Exactly how and why did Merezhkovsky found himself on the German radio in June 1941 nobody was quite sure of. Gippius (according to Yury Terapiano who was quoting Nina Berberova) blamed her own secretary Vladimir Zlobin who, using his German connections, allegedly persuaded the elderly man to come to the studio in the early days of the Nazi invasion of the USSR. In his speech (if its printed version entitled "Bolshevism and Humanity" is to be believed) Merezhkovsky, comparing Hitler to Joan of Arc, called for an anti-Bolshevik crusade, reiterating, among other things, what he was saying all through the 1920s and 1930s:Bolshevism will never change its nature... because right from the start it's been not a national, but international phenomenon. From the very first day Russia has been – and remains to this very day – only a means to the end: that of its conquering the whole world.