RADIO INTERVIEW WITH MIKHAIL GORBACHEV EKHO MOSKVY RADIO, 20:00, APRIL 26, 2005 SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/)
Ganapolsky: Good evening. I am Matvei Ganapolsky. And welcome to our usual evening program Eshcho Vykhod, although our guest is anything but usual. I wish we had him more often. An outstanding man of our times, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, President of the USSR. Good evening, Mikhail Sergeyevich.
Gorbachev: Good evening, good evening dear listeners.
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Venediktov: Mikhail Sergeyevich, it's a strange story. On the one hand, we are conferring citizenship on the daughter of General Denikin who was born in Yekaterinodar at the time it was the scene of fighting. On the other hand, we put up monuments to Stalin who was a commissar of the Revolutionary Military Council precisely at that time. A strange story. Is it part of our destiny to always combine hot and cold, white and black?
Gorbachev: Yes, it is a unique story, and it's hard to think of more complicated and tangled life stories than the life stories of our people. Part of the reason may be that we have been living on this space for a thousand years.
Venediktov: And fighting each other.
Gorbachev: And still so many peoples have been brought together here. In the Soviet Union 220 languages and dialogues were spoken. A world of cultures, a world of religions and of course all the processes here are very complicated. But I think, it's great that she has got Russian citizenship. I welcome the President's move. When the President makes such a move, it is different than when somebody puts a monument to Stalin or carries a portrait of Stalin.
But I was stunned when Gryzlov suddenly started talking in this vein and I reacted promptly. True, by the evening of the same day he began to deny his words. But the fact remains.
One shouldn't confuse things. One shouldn't trample underfoot our difficult history, one should study it and find grounds there for strengthening our spirit so that you should always feel that you are standing with your feet on your own land.
Venediktov: But, Mikhail Sergeyevich, you used to be the leader of the same party as Stalin. You were the General Secretary at the time.
Gorbachev: I am just coming to that, to Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin.
Venediktov: Yes.
Gorbachev: When I delivered my report in 1987 and said that Stalin's hands were dripping with blood and that he had given orders to liquidate outstanding people, hundreds of people. I had to say this. But there were many who were not pleased. Why is he going after Stalin? You know what my life has been like. The war ended and I finished school. I joined the Communist Party. My granddad approved of it, my father, a war veteran approved of it. Soldiers came back from the war. They had won the war and they brought hope with them. But they also discovered that people lived better in the countries where they had been. This was the mood of the time.
When I was in the tenth grade at school, I joined the Party and wrote a composition on the topic "Stalin Is Our Battle Glory". I did it sincerely. Absolutely. But having lived my life and gone through everything and when I was at the very top and looked at the things that had been done... Even my grandfather who was sentenced to death, but survived by miracle, didn't believe that it was done on Stalin's orders. It was hard to believe. Soviet government had given us land, otherwise we would have died. My father died and we lost our breadwinner. But Soviet government saved us. And it was associated with Stalin.
When victory came, Stalin was getting the whole credit for it. But as soon as the war veterans presented their claims, Stalin said, too many heroes, too many victors. There is only one winner.
So, for me, I would put it this way: I reject these moves, these portraits and busts, etc. It means not to respect one's own history. We should know history, but we should call things by their real names. But we must
understand our history.
Ganapolsky: We'll make a brief pause now. They say that once Gorbachev starts talking, there's no stopping him. But amazingly --
Gorbachev: I've stopped.
Ganapolsky: By yourself.
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Radzikhovsky: I just wanted to ask you, Mikhail Sergeyevich. How do you account for it? After all, nobody knew anything before 1956. The 20th Party Congress was like a bombshell. When you spoke in 1987, people already knew a lot more, but still, it came as a revelation to many people. Now, of course, everyone knows that there were tens of millions of people murdered and they know that Stalin himself signed death sentences on thousands of people. All that is known. And yet it is the same old story: monuments are being erected, etc.
Gorbachev: The older generation attribute it to his leadership during the war. They don't look at the details of how he exercised his leadership and just how much credit is really due to him. But whole generations attribute victory to his leadership. That's one thing. Secondly, two thirds of the people live in misery, in poverty, they are humiliated. And they believe that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a great misfortune -- and I agree with them there. 60 percent of all our misfortunes should be attributed to this. All the links have snapped. We are trying to extricate ourselves from this situation. They live in poverty and they look back to the Stalin times.
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Ganapolsky: A question from psychologist Alexander Surmalo, perhaps, the main question of this program: "Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich, I absolutely agree with you that the current Duma and the current government are too bad. But they are what President Putin would like to see. He created this mechanism in his vertical, tuned it in, lubed it and polished it. Do you think that the next Duma elected under the wise guidance of our President, Mr. Surkov and Mr. Veshnyakov will be different?" But this will be done by the next president. Could you comment?
Gorbachev: If the President fails to think it over and decide what should be done to perform the program he outlined in his two latest addresses, the President's history will be over. Those problems should be resolved. This explains why I think that we should support the President. They are tearing him apart and perhaps he is lacking support. We need to support him in those initiatives. Let him work.
Venediktov: Have I got you right that he is surrounded by the likes of Yanayev, who used to be your supporters and then started tearing your apart? Is he following the same path?
Gorbachev: You know, nothing repeats itself. All analogies are conventional.
You journalists like doing this, but as a politician I cannot afford this. I just think that he is facing a choice: either he makes everything possible for the people to feel economic growth, see their incomes grow letting them keep their families, deal with cultural problems or the people will resolutely protest. I will be disappointed to see the people coming out with protests.
Radzikhovsky: Perhaps, it would be wrong to ask you this question as a prominent Marxist, but still. Another outstanding Marxist, Vladimir Lenin, wrote that people will always be deceived as along as they cannot see the interests of particular social groups behind certain words. You certainly know those words by Lenin. There is a point of view that the President represents all Russian residents, that he is the President of the whole country, the President of all Russian residents, and this is fixed in the Constitution. But in fact he represents the interests of very particular social groups, bureaucracy surrounding him, even narrower groups of this bureaucracy, and he has pursued his policy in the interests of this group. Words are one thing, and interests are a different thing.
Gorbachev: During his first term of office the President accomplished what he had to accomplish. He inherited chaos, decline, disintegrating army and other sectors in a dire state. Had President Putin only done what he managed to do during his first term in office, had he stepped down after that, his name would have gone into history. People feel that. People are smarter than we think. This explains why there is support of 60, 70, 80 percent. They hope that now that the situation has stabilized, he will go farther. And I share their hopes.
When there were doubts that he will not be re-elected, I said he would be elected without any problem. But my question is: how does he use this power? Does he use it to resolve national problems, work in the interests
of the majority? Will he service certain interests to divide property and the like? I think he has failed to get out of that. He has to get out and make a choice.
--- Ganapolsky: Now we are asking our listeners a very simple, an ideal question. Does the speech by President Putin mark the start of Perestroika-2, an effective change of course, as Mr. Gorbachev is suggesting. If your answer is yes, dial 995-81-21, if no, dial 995- 81-22. The voting is on.
Venediktov: While the commercial was running Mikhail Sergeyevich and I were talking. There are two points of view: either it is indeed a turning point, the start of a new course, or it is the inertia of the previous four years.
Gorbachev: What the government has been trying to foist on him, has already foisted early this year --
Venediktov: What can the government impose on him? What could the Ryzhkov government impose on you?
Gorbachev: It is imposing. This is the continuation of Gaidar's approach. It's the radicals, the liberals.
Venediktov: Who, Fradkov?
Radzikhovsky: All of them.
Ganapolsky: But you put the right question. Is it Fradkov or --
Radzikhovsky: The liberal, the democrat is always to blame.
Gorbachev: Why? Kudrin and Gref are my good acquaintances.
Ganapolsky: I see this scary picture. Gref and Kudrin driven into a tight corner in a Kremlin corridor.
Venediktov: It's we who are in a tight corner.
Ganapolsky: The tiny Putin squeezed between huge bodies, and only his command of karate saves him.
Radzikhovsky: Gref is not so huge.
Gorbachev: I do not rule out that the President is always present but having said what he said, he can no longer continue acting in this way.
Ganapolsky: 200 listeners have already called us. Is President Putin's speech actually --
Venediktov: A divergence from Gorbachev.
Gorbachev: You put the wrong question. What does that have to do with Gorbachev and perestroika? So, everyone who has a grudge against Gorbachev will blame it all on me. Okay, I am responsible for perestroika, I answer for the time that I was in power.
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Gorbachev: We have a running argument with Yakovlev. I ask him, why are you being so harsh on Lenin? Almost calling him a bandit.
Ganapolsky: Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev?
Gorbachev: Yes, yes. After four years Lenin declared that we had taken the wrong road and made a major mistake and we should revise our policy drastically, small and medium property, private trade, concessions and cooperatives and so on sprung up. This is Lenin for me. In a critical situation, to force Lenin to change his point of view... You know that he could split parties, newspapers, anything, but in the event the man realized that the wrong path had been chosen. He said before the Revolution that the proletariat would win power through democracy.
Venediktov: Yes, yes.
Gorbachev: And that it governs through democracy. History did not work out as he intended to. It followed a different course. And they seized power and established a Bolshevik dictatorship. But he saw what the "war Communism" and all that led to.
And Stalin took over after his death. And Lenin's letters, etc., had been hidden from everyone. When did we learn about them? I still didn't know about them when I was at university. Stalin was everything -- the fundamentals of Marxism and Leninism -- there was a thick gray volume, he wrote it on the basis of war Communism and he buried it. He overcame Bukharin, Kamenev and Trotsky. And so, the path of dictatorship was embarked on, a rejection of democracy. And we lived under a totalitarian system for 30 years. These were not just authoritarian methods, they were totalitarian. It had its own ideological instruments. So, why do we deny the current rulers --
Venediktov: Is Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) a latter-day Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin)?
Gorbachev: Hold on a minute, hold on. Vladimir Vladimirovich is Vladimir Vladimirovich.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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