August 20, 2001

This Date's Issues:   5400 • 5401

Johnson's Russia List
#5401
20 August 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

********

TITLE: PRESS CONFERENCE WITH FORMER USSR PRESIDENT
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
[GORBACHEV FUND, LENINGRADSKY PROSPEKT 39, BLDG 14, 12:00,
AUGUST 16, 2001]
SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/)
DATE: 08/16/01

Moderator: Good day. My name is Pavel Palazhchenko and I am
the head of the Gorbachev Fund press service. Today we are holding
a press conference by Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. This is in
response to numerous requests from journalists and media people. Of
course, most of the requests were for separate interviews and
Mikhail Sergeyevich has met 15-20 such requests, but there were
more than a hundred people who wanted to talk with him and so,
after a break, we are holding this press conference. It coincides
with the 10th anniversary of the events in August 1991, but we
know from the media people that they have questions on many other
problems as well. We are holding this press conference jointly with
Interfax and it will be conducted by first deputy director general
of Interfax Vyacheslav Terekhov.

Terekhov: Thank you. We have just conferred with Mikhail
Sergeyevich and we decided that to save your time Mikhail
Sergeyevich will not be making any introductory remarks and we will
go straight into questions and answers. Of course, there is no
getting away from questions connected with the 10th anniversary of
the putsch, but we will not miss this opportunity to talk about the
party and the current affairs if Mikhail Sergeyevich doesn't mind.

Gorbachev: If I am able to answer, I will answer.

Terekhov: Who will be the first to ask a question? And please,
introduce yourselves.

Q: Public Russian Television (ORT). I have two questions. The
first is about the putsch. Why, when you arrived from Foros at
Vnukovo you did not go straight to the defenders of the White House
where they were waiting for you?

Gorbachev: You have to get into that context although in
hindsight I now say that I should have gone. But one has to be in
the context of the day that I had spent and all my family had
spent. It was the day when we heard on the BBC that Kryuchkov
offered Yeltsin to go to Gorbachev together and make sure what his
physical state was. In other words, they were plugging the line
that Gorbachev was incapacitated. Vladimir Shcherbakov who later
wrote a report to me on what took place in the government and how
he tried to get at the truth and put questions to Yanayev and to
Pavlov and Pavlov twice in response to his direct questions -- when
he visited Pavlov because Pavlov was immediately taken ill, with a
mysterious illness -- and he said that he knew for a fact that
Gorbachev was even unable to walk to the his office. He was talking
with me lying in bed and gave an impression of being totally out of
touch with what was happening in the world. Most importantly,
Gorbachev was mumbling something incoherent.

They were preparing the ground against the eventuality that
they would not be able to get Gorbachev to hand over his functions
to Yanayev. And Baklanov told me at the time, "you have worked so
hard for perestroika" that was what Baklanov was telling me at the
time, but now, of course, he takes a very different line. "You will
mend your health and we in the meantime will put the house in order
back home and then you will return." He said, we will arrest
Yeltsin and then he corrected himself, well, we will arrest him
when he returns today. That was the kind of conversation I had. I
told him and you know what I told him and I am not going to repeat
myself.

That was how it all started and that topic was labored until
the end. Raisa Maximovna felt that people would come any minute to
do something to me to turn me into an invalid. But I was calm all
these days. Of course, I was under heavy strain, but I was not in
a panicky mood. But she panicked, let us be honest about it. She
said, we should hide you somewhere. I told her, calm down. And it
was then that this thing happened to her and it lasted for two
years. So, that was the kind of day we had.

We couldn't even start out earlier in order to prepare Raisa
for the flight. Because it was out of the question for me to fly
myself and leave her a hostage.

So, when we landed it was 2 a.m. and frankly, I did not get a
coherent report about the situation there, that the people were
celebrating and of course, I had to go there. So, now in retrospect
I think it was a miscalculation, a mistake.

Q: And my second question was put by Gennady Yanayev. He will
be live on the air today and he asks you why didn't you give notice
of the coup when the GKChP members came to you to Foros on the
18th?

Gorbachev: Notify whom?

Q: Well, the public, I suppose.

Gorbachev: Read Andrei Grachev, he probably writes about it in
his book. When he was writing his book he talked with all the
members of the GKChP. And when asked why they had sealed off and
isolated Gorbachev, he replied, he shouldn't feel sore. How else
could we have acted? He had to be isolated? And indeed, did you
hear Tolstoi yesterday? Well, I know everything that happened
there. When a certain group appeared I said, what group? I didn't
summon anyone, I didn't invite anyone. And the rules are that if I
did not invite a person, that person will never be allowed on the
grounds. And all of a sudden I find that they are near the house
where I was with my family.

I went to my office, by the way, I always worked in my study
after lunch. And Medvedev, the chief of security, came and said, I
will take care of it. I thought that everything was in order. I
pick up one phone, another phone, a third phone, a fourth phone
and they are dead. I pick up my red strategic telephone and it is
dead, too. I had just been talking with Georgy Shakhnazarov. He
was working in a sanatorium nearby on the text of my speech. We met
with him constantly or talked by phone. A plane had been ordered
for August 19 in order to start the signing on the 20th. The
chairs in the hall where the signing was to take place had been
arranged. Yeltsin was unhappy that Russia was positioned
alphabetically. I told him, look at the alphabet and you will see
that Russia is at the center. Don't worry.

In short, the stage was set. When Shakhnazarov was talking
with me for the last time, there was an officer standing behind my
back and he was telling me to hurry up and end the conversation.
And I told him, wait a bit, the president is talking to his aide.
When I checked nothing worked. And then I realized that things were
getting very serious. I thought at first that it was another
attempt to blackmail me. It's a whole chain of events: at first
they say that the people and the Communists are displeased. What
people are displeased with is that when I travelled around Russia
and the Soviet Union, people told me that they supported me, but
nothing was changing where they lived. "We are told that they have
done away with Khrushchev and Kosygin, and they will do away with
Gorbachev too. But we will have to live here for the rest of our
lives," they told me.

There were thousands of letters like these, in which people
wrote that nothing was changing, that the nomenklatura rejected
reforms. The party and other nomenklatura did not pass the test of
democracy. They were used to getting everything without elections,
discussions and without answering questions from people.

The situation developed in such a way that a session was held
in November of 1990. This is where everything began. In December,
Sazhi Umalatova, a big connoisseur of all processes, both
philosophical and historical, proposed to add one item to the
agenda -- removing Gorbachev from presidency. But that failed.
After that they decided to spill blood in order to tie up
Gorbachev. This led to Vilnius. This is what I think. Because all
this was done behind my back after a discussion in the Federation
Council and after we had ordered a group of three people --
Byelorussia, Armenia and Oleinik, the writer -- to go there and
sort things out in this confrontation where 100,000 people opposed
each other.

Someone from Central Asia said that they would not have
opposed each other for a long time and that blood would have
started flowing a long time ago. So it was necessary to go there
and broke peace. On their way they made a stop for the night in
Minsk. I don't know maybe they were advised to do this. It's hard
to say. So they stayed in Minsk for the night, and it was during
that night that everything happened.

When I asked Yazov in the morning -- by the way, I was talking
to him when Yakovlev was with me in the room -- he told me, "I
don't know, it's some tricks by the garrison commander. His nerves
gave up." Kryuchkov told me the same: "We will find everything out
and report to you."

So I simply didn't know. Everybody thought that I was lying.
Actually this is a more shameful situation. For example, when
things got hot in Baku and we saw that the situation was going to
develop by a blood scenario, I sent Primakov and Girenko, Central
Committee secretary who was dealing with these issues, there. After
two days there, I got an urgent telephone call from them in the
middle of a Supreme Soviet session and they told me that something
must be done because the Supreme Soviet was paralyzed and couldn't
do anything, the Central Committee was isolated, two gallows had
been set up on the square in front of the Central Committee either
as a hint or for use. So something had to be done. District
authorities had been swept away in 18 regions, 200 kilometers of
the border had been swept away, etc., etc.

I agreed with their arguments. I summoned Bakatin and other
ministers, we prepared a decree introducing a state of emergency
and I signed it. You all know what it led to. After that I
understood that no military or force can do anything. We needed
serious political and responsible actions in order to ease such
tension. So in this particular case I did resort to this. But in
all other cases, including Georgia, which was even earlier, and
Vilnius, everything was done behind my back. In other words, the
President could not control things. And this was a much more
difficult situation than as if I had issued a decree and it had not
been fulfilled for some reason, because everything can happen.
Because in this case we could have tried to figure out why it
wasn't done. But here is what happened.

The same happened in Riga. This process was gaining momentum
and they were taking steps in order to -- two attempts were made at
the plenary session. I tendered my resignation, and they understood
they would be disbanded or that they would fall apart and they
would not get the support. At the 28th Congress in 1990, those who
watched it remember fierce debates. They thought that they had lost
the 28th Congress, that Gorbachev and his supporters had managed to
push through their decisions to continue reforms and the movement
toward a socially-oriented economy. In other words, when they had
tried everything and saw, including at the last session in June
when they organized three reports and summoned me --

Read the verbatim reports of my speeches. They have been
transcribed and we will try to publish them. It's about 4,000 pages
of my speeches at Politbureau sessions. And you will see the real
Gorbachev, not the one they are portraying. These were attempts to
preserve -- they saw that their time was slipping away. It was
reactionary part. In the beginning all of them were in favor of
perestroika and they helped me. I am telling you this objectively,
as it was. But then whey they saw that they would not be able to
stand democracy, that democracy was something that would force them
to leave and strip them of their posts they had hold for decades
and of all the perks they had had, this was unacceptable to them.

This is why they did this. I, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev agreed
that since we had worked out a concrete agreement and since the
republics had insisted that the agreement should be very specific
because they did not think that they would be able to get all these
particulars in the Constitution later, so we agreed that we should
not wait for the Constitution and should instead hold elections. We
had such a conversation. And in this connection we also talked
about personnel issues. All this was recorded. As it turned out,
the President and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was tapped by the
KGB.

They pressured Yazov by using this recording, because his name
was mentioned there too. But these people were about 70 years told,
and they should have left and live for pleasure. But, no, they
couldn't agree with that. And Kryuchkov uttered prophetic words, as
if he were Lenin-2, "It will be too late the day after tomorrow, it
is too early today, so we'll move in tomorrow". So the question is,
if you fought to preserve the Union, then why did you try to
convince everybody in December, including the CPRF (sic!)
leadership, to vote for the Belovezhye accords?

No, these were selfish interests and no more than that. It was
an attempt to shift responsibility. It's all very clear. In the
very beginning of the investigation, Tizyakov sent a message in a
piece of bread out of prison. In the message, he wrote, "What are
you repenting? What has gotten into you? Blame everything on
Gorbachev."

But I have to tell you that they have not come to agreement
even in the past 10 years. One says that he was sick and could not
do anything. Another says something else. Yet another one says
something else. They are all in lies up to their ears. But they
feel that this is not a simple situation in the country, that
things are moving more and more toward the left side of the
political spectrum because of the deteriorating social situation.

All this -- they decided to make use of that, and now they are
pursuing -- true, their hands do not tremble today any longer, so
used are they to telling lies -- but they think -- in my opinion,
they even believe -- but now they hide their hands: now they put on
gloves when speaking, now something else. This is something new.

No, all that, you see -- all that is clear to me. An
investigation was conducted, the case was sent to court, and the
trial opened and was going on. All of them agreed to the amnesty,
which means that they agreed with the criminal charges filed
against them. It was Yeltsin who saved them -- as usual in Russia,
the extremes meet. They keep fighting, now breaking away now
clinching to each other, but we are left to sort all that out.

Yeltsin ordered firing at our White House, the Russian White
House, the new parliament that had been for the first time ever
elected in free elections. But then he understood: no one knew how
all that had ended and where the killed people had disappeared.
They were not even buried properly, at least I heard such things,
even complete with the names of the cemeteries where they had been
taken and buried. All that had to be investigated, all that had
happened, and an investigation was opened. But after the elections
they made a deal on the amnesty. This is our situation, you see.
Yeltsin liked it very much that the communists kept sallying
Gorbachev throughout all those ten years. He encouraged them in
that, and not only in that.

Q: Yanayev says that you stayed in Foros of your own free will
in order to follow developments in Moscow. What could you say to
that?

Gorbachev: But did you hear what Tolstoi, the chief of the
Guards Directorate for the Crimea, said yesterday? Tolstoi - he was
interviewed in Pavel Sheremet's film. He said: Gorbachev could do
anything. On the dacha grounds we provided the services due to the
president, and he was treated as the president should... -- of
course, they did; incidentally, the service personnel were not free
to go either -- so, Gorbachev could, but the aide could not go to
his place, nor could the typist and stenographer, whose father had
had a stroke, or something had happened to her child, or others --
no one was let out. And he said, Gorbachev had every provision,
they could go for a swim, whoever wanted to, etc. ... obviously,
swimming was the last thing on my mind. The main thing, I was
walking to and fro on the shore so that they could see from those
three rings of encirclement -- indeed, the third ring had been
added, the 5th Guards Unit had been moved into the area, the roads
were blocked with vehicles, and on the roof, where helicopters
could land, two vehicles were mounted, and on the auxiliary gate a
vehicle was posted, and those spikes were scattered around to
puncture the wheels of vehicles -- that was the kind of situation
we had. And he said: he could do anything but leave - we were told
not to let him go. And the cars were sealed and guarded by those
other who had been brought in. And in one of the cars -- they keep
saying that Gorbachev could have communicated -- yes, in one of the
cars, since Generalov -- that's the name, Generalov, and he also
was a general, Plekhanov's deputy, and he stayed there and reported
to them -- there was that communication facility in one of the
cars, and he communicated with them.

But I was entirely isolated, and all the attempts of deputies
and my aides to go through and meet me, and so on.. . I'm asked,
why didn't you break through? I think that was something to be
reckoned with, I think they would have liked that. What is a
breakthrough when everything is sealed off? There would have been
an exchange of fire, and so on, and Gorbachev would have been shot
in the process. That was the first thing. Why not go over the
fence? they ask. Yes, go over the fence, get hooked on barbed wire
by the seat of your pants and dangle there -- just the right style.

No, I am the president, and twice a day I demanded -- all
those demands are on file, they were communicated and are on file,
in particular, with the investigative authorities -- I demanded the
immediate convocation of the Congress, the withdrawal of the troops
and a plane. Incidentally, they had flown the plane away.

All these are lies, lies which -- it's like the criminal
procedure in any country: whoever commits a crime and is put on
trial can lie in the courtroom, defending himself. So, they are
telling lies, too, but they do that professionally because many of
them are lawyers and politicians, and they are getting advice as
well. The important thing is to smear Gorbachev, to whitewash those
reactionary forces and in this way to make them look as champions
of the homeland.

Q: Ten years have passed since August 1991, when the then
leaders of the Russian Federation, Yeltsin, Khasbulatov and
Rutskoi, saved you from Foros. What is your attitude to these
people today, ten years later?

Gorbachev: Yeltsin and I have not met since December 1991,
because since that time, December 25, 1991, Yeltsin has behaved in
a manner that was shocking. In spite of all the accords, and since
there was that meeting in Alma-Ata, and the republics did not
support the Union, and therefore denied support to the treaty,
which already was in the Supreme Soviet, but called for a
Commonwealth of Independent States -- I said: so, if that's the
position of the leaders of all the states -- and it was the top
leadership and the Supreme Soviet -- they are the vehicles of
sovereignty, and they have the right to make such decisions,
whether to join the Union, or change it, or withdraw from it -- and
if that's their decision, I wish them well. Especially since,
perhaps, our people thought that things would be better in such a
Commonwealth, which was looser that what I had suggested. It was
not a union state, but a union.

So, everyone thought: we would have a common economic
environment, because that was what the documents said, and there
would be coordinated social, economic, financial and lending
policies, banks, the army, the united army, and coordinated foreign
policies would be pursued. Well, perhaps, that would remove all
contradictions and recriminations, and everyone will be more
independent but cooperate with others.

But in reality that was a smokescreen, a front, just for show.
In reality there was disintegration. I have the text of a
memorandum from Burbulis, which he took to Yeltsin in October and
tried to convince him, saying that Gorbachev had already taken over
50 percent of the victory in the August revolution, that the union
republics benefited from and needed the union center, and they
wanted the union republics to go down to their knees and beg
Yeltsin -- a kind of imperial ambition: there are bosses and there
are serfs. That was a very different things. So, Burbulis tried to
convince him that the Union had to be destroyed.

Yeltsin, I think, sincerely believed that having shed the
burden of the Union republics and taken control of those billions
that were being transferred to the republics through union
mechanisms, and taken control of everything that Russia had, and
relying on the views of a group of scientists -- I think, at that
time they engaged, I think, the Siberian branch of the Academy of
Sciences, who said that on its own Russia will make speedier
progress along the road of reform, carry it through, and so on --
so, they took that road.

So, after all that happened, I decided I could no longer serve
as president because they, as a matter of fact, called for a
different arrangement, namely, the commonwealth rather than the
union state. And I delivered the speech that you all know. And
previously we had agreed with Yeltsin as to when we would wind up
our affairs and leave our work places on the 30th. We were to do
this and that and after my speech on the 25th he would come and I
will hand over the "suitcase" to him, the control of the strategic
armed forces. I made my speech. Twenty minutes pass, thirty minutes
pass, Yeltsin is nowhere to be seen. I asked to check. They rang
him up and he was angry. He was angry with the way I spoke. That is
not what we agreed on. But we had not agreed on anything and we
couldn't have discussed it. I did not make any arrangements with
anyone. Why should I get clearance from anyone, especially Yeltsin?

He offered me to meet in another building inside the Kremlin
on neutral ground. And I said, to hell with him and I don't care to
meet him on neutral or any other ground. Write a statement, they
wrote a statement and they accepted the "football" from me, the
generals signed and I told them to report back to me when he
accepts the "football". Half an hour later they reported back to me
that he had handed it over.

After such behavior, after he started making these demands,
that I move out of the presidential dacha within a day and move out
of my apartment immediately and so on, frankly, this was
disgusting. And I thought, what kind of a person will Russia now
have to deal with? I knew it. But I couldn't engage in gossip and
all this stuff. Although on occasion I had to speak out and to
speak frankly about the kind of person Boris Nikolayevich is.

Boris Nikolayevich chose this way. He wanted to keep me on a
leash. He asked me, you are creating a fund, will it be an
opposition party? I said, no, it will be a fund. It will do
research and develop projects that may even be useful to you. And
in general, I want to tell you, Boris Nikolayevich, that I will
back you and even defend you when necessary, but on condition that
you will continue in the same direction in which we were moving,
gradual establishment of democracy, the establishment and
strengthening of democratic institutions, the preservation of
freedoms and the building up of potential for successful
functioning of the economy within a market and socially oriented
economy.

But things moved in a different direction. I began speaking up
beginning from March. You remember that we were ousted from the
building. OMON came along with handcuffs and so on and so forth.
And then they forbade my foreign travels. So, what is there to
discuss with them? But it doesn't mean I didn't speak to them all
these years. True, not here. In Russia in ten years under Yeltsin
I never had a chance to go live on the air. Never. To hush up, to
make sure that Gorbachev is forgotten, to impose a concept of the
mess that Gorbachev had made and so on and so forth.
And in general, Yeltsin, the GKChP and the CPRF put all the
blame on Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Shevardnadze and others. And the main
hero, not for Yeltsin, but for the CPRF is comrade Stalin. Well,
let them stay with him. It's everyone's own choice.

Q: Aren't you sorry that you allowed the Baltics to separate
from the Union in the 1990s?

Gorbachev: We didn't. Things remained in place for all the
diversity. You know what I am sorry about? We were tardy in
reforming, first, the CPSU because it was the initiator and the
engine of perestroika and initially it had done a great deal toward
that end. But when the democratic institutions began functioning
and glasnost came about, this was unacceptable for the party
nomenklatura. And that was where the divergences started and
political struggle reached its peak after the free election when 35
secretaries, members of the Central Committee, and one of them a
candidate member of the Politburo, the Leningrad Party Secretary,
were defeated. And yet they had all the resources at their
disposal. And yet they flopped.

At the meeting of the Politburo it was the screeching of
teeth. Let me tell you that we were late in reforming the party and
we were late in reforming the Union.

Q: Could things have worked out differently?

Gorbachev: They could. In general, at the early phases the
republics, especially the Baltic republics, were pressing for
economic rights and for possibilities to launch economic
initiatives. They thought they could work better and with better
results and they had some grounds for thinking so. Well, the
products of those republics were different and they were highly
regarded. You remember that this was the idea of "republican cost
accounting". Well, I think if we had followed the path of reforming
the Union, including state institutions, the economy and so on, we
would have done what should have done and what we started doing but
only later when emotions ran high and then they saw that they
should press ahead. And previously, they did not raise the question
of secession from the Union. Perhaps, they had it in the back of
their minds, but many of them and I know many of them well and I
still meet with them, it didn't occur to them to seek independence
from the Union.

But the events took the course that they took and the process
was mounting and acquiring a different character. And so, they
promoted this thesis.

What can be said about the Union in this connection? The Union
in its former shape, politically, and in terms of the state
structure and in terms of the economy, was an incredibly cumbersome
entity that could not flexibly respond to the challenges of the
time, especially to the structural reforms that all the developed
countries were already implementing.

And there was one other thing. Soviet society was one of the
best educated and cultured societies in the world and indeed
society in Russia and elsewhere remains the same. So, the
totalitarian regime, the absence of democracy and freedom were
rejected at the cultural level. And all this made the reform
imperative. So, it had to be done. The old union could not be
preserved. It had to be reformed and thereby preserved and given a
new lease of life. And it should have been reformed on the basis of
centralization and democratization. And these principles were put
in the draft Union Treaty that we had to support.

These are the two biggest miscalculations. Reform of the
party. A man who join the party in high school and worked his way
up in the party and achieved such a status, decide to crush this
party -- I felt that the party should have been reformed. By the
way, it was an article of faith which was applied to Yeltsin when
they wanted to expel him from the Central Committee and some even
suggested that he be expelled from the party and so on. But I said,
let him stay in the Central Committee and we will give him the rank
of minister and let him work. And I thought that we had done the
right thing, but in hindsight we should have sent him to a banana
republic. It could have been done easily. He asked to be sent on
pension. And I told him, if you retire and you are just one year
older than I am, I won't feel comfortable working myself.

So this commitment to the democratic creed was an obstacle in
some cases, because authoritarian methods are needed in such
critical times. This is why it was belated.

Q: (Inaudible)... Do you think that you did everything
correctly?

Gorbachev: What structures?

Q: Police, the KGB and --

Gorbachev: Do you really think that they were so powerful?

Q: (Off mike.)

Gorbachev: I gave them a chance to change and take part in
perestroika. But they turned out to be traitors. I want to make
accurate assessments. I nominated Kryuchkov myself. Chebrikov was
nominated by Andropov. Then Chebrikov was transferred to the
Politbureau to deal with legal issues because big political reforms
were looming. So we had to make a choice.

Yakovlev said that Kryuchkov was good person. Most
importantly, I knew that he had been with Andropov for 25 years. I
believed Andropov, and I had a close relationship with Andropov,
not only political but also human. So some ask, how could Gorbachev
choose him? That's how it happened. Just as the president is
looking people for his team.

Q: I didn't finish my question.

Gorbachev: You want to say that Putin seems to be doing the
same now, don't you?

Q: Do you know the democrats that are (inaudible)... and how
will the country benefit from this?

Gorbachev: I support President Putin and his strategy. I see
that it is hard for him to implement it. At first a lot of things
were done by inertia: the Yeltsin government and approaches toward
reforms were from the previous era within the context of radical
liberalism, and a lot of other things. These groups of influence,
oligarchs, the Family are trying to put pressure on the President.

So on the one hand, the President has inherited chaos. On the
other hand, all this came upon him at the time when he had no team
of his own and had no extensive experience of state management at
this level. So what he has done in slightly more than a year, I can
tell you this because I have already gone through this, this
inspires me.

You can say of course there have been mistakes, deviations and
backtracking. Yes, there have been. But there are more positive
things than negative. That he has intervened in reforms that could
have shifted all the costs and burden to the people, two-third of
whom already live in poverty, he had enough courage to create his
own commissions which revised all these proposals, and it turned
out that if the housing and utilities sector had been reorganized
as Gref proposed, 55 percent of the population would not have been
able to pay all expenses at the new rates. And then Gref began to
say that the reform would stretch in time for 15 years.

The same with the RAO UES reform. Everybody wants to satisfy
his own selfish needs despite the interests of the country and the
social situation. Therefore, the President's position that
everything that is done should be consistent with national
interests and the interests of the majority is the most important
thing. There may be successes and failures. We have to understand
this because this is a big and complex country. It used to be the
most militarized and totalitarian country with one party and one
ideology, with total control all the way down to kindergartens. We
have to get out of this. So let's support and help the President.
I see that he wants to work off the mandate he got in the
elections.

I am not turning a blind eye to what is happening. I see
everything. And I speak of many things. And I did this in my latest
article in Trud, where I said that the President should look at his
team and see whether he will be able to make corrections in the
social and economic reform program with this team.

Q: TBS. A question is about the team. Former GKChP members
believe that the law on the state of emergency was adopted with
your approval, that you were aware of everything. So it seems that
both you and they call each other, verbally and in writing,
traitors. Before, there was a balance of democrats and
conservatives in the government. But closer to the putsch, you
began to increase the number of conservatives, and when a critical
point was reached, we know what happened. Could you tell us why
this happened?

Gorbachev: This is the most interesting question for a
politician. And I can give you a brief or a very long answer. But
let me continue my previous thought. As the processes go deeper and
when it became clear that we had passed the point of return, and
the signing of the Union Treaty meant not the destruction of the
Union but an opportunity to give it a new lease of life, there was
a new party program that we planned to get adopted at an
extraordinary congress in November, and we wanted to separate all
trends within the CPSU, communist, liberal, social-democratic, and
plus the anti-crisis program that was supported by all republics.
It was prepared by the Pavlov government, and it consulted all
republics and they demanded that it be written on the front page
that they also participated in this work and it was their program
too. The Baltic republics participated in the work but they said
they would not sign it but agreed to act within the framework of
this program.

So after all the fighting and clashes, we were ready to start
solving the most important questions by the summer: the Union, the
anti-crisis program and party reform. So they realized that the
future did not belong to them. Laws like the law on the state of
emergency or the law on the secession from the USSR -- the Stalin
and Brezhnev Constitutions provided for self-determination and even
secession. You remember all this very well.

But the law on secession did not exist, because one thing was
written and a totally different thing was implemented. It was
written that we were a Union, a federation, but in reality it was
the strictest unitary state with a totalitarian regime. So in this
particular case, responding to your question and to make it short,
I can tell you that all these laws had to be adopted, including the
law on emergency rule, on presidential rule. It's not just that
this should be written down in the Constitution, that it can be
introduced with the consent of the republics, their supreme
soviets. There should also be a mechanism of how to do this.

What is a state of emergency? What does it mean? What is
allowed and what is not, what should be controlled and what should
not? Should representative bodies continue to operate, how should
the press operate, and other things? All this had to be explained
very clearly. All normal democratic countries whose constitutions
provide for a state of emergency or constitutional rule have this
spelled out. So these laws were being drafted and, by the way, the
law on the state of emergency was adopted.

Starting in the fall of 1990 when Russia started distancing
itself from the formation of the Union budget, the Food Fund and so
on -- extraordinary measures had to be taken in order to keep the
processes under control. So far, a different system is not in
existence. And by the way, when Yeltsin invited Union enterprises
under Russian jurisdiction, when he reduced their taxes, all this
was illegal. One should have adopted a different system before
doing all that and then you would have been free to impose any
taxes.

So, this struggle energized the political right, the political
right felt that measures should be taken because what was happening
was inadmissible. This was happening in January, February, March --
throughout the six months of 1991 the confrontation was mounting
and proposals were made more than once to impose emergency
measures. Sometimes I signed decrees on the application of certain
measures in energy, the coal industry and some other place. This
was approximately in April. So, those were all attempts on the one
hand to promote the process of reform and on the other hand to lose
control of the process. These are two sides of the same medal.

And the way they present it now is that they were working on
his instruction. Yes, the Supreme Soviet and the Supreme Soviet
commissions were working on these laws and what follows from that?

The important thing was that they came, seeing that they had
not managed to overcome Gorbachev politically, and they realized
that the would never gain the upper hand, they knew that they would
not solve by convening a congress -- even without Gorbachev --
first of all, this would not have been possible because the
deputies would have demanded the presence of Gorbachev. They
realized that they had only one path open to them, although it was
an adventure. When, after all the twists and turns, cardinal
questions were about to be solved, they embarked on this adventure,
on the coup. It was bound to fail. It was brewing. All these steps
were parts of a conspiracy.

The present governor, Khodyrev, in Nizhny Novgorod, when he
was in the Primakov government he gave an interview to a newspaper
and he boasted that he had been given an assignment in order to
topple Gorbachev on the eve of a plenary session, an assignment to
bring together commanders of military garrisons and he had already
come to an agreement with them.

They couldn't have done anything in the plenary sessions or
sessions of People's Deputies. What's why they embarked on this
adventure.

All the rest are attempts -- you see, Gorbachev spoke so
nicely to them and he used sweet talk and a conciliatory tone, --
those are attempts to suggest that nothing wrong had happened. He
just didn't have the guts, he didn't want to tarnish his image as
a democrat. Why not? If I decided that a state of emergency had to
be imposed in Baku, I went ahead. And later I saw from the
experience of Baku what this could lead to.

So, they are building scenarios that never really existed.
Yes, we worked, all worked. The Supreme Soviet, and the commissions
worked on these projects, but not only on these projects but
chiefly -- yes, it was suggested that Gorbachev was absent from the
session on June 22, that he went into hiding in order to distance
himself from the event. And what was Gorbachev was actually doing
on June 22 and not only on that particular day but for all those
days? We were finalizing the Union Treaty in Ogaryovo with all the
leaders of the republics. So, was I in hiding? This is an attempt
to fiddle things. To suggest that I was shirking decisions, was
washing my hands. This is all rubbish.

I am telling you once again. We will publish all the records
and documents and it will become clear who was pulling in what
direction and who said what and what Gorbachev's position was.

Don't believe them. They are liars, dyed in the wool liars.

Terekhov: Colleagues, I have a suggestion. We are into a
second round of questions about the 10th anniversary of the putsch.
Perhaps, we could pass on to questions on more topical issues? How
do you feel about it?

Gorbachev: Well, isn't it all topical?

Q: I would like to ask for a clarification about the visit to
Pavlov. You said that you told them to go to hell.

Gorbachev: I have already published it and I don't want to
repeat it. It is universally known.

Q: At the end of the trial of Varennikov the judge said that
Varennikov was acquitted (inaudible) ... shook hands with all the
comrades.

Gorbachev: Good topic. They make great play of it. But
throughout the years of perestroika when we had to change our lives
and our views and assessments of history and especially the present
and more specially the future I managed in the discussions that
sometimes lasted for ten hours on end at the politburo, in a narrow
circle, and at the sessions of the Supreme Soviet, I managed to
persuade people with arguments and to uphold my line and my
position.

Perhaps, there were only very few occasions, I can't even
think of one now, when I failed to do that. And this was in the
days when you wrote, Gorbachev talks too much. But what was there
to do if even the people closest to me did not understand which way
we were moving. I had to speak and to repeat to people, like Lenin,
when he was introducing the New Economic Policy, he spoke five
times a day on the same topic. You can read his articles of the
time and you will see that whatever audience he was addressing,
teachers, trade-unionists, soldiers, young people, women,
apparatchiks and so on he was harping on the topic of NEP.

So, we, too, had to drum it into people's heads so that it
should sink in to people. And I would like to say one more thing.
It is alleged that we did nothing openly. Well, even on that
occasion I told them, you are adventurists, this will be your
undoing, but to hell with you, this is your business. But it will
also be the undoing of the country. A congress or a supreme soviet
has to be convened. I will present my report and you will present
yours. And we will leave it to the congress to decide.

You think that you know the situation in the country better
than I do? Well, I know it better than you. The situation is what
it is. But in order to resolve it this is what we are doing: an
anti-crisis program, the signing of a treaty and so on. And what do
you propose? You want to stage a coup. You want to usurp power. I
will not hand over power to Yanayev, even temporarily. At that time
Varennikov -- he seems to be denying it and the trial acquitted him
-- but actually, for your knowledge, he is a sinister individual.
Just yesterday or the day before yesterday he said, it is a pity
that I was in Kiev at the time, I should have arrested Gorbachev
and Yeltsin and some other people and make short work of them. He
was sending cables from there. All this has been published, it is
not only in the materials of the trial. And he told me, "you've got
to resign". And I told him, "no way".

"So, I am telling you again as someone who wants you to
understand it and so that we should not meet with disaster. A
congress has to be convened immediately."

By the way, they said that they had invited me. Well, Tolstoi
told you yesterday how they invited me. They locked me up behind
three rings of security and they increased the number of patrol
vessels off coast by two or three times. This is what I expected.
I rose, came up to them, shook hands and said, "Give them my
demands." And I also said that "holy" word.

Q: Looking back on what happened, could the putsch have been
prevented or it was destined to happen any way? (Inaudible)...

Gorbachev: I was so confident -- Rossiiskaya Gazeta published
questions to me from citizens today. And this question was there
too. I was so confident that only an idiot -- they are now referred
to as simpletons or even political vagabonds. No, these are serious
people, with rich experience. Don't portray them as being very
simple. They thought out carefully everything they did. They just
counted on good luck as we often do in Russia. However, they
realized from the very outset that they would not succeed. But the
nomenklatura supported them. The secretariat of the CPSU Central
Committee, except Stroyev, Semyonov and Andrei Girenko who had left
the secretariat, sent a telegram, demanding that regional communist
party committees support the GKChP. The Politbureau split. So I
think that the answer to your question is clear.

Q: A question about today. One of the greatest achievements of
perestroika and glasnost, of your era, is the disappearance of fear
in the Soviet Union. Today many feel that this fear is beginning to
creep back under Putin. How are you prepared to fight this
tendency, to keep this fear away?

Gorbachev: If your assessment is correct, and it has yet to be
seen whether it is correct, that people already fear today, I
listen to the radio and read the press, and I see that people don't
fear anything. Only the nomenklatura is shaking, fearing to lose
its trough in this fight.

Moreover, people have a very firm position. And I think
President Putin feels this. And I think that it was in response to
this feeling in society that gives him great support that he began
to take steps with regard to reforms. If we embarked on this path,
and this is one of the Stalin cornerstone principles of management
-- fear -- I believe it would be a mistake. Even if there are no
repressions. Even if fear is whipped up without anything else. I
think this would not allow us use the opportunities we will have to
get out of the crisis and move along the path of democracy and
reforms that will make the life in the country better and more
civilized.

So I think President Putin will not agree to this, at least as
far as I know him. I told him many times that there are many people
who fear that a new authoritarian regime may be created in the
country and that all democratic gains will be ruined. He reacts to
this very strongly and emotionally. He favors the rule of law, he
wants the judicial system to work, duties to be distributed, he
wants political parties to operate in the country because there can
be no democracy without political institutions that reflect the
interests of different sections of the population, etc. etc. He
even said that if he did only one thing during his presidency -- to
structure society politically -- he would consider his job done.

I believe his thoughts go in this direction. But at the same
time when he speaks, he always mentions the question of
responsibility and efficiency. He says that everything bogs down.
Presidential decisions sink. And then it is necessary to think
about how to make the state machinery work efficiently. Who can be
against efficiency?

He says that the press must be free but responsible. Indeed,
should we all be responsible and the press should be irresponsible?
I don't think so. Democracy presupposes both, requires all of us
who are involved in the democratic process to be responsible. So I
think there may be mistakes in this search for consensus and
balance. I don't think this is a policy. But there is no doubt that
we need control and efficiency in the country, that we need civic
activity. Otherwise we will not be able to get out of this
situation. I personally don't feel fear.

I think fear was created by Sovetskaya Rossia that came up
with this opus in August, 10 years on. I have to say that they are
right about many things. They pointed out many dangerous things
that the country and the President must see. But look at how they
conduct the discussion. It's nowhere near democracy. If they were
given a chance to dictate their will, they would. It's unacceptable
to talk in such a way to society and the President, and to stir up
emotions.

It reminds me of (inaudible)...

Q: You mentioned Lenin in a rather positive context.

Gorbachev: I think that he has the priority of convergence.
Later intellectuals in many countries, including here, began to
muse about the need for convergence and say that things should not
be brought to absurdity and confrontation. A synthesis is possible.
And I can tell you that we should choose our future not between
capitalism and socialism but we should integrate values that have
proved necessary. These will be liberal and socialist values. We
will never give up justice, solidarity, and not only we but the
whole world believes in these notions very strongly.

As for Lenin, I think no one will deny the fact that this was
a person of great magnitude not only in the Russian history but in
the world history as well. This person prepared a revolution and
led it. Secondly, what he was doing during the first four years
when power was in his hands, he was sidestepping from his
principles and got himself into a trap, so to speak, when the
country, through the peasant uprisings, the Kronshtadt mutiny, the
trade unions, etc., and even through workers' organizations, began
to oppose the way the Soviet power ran the country.

Kalinin, Rykov and others began talking about New Economic
Policy before he did, there is evidence to that effect. We simply
didn't know about it, but now we know. But nevertheless, he
admitted that, and said that we had taken a wrong road and made a
principal mistake, and that the view of socialism should be
drastically revised. Indeed, it was Lenin who said that the
proletariat won power with the help of democracy and ran the
country in reliance on democracy and democratic institutions. But
then he substantiated dictatorship and put it into practice.
Ultimately, he subjected himself to keen analysis and criticism,
and that is, in large measure, his exoneration.

And then, take a look at the results of NEP. In four or five
years the highest development level of tsarist Russia was achieved,
the 1913 level. There were cooperatives, trusts, incentives -- many
things -- concessions, private trading, with the command heights,
as he used to say, held by large-scale industry.

As a matter of fact, that was a very interesting project that
actually pulled the country out of a grave crisis, out of all that
ruin, collapse, disorder, and that was a peasant country without
any communications or anything else. That was done after the Civil
War. But Stalin, having come to power, relied in his writings --if
you read them, especially The Fundamentals of Leninism -- he relied
on all the statements Lenin made in the war communism period. But
everything that was found in later works, everything Lenin did in
the latter-day period, ailing and close to death, was hushed.
Moreover, they said it was the delirium of the ailing Lenin, the
ailing leader.

I think that we would have a different scenario if Lenin had
not died at 54. It would have been a different development
scenario.

That is why I have respect for Lenin. I'm critical of him,
sharply critical because with all that he was nevertheless often
captive to his dogmatic tenets. And he would choose splits and
rifts, and so on, instead of seeking consensus and accord. I cannot
agree with that. But what he did in the latter years deserves our
keeping his heritage in the treasure-house of our historic
experience and study and ponder it.

Q: (off-mike)

Gorbachev: Well, you know, what does this mean? We had to
borrow, but not in the amounts that are cited all the time --
Pavlov and Ryzhkov offered their clarifications already, and they
know what they are talking about -- but nevertheless, we did that.
But then, Russia said it would pay back everything herself. She
said she would take over the nuclear weapons, and assume the debts,
but along with the property abroad, the value of which exceeds the
debts. That is why debts are to be repaid. Or negotiations should
be conducted. But not like the Chernomyrdin government started to
pay the French, after 50 years -- no, after 80 years. No, this
won't do.

I'm not going to wash my hands of anything that happened in my
time. But as for mistakes that were perhaps made, someone asked
about that, as I said, there were miscalculations, major
miscalculations. I did not tell everything. I think that we could
have secured an opportunity to resolve the problem of purchasing
power, of that money overhang over the market, and remove that
contradiction where there was a lot of money and nothing to buy.
How was that to be accomplished? Merely by cutting the military
budget by 20 percent, and that was all. 105 - 108 billion rubles,
officially -- no, we officially said four percent, in reality it
was 25, and in fact up to 50, all that was expended on war.
Therefore, that could be resolved as well. Occasionally we
overlooked things, and occasionally circumstances interfered, and
the political infighting consumed so much time and effort that we
had no chance to address practical problems.

But that was an unprecedented reform project. Just look at it
-- our subject of reform was the Soviet Union. A huge and diverse
country, with worlds upon worlds of peoples, cultures and faiths.
The highest degree of militarization and the most rigid
bureaucratic state. A single ideology, suppression, dissent,
freedom, mentality -- indeed, we wanted a state like a social
security service. All that was to be redone. So, I say, gradually,
slowly... . I like Putin treading cautiously, the caution with
which he proceeds, although he promptly senses the moment when
intervention is required, and he does intervene.

Q: What do you think of the age limit for presidential
candidates, and would you run if the age limit is cancelled?

Gorbachev: The age limit principle is correct, and if need be
something else could be done. But I will not run. I visited Rostov
the other day, together with Konstantin Alexeyevich Titov, we
convened our activists in the last, 7th district, the activists of
our two parties, to discuss problems of unification. And we
publicly stated there that we -- we were asked the same question,
whether we would participate in the presidential elections -- we
will, but today, and we think that our position will be the same
tomorrow, we say that we will support the incumbent. He will bruise
himself heavily -- he has already done so -- but he has learned a
great deal, he is making progress. I think that if nothing happens,
no upheaval, I think that we should put our stakes, all of us, on
Putin so that he could carry his plans through.

Q: What did you know in 1991, Shevardnadze and you, about the
possibility of emergency rule being called in the USSR, and how
would the situation have developed, in your view....

Gorbachev: Have you just come in?

Q: Sorry, and how would the situation in the country have
developed if the GKChP plan had succeeded?

Gorbachev: First, the fact that they decided to establish the
GKChP -- I don't know, but they had arrived at that in the last few
days, even Yanayev learned about that on the same day, on the 18th,
the day before. But the fact that that reactionary part of my
entourage all the time, through plenary meetings, the Soyuz group
in the Congress, and the press, had been encouraging criticism of
the situation and kept demanding that tough measures be taken -- I
understood that, generally -- even when I addressed the USSR
Supreme Soviet session on the 26th of September -- of August, upon
returning from Foros -- I said that, generally, a conspiracy had
been brewing, and I already discussed that background. But I
believed that they would not succeed, that they were doomed to
fail. So, I went away for a rest, at least for ten days.

But if I were to recall what that final year had been for me,
it was some kind of madness. The year 1991. I am surprised that I
have managed to survive without losing self-control. So, I felt
that I had to take a holiday of ten days. Because I knew that
immediately after my return an important job was to be done.

Q: How would the situation have developed?

Gorbachev: I don't think they had a chance to win. That was
ruled out. And in general, I look at your generation and at people
still younger than you. They are the generation who are assuming
responsibility for the country and nobody can force these people to
backtrack. No one. That is why they are so vigilant when it comes
to freedom, democracy and so on. This is very important. And we
should look to these generations. As for old people, you should
care for them and these generations should be given an opportunity
to fulfill themselves.

These generations are not burdened with the past. And this is
very important.

And on the other hand, I am sure everyone has become persuaded
that the project of radical liberalism is a dangerous project. Even
President Yeltsin in his last address to the Federal Assembly said
that only 12 percent of the population benefited from the reform
and all the rest had lost. And now because prices are growing and
all sorts of tariffs are growing -- people are scared of this,
above all. So, I would seriously criticize this line. Developed
countries are rejecting radical liberalism, they have criticized
and are revising the Washington Consensus concept. The state must
play its role. Without it neither education, nor the processes of
innovation can go on. The state should play a new role in the new
conditions. And we are turning back to "savage capitalism". No,
this is unacceptable.

So, what remains is the social-democratic project. This is the
direction in which the answer should be sought.

So, I think people are beginning to understand it. I see how
-- you see, it is not easy to set up a party in a short year and a
half. We have created organizing groups in 78 regions and in some
we have even set up considerable organizations. And people are
showing interest in what we are doing. Young people have responded
and we have set up a Union of Young Social Democrats. This was done
at the initiative of young people themselves. They were delegates
to the main congress, they accounted for 25 percent of the
delegates there and at the end of the congress they asked to meet
us and said, let us set up a youth alliance of social democrats. 72
percent of its members are students. Well, they are the most
dynamic group, those who will run our lives tomorrow.

I hope that we have learned something. And that is why I have
decided to organize this project, the creation of a United Social
Democratic Party.

Terekhov: We have been working for an hour and 20 minutes. How
are you off for time?

Gorbachev: Let us work until half past one.

Q: Do you see any link between the failure of the putsch ten
years ago and the present stability under Putin?

Gorbachev: I would put it this way. I would like there to be
stability. But the social strains are such that sometimes one
feels that kerosene is flooding the country and a single match can
set everything on fire. So, let us not be euphoric about stability.
On the contrary, I think that President Putin has tried to do
something to extract the country from the chaos that he has
inherited from the Yeltsin era, but this is only the beginning of
his project. And I think we should back the president.

Q: Do you see yourself in the policy pursued by Putin?

Gorbachev: What else? If there had been no perestroika, none
of this would have come about.

Q: Actually, I wanted to ask you about the putsch. But there
is one coincidence that frankly, I find surprising. You support
Putin and the coupsters today, ten days on, also support Putin.
What does one make of it? Is it that Putin can please different
currents, even opposite ones, or have some of them changed during
the past ten years?

Gorbachev: What I am telling you is a serious and
well-thought-out and solid position. What they say, they have
berated him. Just read the last speech of Zyuganov in which he says
that the president has not lived up to expectations. But today they
have united and they support him. But it is anyone's guess what
they will say tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and especially
what they will do. So, these are people whom you should take with
a pinch of salt.

Q: NHK, Japan. After ten years it has become fashionable to
describe the events of 1991 and everything that followed as a
revolution. One economist compares it to the bourgeois revolution
in England. Do you agree with this interpretation? And can you
define in one or two words --

Gorbachev: Some say revolution and others say evolution. But
in general I think it was a very acute, revolutionary moment.
Because it changed the direction and after that -- of course, what
was done in the period of perestroika as regards democracy, freedom
and glasnost and the commitment to building a market economy and
openness to the world, all that has remained -- but the balance of
political forces has changed. But even after that the revolution
had its ebb and flow and setbacks, and as a result we have what we
have.

My attitude is as follows. I for one described perestroika as
a revolution. Why? One can look at it in different ways. We usually
think of a revolution as something like a storm, an atmospheric
discharge after which everything changes. But profound
revolutionary changes in property, the political process, the
social sphere, and the spiritual sphere can also bring about
revolutionary changes.

Political scientists would be up in arms against it. They are
probably listening to me now and saying that Gorbachev is meddling
in other people's business. We have neatly defined what is a
revolution and what is a counter-revolution and what is Bonapartism
and conformism and so on. I don't think it is all that important.
But the fact that life changed its direction and the situation
changed dramatically. In general, Yeltsin's strategy was that the
country had to be destroyed and that Russia could more quickly
carry out all the reforms and modernize if it went it alone. I
think that this alone is a revolutionary change. But that is as far
as the form is concerned. As for the substance, I'd say that we
were thrown off the path of gradual movement toward a
social-oriented economy, democracy and spiritual freedom and
plunged into wild capitalism. So think about this, is this a
revolution if we have been plunged into wild capitalism? Let
theoreticians explain this to you.

Q: (Off mike.)

Gorbachev: Come closer.

Q: I am just wondering how you appraise Shevardnadze in
December 1990 when he warned of dictatorship, and in August 1991
when he congratulated Yeltsin? And don't you want to say today what
Shevardnadze said in December 1991?

Gorbachev: A Georgian-Russian question. An interesting
question. I think that in 1990 Shevardnadze left at a very critical
time. I don't call it treachery because he made it publicly.

Q: (Off mike.)

Gorbachev: Don't worry. I am speaking. Why are you so afraid?
You asked your question, now keep quiet. I think he left me at a
difficult time without even warning me. I asked him why he had done
this. After all we were big friends. And he said, "I knew you would
not agree." That was his explanation. I think he made a mistake
because -- moreover, he was driven by his Caucasus temperament.

Gorbachev sent Primakov to the Middle East and Shevardnadze
was not trusted either. Nonsense. On the contrary, everybody had to
work because all processes were very acute. I trusted Shevardnadze
completely.

As for the fact that he congratulated Yeltsin in August, what
can I say? I congratulated him too. As soon as my telephones were
switched on, Yeltsin was the first person I talked to and I
congratulated him. I said this publicly, although I remember what
happened afterwards and how Yeltsin acted in the fall of 1991 when
on the one hand, he participated in the drafting of a new treaty
and initialed it. I still have blueprints with his corrections.
These were minimum corrections because he agreed with most of it.
I have all this in my archive. But look at what he was doing behind
my back.

And then all of a sudden he raised the question of Ukraine's
independence. Wait a minute. Before Ukraine, all republics has
proclaimed their independence. So what are we talking about?
Independence means stronger positions in negotiations on a new
treaty. Based on these positions, throughout the fall, all
republics, except the Baltic republics and some other which did not
participate, but major republics participated.

So I congratulated Yeltsin publicly on his outstanding role in
defending democracy. But what he did after that was a mistake. It's
neo-Bolshevism: to do everything in one stroke. It has failed
everywhere. And it could not be done in our country in particular.

I cannot say that many things happened during this 10 years
under Yeltsin that made us a different country. Businessmen
appeared, we count on the state less, we think more how to organize
our life, and some other things too. But I have to say that Yeltsin
was very careful with perestroika democratic gains. After all, many
of them survived. But that doesn't overweigh and is 10 or 100 times
less than what he did to the country.

Finally, his relationship with Yeltsin. I think it is bad that
we no longer have good relations between Russia and Georgia
although we had them for centuries. I think it's not normal. It's
temperament. We have to take this into account when we deal with
them.

I think that sooner or later these relations will be restored,
although there are certain forces abroad that would not like good
relations between Russia and Georgia to be restored. I think that
at some point Shevardnadze hoped that he would be praised in the
West. Just as Yeltsin did, by the way. They are big friends. He
hoped that he would be praised in the West for destroying communism
and the country into the bargain. But we all know what happened.

We are facing the need, under Putin, to find a way to
normalize relations, to build good, normal and respectful
relations. But this will require Putin to put forth certain
initiatives and President Shevardnadze make appropriate adjustments
too.

Q: Kommersant-Daily. Have you accepted the offer to join
Putin's team?

Gorbachev: I thought I was already there. I support him and I
don't make it a secret. Do you mean that I should get a salary if
I join his team?

Q: No, I mean a position.

Gorbachev: I am quite satisfied with my current salary. No,
comrades, I am not going to join any political structures, I mean
state structures. But this does not mean that I will say away from
politics. I will do politics even more and I will support the
President. I think this will be more valuable than if I became a
clerk. Besides, this is not acceptable to me.

Q: Should Russia strive to achieve European levels of
democracy in market economy?

Gorbachev: It certainly should.

Q: And when will it be able to achieve these levels?

Gorbachev: Life will show.

Moderator: Thank you very much. I think it's a record. We have 28 cameras here.

******

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