Jan. Putin as its leader, even sought to prove this week that the Soviet anthem was not really that Soviet because its refrain and other shards of its score were borrowed from 19th-century composers by Aleksandr Aleksandrov, who wrote the piece for Stalin. The symmetry of his proposal, taking two symbols from czarist Russia and two Soviet symbols appeared to form the basis for a compromise in the Duma that drew overwhleming support. Putin shocked many liberals and intellectuals with his decision, many also supported him. ''All I associate with that anthem are party congresses, party conferences, where the power of party bureaucrats was strengthened and confirmed.'' as the national anthem,'' he said in an interview with the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. ''I am categorically against the return of the anthem of the U.S.S.R. Yeltsin, who had banished the Soviet anthem and the red-flag trappings of the Soviet state in 1991, said he was disappointed in his successor and believed he had made a mistake.
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