BBC transcript 8 March 2002 Mikhail Gorbachev: Talking Point Special
Bridget Kendall: Welcome to this special edition of Talking Point in Moscow. I'm Bridget Kendall and I'm joined here by the former Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev who will be answering some of the 700 questions we've received.
Mikhail Gorbachev: Thank you for your invitation.
Bridget Kendall: It's 10 years since Mr Gorbachev stepped down as Soviet President and it's over 15 years since he began the reforms that were to shake the foundations of the USSR and that's where our first question begins. It's from Timo Nurminen in Helsinki, Finland and he asks: When did you first realise that the system you were living in was flawed? When you were younger or only when you assumed power?
Mikhail Gorbachev: I must say that it is of course a long process and first of all my life and politics when my responsibilities kept growing all the time and when for almost 10 years I was in charge of a region because then I found myself in a situation when I had to take decisions which were required by life itself and then I saw with all my large rights I couldn't solve many things. I thought that it was just outside my region where I worked but then I found myself in Moscow in the Political Bureau and I worked for seven years with Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernencko - and then I realized that were lots of things I couldn't do - the system was hampering me and then I thought about reforms - that was that.
Secondly, I had an illusion just like Kruschev and Kosygin did that through partial reforms to improve socialism, to improve the system, to make it work - we were talking all the time. I had been talking about the advantages of the system as compared to the capitalist system and the illusion was there and then it collapsed and I realised it was necessary to change the system in 1988. It was before political reform began with free elections, with the division of powers into judicial executive legislative power. The freedom, the pluralism in politics, pluralism in the economy, the right to elect parties - confessions and so on.
Bridget Kendall: Was there a moment when you realised the Communist Party was the enemy of reforms?
Mikhail Gorbachev: Already after 1986 when we had held the 27th Congress, we had hoped that it would provide a stimulus for the whole society. Nevertheless, I went on my own because I couldn't trust such information - even to the closest people - it was difficult. I travelled around the country myself and I saw and people told me directly - we believe in you, really, we have to reform to change it, we are tried of all this life - that here the local authorities - the local bosses do not take anything in - they are not changing. They say we survived Kruschev, we survived Kosygin - we'll survive you, Gorbachev - they come and go and we're here forever. And I began to think about this and the more we tried to enable people - the citizens - to give them the freedom of speech, freedom to criticize, independence, the right to initiative, the right to hire production facilities and to do their own business. The more active we were in our search for ways to set society in action, the more the apparatchiks were stalling us because they were used to hold all the strings in their hands so that everybody would depend on it and they were just governing everything.
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Bridget Kendall: Jiadong Sun, London: It seems to me that Communism in the Soviet Union ended quite dramatically. Would you rather have taken more gradual steps or did it slip out of your control?
Mikhail Gorbachev: We can talk about different things here. When he talks about this, I think he means the Soviet Union disintegrated. As for Communism, communism is not the Soviet Union, Communism is a whole system of countries - as we called them the socialist and capitalist camps and the bit about the defeat of a Communist model. It was the model used by the Bolsheviks which relied on dictatorship and not on democracy. Then there was a gap straight away between what they were going to do and what they promised to do and what they did in the end. We took the wrong path. We decided to use dictatorship and not to introduce the Communism straight away. We said it was a mistake. We started to talk about private property about cooperative concessions, co-operative ventures, about this new economic policy. And the country blossomed. We reached the pre-First World War level. People can do a lot when the conditions are right and Lenin disappeared and everything went back to dictatorial methods as a result. We had the totalitarian system as a result.
This system - we Communists - the new generation of Communists understood that this system wasn't working that it was beginning to fail and showing that we were lagging behind. Before we were managing to catch up with other countries and we were beginning to lag behind in agriculture. Productivity was three times lower than before in industry as well. There was a lot of wastage. It was a wasteful economy. The resources that we were spending - one would have two GDPs and it did not happen. The system was to blame and it was the anti-democratic moral which was defeated - dictatorial model.
The consequence of the Perestroika was that it brought the country from a totalitarian system to democracy. Yes, in that way, yes that was the model. Some people thought that it will bury socialist values with that, but it doesn't work like that. How many times did they bury - as we buried capitalism and liberal values, the other side buried socialist values - but both are still there. And the conclusion is that we need liberal values - freedom, the values of socialism as well - like justice, solidarity. Can we say that we are living in a just world now? No.
Responsibility
Bridget Kendall: To pick you up on what you were saying about the collapse of the Soviet Union. We've had a question from Ernest Merril, Antigua and there are many others, particularly Russians it seem, who have sent us a question like this. He says: I blame you Sir for the collapse of the Soviet Union and other people share my sentiments. Sir, do you believe I am justified in saying that?
Mikhail Gorbachev: I have a different opinion. It's up to him what he thinks, he has his right to think so. Since he asked me, I will say. I fought to the last for the preservation of the Soviet Union - for reforming it. The Soviet Union needed reform, it was true. It was a huge machine, it couldn't manoeuvre, it was over-centralised, it was over-bureaucraticised. It had a system where one party ruled, where one ideology existed. Everything was under control, from a nursery to big industries. This machine was not working - the system wasn't working - and it needed reforming. This is what the Soviet Union needed
Over the years of the Soviet Union on ethnic groups - large ethnic groups like 52 million in the Ukraine, 10 million in Belarus, 16 million in Kazikstan, 20 million in Uzbekistan. Republics had grown up - whole states - but they were treated like regions - they had no rights. This is why they had to be decentralised. If we hadn't done that then the process of disintegration would begin. When the putsch undermined it, the union treaty had already been ready for signing and the putsch undermined it and then disintegration did begin then.
After the putsch I tried to negotiate a new option, a new variant for the Soviet Union and then the national elite starting acting. They saw a chance to shake off the influence of the centre - to acquire independence to use it. As a result all the polls, even now, show people regret the disintegration of the Soviet Union. But when they're asked do we need to restore it - only 5, 7 - maximum 9% say yes. Which means that what I did in reforming, it was saving the Soviet Union. I would have done it differently - democratic - more flexible with confederate relations inside. Now we are looking for new ways of integration because everybody needs cooperation - even Burbulis who wrote documents for the Agreements of Belovezhskaya Puscha. He says now Gorbachev's vision was right.
Bridget Kendall: But who then do you think is to blame for the break up of the Soviet Union if it's not you?
Mikhail Gorbachev: I already said that the process of reforms was undermined - it was sabotaged - it was the organisers of that coup first of all who sabotaged it and then Yeltsin decided to implement his ambitions. I fought until the end for the preservation of the Soviet Union. It was under my leadership that the new Union Treaty had been prepared. And when the union was already in the republic's parliaments for approval then Yeltsin gathered in Belovezhskaya Puscha the known participants. In August the Communists who staged a coup d'etat saying that Gorbachev was putting the Soviet Union in danger and that they were saving the Soviet Union - in fact it was the other way around; they were just trying to save themselves. When Yeltsin, Kravchouk and Shushkevich made these proposals on the dissolution of the Soviet Union in Moscow in Parliament where 86% were Communists, they voted for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I was on my own and it seemed as if I was the only one who needed it.
Coup
Bridget Kendall: Nigel, London: Preparations for the failed coup against you in 1991 seem to be underway for about a year. To what extent were you aware of them?
Mikhail Gorbachev: The putsch was in preparation for a year - this is a big claim. The person who was asking thinks he knows more than we do. There was fighting between various groups who had already emerged in the leadership of the Soviet Union in the Soviet Parliament. I would remind you that in the autumn at the meeting of the Congress of the People Deputies Sazhi Umalatova at the instruction of her group at the instruction of the head of parliament - she was putting forward a proposal in order to remove Gorbachev from the presidential post and she failed in April at the Plenum of the central Communist Party - they tried to remove me from the post of the head of the Communist Party.
All the attempts to pursue an open political fight against me - to use democratic means to remove Gorbachev from power - they all failed and then they decided to stage a coup d'etat. I knew that there was discontent. I knew about their positions but politically they had been failing - that's why they decided to stage a coup d'etat. And when they decided to do it - when the draft of the union treaty had already been ready when we had a political programme and all the republics had approved it - even the Baltic ones who said that we would comply with them though we will not sign them. And then in July we adopted a plan to reform the CPSU and in November 1991 we were going to discuss it at another Congress of the People Deputies.
Resignation
Bridget Kendall: We have a question here from an English schoolboy, Brian Witham, from Britain: He says, in our history lessons at school, we have to debate the real reasons for your resignation. Can you tell me what they were?
Mikhail Gorbachev: I cannot say I did it on my own accord. When a meeting gathered in Belovezhskaya Puscha and announced a dissolution of the country and then after all these arguments they do agree to dissolve the Soviet Union and then it happens that there is no state of which I was a president. They decide then if the supreme councils, which under Gorbachev had just been selected during free elections. Those supreme councils - parliaments - who reflect the real interest of the people and they speak for the dissolution of the Soviet Union - then I took that position.
Why did people react like that? They thought that the Commonwealth - as it was announced in Almaty - it was just a softer version of the Soviet Union and in reality it was just a ploy. They said that that the same economic space would be preserved - the same financial policies - that the reforms would be coordinated, that the united armed forces would still be there, that the foreign policy would be the same. All the signs of the Soviet Union - but nothing was there. During the next three months it was all gone. It was a just a ploy for the people. The people thought that maybe Yeltsin and his team would manage to put them together better. People were confused - totally confused. Then despite that, I spoke virtually every day on the subject - sometimes such things happen.
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Personal
Bridget Kendall: Our last question is an even more personal question. It's from Vadim in Israel who sent this to our Russian service website: What kind of books do you like to read and what your personal tastes are in culture?
Mikhail Gorbachev: I like reading and of course I have read a lot of Russian books and I like Soviet authors. There is a lot of interesting things there although there is a lot of emptiness there as well. French, English, American - I cannot be limited to one book. I can name several French, American - a dozen Russian authors. When I was young, I liked Jack London and then Fitzgerald and Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind. Now I read more books which study the processes of transformation that is happening in the world. My house is full of such books. I am all submerged in this life over the past years. Even with Raisa - especially after she died I go to the theatre less. I used to love the theatre - now there are lot of new Russian authors - I don't know their work, which I regret, but I haven't got time. My energy is limited.
Bridget Kendall: There is lot of interest - always has been - in your wife - you must be lonely after the death of Raisa.
Mikhail Gorbachev: To finish the talk about books, I want to tell people, especially young ones, that no TV programmes, including the one we are now taking part in, will ever replace books. People have to quietly be alone with a book to have time to think and not just to watch the screen on which scenes keep changing and nothing is clear. A book is a person's salvation.
As for your question - yes, lonely - the pain is still there. I travel, you work to the limit. What saves me is that my daughter Irina and my granddaughters moved in with me. I understand what it took them - that they had to uproot their live but I'm grateful. Recently I turned 71 and the first thing in the morning I went to Novodevichye Cemetery to Raisa's grave. I took her favourite flowers there - yes lonely. But at my age to stay alone - of course it's always good when friends are there and when your wife is a friend not just in terms of her intellect but also her friendship. We had a lot of happiness. When you talk together - when you have to stay 70 on your own - it's difficult.
Bridget Kendall: That's all we've got time for in this special edition of Talking Point from Moscow. My apologies to those of you whose questions we didn't manage to ask out of the 700 and more that have come to us. But thanks to all of you who did ask your questions. And my main thanks of course go to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for this chance to explore his insights both into the past and into the future.
Mikhail Gorbachev: Good luck.