Putin Celebrates Russia Day With Honors

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, visits Alexander Solzhenitsyn, center, in his house in Troitse-Lykovo in the outskirts of Moscow, Tuesday, June 12, 2007. Shown from left in the background are, Solzhenitsyn's sons, Stepan and Yermolai, an unidentified. While celebrating the holiday of Russia's emergence from the crumbling Soviet Union Putin honored the Nobel laureate and longtime exile who documented the murderous Soviet prison camp system, with an award for humanitarian achievement and visited the ailing 88-year-old author, who has not appeared in public in recent years. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Presidential Press Service, Mikhail Klimentyev) (Mikhail Klimentyev - AP)

"Our bitter national experience can yet help us in a possible repeat of unstable social conditions. It will forewarn and protect us from destructive breakdowns," he said, looking gaunt and speaking haltingly.

Solzhenitsyn and Putin are unlikely allies _ the imprisoned and exiled enemy of the Soviet state, and the longtime KGB officer.

But while Solzhenitsyn was harshly critical of chaotic post-Soviet Russia when he returned from the United States in 1994, he has praised Putin for working to restore a strong state and echoed the president's accusations of Western encroachment.

Solzhenitsyn has warned of the possibility of a return to the turbulence that plunged czarist Russia into chaos and led to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Putin, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term next year, has stressed the need for unity as the March election approaches. At the awards ceremony, Putin said that "common moral values" are the key to multiethnic Russia's unity.

Putin has repeatedly suggested that the greatest threat to the country comes from external foes, and the ceremony emphasized Russia's military might as much as its cultural depth. Five of the 12 recipients were honored for work related to the military, and Putin announced a special award for the developers of the Iskander-M cruise-missile system, who were not named because their identity is a state secret.

New missiles for the system were tested last month, officials said, as part of what Putin called a response to U.S. plans to deploy a missile-defense system in eastern Europe.

"Labor in the name of strengthening the country's defense capability has always been greatly respected," Putin said.

The June 12 holiday is one of several that have been shifted or renamed as Putin's Kremlin seeks to shape Russia's image. It was introduced by his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, to commemorate Russia's 1990 declaration of sovereignty and was long known to many as Independence Day. However, millions regret the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union _ which was dominated by Russia _ and blame Yeltsin for the disintegration.

That means there is little political capital to be gained from celebrating Russian independence, and the holiday's name was officially changed to the Russia Day in 2002.