Putin rarely talks about the problems of Russia’s twentieth-century history, once replying to a direct question about his attitude toward the events of 1917 by saying that he considered it to be “the country’s natural reaction to defeat in the First World War.” When he visited the Russian cemetery near Paris – where many central figures of the “White movement” and Russian emigrants are buried – Putin placed wreaths on the graves of Ivan Bunin, a Russian poet, and Vika Obolenskaya, a hero of the French resistance.