Slava Paperno: Considering that there is no more censorship or tight control of what ordinary people do, some people probably feel that things have become better now. Can you talk about this a bit? G.N. Lepeshkin: Listen, do you really think ordinary people were censored? Paperno: Well, they didn't get what they could have gotten if there hadn't been any censorship, did they? Lepeshkin: With the breakup of the [Soviet] Union, with the breakup of the Union that occurred in our country, the people received, most of the people received freedom. People have become less inhibited and have begun to communicate with many, with many of their friends, including those abroad. They can travel freely to any spot in the world if they can afford it, they can express their thoughts, publish their papers, publish their documents. But... this is, of course, a big achievement of democracy. The young people who are growing up now, they don't know about all the difficulties that we, as members of the older generation, experienced in the past. On the other hand, this excessive democracy, let's put it that way, creates a situation in which we become hostages of the system we have, of the views we have, the negative views we have from other countries. Above all this involves culture. After all, just look, we have a reassessment,.. a reassessment of values has just taken place. We often absorb negative characteristics that come at us from television, young people are brought up on this, scenes of violence, scenes of drug addiction and many, many other things, that we would not like to accept. Nevertheless, every new trend has its pluses and minuses. And on the whole, of course, people have begun to feel much freer.