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.