Reading 1Putin leans here on a strange theory advanced by the 20th-century historian andethnographer Lev Gumilev. The son of two of Russia's most famous poets,Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, Gumilev maintains that every people'possesses a distinct life force: a "bio-cosmic" inner energy or passionate substancethat he calls passionarnost. Putin may have known Gumilev in St Petersburg at thestart of the 1990s. At any rate, he has embraced his ideas and never misses anopportunity to refer to them. In February last year, he said: "I believein passionarnost. In nature as in society, there is development, climax and decline.Russia has not yet attained its highest point. We are on the way". According tohim, Russia carries the power and potential of a young people. "We possess aninfinite genetic code", he has said. In addition to Gumilev, Putin relies on another thinker - a minor figure in thehistory of Russian thought. Last October, he spoke of regularly consulting acollection of political essays titled "'Our Tasks", the major work of Ivan Ilyin, whodied in 1954. In one of the president's preferred essays, "What does the worldseek from the dismemberment of Russia?", Ilyin denounces the country's"imperialist neighbours", these "western peoples who neither understand noraccept Russian originality'. In the future, he suggests, these countries willinevitably attempt to seize territories such as the Baltic countries, the Caucasus,central Asia and, especially, Ukraine. The method, according to Ilyin, will be thehypocritical promotion of values such as "freedom" in order to transform Russia"a gigantic Balkans". The final object is to "dismember Russia, to subject herto western control, to dismantle her and in the end make her disappear".It is necessary, then, to understand that what is actually happening in Ukraine isthe result of a vision of Russia that is deeply embedded in the mind of Putin. In2008, he punished Georgia for its desire to leave the orbit of the old imperialpower. In 2014, he annexed Crimea and prevented Ukraine from joining Nato bystarting the Donbas conflict. But that is not enough for him. He wants aconfrontation with - and a victory over - a west that he holds responsible for thefall of the Soviet Union, for the weakness of Russia in the 1990s, and for theautonomous tendencies of the old Soviet republics.
【題組】21. Based on the passage, it is most likely Putin would agree with which of thefollowing statements about Gumilev's theory on passionarost?
(A) It suggests that the Russian people is yet to reach its full potentiality.
(B) It means that the West can do whatever they want with Russia.
(C)It depicts a new political map of peaceful unions.
(D)It is detrimental to the Russian economy.
(E) It is an aesthetic expression of love and peace.