The New Russia

In the immediate future, it is most probable that a moderately authoritarian regime will be established in Russia and will be well received by the public. The political elite is opting in favour of regaining great power status, and Russian society, or at least a majority of it, is again hoping to prosper as a powerful nation.

Honest and total Glasnost is a prerequisite for any healthy society, including ours. Anybody who does not desire Glasnost for our country is no patriot and is thinking only of his own self-interest. Anybody who does not wish Glasnost for our fatherland does not want to rid it of its ills but only to drive them inwards and let them fester there.

The president bears responsibility for everything, in just the same way that nobody can absolve me of at least moral responsibility for everything that happened. The president cannot, however, be held to account for every incident and disaster. His job, his duty and foremost responsibility, is to learn the lessons from every incident and make sure it does not happen again. It is a matter here of the survival and security of the country and the state.

Despite the differences, of which we are both aware, you should know of the great interest being taken by the parties united in the Socialist International, and by no means only by them, in the proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Congress of the CPSU. …It would be improper for us to seek to interfere in your discussions, but needless to say, we are paying close attention to the new and varied interest being shown in the standpoint of social democratic parties and the Socialist International.

A number of people were in a great hurry to depict the dramatic events of the late 1980s and early 1990s as the ‘victory’ of economic liberalism and ‘the End of History’. They saw them as evidence that liberalism was now recognized as a universally applicable solution to all the fundamental problems of social life, leaving no room for other political perspectives. This theory has already been much criticized and, in my opinion, rightly so.

Liberal democracy has failed to provide the ultimate solution to the fundamental challenges of existence. Neither the broadening of economic freedoms nor political emancipation can of themselves produce a free, enlightened, moral individual. The institutions of the public sphere are vulnerable to subjection by vested private and group interests.

The downfall of totalitarianism in the former Soviet Union was the collapse of a particular system that was called ‘socialism’ and seen by many as such, whether from a hostile standpoint or with approval and a sense of solidarity. In reality it was not socialism. The values that usually inform the concept of socialism, however, are as relevant today as ever. They have inspired many generations of champions of liberty, equality and fraternity and have brought vast mass movements into being.

In my country today the very mention of ‘socialism’ irritates many people. Nevertheless, people cannot help wondering, ‘What comes next? Where are we headed?’ Many are nostalgic for the old Soviet social guarantees, which were nothing special but did exist. The government, the Communist opposition and many members of the so-called liberal intelligentsia make great play with social democratic ideals and slogans. There is food for thought here for anyone genuinely committed to the principles of democratic socialism. I believe political forces of a social democratic persuasion can and must play a much greater role in modern Russia.

I cannot see a fully satisfactory and successful future for Russia that does not involve the values of social democracy. At the same time, I am against dogmatically setting one variety of democracy against another. Pragmatic policy should be based on a synthesis of experience, ideas and values that have been tried and tested in practice in the past.

Russia is in a state of systemic crisis. The economy is crippled by monopolies and protectionism, the state by corruption, and society by organized crime. The small and medium-sized businesses that appeared in the Perestroika years are burdened with unfair levies and taxes, gangster protection rackets and extortion by officials.

The country’s fundamental social welfare provision has been undermined. The funds allocated by the state for science, culture, education and health are inadequate not only for these areas to function effectively, but even for them to survive. The income of those in work is insufficient to ensure a decent standard of living, and jobs are constantly being cut. The pauperization of millions of people affects their moral and physical health and life expectancy.

The RUSDP considers that the cause of this systemic, socio-economic crisis is erroneous strategic choices, disengagement of the government from the people, together with a profound moral and intellectual crisis inside it. The government is suppressing people’s initiative and thereby generating economic and social passivity and a loss of faith in democracy. If this pernicious tendency is not overcome through the joint efforts of a majority of citizens, Russia will be doomed to a dull existence on the margins of civilization.

Given this situation, the RUSDP proposes not only to its political supporters, but to society as a whole, a social democratic alternative to enable the country to progress.

…Our history has shown the unacceptability of a strategy of lagging behind the West. The RUSDP believes that the only alternative is competitive advancement of Russia by implementing a breakthrough strategy.

The RUSDP sees investment in human development and social programmes not as charity but as an important means of achieving modernization, economic growth and social progress.

DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, Perestroika is over. Instead of ‘the framework of the law’ we now have ‘sorting out a situation’. Instead of Glasnost, we have talk shows. Instead of ‘personal freedom’, consolidation of the state as a private business enterprise.

MG: For all that, I find much of what is happening now understandable and explicable. I have no reason at present to question the main intention of the president or his actions. It is, after all, a way out of the crisis, away from the chaos he inherited.

We have lived through what was effectively the risk that Russia might disintegrate, or at least relapse into regional feudalism. And, of course, we have experienced the dominance of the bureaucracy, especially the federal bureaucracy, where mafias brazenly made no secret of lending money for elections, for political power, in the expectation that they would be paid back later with public property They would help themselves to it, and already have. That has had, and is still having, an effect on the moral climate in society. So without an effort to restore public confidence that the government is properly concerned about national issues rather than just servicing these mafias, it will be impossible to get anything done. Governments do sometimes have to be authoritarian, to take action without giving lengthy explanations, and that can make it impossible to understand their measures.

DM: What is there not to understand? They are only too readily comprehensible.

MG: Everything is instantly clear to you young people, but I have seen a few things in my time, and I don’t find it quite so easy to know the truth about everything. And with the country in such a state… the Lord God Himself wouldn’t want to get involved. Even He hasn’t worked out what is going on yet.

DM: Well, sure. It’s the way it always is. We exchange the reforms for freedom, we exchange freedom for property, and the scope for democracy gets narrowed ‘in the interests of the people and democracy’.

MG: I’ll say it again, there are no grounds to accuse the president of being anti-democratic. I have been in his shoes and I can tell you that what Vladimir Putin has managed to do is in the interests of most of the people.

DM: Okay, let’s have some examples.

MG: Take education. The president is in favour of adapting it to the present day, but it needs also to be free and accessible. He intervened in the approach to reforming the public utilities to prevent radical changes being made at the expense of consumers.

DM: Meanwhile, the price of petrol is just soaring, right-hand drive cars are being banned, domestic manufacturers are again being favoured ahead of domestic consumers. Importing old foreign cars is being prohibited. Is that also in the interests of the majority?

MG: There are things in your list I would not have done, but the fact is that the president has to be involved in the battle for the domestic market. That is true also of the richest and most developed countries. See how they fight against letting us into their markets! The European Union has brought more than 60 anti-dumping lawsuits against Russia. Is that what they mean by ‘a new chapter in our relationship’? And at the same time, a third of farmers’ incomes in the EU comes from state subsidies. In other words, agriculture is being subsidized to make it competitive.

DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, they have rich consumers who can get by without second-hand, seven-year-old Russian vehicles, but how is our motorist, on a Russian income, supposed to get by without old, but cheap and reliable, cars?

MG: Perfectly true, but we do need to stimulate and encourage our mechanical engineering industry. At present what we still have functioning is mainly the raw materials sectors, metallurgical and chemical industries. Everything else needs to be modernized, and that takes time and needs protectionist measures.

DM: Life is short, Mikhail Sergeyevich. People want to live now, to be able to drive a car. They don’t always have enough time to be patriotic.

MG: And the ‘life’ of a president is even shorter: four years, or at most eight. He needed to make a difference to the country, to let it feel it can get out of this quagmire.

DM: It seems to me there is a contradiction between what you are saying now and what you did as president of the USSR. Gorbachev started a political reform, aware of the fact that without political freedoms and free citizens it is impossible to build a free economy. Now you are to all intents and purposes giving approval to a constricting of politics. Alternatives are out of fashion; nobody has any time for them. Everybody keeps saying there is no alternative, the choices have been made for many years to come. The Federation Council has been all but abolished. The State Duma has become a completely obedient, rubber-stamping body. I repeat, is the price of successful reforms really a reduction of political freedom? Can we honestly say that?

MG: Well, you just have, so freedom of speech is not defunct.

DM: In conversation with you.

MG: Yes… The situation in Russia is so complex and contradictory that the solutions are necessarily also going to be messy.

What I have seen of the president and the conversations I have had with him convince me that he is committed to democratic governance and has no intention of establishing some kind of authoritarian regime along even the neo-Stalinist lines of the times in which you and I lived and worked. I have absolutely no doubts about that.

I often notice the temperature being artificially raised when these issues are discussed, but I am absolutely sincere in my present position of supporting Putin. I wish the president every success. I think people do instinctively sense that the man is determined to haul Russia out of the morass she is stuck in. There are, however, very substantial forces who would like everything to remain just as it is. The status quo is principally what has developed over the past 10 years. There is a struggle going on between those who have everything, and for whom reform can only reduce their unmonitored and uncontrolled revenues, and the majority of the population, who are not so much living as just surviving.

To tell the truth, I think our greatest misfortune is that people’s morale and faith in the future have been undermined. For us, for the Russian mentality, that is a painful and dangerous state to be in. The way Russia functions is that, if people don’t feel valued, if they are again pushed to one side, all these plans for the future will come to nothing.

That means that the whole idea of maintaining the status quo and continuing the inertia of the previous 10 years, with a clique in control of everything, would spell disaster for Russia.

The president is talking more and more about the need for policies of innovation, policies to support grassroots initiatives. In a little more than two years several times more constructive laws have been passed than previously, and they have gone some way towards creating a climate of legality, but you are saying that nothing has changed.

DM: Absolutely. It seems to me that nothing has changed because all the courts are being bought piecemeal and wholesale by large oligarchical organizations to make sure they deliver the right verdicts. Authoritarianism is when you cannot get justice through the courts. It is when justice depends on whether you are admitted to an audience with the president, whether you have his ear or are kept away from him. And is that not the way things stand at present?

MG: What you are talking about is a tendency Putin wants to reverse. The preconditions are in place now to move forward. The preparations for judicial and administrative reforms, the search for a balance in the allocation of powers to get both the regional and local governments functioning are all steps in the right direction. But just see the effort required for every step forward in all these matters.

Without judicial reform and without an effective, independent court system, we stand no chance of combating the bureaucracy and corruption. It seems to me that the president is only beginning to tackle this issue of fighting corruption. And what are we to make of all the bureaucratic delays in trying to get the Duma to pass an anticorruption law?

DM: What Duma are we talking about? This Duma?

MG: On corruption, yes.

DM: All that is needed is a phone call and the first, second and third readings will be completed in half an hour.

MG: You are wrong. If it was that easy… A draft law, as you know, has been in the Duma’s portfolio for a long time, but there is no sign yet of when it might be adopted.

I am not remotely interested in providing an apologia for the president’s policies. I have no need of that. I am not one of those who dance attendance on him and compete for access to his presence, but I know from the president himself what his position is on this matter. He is not susceptible to flattery and cannot be swayed by obsequiousness. What we are observing only testifies to a dire shortage of good people. The president did once say that finding suitable people was currently his main problem.

Russia has reached a stage where it is time to replace a survival strategy with a development strategy. Decisions are needed on many matters. It is essential that we should see a thoroughgoing development of small and medium-sized businesses. We need an industrial policy.

What is needed is not a dictatorial approach, but laws. We should support the president so that all of us enjoy success. We should support him. The president and all of us need strength and political willpower. People understand the president, and that is the crucial resource that will enable us to overcome all resistance.

I consider it one of the president’s strengths that when he is preparing his speeches he does not forget he has a country standing behind him. Two-thirds of the Russian people are living on the poverty line. Where do we go from here? How many billions of roubles are exported out of the country every year? It is time that money was invested in our own economy.

In any case, where do these billions come from? I continue to insist that the country needs a systematic tax on natural resources. In Europe and the United States and other parts the world, I am constantly asked, ‘Why can’t you people just intelligently manage the wealth you have?’ Perhaps we should set up a Russian sovereign wealth fund for national development, like Norway, to accumulate proceeds from the sale of our mineral wealth. We have the revenue sources: all we need to do is manage them properly, for the good of our people.

DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, how is it that when you were undertaking the reforms the world came to know as Perestroika, free speech and transparency were helpful to it? Not all that much time has passed since then, but now we find that Glasnost and free speech are a hindrance to today’s reforms. How has this happened? To be more specific, why is it, for example, that when you were president the whole country was transfixed, watching live broadcasts of the Congresses of People’s Deputies? For the first time people found out many things about themselves, about you and about the Russian people. Now the government party refuses to participate in public debates.

MG: That is a good question. As regards the past, I will say openly that, if we had not first had Glasnost and then free speech, Perestroika as a wholly unique, difficult, risky policy would never have got off the ground. I am sure, even more certain now, that it would never have happened.

Now, about the party in government’s refusal to participate in debates. I was shocked. Who is giving them this sort of advice? It would seem that United Russia, which has not yet won the election, no longer wants anything to do with other parties. What are they going to be like after the election? They seem to have a very odd idea of democracy.

In short, not everybody is yet able to withstand the test of Glasnost, freedom and democracy. This also applies to the press. We see often enough that you are all for freedom when writing about other people, but when the media have their attention drawn to something they have published, you all regard it as an assault on free speech and rush to your colleagues’ defence.

DM: Well, what do you expect? Of course we do. That is freedom, solidarity, esprit de corps.

MG: Well that lot are just showing esprit de corps in defending their interests! It is a struggle, which is why I really want to emphasize yet again that our greatest achievement, with which everything, the reforms, started, was Glasnost and freedom. I do not think that now, after the painful, difficult years of rule by Boris Yeltsin, which left us only a legacy of chaos, anyone can sensibly still argue that what Russia needs is a ‘firm hand’.

In fact, all this talk about a strong state, as if it were something separate from democracy, is ridiculous. The strongest state is a democratic state.

I was talking once to a former prime minister of France. He said, ‘I can see that in this situation President Putin cannot avoid using authoritarian methods to resolve certain particular problems.’ But, he asked, did I not fear this might lead to an authoritarian regime? I told him that, as I saw and understood Vladimir Putin, that seemed unlikely to happen.

DM: What are these feelings of yours based on?

MG: I said they are feelings. The nous, the intuition of a politician. But let me, nevertheless, try to reply to your remark. Look at what is happening. According to UN statistics, in the last quarter of the twentieth century more than 80 dictatorial or totalitarian regimes disappeared from the arena of history and politics; a wave of democracy swept the world. Think how many such regimes disappeared as the result of free elections in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union!

DM: How many?

MG: But right at the end of the twentieth century we see the beginnings of a backlash. That has been worrying me for several years now. In the post-Soviet territories it has become increasingly common to try to resolve complex problems by authoritarian methods, and in some cases we have even seen the establishment of authoritarian regimes. In many countries, even in Europe, the electorate is voting for politicians of an authoritarian bent. Political science scholars gathered in Quebec at their World Conference concluded that the unregulated spread of globalization had generated tensions nationally and internationally. They believed that authoritarian tendencies might not only survive, but actually gain ground.

DM: To put it simply, the twenty-first century is going to be the century of totalitarianism? And that justifies what is happening in Russia?

MG: Let me finish. I don’t agree with the political scientists, or with other academics who are making the same case. I think they are jumping the gun. I think they are in a panic. The only way to avoid policy mistakes and miscalculations, both nationally and internationally, is within a framework of democracy. The main argument is that nowhere (and we have only to look back in history), nowhere have totalitarian methods proved efficient.

As far as Russia is concerned, we are in a difficult situation, but we will be able to solve even the most difficult problems if we keep to the path of democracy. No doubt our national peculiarities, our mentality, culture, history, experience, religion, will make their mark on democratic processes, but that is the case everywhere. Everybody accepts that nowadays. I have just come back from a forum on Okinawa attended by representatives of countries that profess Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. They included politicians like Zbigniew Brzezinski, former prime ministers of Japan and Malaysia, and representatives of China and South Korea. They were well-qualified people, and everyone was in agreement that you cannot install a democratic regime in a country by sending in the tanks. Mankind’s strategic path to the future can be successful only on a basis of freedom and democracy.

DM: I don’t understand, Mikhail Sergeyevich. You seem to be saying democracy cannot be imposed, but that it is indispensable. Please explain.

MG: I’m just saying that where we are dealing with states in transition, we need to remember that it will take not ‘10 days’ or ‘500 days’, but decades, and perhaps the whole of the twenty-first century. That is key to understanding the context in which Vladimir Putin is operating.

I do not think that President Putin’s top priority today is suppressing public opinion and subordinating Russia, society and the state, to himself. In the first place, it would be unrealistic and, in the second, I believe it would be contrary to his views. As a warning that we need to prevent a slide into authoritarianism I consider that what the press is saying is justified, but to accuse President Putin of that sin is unfounded.

DM: But the bureaucratic apparatus of government and the way it functions does nevertheless depend on subjective aspects of what the leader does. There is no getting away from that. You tried to dismantle the authoritarian system of appointments to allow society itself to generate new ideas and learn new values. The present government has practically monopolized politics.

MG: But at that time society had been crushed. What did Putin inherit? A state of anarchy, chaos, and a risk that the state might disintegrate.

DM: So what does that mean, that we needed to reinvent a party of bureaucratic officialdom?

MG: No, it means only that I had one problem and he has a different one: to rescue and stabilize the situation and restore the right conditions for moving along the road of democratic changes.

DM: But do you not think that there is a systematic re-establishment of control over civil rights and liberties? If you open the constitution and then look out the window to see which rights are being observed and which not, we see an extraordinary picture: there is only one party, television has been monopolized and the press is under pressure.

MG: You are exaggerating on every count.

DM: How so?

MG: Because there are parties like Yabloko, the Union of Right Forces, Zhirinovsky’s party. And, of course, the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party of Russia and so on.

DM: That is not what I was referring to. I mean that, as far as television access is concerned, with the exception of the debates, there is effectively only one party, United Russia. Everybody has noticed. People find it laughable.

MG: You are largely right about that. The introduction of new requirements of the press just before the election is a mistake. People do not want to be deprived of free access to information. They want to know as much as possible about all the candidates.

DM: I agree with you there.

MG: People do not want to be deprived of the freedom to choose, either, and when they are pressured and have a single party imposed on them, they begin to have doubts about bothering to vote.

People support the president because he presents new policies and tries to act in the national interest. The social situation is in fact improving, if only slowly. That is the main thing. As regards the president’s methods, people have a different attitude.

I believe the president has cause for concern, including the results of the parliamentary election. The United Russia party behaved shamelessly, like a usurper, abusing the goodwill of the president. We can have a rubber-stamping Duma, a malleable Duma, but that is likely to have dire consequences for democracy.

Putin inherited a very mixed government. It is essential for him to create his own government, a team that shares his priorities and will implement his programme, which should aim to modernize the economy, reduce its dependence on oil and encourage small and medium businesses.

On the basis of the preliminary voting data, many pundits are saying that everything should now continue as before and that everything will be peaceful and stable. I think they are wrong.

The high share of the vote obtained by Putin is a kind of advance payment that tells us people are still full of hope and eager for change, and that is why the president must now deliver what it would have been irresponsible to demand of him during his first term.

In the recent election, the voters reaffirmed their trust in you and their hopes. They see that your thoughts and concerns are about the people and the future of Russia. I hope the next four years will see firm steps on the road of democracy, economic growth, strengthening of the rule of law and the building of civil society. May you continue to enjoy the broad support of the citizens of Russia.

I still cannot believe what happened in Beslan. It was a terrible tragedy, after which none of us can carry on living our lives the way we did. The first priority must be help for the victims. The Gorbachev Foundation has already transferred money to the account of the Red Cross and now we will try to help particular people and particular families.

I find it wholly unacceptable that the professionals in the special services failed to prevent the terrorist attack in the first place, or the bloody conclusion of the events. I am in no doubt that Patrushev and Nurgaliev must be held personally responsible for what happened. I think the president also understands that and will do what is necessary.

I expected the government to react decisively to what had occurred, and much of what President Putin said in his address strikes me as important and necessary. It certainly is essential to reorganize the work of the special services, to combat corruption and deal with the social problems of the North Caucasus. Terrorism has to be defeated primarily through politics, not by force.

Unlike the president, however, I believe the terrorist acts of recent weeks are directly related to the military operations in the Caucasus. Back in 1994, during the first Chechen war, I could see only too clearly the catastrophic consequences it would have. Unfortunately, I was right. That means that we need once more to seek political solutions, to negotiate with the moderate militants and separate them from irreconcilable extremists.

I have no doubt that today the government needs public support for its actions. How is it to overcome all the corruption without a properly functioning parliament or free press, without society at large keeping an eye on everything? Unfortunately there is no sign of movement in that direction, rather the reverse. Under cover of the need to combat terrorism, they are proposing a major retraction of democratic freedoms and to deprive citizens of the ability to give direct expression of their attitude to the state authorities in free elections. We are invited to acquiesce in the effective appointment of governors by the Centre and to give up the election of independent parliamentary deputies, and all this despite the fact that today nearly all the parties are subservient to the Kremlin. I know what I am talking about: when we were trying to set up a social democratic party, we ourselves had the bureaucracy attempting to bind us hand and foot. A system of that sort is going to be a fat lot of use in the fight against terrorism. On the other hand, it will undoubtedly make it easier to impose measures that hurt voters, like abolishing welfare benefits.

I very much hope this is only a possible policy being considered by President Putin, an idea under discussion rather than a final decision. Our common task is to do everything possible to stop proposals gaining the force of law that are effectively a retreat from democracy. I hope our politicians, voters and indeed the president himself will preserve the democratic freedoms that were so hard won.

In the crisis caused by implementation of the law on benefits, the president has acted resolutely and everything is now calming down, but there can only be one verdict on the Cabinet: it has egg all over its face. Everything was done so flamboyantly and irresponsibly that the country and the president were driven into a corner.

After the election, the president made a statement in the Federal Assembly which excited many people, including me. He talked about attacking poverty, fighting corruption, supporting small and medium businesses and moving along the road to a post-industrial society. As time has passed it has begun to seem that the government is implementing a programme quite different from the one declared by the president. I do not know what is keeping him from, if not completely replacing the Cabinet, then at least reacting to its performance. The Cabinet is abusing the infinite patience of the Russian people.

DM: It looks like Russia is becoming an authoritarian country. Do you believe a turn to democratic forms of government is still on the cards?

MG: This is a topic that worries me a great deal, because I have devoted too much of my life to nurturing democracy. Everything will ultimately depend on what choice is made by the present authorities. Let us look back at the presidential election campaign and consider who, including myself, said what.

I said then there was no doubt that the president would win: there were no other serious contenders. However, I said at the same time, openly and very deliberately, that it would be a big mistake if the president were to use his mandate for a second term solely to further strengthen his power. It is in the president’s own interests to work for the country and its citizens. This is his main function. If he is going to indulge in all these political games, I will be disappointed and so, I think, will every citizen of Russia, irrespective of their political and ideological persuasions. The main resource that ensured the president’s decisive victory was exploitation of the state’s administrative resources, but I would add that no amount of resources will prove effective without support in the community. If that is lacking, issues can only be resolved by sleight of hand. Perhaps there even was something of that in the last election, but the reality is that it cannot be used on a really large scale. It would result in failure. The president’s 70 per cent approval rating had its effect. People were pinning their hopes on him.

During his first term a degree of stabilization was achieved and a number of steps were taken to improve citizens’ welfare. Some control was established over the operating of the state’s institutions. I did expect that he would use the mandate of a second term in office to move things on, and in particular to develop the economic, social and political spheres in the interests of the people. This is how democracy begins, but what has begun now makes me very uneasy. You have yourself sensed that, in my recent remarks, even when these were very brief, there has been a great deal of emotion and distress.

DM: But you are not yet ready to swell the ranks of the opposition?

MG: I am ready to point out openly to the president what is going on in the country. And what I am observing is a retreat from what he declared. What is happening is just not what the country expects. How long can people be kept in their current situation? The monetization project shows just how cynically and callously the authorities are dealing with pensioners. All these nonsensical legal draughtsmen with their ‘blueprints’, driving people to join protest rallies! To hell with these draughtsmen! They should be kicked out now! But this is the point: no one has been dismissed, no one has been held responsible. Now we are hearing all these assurances that the president has the situation under control. The question is, what sort of people is he talking to? The general public still have no idea what they are supposed to be doing, where they should be going, what documents they need to take. In January there was total confusion, and rage drove sick people out on to the streets to protest in the cold and frost.

DM: What made you particularly indignant during the ‘pensioner riots’?

MG: The aftermath. From the very first days they started looking for the ‘instigators’. They always look for them among people who just need to go about their business, buy medicine and live their lives! The real instigators are all cosily sitting in their government positions. What sort of administration is this? There was a time when I tried somehow to justify them. I could not believe that the people working on important documents affecting millions of people were so callous and cynical. This was major national policy. I was appalled to realize that policies churning up the fate of millions were being tossed together so brazenly and casually.

Creating Putin’s ‘vertical of power’ has led to chaos. Officials are just sitting there waiting to be kicked out or made redundant and do not know what to do. They are being ‘reorganized’ out of business. If this approach is pursued further, there is going to be a very big problem. Back in July and August the government took a swing at education and healthcare, by which I mean introducing payment for services. What they are really taking a swing at is the constitution. Right there, enshrined in Article 42, is the right to free education. This is one of the great achievements of democracy: any family, regardless of its income, knows it will be able to educate its children to the end of secondary education. Now the government is thinking of withdrawing that right.

It is just so irresponsible and immoral. We have already had one bout of shock therapy, when privatization was pushed through, robbing the people. All citizens’ nest eggs in the savings banks went up in smoke. People were left with tiny salaries. Now we are being told that, according to the latest official statistics, there are hardly any poor people in Russia. They are lying through their teeth! In 1990 we reviewed the poverty threshold in the Soviet Union and raised it. The basket included not just a selection of basic foodstuffs, but such items as the money needed to support children. Under Yeltsin, the government solved that problem very simply by lowering the threshold to half its previous level, and magically halved the number of poor people! Come to that, we could reduce rations to the levels during the Siege of Leningrad and then we wouldn’t have any poor people at all. Everything is done purely for effect, cynically, disrespectfully. With that sort of attitude, it is insulting to talk of democracy. I find it completely unacceptable. We have to ask, whatever happened to the welfare state? What has happened to observing the provisions of the constitution? Without those guarantees the constitution is just so much waste paper.

DM: The government claims that its reforms of healthcare and education are merely following Western practice.

MG: All these weasel words really make me angry. If you want to shuffle off responsibility for the people, to rid yourself of responsibility for caring for the citizens, who the hell needs you? What are you there for? The comparisons with the West are untenable. If we are going to talk like that, then let the government ensure wage levels are comparable, if not with America then at least with France, Italy, or Germany. Then our people really will be able to say, what the hell, we don’t mind paying! If people have plenty of money, they will have no trouble choosing for themselves where to get medical treatment and education. But today they simply cannot afford it. Many people already cannot make ends meet. If policies of this kind continue to be pursued, then, in the near future, we may see serious disturbances.

DM: What kind of disturbances?

MG: I think people will simply not put up with the policy. In any case, it is not even a policy. The people pushing the president in this direction are macroeconomic advisers who always act only from the perspective of the immediate budget, but the budget gets funded by a developing economy, new jobs, the flourishing of small and medium businesses. What do they have to show in that respect? Nothing is happening, or precious little. That is the real issue. The president has a programme he announced to the Federal Assembly, and that is the way we need to go.

DM: Doesn’t the present situation in respect of Glasnost remind you of the Era of Stagnation?

MG: Under Brezhnev we had a kind of neo-Stalinism, without the repression but everything was controlled. On one occasion, someone, a worker or an engineer speaking at a trade union congress, said: ‘What is the general secretary doing about it? Is he not supposed to be in charge? Does he know what is going on? It is his responsibility!’ A meeting of the Politburo was convened: this was an emergency! How could such a comment have been allowed to be heard at the congress? That was how much democracy we had. That was how much Glasnost and free speech there was. There’s your answer.

DM: Another instance of déjà vu is the increasingly frequent attacks on the West, talk about double standards. Are we not going back to the times of the Cold War?

MG: There really is a problem of double standards, and it is right to speak directly and openly about it. Pressurizing and megaphone diplomacy are unacceptable in relations between countries. We know from the Cold War period where that leads. What all countries have an interest in is a calm atmosphere, dialogue and cooperation. We need to trade, to exchange technology and knowledge. In isolation, no country can consider itself secure.

DM: We seem to be seeing a weird resuscitation of old attitudes and moss-covered slogans. What is that all about?

MG: I have noticed it too. Is it really normal for the chairman of the State Duma to suddenly start extolling Stalin? I am astounded. By evening, Gryzlov was already backtracking.

In the morning he was shooting his mouth off and in the evening… No, this is not Stalinism but some kind of hybrid. They have started talking about secret police, ‘Chekist methods’. This really is an original Russian invention. Instead, we need to follow a more straightforward path of freedom, democracy, respect, national openness, freedom of press and freedom to express your own opinion. They seem to be scared of everything, but what are they scared of? At most, they might lose power. So what? When I began the reforms I said I would work two terms and no more. There was such inertia among the personnel at every level that it was literally holding the country back and the whole situation had to be exploded. But how? Not through Stalinist repression, but by democracy. Nowadays, many people think nobody can any longer be bothered with democracy, and globally, authoritarian politicians seem to be in great demand. In Russia, though, we always go to extremes. Either the far left take power, or the right, who are also practically off the scale. It’s madness. I often emphasize that the last thing we need is to end up in a new Era of Stagnation or new era of control freakery and hyper-centralization.

DM: How are things going with your party?

MG: We have, in spite of everything, been creating a new social democratic party. The president publicly supported us, and even said, ‘Our country is social democratic’. The officials in the Presidential Administration did not support us, though, and kept throwing spanners in the works. They wanted all the political parties dancing to their tune, malleable, to be able to manage them the way they manage the groups in the Duma, by pager. They were put out that Gorbachev doesn’t dance to anyone’s tune.

We didn’t create the Social Democratic Party the way it is generally done now, when 30 odd organizations are brought together and declare themselves a party, democratic or super-nationalistic or conservative. We admitted only people who wrote their applications personally, which is quite a different approach. People came to us who for many years had shunned the other parties. They were waiting for the appearance of a social democratic party. They came, 32,000 of them. Do you know how interesting our plenums and congresses were? I was positively envious of these young people, so free, so intelligent.

It took me a whole life to grow from writing that essay in tenth grade on ‘Stalin is our military glory’ to understanding the need to rid ourselves of Stalinism, of his entire legacy, of totalitarianism, of our one-track way of thinking. Today too, we need to free people from fear of the state, because until we do so we cannot have a democratic state. That fear never completely left us and now it has come back again.

DM: Are any of today’s political parties capable of leading an opposition?

MG: As of now, no. They need to be created and, of course, from the grassroots up. Attempts to graft something from those already existing are bound to fail. The graft will be the same as its parent. That is how they created the United Russia Party, using the Communist Party as a prototype, and the result has been a shadow of the CPSU! If people with social democratic views genuinely joined together, from the Fatherland party, from the party of the regions, if they took up our idea it would make really good sense.

DM: Are you an optimist, Mikhail Sergeyevich?

MG: Always. They say optimists are an irresponsible lot, but that is nonsense. No and no. Every country is restive today, not only Russia. We cannot allow ourselves to panic. History is not fated: there are always alternatives, alternative solutions. It is not a flood that is unaffected by what we do and the choices we make. We have to find our place in the process of history, which cannot just be abolished. As Bismarck said: ‘A statesman must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.’ An optimist is someone who sees everything, analyses and understands, but still goes on to find an answer. Every age has its heroes, people who do, in spite of everything, give an answer.

DM: Do you see any among our politicians?

MG: Not so far, but what of it? I am an optimist about that too. There are opportunities for the president, and not only for him. There is no cause to panic.

Pankin: By saying recently that President Putin should dismiss his government and call new elections for the Duma, you blew our planned interview on historical matters out of the water.

MG: I do not know why it was so sensational, because I made the suggestion very calmly.

Pankin: Even so, when the president of the USSR urges the president of Russia to do something like that, people sit up and take notice. Why at this precise moment?

MG: My temperament is still a bit volatile, but I never lose self-control. Every statement I make has been deliberated over and thought through. That was my considered reaction to the president’s address. It might have been entirely unexceptional but for what the president said at the very beginning. He said: ‘I will not repeat what I said in my last address, and would ask you to consider these as two instalments and proceed on the basis of a programme I am proposing for the coming decade.’

I have to say that I paid close attention to the address last year and, together with the new additions this year about the state, human rights, the judicial system and political issues, it really did come over as something of a manifesto. It seemed a statement of long-term policy and it raised my spirits. I felt it was a serious project that I could support. However, it was immediately toned down by commentaries: the president had supposedly changed his overall policies at the last minute. How come, if he had begun it last year? I do not believe this is just some kind of game. The president is, after all, an ambitious man, a man who knows his own worth, and I believe he meant what he said.

Moreover, he was clearly finding it all very difficult. When he read it, you probably noticed, he was thinking very hard how best to get his point over. He seemed to be choking on the words, gasping for air. I remember thinking he seemed to be saying he could not agree with what was happening and wanted to distance himself. Some people here in Russia, and also abroad, say he was so stressed because of his incursions against democracy and his attacks on the media and had decided to put matters right. I don’t think that can be taken seriously. I saw this as a carefully considered choice on the part of the president.

But how is it all going to be implemented? That is what worries me. Is he counting on parliament? The present parliament is passing, without proper scrutiny, proposals of huge social significance, affecting the very part of the population the state ought to be standing up for. Perhaps some people find that kind of parliament convenient, but what the hell use is it to the rest of us? It’s certainly no use to Russia. Anyway, forget the parliament. Perhaps it can be turned around, although frankly I doubt it.

But what about the Cabinet? This is the government that, early this year, nonchalantly came up with the law on monetization of benefits. At this very moment, what the government is brewing up in its kitchen affects education, healthcare, residential maintenance and the public utilities. Its approach is to pass all the costs on to the general public. I am not convinced this government is capable of implementing the president’s programme; I do not believe the government will be up to dealing with everything implied by the address. They are simply not up to it! They are radical neo-liberals no less than the Gaidar government was.

The first step, then, is to send the government packing.

Pankin: Might you have anyone in mind for the new Cabinet? Who would you suggest, for example, for prime minister, foreign affairs, defence, finance, the economy?

MG: Everybody has people in mind, not just me. The president’s ‘Petersburg cronies approach’ has not worked. What is needed, ‘as the Communist Party taught us’, is to select people on the basis of their political and professional qualities.

Pankin: Let us suppose the president decides to take your second piece of advice and dissolves the Duma. Let us imagine the elections are absolutely clean, with balanced television coverage and no misuse of the state’s administrative resources. What do you think the new parliament would be like? Who, what forces, in what configuration might be represented in it?

MG: I think that given normal elections, with no ballot-rigging and fraud, but based on the principles the president has talked about, we could end up, even with society in its present state, with really quite effective people. The top priority is to get a parliament able to find democratic means of freeing society from the domination of the bureaucracy. Once we have that we can hope to open the floodgates to private enterprise and civic initiatives. Even our regional representative bodies are crushed and dependent on the bureaucracy. We have an excessive bias in favour of the executive branch.

Then the conversation did turn to history. The year 2005 was the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of Perestroika, so we looked at the parallels between those times and the present. Inevitably the issue of democracy came up, developing its institutions and how political parties are formed.

Pankin: Let’s talk about current affairs in the light of past history. Some people see Putin as a kind of new Gorbachev.

MG: We are entirely different people, with completely different careers and biographies. And these are different times. But I said long ago, and still believe, the president has made his mark. Experience has shown he is hardworking and ambitious, but he is in a predicament. He has been pulled this way and that by all these cliques, and still they are wrangling over how to share out state property.

Pankin: But how about this for a parallel? Both you and he appeared after a period of senile, incompetent government. Both you and he were pulled out of the ranks as young men who were somehow to rescue and revive the system. But then you young men got ideas and went off-message.

MG: Putin in his first term worked well. If a competition were held to see who could identify most of his mistakes, I could probably mention more than anyone else. But that is not how these matters are judged. When someone is implementing a particular project, taking decisions about specific, major issues, there will always be instances of too little too late, things that go wrong, and downright blunders.

You need to remember the chaos there was everywhere: in the social sphere, in science and education, healthcare, the army, in relations between the federal government and the regions. There is no counting it all. I think he has already done a great deal. Enough, at least, to have earned his place in history.

But now the question is, what next? How can we avoid continuing downhill out of inertia, which we have largely failed to overcome, in the same rut as Yeltsin? We need to change course now. When he was still only running for a second term, I said that what mattered was what he would do. If he used the power he was given for a second term to consolidate his own power and continue the policy of creating a ‘managed democracy’, it would ultimately end badly.

Pankin: Here is another parallel with Perestroika. You too consistently took on more and more formal positions, but your real power became less and less. Don’t you think Putin is going down the same path: he too is assuming more and more powers…

MG: The situations are, nevertheless, different. I needed to do that in order to create a different kind of regime through a new constitution, through the political process, through free elections, a regime based on democratic principles and procedures. I needed also to free the state, the executive and other branches from the hold of the CPSU. The problem I faced was creating a state system for managing the country, because we had arrived at the moment when Article 6, enshrining the CPSU’s monopoly of power, was going to be dropped from the constitution. For Vladimir Putin that problem had already been solved. He faced a different task, of creating genuine national and federal political parties which could provide the foundation for developing democratic institutions.

I have to say clearly, though, that nothing could be more mistaken than trying to concoct parties in the office of Vladislav Surkov. A party is formed out of political movements, certain sections of society, large groups of people. Parties form themselves as people discover they have interests in common.

So, for us the task was to shake off the fetters of the Communist Party. The present government has had that done for it. What is needed now is to facilitate the formation of parties.

Pankin: Another question about parallels. Many people remember the sense of imminent catastrophe in the public consciousness in 1990–1. Everybody was telling themselves that if this or that was not done there was going to be disaster, a civil war. A similar sense of impending doom seems to be growing in Russia now. The mayor of Moscow and the head of the Presidential Administration are allowing themselves to talk about a real danger of the country disintegrating. And what interest there is among readers of Izvestiya in the ‘coloured’ revolutions!

MG: I think the situation has been aggravated by the way the proposed reforms are being introduced. Reform of the government has stalled. Dmitry Kozak’s administrative reform has stalled, and we have all these social sector reforms. Resistance to the approaches underlying all these changes did not begin only in January and February 2005. That is when the pensioners came out onto the streets, protesting against the law monetizing benefits, but battle was joined long ago over what kind of educational, healthcare, housing and utilities policies were to be pursued. It is plain that they went about it in the most primitive way possible, burdening ordinary people with all the costs. I think that is what could shake people out of their complacency and acceptance. Russia woke up after the old people protested, and now there are people protesting every day against this measure or that. They are not going to put up with it any more.

Finally, we came to the topic increasingly preoccupying the public as the next elections approached: the possibility of a third presidential term for Vladimir Putin.

Pankin: When Putin says, ‘Here is an action programme for the next 10 years’, is that an indication that he is intending to stay on for a third term, or hold onto power in some other way?

MG: I thought he had already considered this carefully, and he has said himself that he will not stand for a third term. Observing the constitution is actually a perfectly normal thing to do. At the same time, there are things in it that might need to be clarified. People are raising the question of whether the articles relating to the presidency need to be revised. I think they do. Although Putin says the constitution should be left alone.

Pankin: Revised, in your opinion, in what direction?

MG: My view is that we need a version of the French constitution, adapted for Russia. So the party that comes out on top in the elections forms the government, but at the same time the president is popularly elected. Everybody’s powers are clearly set out, and the government is left to get on with its job. The president can come to meetings of the government, as Chirac does, and chair sessions of the cabinet, all as he sees fit. Nevertheless, the government operates under the direction of the prime minister. Of course, he and the president interact.

Some people would like to see a puppet president elected by parliament. Are they going to summon parliament like a plenum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and summarily depose him the way they treated Khrushchev?

A majority of people are living in poverty, unable to find a use for their skills and knowledge, and many have emigrated. Teachers, doctors, scientists, people in the army, people in the creative professions. Under President Putin the situation has begun to improve, but overall we are not yet back to the levels of 1990.

The president has only two more years in office. In theory he could be tempted not to take on anything too serious now. His approval rating is high, oil prices are going through the roof, the population’s standard of living is not deteriorating. For all that, I hope he will choose, has already chosen, a different option.

Last year, Russia’s head of state proposed prioritizing four national campaigns, in education, healthcare, affordable housing and agriculture. Effectively this is a social democratic approach. The president took on major responsibilities himself, presumably because he finds the government’s efforts in social welfare unsatisfactory.

And who could think otherwise? The social reforms have stalled, even though there is more than enough money in the country thanks to high oil prices. To make matters worse, the government arrogantly ignores criticism from the public.

Perhaps Russia’s greatest bane is corruption. People assert that this is an inevitable consequence of involvement of the state in the economy. They criticize the president for the fact that during his time in office the state has taken back control of the oil and gas sectors. I disagree. I wholly support what the president is doing in this area, but officials should not be given carte blanche. They are there to serve society. They have proliferated out of all proportion and, if that is not stopped, the problem of corruption will become worse. It is a problem that can be dealt with only through democracy.

Now, as the next elections approach, cliques are coming out of the woodwork which are clearly interested in getting control over major revenue streams and exploiting them for their own political ends.

Politicians in office should, as a matter of principle, keep business interests at arm’s length. That is all there is to it, and it applies particularly to the president. Politicians should devote themselves to politics because otherwise they will act not in the interests of the country, but for their own personal benefit.

After I resigned I had many invitations to move into business, but I always refused. I long ago chose politics.

We are about two years away from the next presidential election. This is already being much discussed, and even greater efforts are being made by various groups to safeguard their interests. Increasingly, we hear it suggested that some ‘Operation Successor’ is needed, or, better still, that a tactic should be devised to enable the current president to stay on for a third term. This is profoundly misguided. The only reason an Operation Successor could be needed would be to avoid a fair election. The clear intention is once more to distort the election campaign. This is a violation of democracy and of the rights of civil society. I believe we need right now to focus all discussion of the coming election on this issue.

I am confident that President Putin will not violate the constitution and will relinquish office at the time it specifies. He will see his biography as president through to a worthy conclusion. It would not surprise me if attempts are made to get him to agree to a different scenario, and it is not difficult to imagine the approach: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, the Russian people beg you…’ I do not think the president will succumb to that temptation. At all events, I have no reason to suspect that he will.

Today everyone is still talking about the November reshuffle of the Cabinet and Presidential Administration, and trying to guess which of the new appointees may take the place of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. I do not think that merits serious discussion. I do not see the president following his predecessor’s example of resigning prematurely and appointing a new prime minister as acting president, with an endorsement of that individual as the future head of state.

There is a serious risk that the election campaign will be a sham. In my opinion, there have been no fair and free elections in Russia since those of 1989, 1990 and the election of 1991 when Boris Yeltsin became the first president of Russia. All the other campaigns were flawed. The candidates did not face a level playing field, the administrative resources of the state were improperly exploited, and the results were blatantly rigged. I make that claim not from hearsay: during the 1996 campaign I had direct experience of it myself.

Can we compel the authorities to hold elections in accordance with democratic standards? We can and must. Nobody else will do it for us. Civil society must defend its rights. That is something we have to learn. Elections must not be privatized by the party in government.

There is, however, another point that troubles me. The elections will be genuine only if there are several strong political contenders. I am sure they will appear, and indeed some already have, but I refrain from naming them. I am only too familiar with the ways of the so-called elite, who will immediately crush them.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has repeatedly declared his intention to steer the country towards a democracy from which ordinary people will feel the benefit. I do not believe he is being disingenuous. If, before the end of his presidential term, he genuinely moves Russia in that direction, the 2008 elections will be conducted in accordance with the practice of any civilized country, with actively engaged voters, a fair and equitable campaign, genuine political competition, and no rigging of the results.

If his words remain mere words and in reality authoritarian tendencies prevail, we will have an ‘election’ with no choice. We need to be aware of that danger and do everything possible to prevent it.

I do not believe the president wants to just walk away, to make a declaration and leave it at that. He has an opportunity in the next year or year and a half before the end of his term to initiate a process for realizing everything he outlined in his address. To achieve that, however, very major efforts are going to be needed. The question is, who is going to make them?

In the run-up to the recent G8 summit in St Petersburg, discussions about democracy, which were already taking place in Russia, became particularly pointed. Much of what Western politicians and commentators had to say met with outright rejection in Russia, mainly because people felt that it was our country that was being discussed and our democracy, and that it was for us, rather than the vice-president of the United States, to decide what it should be like and how we should arrive at it. It is high time the West recognized that attempts to put pressure on Russia are invariably counterproductive.

Rejecting outside pressure, however, obliges us ourselves to analyse and assess all the more carefully and critically the current state of progress in our country towards democracy. My own belief is that Russia can reach the goals we are striving for only by following the path of democracy. At the same time, it needs to be recognized that the transition from totalitarianism to democracy is not taking place in a vacuum, under ideal conditions, but within the context of our history. It is proving difficult and will require considerable time and effort from the whole of our society.

The conditions under which our ‘transition to democracy’ is occurring were made much more difficult by misguided policies of the Russian leadership in the 1990s. Given impoverishment of the majority of the population, chaos at the heart of government and in the economy and the threat that the nation might simply disintegrate, what chance was there of developing democracy? To all intents and purposes there was none, and it was replaced by a shabby imitation.

Having inherited that situation, Vladimir Putin’s first priority had to be preventing the collapse of the country and stabilizing the economy and society. He had to act fast, and inevitably not everything could be done without certain measures that do not feature in standard textbooks on democracy. Overly independent regional leaders had, for example, to be obliged to bring regional legislation into accordance with federal law. Harsh measures were necessary to combat terrorism.

The measures taken dealt with the crisis of the Russian state and led to economic growth, whose results are beginning to impact positively on people’s lives. This has changed the situation, but something else is also true: social stability and a noticeable improvement in the economic figures do not of themselves resolve all the issues relating to the state of our democracy. Quite the contrary. If the difficult circumstances, even emergency, that we confronted at the start of the decade have been dealt with, it is all the more time now to examine how far our democratic institutions and current legislative proposals accord with the overriding aim of constructing a new, free, democratic society in Russia.

Here there is cause for concern. Twenty years have passed since the beginning of democratic reforms, yet there are many unjustifiable restrictions, prohibitions and barriers – both old and recently introduced. I do not doubt that Alexander Veshnyakov, the chairman of the Central Electoral Commission, knew what he was talking about when he said recently there was a danger that, instead of a genuine political contest, the election might turn into a farce. The president himself was obliged to remind everyone that the opposition has a right to express its opinions and that it should be listened to. This is a matter of great importance, because competitive elections and a real opposition are essential features of any democracy.

It has to be said that the closer the parliamentary and presidential elections come, the more evident is the desire of a section of the Russian political elite to restrict and reduce the participation of citizens in the political process. Instead of involving people in politics, in the taking of vital decisions by availing themselves of their constitutional rights, we see attempts to limit their participation in the affairs of the state and to regulate it to the point where it ceases to be effective or even to make sense.

Most worrying of all are changes in electoral law.

A law passed last year abolished constituencies fielding independent candidates. This was a retrograde step. In these constituencies the deputy directly represents his or her constituents and their interests. Voting for party lists, on the contrary, the voter sees only the names of celebrities at the top of the list who, as a rule, have not the slightest intention of actually working in the Duma. It is a disgraceful practice, a brazen deception, but there has been no talk at all about abolishing that. The ‘merit’ of the system is that it enables parties to funnel ‘the right people’ into the Duma, people whose loyalty is not to Russia’s citizens but only to the leaders of their party.

The move to a wholly proportional system of representation could only be justified if Russia had already generated a stable party system, with political parties that, taken together, adequately reflect the interests of all the segments and groups in society. We have a long way to go before that is the case. In the present situation, it is blindingly obvious that the aim of this innovation is to establish a monopoly over Russia’s politics.

The law on political parties adopted in 2001 established a rigid state regulation and control of the activities of parties, and was subsequently made even more draconian with additional requirements on the number of parties, the number of regional offices they were required to have, and so on. When I was head of the Social Democratic Party, I reluctantly agreed to these provisions, supposing that any legal framework was better than none. Experience has shown, however, that such regulation is not consistent with democratic principles: the political credibility of parties should be determined by the voters, not by the state.

The process of chiselling away at the rights and opportunities of political parties is still continuing: the entrance barrier for parties to be admitted to the Duma has been raised to 7 per cent of the overall vote, with the manifest intention of obstructing the appearance in parliament of ‘undesirable’ opposition parties. The new electoral law decrees that, of the 200,000 signatures that must first be collected by any party aspiring to participate in the elections, the permissible proportion of those considered questionable or invalid has been reduced from the previous 20 per cent to 5 per cent. Quite clearly, those conducting the inspection will have no difficulty finding the required number of rejects if they are so minded. There is immense scope for administrative malfeasance.

One of the latest innovations is the removal from voting slips of the box labelled ‘Against all the above’. It is claimed that this will raise the sense of civic responsibility among voters, but in reality a substantial section of the electorate is being prevented from voting. In 2003, some 13 million people voted ‘Against all the above’ and, moreover, most often those who did were educated people protesting against the lack of real choice. The likelihood is that most of them will in future simply boycott the elections.

Even that is not the end of it. The government has resuscitated the provision for early voting, which is a charter for ballot-rigging. Nongovernmental organizations are now excluded from monitoring the elections. Newspapers established by political parties are banned from informing voters about their parties’ activities until one month before the election. All these are initiatives proceeding from United Russia, exploiting its majority in the fourth Duma. Their only purpose is to ensure at all costs that ‘the bosses’ party’ is guaranteed a majority in the next elections.

What might look like piecemeal changes to the legislation lead cumulatively to a degrading of the entire electoral system, which is increasingly being turned into a pure formality. This is particularly obvious in respect of the Federation Council, which now consists of appointed officials who often have no connection whatsoever with the regions they ‘represent’. Flagrant instances of corruption have been exposed recently. One can only sympathize with the demand of the Federation Council’s chairman, Sergey Mironov, for a review of the manner in which this chamber is constituted.

Voters’ trust in elections and government institutions has been falling in recent years. Eloquent testimony to this is the low voter turnout in recent elections and referendums.

In fact, however, one has the impression that the ruling ‘elite’ has a direct interest in reducing citizens’ participation. Why else would the quorum for valid elections have been reduced at federal level from 50 per cent to 25 per cent, while for local elections it can be even lower.

Our bureaucrats seem to think that the fewer people who vote in the elections, the surer they can be of obtaining the result they require.

All this is going on against a background of other developments over recent years. I have in mind the restriction on the independence of the electronic mass media to report; the ubiquitous abuse of government administrative resources during election campaigns; the tightening of laws governing the conduct of meetings and demonstrations; the adoption of a law on referendums which has made it almost impossible for them to be conducted other than at the instigation of the state authorities; and intensification of control over the activities of nongovernmental organizations. What does this all add up to in a state of affairs where all the governors belong to the same party?

Is this really justified by national characteristics of our democracy or other external circumstances? I think not.

Of course, democracy must indeed be rooted in the soil of each country, and has its own national peculiarities. There are, however, some universal principles. Restrictions that might be necessary in a situation where people’s lives and the very existence of the state are under threat should be regarded as temporary and not perpetuated as basic principles, as is being done by the theorists of ‘sovereign’ or ‘managed’ democracy. Such collocations distort the very essence of democracy, no less than it was distorted by designations like ‘socialist’ or ‘people’s’ democracy.

We are constantly reminded of the need to fight terrorism and extremism. No reasonable person would deny it, but when a law is passed that defines extremism so broadly that it can be used to suppress any opposition or dissent, one has to disagree. The beneficiary of such legislation and restriction of the electoral rights of Russian citizens is the bureaucracy in its campaign to shield itself from public accountability.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the need to rein in the bureaucracy, but the only effective antidote to its high-handedness is a mature civil society with robust legislation and feedback between the state authorities and the population. If, however, the bureaucracy is beyond the reach of genuine scrutiny from above and below and is, into the bargain, corrupt, it is in a position to turn democratic arrangements into a mere formality, discrediting and devaluing democracy itself, even calling into question whether it has any use.

Analysing the current difficulties of our democratic processes brings us back to the eternal Russian question: what is to be done? The first priority is to recognize that with the current legislation in place it is impossible to hold genuinely democratic elections and ensure genuine participation by the people in the political process.

There is still time to put matters right. I believe the president, with his ability to veto, should now make use of his powers and great authority. Decisive action on his part could transform the situation. Much depends at this time on him alone. I am sure the president’s actions will be supported by the citizens of Russia.

Ultimately it is for all of us, the people of Russia, to decide whether the country develops in the direction of real involvement of citizens in public affairs or whether the model of paternalistic bureaucratic guardianship prevails. I have no doubt that Russia deserves the former.

Dear Yelena Bonner,

I very much wanted to wish you a happy birthday by telephone but was unsuccessful, so here are my greetings by letter.

I would like to join with all those who know and appreciate you and who on this day are wishing you all the best. Your heart and mind are always receptive to other people and respond to their pain. You are one of those people for whom politics has never been reducible to ideology or ‘spin’ but is measured by human, ethical criteria. That is why you are admired even by those who do not always agree with you but share your passionate desire to see our homeland become democratic, a state governed by the rule of law, and to see the world become a more just place.

I believe that these ideals, upheld by Andrey Sakharov, will some day become a reality, thanks to the spirit and energetic efforts of many people, and especially people like you.

I wish you long life, vigour, indomitableness of spirit and the love and care of your family and friends.

Yours,

Mikhail Gorbachev

15 February 2008

Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich,

Thank you for your good wishes and kind words about my heart and other virtues. When I received your letter, I first thought it was a pity you had not phoned, but a moment later thought better of it, because if you had we would probably have quarrelled again, and on my birthday that would not have been seemly.

I can share your hope that Andrey Dmitrievich’s ideals may some day come to pass in our country, but I think the road will be longer and thornier than you do. That does not, however, mean that Russia will never make it: per aspera ad astra.

With unfading memory of our departed loved ones, thank you once again, and I wish you, Irina and your family health and all the best.

Yelena Bonner

4 March 2008

The elections are over, and for all the importance of both the Duma and presidential elections, what matters now is what comes next. To some extent the situation became clearer only towards the end of the campaign. Voters were given no opportunity to compare the projects of rival candidates or alternative ways of resolving the problems faced by Russia. The quality of the candidates also left much to be desired. Despite that, people came, voted, and this is again a result of the Putin phenomenon and people’s confidence in him.

Now the big question is the use to which this mandate will be put. Having given their trust to Putin and Medvedev, the electorate has a right to expect them to keep their promises. In Russia today the problem of mutual understanding between the state, society and the individual is more acute than ever.

As I see it, we now have a unique opportunity. Building on the preconditions created in recent years and the favourable international situation, we can embark firmly on modernizing Russia, not only industry but all the other areas: politics, the economy and social services. The crucial areas to focus on are education, innovation, healthcare, governance and, finally, overcoming poverty and combating the dominance of the bureaucracy and corruption.

It was very important that, in the last days of the election campaign, both President Putin and presidential candidate Medvedev spoke as one about just this issue. I have no doubt they will put great efforts into tackling it, but on its own that is not enough. What is vital is that machinery should be devised for realizing a whole raft of extremely complex changes.

Clearly, to successfully bring together efforts on the federal, regional and even district levels, we need to see a serious improvement in personnel policy. This should not be a witch-hunt. Training personnel, preparing them to resolve completely new tasks must be part of a carefully thought-through system. It is particularly important to recruit young people. If the president and government do not undertake this, many of their declarations and promises will prove empty, and no amount of PR will save the situation.

The experience of the whole world tells us that such large-scale tasks can be tackled successfully only where there is real democracy and civic engagement, where there is mutual understanding between society and state authorities accountable to it, and when people are not afraid to take initiatives.

Some are going to say, ‘We cannot possibly let go of the reins’, that Russia has no need of new democratic experiments, that what works is a strong central authority, a ‘firm hand’. But a strong power in isolation often proves powerless. Real popular support is needed. Putin sensed what mattered, what people really wanted: a return to stability and a state that worked, – and he gained that support. Now, however, when even more complex, truly historic tasks have to be tackled, a far greater level of interaction between the state and society will be needed.

Our electoral system needs not mere adjustment but a complete overhaul. It is essential that there should be changes in the organization of both the presidential elections and the Duma elections, and of the way governors are elected.

As the top priority, I would list the need to return to a mixed voting system, with both proportional voting for party lists and direct election of independent candidates. People should be able to know the particular candidates and choose between them. After the Duma elections in December 2007, 113 top candidates on the lists of successful parties did not take up their mandate as deputies but simply handed them on to little-known people. But 113 seats is just one-quarter of the total! What sort of disregard for the voters is that? We need also to lower the minimum percentage of the overall vote required for a party to be admitted to the Duma to 5 per cent.

I think direct election of governors should be restored, instead of as now having them nominated by the president and confirmed by the regional legislative bodies.

In effect, two social classes coexist today on the territory of Russia. One, relatively small, consists of healthy, free, properly educated and extremely wealthy citizens who enjoy full civic rights. This new court nobility live in a special world they have built just for themselves. They have an exclusive habitat, way, quality and style of life. The second class, however, vastly more numerous, is the bulk of the population, struggling to earn a living. The majority of these are low-income, less educated people with limited rights. They do not enjoy particularly good health, do not receive essential medical care, and are fated to have what, by modern standards, is a short lifespan.[2]

We are bidding farewell to a great man and a major writer, a Nobel Prize winner, a man with a unique destiny whose name will remain in the annals of Russian history. He, like millions of other citizens of our country, was subjected to severe ordeals. Solzhenitsyn was one of the first to speak out loud about the inhumanity of the Stalinist regime and about people who were not broken by their ordeals. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago are books that altered the thinking of millions of people, compelling them to re-evaluate the past and present. It is impossible to overstate the contribution they made to overcoming totalitarianism. Solzhenitsyn completed his life’s work worthily, continuing to fight to the end of his days to try to ensure that Russia not only broke away from the clutches of the past, but also moved forward to a condign future, becoming a truly free and democratic country. We owe him a great deal.

The events of the past week in South Ossetia can only cause everyone pain and concern. The deaths of thousands of people, with tens of thousands turned into refugees, the destruction of towns and villages is completely unjustifiable. It is a great tragedy and a warning to everybody.

The roots of the present tragic situation can be traced back to a decision by Georgia’s separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish the autonomy of South Ossetia. That placed a time-bomb under the territorial integrity of Georgia. Every time a succession of Georgian leaders attempted to impose their will by force, they only worsened the situation there and in Abkhazia, where the problems are analogous. Fresh wounds were added to old historical grudges.

It would, nevertheless, still have been possible to normalize the situation and arrive at a political solution. For quite an extended period, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. A mixed peacekeeping contingent carried out its mission and Ossetians and the Georgians living beside them managed to find a common language.

It is important to point out that all these years Russia’s position has been recognition of the territorial integrity of Georgia, but the problem could only be resolved on that basis by peaceful means. There should be no other means of resolving issues in the civilized world. The Georgian leadership flouted that sacrosanct principle. What happened on the night of 8 August, the bombardment of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali from rocket launchers designed for blanket strikes, simply beggars belief. It was impossible for Russia not to react. To accuse her of aggression against ‘defenceless little Georgia’ is not just hypocritical but inhumane.

It is now obvious that the Georgian leaders’ decision to send in troops against a civilian population was an irresponsible escapade that has had tragic consequences for thousands of people of different nationalities. They could never have decided on such folly without believing they had the support and encouragement of a much greater power. The Georgian armed forces have been trained by hundreds of American instructors, and they have been buying cutting-edge military technology in several countries. This, together with promises of NATO membership, made the regime overconfident and gave them a sense of invulnerability that contributed to their hitting on the idea of a ‘blitzkrieg’ against South Ossetia.

In short, Mikheil Saakashvili was relying on unconditional support from the West, which the West had given him grounds to expect. The resolute repulsing of their military adventure should give food for thought not only to the Georgian government.

What is needed now is to put a stop as soon as possible to the fighting and get on with such vital matters as aid for the victims of a humanitarian disaster very little reported in the Western media, and rebuilding the towns and villages. No less important is to give serious consideration to the best ways of resolving this situation, one of the most volatile in the Caucasian region, which is an area that requires extremely sensitive handling.

I said at one time that the solution to the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was to establish a federation with broad autonomy for the two republics. This idea met furious opposition, especially in Georgia. Later, attitudes changed, but after the present tragic events even that solution would be difficult to achieve.

Memories and pain are hard to bear, and even more difficult to cure. That is only possible after lengthy treatment, involving thoughtful dialogue and completely excluding the use of force. Similar conflicts in Europe and beyond have taken decades to be resolved, and some have yet to be settled. They need not only patience, but also wisdom. The history and experience of peoples living together in the small states of the Caucasus are testimony that tolerance and cooperation can ensure lasting peace and the conditions necessary for life and progress. That is the main thing to remember.

We need political leaders who are fully aware of this and who will apply their energies not to developing military muscle, but to laying the foundations for lasting peace.

Of late, the standpoint of some Western countries has been unbalanced, particularly in the UN Security Council. From the outset that has undermined its ability to function effectively. By declaring the Caucasus, situated thousands of miles away from the American continent, an area of its ‘national interests’, the United States has made yet another mistake. Peace in the region is in everybody’s interests, and elementary common sense requires recognition of the fact that Russia is bound to the Caucasus by shared geography and centuries of history. She is not seeking territorial expansion, but has unchallengeable grounds for declaring a legitimate interest in the area.

The international community might set a long-term goal of creating a system of regional security and co-cooperation that would prevent any such provocation in the future and the very possibility of crises like this. Establishing that kind of system would be extremely difficult, and could be achieved only by agreement among the neighbouring countries. Powers outside the region might facilitate it, but only if they adopted a balanced and objective approach. Geopolitical games are dangerous, and not only in the Caucasus. That is one further lesson that needs to be learned from recent events there.

Russia was dragged into this crisis. She could not stand idly by.

The acute phase of the conflict, caused by Georgian troops attacking the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali is behind us, but it is simply impossible to erase from memory the dreadful images: the salvos of rockets raining down in the night on a peaceful city, the barbaric destruction of entire neighbourhoods, the people killed in the cellars of their homes where they had taken shelter, the wrecking of ancient monuments and the graves of ancestors.

Russia did not seek this escalation. The domestic situation of the Russian leadership is perfectly stable and it has no need of any ‘small, victorious war’. Russia was drawn into the crisis by Saakashvili’s opportunism, in which he would never have indulged if he had not been receiving foreign support.

Russia could not stand idly by. She responded and an end was put to the aggression. President Dmitry Medvedev’s cessation of hostilities was a wise and responsible step. During this time, the Russian president acted calmly, confidently and firmly. If anyone was hoping to see Moscow in a state of disarray, they were disappointed.

Now a change of tack is increasingly obvious; whatever the outcome, Russia is to carry the blame for worsening the situation in the region and the world. A full-scale propaganda attack has been mounted against her in the Western, and particularly American, media, without even a pretence of objectivity in the way the crisis was treated, especially at the beginning. The public in the West has been deprived of a full and objective picture.

Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins, thousands of people were fleeing for their lives from a city in which there were as yet no Russian troops, and already Russia was being accused of aggression, repeating the lies of an out-of-control Georgian leader.

Whether the West was aware of Saakashvili’s plans is a serious question that has yet to receive a definite answer. At all events, training programmes provided to Georgian troops and massive arms deliveries did nothing to further the cause of peace, and much to foment war.

If this military adventure came as a surprise to the Georgian leader’s sponsors, the situation is little better, since it suggests the tail is wagging the dog. How many compliments were lavished on Saakashvili: ‘our ally, a democrat’, who was helping in Iraq, etc., and now everyone, we Russians, the Europeans, and most importantly innocent civilians are suffering the consequences of the misdeeds of America’s ‘best buddy’.

Before rushing to judgements about the situation in the Caucasus, and even more before claiming influence there, you need to have at least some degree of understanding of the complexities of the region. There are Ossetians living both in Georgia and in Russia. It is the same throughout the region: literally every country is a patchwork of different ethnicities, of peoples living side by side. It is unacceptable for anyone to be asserting that ‘this is our land’, or ‘we are liberating our territory’. There are people living on that land, and we have to think about them.

It is pointless trying to resolve the problems of the Caucasus region by force. It has been tried often enough, and each time with disastrous results for the aggressor. A legally binding non-aggression treaty is essential, but Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign one. It is now clear why. If the West were to facilitate the adoption of such an agreement it would be a good deed well done. If it chooses a different course, condemns Russia and re-arms Georgia (which some American officials are already suggesting), a new crisis is inevitable that will have even worse consequences.

In recent days, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and indeed President Bush, have been threatening to isolate Russia. American politicians talk about excluding our country from the G8, closing down the NATO-Russia Council, and blocking our membership of the World Trade Organization. These are empty threats. In Russia, the question is in any case being asked what use all these institutions are to us if our opinion is simply ignored. Just to sit round a well-laid table and be lectured at?

The reality is that, in recent years, Russia has been confronted with one fait accompli after another: this is what we are doing about Kosovo; now we are withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and deploying anti-missile systems in your neighbouring countries; now we are continuing to endlessly expand NATO. Live with it! And all that to the accompaniment of a lot of sweet talk about ‘partnership’ that is no more than a smokescreen. Who is going to put up with that sort of thing?

There are calls now in the United States for a ‘review’ of relations with Russia. I think the first thing in need of review is this way of talking down to Russia, ignoring her views and interests. Our countries are well able to develop a serious agenda for cooperation, in deeds rather than just in words. I believe many Americans and many Russians know that. It is time for the politicians to catch up.

A Bipartisan Commission on US Policy towards Russia has recently been established under the co-chairmanship of former Senator Gary Hart and Senator Chuck Hagel. Its members include some influential people and, judging by its published mandate, they understand what Russia is and how important it is to build a constructive relationship with her.

The Commission has stated that it will produce recommendations ‘to advance American national interests effectively in relations with Russia’. If they think only about that, no good will come of the initiative. If, however, they take account of the interests of their partner, common security interests, and add the necessary dose of sober realism, the way may be opened to rebuilding trust and worthwhile cooperation.

Dear Mr. Gorbachev,

I have just read your article in the Washington Post and last night watched your interview on Larry King’s talk show. I want to thank you for giving a clear and considered assessment of the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia.

Despite what the main US media are saying, people in the West cannot be fooled by this constant demonizing of Russia. We understand that President Saakashvili started this conflict. I was also amazed that the United States managed to provide assistance to Georgia faster than to its own nationals after Hurricane Katrina.

As you told Larry King, we had an opportunity after the Cold War to reduce military spending worldwide, which would have brought peace, stability and trust. Instead, the US military budget has increased to unprecedented levels, which has given impetus to a new arms race and jeopardized the safety of the whole world.

Mr. Gorbachev has offered up a wise and reasoned perspective on the complexities of the region. He has also laid out a plausible way to peacefully resolve this crisis.

We should listen to this Nobel Peace Prize Laureate! Instead of with guns, let’s arm ourselves with knowledge and stand strong for peace.

I admit to being a great admirer of Mikhail Gorbachev, and I join with those who congratulate the Washington Post for carrying this very important piece.

I also thought the abolition of autonomy for South Ossetia was a classic blunder and that Georgia should have carefully considered the merits of the federation solution Gorbachev proposed.

‘Mikheil Saakashvili was expecting unconditional support from the West, and the West had given him reason to think he would have it.’ Who really started all this remains unclear, but if the Georgians thought that America would pull their chestnuts out of the fire, then more fool they.

I understand that President Gorbachev will be speaking in Philadelphia on September 17 when he receives an award. Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend the ceremony because of a commitment in California that day.

We are appalled at the way the press is handling the current confrontation between Georgia and Russia. President Gorbachev’s interviews and op-ed articles have been important in drawing attention to the events of 1990–91, which lie at the root of much that has happened.

I hope we can all work together to bring some sanity to the current international situation. Just when I had the feeling that we could soon move in the right direction on the nuclear issues, the situation in Georgia has intruded to make that difficult.[3]

There is a grave danger that in the very near future the financial crisis will lead to even greater social stratification, a substantial increase in the risk of poverty for the majority of the population, and a significant weakening of the middle class.

The measures currently being taken are only the beginning of a vast effort needed to surmount the crisis, create more effective models of development and prevent similar situations recurring. Statements issued initially to the effect that Russia would ride out the crisis as a safe haven have proved unfounded. Reference to external factors cannot be used to avoid a critical analysis of the state’s economic policy and of recently taken decisions.

Just as the most important decisions of recent years have been taken with virtually no public debate, so the policies currently being adopted to deal with the crisis are not being subjected to public scrutiny and are essentially being formulated outside the democratic process. Increasingly, the impression is that the authorities have no strategy for overcoming the crisis. ‘Firefighting’ measures are having no effect and financial resources allocated not infrequently disappear into the sand or into someone’s very specific pocket. It is plain that Russia has no modern crisis management capacity or open and effective decision-making methods.

Fifty billion dollars are being used to repay the foreign debts of corporations belonging to Russia’s richest citizens, many of whom are continuing to make active use of tax avoidance schemes on their profits earned in Russia. This is money that could be invested in Russia to have an economic and social impact.

More than a trillion roubles has been transferred on deposit to the three largest state-owned banks, and a short time later a further 950 billion roubles was issued as a loan.

Access to these funds is, however, restricted to a small number of beneficiaries. There is no answer to the question of what has happened to the first tranche, for the simple reason that the government has not publicly asked it. There is every reason to suppose that the financial resources issued to the banks have not been passed on to businesses, but are being exploited for speculative refinancing, buying up dollars and the export of currency abroad.

There has also been no system to decisions about protecting the public from the crisis and its repercussions.

It was not enough to confine ourselves to criticism, and the memorandum contained specific proposals.

The first serious anti-crisis measure should be a comprehensive analysis of the domestic causes of the crisis, and public discussion of a draft national anti-crisis programme on an alternative, democratic basis.

This programme could stipulate a set of urgent economic and social measures, of which the following are top priority:

• devising a set of urgent measures to support socially vulnerable segments of the population;

• a change of policy on foreign borrowings;

• support for the rouble and a fight against inflation using all available measures;

• increased support of exports and damping down of imports;

• a freeze on the prices charged by natural monopolies;

• introduction of anti-monopoly policies;

• reduction of state administrative expenditure;

• establishment of a reliable system of national insurance against redundancy;

• urgent measures to reduce levels of corruption.

We proposed uniting the efforts of professional economists and representatives of various civil society initiatives to analyse the situation and formulate the policies needed by the economy and society as a whole. We hoped our initiative would lead to the emergence at all levels of other independent public initiative groups to combat the crisis, because, ‘a government cut off from society is incapable of finding optimal policies on its own; it is impossible to come through the crisis without active public involvement and increased confidence’.

Decisions were needed that provided answers to the most acute problems of the present day, and at the same time laid a foundation for the development of Russia for years into the future. Such decisions, the supporters of the Public Anti-Crisis Initiative argued, could not be arrived at in private by a narrow circle of ‘officially approved experts’.

There either is democracy or there isn’t. When a democratic system is being created, a great deal of effort is required to ensure that it grows, matures, takes root, to ensure that all institutions are free and act effectively, and that there is no bias in favour of the executive branch.

People are afraid that things may get even worse. They do not want to rock the boat, but the new authorities should not delude themselves. People want democracy, and the polls show it. In order to continue moving towards democracy, we need not only mobilization of civil society, but also a willingness on the part of the regime to encourage the formation of genuine political forces.

It is all there in the electoral system. What is supremely important is that there should be no electoral fraud, that genuine candidates should be put forward, that there should be competing manifestos, people and parties.

I was often asked, and still am, whether I would have embarked on reform if I had known then everything we know today. My answer is invariably that things could not go on as they were: the reforms were essential.… At the same time it is perfectly fair to ask whether it would have been possible to extract ourselves from the Soviet system with much less upheaval. I believe it would.

Metro: Was it difficult to foresee all the consequences?

MG: Yes, although in general it was clear enough what was coming.

We were probably insufficiently experienced. Nobody had ever made the transition from communism to capitalism before.

Metro: A lot of people blamed you for the difficulties our country had to experience. What helped you not to break under the weight of accusations from all sides?

MG: It was hard, but if a person lacks physical, intellectual and moral stamina, he is not cut out to govern a country like ours. I had the stamina both to lead the country and, subsequently, not to be broken.

Metro: How do you feel about people who criticize you?

MG: They may have a point. They are welcome to do so.

On your first question, yes, democratization is inevitable, and essential. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, as a result of democratic processes, partly as a result of Perestroika, authoritarian regimes in dozens of states left the stage.

One must, though, particularly if you are a researcher, be honest, observant and take all the facts into account. One fact is that in many countries democracy is being severely tested, and in some of them there is already a move away from democracy again. That has been and is happening in Russia. In our country we are living through a period of transition.

I think that in terms of our present transition to democracy, we are no more than halfway there. Democratization is one thing, and democracy another. It is one thing when you have a firmly rooted democracy with functioning institutions, but a process of democratization could take 100 years. We are still far away from being able to say we have democracy.

As regards the quest for political and personal freedom, that is a wholly understandable question. A lot has happened, and recent events in our country have shown that you will have to fight for political rights and personal freedoms. These matters have not yet been fully resolved.

I am often asked whether Perestroika was defeated. I do not know whether you will agree with me, but my answer is that the process of Perestroika has not failed. I think the politicians, and primarily the main perpetrator of Perestroika (I hope that does not make me sound too arrogant), did fail personally, as politicians. Nevertheless, what Perestroika caused to happen in Russia, and is still causing to happen, is seen around the world as the most important event of recent decades.

DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, after your statements in Novaya Gazeta and on Radio Free Europe that United Russia has begun to look like an inferior copy of the CPSU, Internet trolls declared war on you: ‘Perestroika was a betrayal of the Motherland’, ‘Gorbachev danced to the tune of the CIA’. How do you react to this latest storm around your person?

MG: With full awareness that hirelings are being paid money to perform in this way. They should be grateful to me for enabling them to earn their crust of bread. This is a sign of fear. Ordinary people are increasingly becoming involved in the country’s affairs. There is a new social climate, people are coming back to normal values. That sticks in the throat of powerful monopolists.

They are scared to death of people having freedom, of a democratic press, of a society emancipated from fear and censorship. Their behaviour might come under scrutiny! The individuals who muscled in on political (which for them is the same as economic) power are defending their ill-gotten gains, in part with all this squawking on the Internet. It is worth adding that our so-called ruling elite takes all the benefits of democracy for itself (the market economy, open borders, etc.), while trying to explain what a terrible thing democracy is for ordinary people. But now people have wised up to them.

DM: In other words, you are not perturbed by these social network attacks?

MG: Well, of course they need to vilify me because they are corrupt from top to toe, and democracy is a very rigorous form of government, which requires a regular turnover of rulers and observance of the law, and does not allow anyone a monopoly on power. Democracy is a much more formidable foe of corruption than any ‘firm hand’. Corruption opens the door to all sorts of disasters, from threats to people’s personal safety to depriving Russia of any sort of normal future.

Corruption can only be overcome through democracy and an independent judiciary, through society being in a position to know everything about those governing it. That is why they are running scared and attacking anyone who stands for freedom.

DM: Our longstanding dispute: what makes you so sure ‘society’ wants freedom, that it loves democracy more than a strong hairy fist?

MG: Oh-oh! In a minute we’re going to talk ourselves round to the theory that Russia is not ready for democracy. The fact is that we never tried it properly before we started to back off. We need to defeat corruption. We need a rejuvenated electoral system, a change in how the votes are counted, to eliminate ballot-stuffing!

The state authorities at all levels are trying to fraudulently hold on to their top jobs, discrediting the very idea of elections in their own interests. Restricting democracy is restricting the right of people to exercise influence over the government and change life for the better. What other means do people have? Attending protest rallies? The authorities have made it far from easy to hold demonstrations.

DM: The chief of police in Moscow has already recently proposed imprisoning people for 15 days for participating in unsanctioned street protests.

MG: Well, yes – in the USSR when they ran out of arguments they tried to keep life cosy by allowing the security services to imprison dissidents in psychiatric hospitals. They had to stop that in the end.

You cannot allow yourself to be afraid of the people. This lot are scared of their own people and try to hem them in. Why are they scared? Because they know that if democracy starts working in this country, there is a lot they will have to answer for.

DM: And lose office.

MG: At the very least.

DM: On the 25th anniversary of the April plenum, you said, in April 1985, ‘…unavoidable need for change’, ‘…contact with people’, ‘…economic development’, ‘…take account of public opinion’. It looks very much like a speech by Medvedev but, as one political scientist observed, Gorbachev tried to return power to society after Andropov died, but Medvedev is attempting modernization with Andropov still alive.’

MG: And what do you yourself think?

DM: I think that modernization means dismantling the corrupt system that has been established in recent years.

MG: There is dissatisfaction in society with the ruling elite. They are not working in the interests of Russia and are interested only in their own well-being. The system expels honest, socially active people, businessmen who have their own ideas, who do not pay kickbacks, who do not take part in projects imposed from above.

I repeat, they are afraid of the people, and that leads to losing control of the situation. We need to move forward one step at a time, building a modern, sophisticated, democratic country. There is no other way.

DM: Some experts argue it would be more effective to reform the country without the aid of democracy.

MG: Reform it for whom? People will not wait. They will turn their backs on Russia. Modernization with or without the people: the question cannot even be posed in those terms. Society should and must take part in determining its future. Otherwise, under the pretext of introducing reforms, they will just siphon off funds for themselves.

We have to learn to live in a globalized world, and you cannot be part of it with authoritarian methods. I cannot, and never will, agree with those who distrust the people. That is just a cover for their horror at the realization that public accountability will destroy their corrupt dealings. The state authorities cannot be in charge of their own political future. That is a dead end.

It is completely obvious that those behind this inhuman act intended to spread panic and intimidate people and the authorities. I am certain they will fail. It would be a mistake to react blindly to this provocation or to appear distraught for even a moment. On the contrary, all of us, both the authorities and society as a whole, must be resolute and take whatever measures may be necessary to block the possibility of villainous terrorist attacks.

Of course, you can’t just overlook facts, and it is a fact that Stalin played a role in the war. I think, though, that we are now fully informed about him, and what was done and how is something that should be written about objectively in textbooks and more generally. If Moscow is suddenly covered in advertising hoardings depicting Stalin, a lot of people will be, to say the least, surprised and baffled. Stalin was, after all, responsible for a lot of mistakes, especially immediately before the outbreak of war and in its initial stages.

Yes, we won the war, but the sacrifices our people made to achieve that victory are a national tragedy from which it will take us a long time yet to recover.

DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, a hot summer but no shortage of political developments: a mysterious spy scandal, attempts to give the FSB additional powers, aspirations to gain control over the Internet, constant hassle for the protest rallies on the 31st of each month [in defence of Article 31 of the Constitution guaranteeing the right of peaceful assembly], the statement by members of the government about raising the retirement age, and more. You must agree, life seems full of contradictions: on the one hand, entirely proper remarks about the need for modernization; on the other, tightening of the screws, the attempt to control everything, as if the security top brass are getting ready to impose emergency measures.

MG: There is indeed serious evidence of conflict between the state authorities and Russian society beginning to manifest itself. Human rights are no longer seen as mattering only to defenders of human rights; they are no longer regarded by most people as something abstract and foreign: people are remembering their rights to medical care, education and housing and are beginning to look for ways to assert them. Pointed questions are being asked about social justice. ‘Are the authorities with us or do they live in a different country?’ That is what is really getting people agitated.

DM: And do you believe it is possible to continue dialogue? Or are we going back to: first send in the riot police, after which you can put your teeth back in and we’ll talk?

MG: Dialogue is indispensable, both for the people and for the state authorities. There is no getting away from that.

It is wrong to separate people out according to their political ideas: ‘These young people in the youth movement are a mainstay of the regime, but those others in the awkward squad are nothing to do with “us” and we will just steamroller them!’ Some things are more important than ideology: the law and justice are above everything else. Separating society into those who are with us and those who are against us is the royal road to purges and prison camps. The state authorities are in a quandary, and that is pushing them towards mindless use of force.

DM: Are they in a quandary or do they, forgive the expression, not give a toss?

MG: No, they are in a quandary. They are unable to get dialogue going. They are tempted to declare that all those who oppose them are ‘enemies’. When you drive somebody out of social and political life, you unbalance the system, and that inevitably leads to a succession of unmanageable social conflicts.

DM: But how can anyone make themselves heard in public or political life when it has all been flattened?

MG: That is precisely why, if society is not to explode, we need a new policy. We hear the authorities making the right noises about modernization, and the courts and freedom. They need to discuss this with the public and get their support, not just silence them. Otherwise there will be nobody to defend these ideas. Only society can defend them, civil society, not the bureaucracy.

On the whole, the current elite of appointees in power are yesmen. They are not material for modernizing Russia. They will filibuster it out of existence, or more likely steal all the funding first. These are the wretched results of forming the present elite on the basis of geographical, professional and commercial affinity.

DM: What do you propose, Mikhail Sergeyevich? Import a new elite duty-free? Create a new party?

MG: We couldn’t create a new party. They wouldn’t allow it. I had a talk on one occasion with our main ‘party organizer’, and he said, ‘Why are you wasting your time on this Social Democratic Party? We aren’t going to register it anyway.’ I am quite sure they would not register it, and I don’t for a moment suppose that is exclusively his policy. They will cling on to their monopoly, but people are looking for ways to influence the government.

If it cannot be done through the parliament, they will go to rallies. If the rallies are broken up, you can be certain they will come up with something else. Is it really so difficult to understand that in the current situation genuine dialogue is essential? We need to create a new democratic forum. Without delay.

DM: How is that different from a party?

MG: No. It needs to be a non-party movement which, on behalf of the public, can represent their opinion and influence the government. A new, independent partner of government and society, representing the public’s interests. Something the state authorities will not be able to ignore.

DM: Why not?

MG: It is in the Federation Council and the State Duma that seats are dished out or simply sold. This forum will be a gathering of authoritative, incorruptible leaders: it will be impossible to ignore them or not to listen to them.

In 2010, in connection with the passing of a law, ‘On the legal status of publicly funded institutions’, the problem of education became one of the main focuses of controversy in Russian society. There was strong criticism from representatives of political parties, the Orthodox Church, specialists and the public at large. The law, which, judging by official statements, was seen as central to reforms for modernizing and raising the standards of education, was, in effect, rejected by Russia’s citizens.

They rightly saw in the new law an attempt, under the pretext of transferring education to a free market basis, to do away with the allimportant principle of ‘free and universally accessible pre-school, basic general and secondary vocational education’. In recent months, the situation has been aggravated by attempts to modernize the unitary act ‘On Education’, which encompasses all educational institutions in the Russian Federation, from nursery education right up to the universities. The new project has again raised a storm of protest.

I never expected to be celebrating my 80th birthday. When we were in the middle of Perestroika, we hoped to live at least until 2000. I cannot boast about my age or what an amazingly hale and hearty old man I am. I find myself visiting hospitals too often for that, and even having extended stays in them. But I will stay the course! I have experienced a lot. I feel that in those 80 years I have lived several lives, and perhaps even a full century. There have been great joys and grievous losses and trials, all packed into those years.

You know I don’t much care to follow what is written or said about you: it disturbs the memory and, at times, the lies are terribly hurtful. In the last months, though, with your 80th birthday approaching, I have read and listened to practically everything that has been written about you. With every fibre of my being I have relived your and our drama and the triumph of your, and hence of our, life.

It is 20 years now since you were president; those others, just as then, still know everything and the country is exactly where it is. Today, on your 80th birthday, by right of being the only person who has known you closely for over half a century, there are some things I want to say about you as a human being, and that means also about politics.

Our world, now global, is characterized by extreme political cynicism. Big politics is entirely subordinate to making profits, either by big business or directly by the state authorities. Where there are not already mature civil institutions, the prime objective of politics is power itself and personal enrichment. And, of course, spheres of influence. If we look around with open eyes, we observe how calmly, how cynically the unbelievably painful problems of entire countries and peoples are ignored: they are denied basic benefits and freedoms.

Why? Because any transnational corporation finds it a thousand times more agreeable and straightforward to reach agreement with any authoritarian and dictatorial regime, in effect, with just one or two people, than to have to deal with civil society, especially if a country has natural resources. In the early 1980s this general picture of the world was complicated by such factors as the political confrontation of two systems, the real threat of nuclear conflict, an unbridled arms race: the Cold War. The world was divided. In the Soviet Union itself, and to varying degrees in the countries of the ‘socialist camp’, a totalitarian regime denied its citizens many essentials but could have gone on existing for a long time to come.

And then you came and said that a politics that ignored fundamental human values, and first and foremost the right to live in dignity and freedom, was immoral. That was your personal belief, born of your nature as a human being, but you succeeded in using that conviction as the foundation of a foreign policy that truly changed the course of world history in the late twentieth century, and of transformations in your own country. In your own land you had to reckon with the reality of a country that had never known democracy or free choice, a country where all property was owned by the state, the dictatorship of the Communist Party, terrible shortages, with a real people that had long forgotten, if it had ever known, what freedom and the right to choose even were; and then, when everything kicked off, also with a real balance of political forces, which shifted and where the forms of confrontation became ever more extreme.

All those opposing you were agreed that you lacked determination, that you were insufficiently radical. Those on the right complained you were moving too slowly, those on the left that you were going too fast. They claimed you did not know, or were afraid, to adopt the correct position. Never in my life have I seen you frightened. In the heat of the struggle, none of them paused to reflect that to adopt one of the extreme options might violate your own human nature. You always looked for the true path to reform of our country between the extremes, but truth, like moderation, is elusive, and finding and keeping to that path is as difficult as walking on a razor’s edge.

You sought consensus, the position that could unite citizens and nations and nationalities. Many jeered. What was this consensus? What were they supposed to do with it? Most damagingly, who needed it? I never waste my time on the plethora of obscure, muddled conspiracy theories that you were working to some secret plan. That just is not you. If you had wanted to be manipulating everything in secret, you could just have remained general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. I still remember every outburst of radicalism in those years, every clash, because every time it grieved you profoundly, and us with you.

You never were naive, and I know that for a fact. They say you did not know the Russian people. What nonsense! You were born and bred in the midst of the people: you were hardly going to grow up in a state of rosy naivety. It is just that your knowledge did not alter your beliefs, and your faith in the ability of the people to change for the better if their circumstances changed. Everything went the way it did, the results were what they are; that was what people wanted. Every people made their choice in the light of perspectives that had opened up for them, made the best of new opportunities. Russia’s path has proved long and arduous.

You have had the courage not just to stay in a country where you had effectively been deposed, where for years they have been trying to defame not only you, but your wife, where they even tried to represent you as the main culprit for the actions of the Communist dictatorship in the entire 70 years of its existence. Despite all that, you had the courage to carry on doing much work to the benefit of your country and all the people of the world. As a human being, you are far stronger and wiser than those who slander and presume to judge you.

We are proud of you. You are the root of our life in every sense, Your Excellency!

Dear Dmitry Anatolievich,

I accept this highest award of the Russian state with emotion and gratitude.

My whole life passes before my eyes. I am not ashamed of what I have done. Of myself and those with whom a quarter of a century ago I decided to implement cardinal reforms, I can say in the words of Willy Brandt: ‘We did our best.’ We embarked on reform not for honour and glory, but because we understood how vitally Russia needed change. People deserved freedom. They have a right to determine their own destiny and that of their country. That idea was paramount.

We wanted great change to come about without bloodshed. We did not succeed in avoiding it completely, but there were no bloodbaths. We made mistakes, and these torment me to this day. And yet, in a few short years, we managed to make such progress that a return to the totalitarian past had become impossible.

I will never agree that freedom is alien to Russia and that our people do not need it. Of course they do. There are more free people in our country today than ever before.

I am sure that those people who recently took to the streets of our cities to demand fair elections were expressing the view of millions of Russian citizens. These people should not be repulsed! They should not be viewed as enemies!

We need change without chaos, free political competition without a split in society. That is difficult. It calls for maturity and responsibility from everyone, but it is possible. I want to facilitate this, and that is why I consider it my duty to express my opinions, to speak frankly to the people and to those governing the state.

A great, strong and flourishing Russia will be created by the present generations of citizens and political leaders. That is the kind of Russia needed by us and, I am convinced, the world. Once again, I express my gratitude for this august award, and wish to express my firm belief in the democratic future of our country.

On the threshold of his 80th birthday, Gorbachev does not mince words or avoid questions, even if they are clearly not to his liking. He is not just critical, he is almost irritated and untypically blunt in his assessments. These are the assessments of someone who can afford not to be intimidated and not to worry how others may react.

MG: Well, does it not matter that these ‘friends’ are betraying the Russian people? Helping themselves to everyone’s property and quietly moving money abroad? Instead of a fight against corruption, we have a pretence, and what is the result? The same pants, only back to front, as the saying goes.

LT: What is your main gripe against the current Russian state authorities?

MG: They are taking too long to introduce democracy.

LT: Too long? You put that very mildly. Why do you think the situation is as it is?

MG: Our rulers like to keep everything on manual control, and to stay in peak physical condition they need to work out by breaking democratic equipment.

LT: Why are the people who have come to power in Russia far removed from what is commonly called the ideals of Perestroika? MG: Because they were not elected. Those who have come to power were not elected in democratic elections and have no mandate from democratic institutions. Since 1989 and 1990, when democratic elections were held for the first time in the Soviet republics, we have had no more free elections.

LT: But Vladimir Putin won in the elections. Even if we allow for a certain amount of fraud, there is no disputing the fact that a majority did vote for him, both in 2000 and in 2004.

MG: If the election campaigns had been more free, he would have been facing competition from a considerably greater number of representatives of the opposition. The elections would have been more full-blooded, and then it would be a completely different story, with a different political climate. Take those countries that do have a mature democracy. There will be several parties represented in parliament, none of them with more than 40 per cent of the seats, and those with most seats are obliged to negotiate with the opposition.

LT: Why do you think governments in Russian traditionally tend towards authoritarianism?

MG: It depends on who comes to power.

LT: On the individual?

MG: Yes, on the person, his personal qualities, his experience. What experience do ours have? Only of manual control. They are accustomed to keeping people in their place by fear. That is why I am now saying that our main problem, our number one problem, is that we need a revamped electoral system that would give people a real choice.

LT: The political situation in Russia seems unlikely to change any time soon. Would you care to predict how political events will unfold in Russia?

MG: No.

LT: Perhaps just for the next decade?

MG: No. The main thing right now is to get robust democratic procedures operating, and for them to disempower those who want to gnaw away at political freedom and property rights.

LT: Would you wish for Russia to have, for example, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin elected president again in 2018?

MG: No. I think it is essential that we should all firmly agree that nobody should occupy that post for more than two terms.

LT: Do you see any prospect of genuine political competition in the 2012 presidential election?

MG: Not so far. So far the Russian elite is so obsessed with power… The government is above God! First they get up to all sorts of things, then go to church, take some candles and pray to the Almighty to forgive them their sins. I do, though, have a sense that we already have a whole stratum in the population who will identify and put forward someone with a credible claim to become president.

LT: You must yourself have been tempted to try to hold on to power at all costs.

MG: Is it really so difficult to see that even during the Soviet period Gorbachev began delegating power, giving more and more of it to others? I think I did the right thing there. I am certain of it. That was my choice.

SK: People think Medvedev should be the engine for reform. Mikhail Khodorkovsky said last year that Medvedev had become a symbol of reform, but not its engine. Now people are urging him to show some political will and get rid of Putin, one way or another. Legally, of course. Those against that idea say that then Medvedev should accept he would find himself in the role of Gorbachev, that the process he initiated would end up sweeping him off the political stage. If Medvedev starts the process, there is no guarantee the wave will not sweep away not only Putin, but him too, and in such a way that he would be forced to emigrate from Russia because he is a part of the system. What do you think about these parallels?

MG: In the first place, I think their regular and increasingly frequent remarks about coming together to talk and agree everything at the appropriate time testifies, at the very least, to a lack of humility on their part. They have no right to behave in that manner. They were elected by the Russian people and it is not for them but for the people, the electorate, to decide.

SK: That is what is supposed to happen, but not the way things are in reality.

MG: If it is what is supposed to happen, that is how they should behave.

SK: True, but they think they are going to decide.

MG: Who cares what they think. How do they think they will decide? They do, after all, face an election.

SK: Well, you know yourself how elections are conducted in Russia. Hardly anybody believes in fair elections any more.

MG: Well that is just not how it should be. It is something that concerns all of us.

SK: So what should be done, Mikhail Sergeyevich?

MG: We need a completely new electoral system, in which it should be firmly established that two terms is the maximum and that is that.

The president’s plan for modernizing the economy, politics and other areas is all well and good, but his options are limited. A coalition with the democratic forces of civil society is essential.

I can see, though, that Putin is outplaying him. He is setting up all sorts of fronts, a so-called ‘Popular Front’. I don’t know how many of these fronts he will come up with, but it does indicate that he has little faith in what United Russia can achieve, and at least he is right about that. He can see that United Russia is incapable of winning on its own.

Again, what is going to be the mainstay of modernization? Vladimir Vladimirovich is calling for stability. He thinks we should maintain the status quo. We say, ‘No! If you want to keep the status quo, where does modernization fit in?

We need now to realize that we are facing a wave of social problems that will determine Russia’s future, the situation in education, healthcare and other areas. If we cannot find solutions to these problems, Russia will not modernize. We need a different programme from that advocated by Putin.

I have criticized Putin for bumptiousness. I respect him as a political leader and a person, but I believe his current policies are an obstacle to progress.

The more I meet people, read, observe the way events are developing and the public mood, the more I sense a growing unease. Recognition that the state is being degraded and society demoralized is becoming widespread.

It is increasingly plain that the way relations between the government and society have evolved in Russia is not providing citizens with personal security, the standard of living they deserve, or genuine (rather than pretended) respect for Russia on the world stage. Some half of Russian respondents believe Russia is ‘heading in the wrong direction’. Awareness of the unpromising nature of the situation is being felt among the political class.

It is difficult to avoid the impression that the Russian state authorities lack the political resolution and willingness to look for a genuine solution. They limit themselves to cosmetic measures or, more often, to a pretence of reform accompanied by ringing declarations. There are evidently powerful personal and corporate interests vested in maintaining the status quo.

Even many of those who recognize the need for change hope reform will come from above and are waiting for it to be delivered by the Kremlin. Are we still in this day and age relying on a reforming tsar rather than on our own strengths? Do we still look down on the people as cattle?

Others call for ‘gradual, evolutionary’ change. I myself am an enemy of ‘clean sweeps’, but there are some changes that simply cannot be gradual. How, for instance, could you introduce the rule of law a step at a time? Would the protection of the law be extended first only to certain categories of the population? If so, to whom precisely? And in the meantime, what about the others: would they be in a grey zone? Or treated as second-class citizens?

And how would you manage an ‘evolutionary’ introduction of the principle of political competition? Who would decide who was eligible and who was not?

Reluctance to initiate reform or a desire to restrict it to half-baked changes are often claimed to stem not from a fear of losing power, but from a desire to avoid a new collapse of Russia. Instead, however, it is the lack of change that is threatening to create instability and jeopardize the country’s future.

The election campaign is under way and, already noisy and scandalous, is shaping up to be one more Potemkin Village with false façades. The regime is not even trying to conceal its determination to shield itself from fair competition and ensure its self-preservation. For the rest of its life?

All this reminds me of the 1980s, but back then we mustered the strength to break through the iron hoop of unfreedom constricting society, and released an unprecedented surge of political enthusiasm. People marched with growing resolution, and their demands effectively came down to one slogan: ‘This is no way to live!’

The leaders of the USSR recognized that the Soviet system was inefficient and blocking progress. We embarked on cardinal reforms, despite all the risks and dangers. We began dismantling the Communist Party’s monopoly on power and organized the first genuine elections in Soviet history.

In short, Perestroika was the answer to the impasse of that time. For the first time in Russian history, people had an opportunity to express their wishes. Contrasting that with the current torpor of the political scene and our sullen public, those days look like an amazing triumph of democracy.

Alas, we, the then government and society as a whole, were unable to see Perestroika through and create a system based on political competition and the guaranteeing of freedom and transparency. Perestroika was halted, and in the 1990s the power of the state fell into the hands of people who, hiding behind a screen of democratic slogans, turned back the clock. Additionally, a new autocracy was bolstered by oligarchic capitalism with a tinge of criminality.

The 2000s, creating an illusion of stability and prosperity, were a period when Russia’s natural resources were squandered.

The regime locked itself in a bunker and erected an impenetrable shield consisting of all manner of trickery, abuse of state administrative resources and hypocritical legislation that makes a change of regime impossible. Russia is being pushed back to the Brezhnev era, forgetful of how that period ended. People trust the regime less and less, are losing hope in the future, and are humiliated by poverty and deepening social divisions, unlike a celebrity set who are rolling in money.

Another five or six years of this and Russia is unlikely ever to be able to escape from this dead-end situation.

How is Russia to get out of it? It would be naive to imagine that economic reform alone will suffice. In any case, that is not going to happen without a root-and-branch transformation: without ridding our electoral system of phoney, unjustifiable restrictions whose sole purpose is to enable the current ‘elite’ to rule in perpetuity; without establishing an independent representative branch, an independent judiciary and independent local government; without freeing the media; without civil society.

In Russia today the executive branch lords it over society, beholden to no one. The president can appoint his successor, extend or renew his authority using rigged elections. With the presidency in that state we have no grounds for optimism that the other branches of government will function normally or that civil rights will be respected. A system of appointment from above has replaced free elections.

Those responsible for the current situation in Russia are incapable of initiating real change for fear they would undermine their own power. There is no precedent in history for a failed system being reformed by those responsible for establishing it.

Russia has a vital need of free and fair elections and political competition. Election to power and timely replacement of those in power is a prerequisite for a modern society to develop normally. They will be possible in Russia only if there is a radical overhaul of the current system and its supporting pillars.

A change of government while retaining the old rules will result only in one clique being replaced by another, and meanwhile the caravan will continue trundling towards the precipice.

Russia will have to be reformed in a difficult domestic and international environment, but there is no other way: every aspect of society needs transformation. We need to lay the foundations for a state and a system that will serve society and not vice versa. It will be the first time this problem has been solved in the history of Russia, and today nobody has a ready blueprint of how to do it. That is why a wide public debate is needed on how to build a new Russia.

What will come next? If the future president leaves everything as it is and thinks only about how to hold on to power, and as a consequence holds on to the same old team that was responsible for how things are now, he will be making a big mistake. Nothing will move forward without major changes affecting the entire system. Without that we face the prospect of six lost years. I think the future president should think about that very seriously.

At this moment, there is only one solution, and that is also what I would advise. The election results must be annulled and new elections held. A wave of protest is growing, more and more people in the country do not believe the results. Ignoring public opinion discredits the authorities and destabilizes society. The government must admit that there have been numerous instances of falsification and ballot-rigging. In other words, the results do not reflect the will of the voters. After the criticism and protests at Chistye Prudy, it is clear there is a growing refusal to accept the way the votes have been counted in favour of United Russia. There is a firm conviction that, as the demonstrators are saying, Putin’s party collected no more than 25 per cent of the vote, and certainly not 50. This is very serious. The Kremlin has come up against a red line. The situation is grave. There must be no aggravating of the confrontation, no further heightening of the tension. I am convinced that the prime minister and president must come up with an initiative to keep everything within democratic procedures. We have difficult decisions to take, major unavoidable changes to introduce, and that cannot be done without our citizens or against our citizens. Deceit destroys trust in the state authorities. That is why I consider it essential to annul the results of this vote and declare new elections.

Dmitry Muratov: There is a protest rally on 24 December. What do you think, why will people be going there?

Gorbachev: I was hoping to ask you that question.

DM: I can tell you that all of us in the editorial office who were not involved in producing the current issue of the newspaper, and some who were, went to the meeting on Bolotnaya Square. They all had just one wish, I think, and that was to show that we are human beings, that we cannot be manipulated, and we are modern citizens of a modern country. That is why these people are turning out. They are going there for personal freedom, in order not to whisper about it in the kitchen but to state their position and show their faces.

MG: I want to say once again, I am delighted with this stand by our citizens. And if they again try to intimidate us, they will fail. I am sure of that. Look at how many thousands of people came to Bolotnaya Square!

DM: The mood of the public has changed, don’t you think? The sense of glumness has gone.

MG: Yes, the mood has changed. People are coming out of their despondency. Our time has not been wasted! We have been kicked about for Perestroika, they have tried to break us, called us every name under the sun, but now the link is being re-established with everything we began so altruistically, for which we took such risks. Freedom, personal honesty – the things we wanted.

We did not by any means succeed at everything; we did not see Perestroika through to the end, but today I’m amazed by the main…

DM: The fact that the ‘freedom gene’ can be found in Russian people? It was inserted, and here it has reappeared a generation later?

MG: Absolutely! And that’s that. Now they can’t blame everything on the backwardness of a people who ‘cannot be left to decide anything for themselves, do not know what is good for them, are happy as they are as long as they have vodka…’. That is denigration of our people. I was very struck at Bolotnaya on 10 December by the fact that when these 100,000 people left, they took their rubbish with them. They left the square clean! There were provocateurs attempting to stir up trouble, but they failed. People quickly put them in their place. By the way, that is something to bear in mind for the future! That mischief, possibly on a larger scale, may be repeated.

DM: Do you think there may be plain-clothes troublemakers on Saturday, on 24 December?

MG: I think there may well be provocateurs, because civic activism is something a lot of people do not like.

DM: Will the trouble-making be instigated by the authorities or by the radicals?

MG: Tut-tut! How can you even think such a thing? The authorities provoke trouble? How can you be so ignorant, you, the editor of such a well-known newspaper, a well-informed citizen. You of all people should know that!

DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, you were the first to say the results of these elections should be annulled. Do you stand by that?

MG: I am still staggered by what I saw and heard. That day and the following night I closely monitored everything that was going on. I heard everything that was being broadcast ‘from both corners’, and saw all that alchemy with the voting and vote-counting.

DM: We passed you a lot of documents too…

MG: That picture our press gave me really shocked me. Russian citizens had their right to vote stolen from them, and at just that moment, a wizard materializes. I refer to Churov, the chairman of the Electoral Commission.

DM: On the Internet he is being called the Churodey.[1]

MG: I can think of a few other names he could be called. He kept repeating, ‘We will be holding the very fairest of elections.’ He seems to have convinced himself of that and tried to get the public at large to believe it. I believe he managed to fool the president.

DM: You mean Churov was the hatchet that laid himself under Dmitry Medvedev’s compass and threw him off course?

MG: You ask such difficult questions!

DM: What is so difficult about it? Medvedev, whom I greatly respect, suddenly turned up in charge of United Russia, and it was United Russia that was having all those votes attributed to it.

MG: I do not believe he knew everything that was going on. He does not yet have enough experience for that. You need to go through a lot, get bumps and bruises, and even wounds, before you understand quite how all that gets done. What was it he said exactly?

DM: He congratulated United Russia on getting over the threshold to be admitted to the Duma.

MG: But in the press he said, ‘I have no comments or doubts about the elections.’ At that point, I think Dmitry Anatolievich did himself no good at all.

DM: I feel sad about that.

MG: So do I. He just needed more time. Now he is in a difficult situation. People are laughing at him. Well, he will just have to learn to put up with that too.

DM: But to come back to your call to annul the election results. Does that still stand? Or is it already unrealistic?

MG: It stands! Even our cleverest friends are saying, ‘No, it’s over, it’s not going to happen.’ But it is not over, because how could a Duma elected that way be allowed to sit for five years during such a historically difficult period? You have to tell the people the truth, because you cannot build a relationship on lies. Solzhenitsyn was absolutely right when he said, ‘You cannot build the future on lies.’ And the question we are facing is precisely about the future: what is going to happen in these coming five years?

DM: Are we or are we not going to build Russia’s future on a lie? Is that how you would formulate the question?

MG: Precisely.

DM: Medvedev has said he is satisfied with the election results. Putin has said the question of annulment is not even being considered, and that it is not decided at protest demonstrations or on the Internet. In that case, who was given the ultimatum from Bolotnaya Square to annul the elections?

MG: The state authorities.

DM: On Echo of Moscow radio and in Novaya Gazeta you said annulment of the election results should be initiated by the authorities, but they have refused. So where do we go from here?

MG: Frankly, I was looking for a way to hand the initiative to them, to let them do it themselves.

DM: But they have refused. The two weeks they were given by Bolotnaya Square have passed. Are you proposing to appeal to them again?

MG: I am not yet making any proposals. We have not reached that point. In the first place, those two weeks between 10 and 24 December have taught us many lessons.

DM: Like what?

MG: About Russia, about the regime, about society. Society is being renewed, it is changing!

DM: Can we take pride in it again?

MG: It has spoken!

DM: I was certainly proud of what I saw at Bolotnaya. What faces! I recognize them: those are our readers! I was so pleased.

MG: That is the first thing. We saw our own country, our own people. And again they were saying, ‘This is no way to live!’, with the people debarred from deciding the country’s future because they are supposedly completely hopeless.

DM: Well, evidently Stanislav Govorukhin thinks this is just the right way to live. He agreed to head the election campaign of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

MG: I can only express regret. I do not just respect him, I consider him a friend. He will have to sort all that out for himself.

DM: Still, what do you think people should do on 24 December? MG: I think the most important thing is to link this with the campaign for the presidency.

DM: You mean, link the demand for the annulment of the Duma election results to the forthcoming presidential election?

MG: Let me explain: we can trust with our votes only those candidates who raise the question of annulling the Duma election results.

DM: ‘Raise the question’ or annul them?

MG: Annul them! Give a commitment to annul the results of the Duma elections. We cannot tolerate for five years a Duma elected in this manner.

DM: I have another question: who are these people who will come out again to the square to protest? In addition to the fact that these are free people who love their country and are protesting for Russia, who are they for you?

MG: A new generation. They are voters. They are already a powerful civic association of voters!

DM: With a lot of different views, not members of United Russia, but people with a constitutional human right to a fair election?

MG: I will say without any ifs and buts, those voters are patriots!

DM: The social networks – Facebook, for example – are voting for who should speak at the 24 December rally, and they are not choosing spokesmen for the current regime or the present opposition. The networks are preferring Leonid Parfenov, Boris Akunin and Yury Shevchuk. Citizens, not politicians. Nobody trusts politicians, and not just those in power. Why?

MG: Because many politicians are not prepared to listen to citizens. To take an example, Gennadiy Zyuganov is calling the protesters, people who are standing up for their constitutional rights, ‘that orange plague’. He is saying that oppositionists who are not part of the system have no right to speak out and should be ignored. He is comfortable in his parliamentary seat and to hell with all the rest of them. They are outside the system. That is why politicians are mistrusted.

As for the regime, look at Putin’s talk on television after Bolotnaya Square. The whole purpose of the show was to mislead people. It was embarrassing, and disgraceful. I feel ashamed now. I feel associated with Putin, in the sense that initially, when he first came to power, I actively supported him here, and abroad – everywhere… And now?

DM: The regime is giving the organizers of the rally, social activists, newspaper editors, to understand that ‘if blood is spilled, the opposition will be held responsible’. As if it is not because of the regime’s own machinations that people have rallied in the square!

MG: It is the duty of the state to ensure that people are safe. The people have begun to be personally involved in important matters of state. That is their right. So, protect them!

DM: The meeting will be held on Saturday, then the New Year holiday will begin, people will go away. Christmas trees, presents, hangovers… And then what? Do you think the rally, which is going to be on Sakharov Prospekt, should set up some kind of permanent organizing body?

MG: I would say that is absolutely essential. The people who were on the organizing committee that took the initiative in the first place could head it.

DM: Don’t you think they will squabble among themselves, Mikhail Sergeyevich?

MG: Well, they haven’t as of now. Perhaps this will be the beginning of democrats managing to cooperate.

DM: Up till now they have only been capable of splitting into factions.

MG: Yes. But now there is a situation which will enable other things to grow through. All these outmoded, purely ideological attachments will wither and the issue of elections will be central. Whichever way you look at it, this is a serious issue, in fact the top priority for Russia right now.

DM: The current government is claiming that free elections would see the Communists or Nazis come to power, and then we would realize how much better the present regime was. That’s their argument.

MG: In every country, in every society there are nationalists. I think the concerns of normal nationalists are feelings for which there should be a place in a different social climate.

DM: Do you actually know any normal nationalists? I don’t.

MG: A normal nationalist in Russia is a person whose heart bleeds for his people, but who understands that Russia is a country of many worlds, of different cultures, a complicated state, a society formed over centuries and which, incidentally, existed and developed as such.

DM: Well, for me the modern nationalists are the people who killed our journalist, Nastya Baburova, and the lawyer Stanislav Markelov, people who knife Tajiks and migrant workers. That’s who they are.

MG: I cannot agree that those are nationalists: they are criminals.

DM: Nevertheless, that is the regime’s scare story: if it does not stay in power and maintain what it calls stability, the Communists or nationalists will come to power.

MG: They are trying to impose the same false alternatives as in 1996, when people were told to vote for Yeltsin or the Communists would get in.

DM: And do you think it would be better if the Communists did get in?

MG: They got away with that scare then and want to use it again now. It is a false choice! If elections are fair, you do not need to be afraid of the results. If there are fair elections you get a change of governments.

DM: Well, back to the rally on 24 December. What needs to happen?

MG: The first thing on that day is to approve the slogan, ‘For new, free and fair elections!’ The condition for supporting any presidential candidate will be for him to agree to that slogan. The second thing is for a Voters of Russia organizing committee to be set up and a day agreed for a Congress of Voters of Russia. These will be people with differing political views but who have in common a conviction that elections must be fair, the press must be free, and the government must be accountable to society.

DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, still, do we or do we not have to be afraid of the unpredictability of the results of fair elections?

MG: We do not. And we should take part in new elections after annulment of the sham ones.

Lately one of the candidates has been urging us to die for the fatherland. We need to live for the motherland, to fight for her democratic future. We need to safeguard our citizens’ right to further develop peaceful ways of expressing protest.

And we will have fair elections!

After the mass protests that began in December, the government did at last sense that its hope that everything would just blow over was not going to be realized. In spite of that, it has made only token efforts to mollify society, and wants to leave unchanged the things that matter most.

I considered it my civic duty to speak out, and in a number of articles and interviews said, loud and clear, that this was unacceptable.

What is needed is not cosmetic, but radical changes. We need to change the constitutional provisions governing the structure of state power relations so as to prevent any individual or group from gaining a monopoly of power.

We need to ensure independence of the judiciary from the executive branch and freedom of the media.

And finally, and very importantly, we need political parties that reflect the real interests of people and the intellectual and political trends in society, social democratic, liberal, conservative and others.

It is impossible to accomplish all these tasks overnight, but neither can we afford to waste time, because without a thoroughgoing reform and demonopolization of our political system, there will be no modernization. We shall be unable to put an end to corruption, the overdependence of the economy on natural resources, and social inequality.

I think this election has differed from the last elections in that it became evident during the campaign that society is emerging from a state of, I would say, torpor. The voters are beginning to participate in shaping the agenda. If the president really intends to implement the programme and obligations he accepted before being elected, if it is not a sham and we are to take the president seriously, we are going to need some very hard work on the part of the executive, the legislature, the citizens and the public as a whole… he is not going to be able to carry on acting in the old way, even if he wants to. Moreover, I think the question will very soon arise of the need to elect a new parliament, because we know all about how the present one got elected. If we are to have an active, effective parliament, then, frankly, this one needs to be replaced.

RL: They took to the streets, to Bolotnaya Square, to Sakharov Prospekt, then again to Bolotnaya… Now what?

MG: They carry right on. They come back out on the streets to reaffirm their demands, and when this whole election saga is over, to insist on implementation of all that was promised in the course of the election campaign. Let Putin explain himself. Let him be held to account. The pressure may be much greater than the government expects, and greater even than we expect.

RL: Will the movement that began on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Prospekt develop, or run out of steam after the election?

MG: It will expand.

RL: Does Putin understand that?

MG: I believe he does. He senses it. After all, up till now nobody has taken to the streets, other than the old people when they were deprived of their welfare benefits. They, incidentally, were the first to come out in the freezing cold to block roads. They set an example for the young to follow. I am quite sure there will be no progress without increasing pressure. And it will increase, and become more organized and more politicized. Putin will not be able to ignore that.

To the president of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, V. D. Zorkin:

Esteemed Valeriy Dmitrievich,

Your article ‘There is no morality in chaos’, published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on 11 December 2012, came to my attention after some delay. I will not disguise the fact that much in the text surprised me precisely because it was written by the president of the Constitutional Court of Russia and published in our government newspaper.

Polemicizing with the highly subjective judgements of the American political scientist, Leon Aron, ‘On moral and personal choice in constructing the Russian state’ (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 28 November 2012), you ascribe, absolutely without foundation and contrary to the well-known historical facts, an absence of any positive moral values to Gorbachev’s Perestroika. You find it ‘guilty’ of sedition, as a form of chaos devoid of morality.

As if there had not been the first free elections with alternative candidates for decades of Russian history in 1989 and 1990! As if there had not been Glasnost, which allowed people to say freely what they were thinking!

As if there had been no opening up to citizens of access to information and the wealth of Russian and world literature! As if there had been no introduction of the freedom for citizens to leave and return to their homeland!

And what of the law on freedom of conscience and religious organization, the return of places of worship to believers and the extensive celebration of a millennium since the Christianization of Russia? Why do you overlook the resumption of the suspended rehabilitation of victims of Stalinist repression and the release of political prisoners? To say nothing of the ending of the Cold War and real steps towards removing the danger of nuclear war and towards arms reduction. Can you not see ‘positive moral content’ in this?

I can well imagine whose interests the clarion calls and orders to vilify Perestroika served, and why they are now being reissued. I did not expect, however, that a writer of your level of authority, ranting against those who ‘extol’ Gorbachev’s Perestroika, would literally in the next phrase start trying to identify it with the upheavals and crimes of the 1990s and use that to denigrate the new ‘Perestroika sedition’ which is supposedly aiming to ‘further this degradation of society’.

For example, the following passages in your article read very strangely: ‘Is it not obvious’, you write, ‘that the extolling and justification of our Perestroika and Yeltsin’s shelling of his own parliament addresses not to the past but to the future [sic]? That this is a model, literally a model, for a new wave of absolute moral negativism towards what is happening now, and that this wave of absolute moral negativism is already being called by many “Perestroika-2”?’

Since all these troubles, it would appear from your article, are extolled and commended by Leon Aron, it would seem that he and others like him are seeking to bring chaos, immorality and sedition down on us again today. You are so eager to shout ‘Stop, thief!’ and erect a new Iron Curtain, but I am wholly convinced that a much more promising way forward is to cleanse and renew our state authorities, as was only recently declared necessary from the highest office in the land.

The climate of opinion that leads to movements like Perestroika arises less at the volition of seditious troublemakers than as a consequence of the failure of a political system and ruling elite to keep abreast of the demands of a developing society and the maturing civic consciousness of a population. To be unable to recognize the steady rise of civic protest in conditions of political stagnation, to attempt to write it off as due to moral and legal ‘inadequacies’ on the part of your ‘overly demanding fellow citizens’ is dangerously short-sighted and profoundly mistaken. That way we really can expect dramatic upheavals and revolutions.

As regards the assessment of Gorbachev’s Perestroika given in your article about chaos-devoid-of-morality, in the interests of objectivity I will permit myself to quote some rather different writing and acknowledgements from an official government telegram I received. It reads:

‘Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich,

Please accept my cordial best wishes on your 75th birthday. Everyone knows how much effort you put into enabling our country to take a historic decision to turn in the direction of democratic reform, for the emergence of civil society and the construction of a state living under the rule of law.

I wholeheartedly wish you good health and inexhaustible reserves of optimism and faith in the future. I wish you success in all you undertake, and happiness and prosperity for you and your family.

V. D. Zorkin

President of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation

2 March 2006’

What has prompted you so abruptly and diametrically to change your judgements and assessment? May it perhaps be the fact that in recent years I have begun to publicly criticize the governing party, which embodies the worst bureaucratic features of the Soviet Communist Party and has turned into a mechanism for maintaining its own monopoly of power, a machine that mindlessly endorses whatever decisions and orders come down to it from on high?

Dear Valeriy Dmitrievich, Your Honour! Do believe me when I say that I have written everything above solely in the interests of truth and justice. It is nothing personal. I do not indulge in anger or hold grudges. I wish you good health and hope you have a wonderful New Year and Christmas.

I find I really want to thank you for the changes that have come about in the modern world because of you.

The world is much more open than it was: the opportunities we have today are incomparably greater than they were before 1985, and that is particularly true of former Soviet citizens.

I know what I am talking about, because I was born in 1954.

Thank you for your courage, your sense of responsibility, and all the concern you continue to show. In the USSR, life was not so much behind an Iron Curtain but like being in a box with no windows.

Naturally, the break-up of relations within society had a severe impact on people’s lives, but that was unavoidable. On the good side, today’s and future generations gained real prospects for the future.

Valeriya Ageyeva

St Petersburg

19 June 2012

Hello, dear Mikhail Sergeyevich,

Perhaps you do not need this, but I want to write a few lines to you.

I and my family have always supported you, from when you first came to power and to the present day.

I want to express my opinion about the mock ‘trials’ of Gorbachev. They were contemptible and dishonest towards you during the Perestroika years and still are today.

We Slavs, Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians have evolved a tradition where everyone praises a person to the skies when he comes to power, and then when he retires many spit at his back. It is a shameful tradition.

I believe that raising the question of whether Gorbachev is ‘guilty or not guilty’ is wrong. How can you presume to judge a person who gave freedom (free speech, freedom of movement) to the people of the Soviet Union, ultimately just the right to choose? A president of the USSR who did everything possible, and more, to reform the Union, to preserve everything that was good in it? Then came the putsch, the coup attempt in August 1991, with all its consequences (a chain reaction).

I have just the greatest respect for Raisa Maximovna. She is a very good woman, wife, mother and grandmother.

Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich, may God protect you, your family and friends from all evil.

Yours sincerely,

Pavel Levada (35 years of age)

Lviv, Ukraine

6 August 2012

Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich,

My name is Anna and I am 32 years old. I was born in the USSR and remember your speeches on television. When I was little I was puzzled, and it is hardly surprising. I wondered why my parents whom I so loved would turn on the news or reports of meetings and shushed at us children not to interrupt what they were watching.

Then the word ‘coup’ was everywhere and first my grandmother and then my mother stopped liking you. I remember that ever since I was a child I was told everything was Gorbachev’s fault.

It is only now when I switch on your speeches and interviews from those times that I am amazed that you were able to bear all that. How did you have the strength and courage to take those decisions and take responsibility for them, when people at the time could not even understand why it was necessary?

I realize you are unlikely to read my letter, but… I really want to tell you, Mikhail Sergeyevich, that I think you are a wonderful man! And that you were a wonderful president, who really wanted to change people’s lives for the better. I so regret that we have no people like you in our present government, and little prospect that we will have any time soon.

Thank you so much, and do forgive a certain naivety in the way this is written.

Anna

Kiev

31 January 2013

Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich,

To be honest, I never really understood (to put it mildly) what you achieved, although I remember the years 1986–91 as the best in my life. Freedom!

It is only now that I see the significance of what you did! You were born inside the system but made such incredible changes in it, like an outsider. You achieved the impossible. I do not know whether you had a team of like-minded colleagues, but can well imagine how heavy the burden must have been.

Please accept my sincere thanks for that time.

I find myself unable to explain to many people how important and meaningful those changes were, but what of it? Time itself will put everything in perspective. That is one of its characteristics.

Yours respectfully,

Konstantin Kapustin

5 February 2013

My name is Vladislav Gorvitz,

I was born and grew up in Ukraine and in 1989 our family was permitted to emigrate from the Soviet Union.

I was 16 years old then, and now already I am 40.

All my life I have wanted desperately to thank Mikhail Gorbachev for everything he did for our family and hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.

I just want to send my personal gratitude on behalf of the hundreds of millions of people whose lives he saved, in police prisons and Afghanistan, and for giving us freedom. I never cry, but as I write this letter to dear Mikhail my tears are flowing.

My thanks beyond measure, dear Mikhail Gorbachev. I am enclosing a photo of me with my parents when I was little, so that you can see three of the hundreds of millions whose lives you made better.

Vladislav Gorvitz (now Vlad James Mitchell)

28 February 2013

Hello, dear Mikhail Sergeyevich.

My name is Ivan, I am 34 years old and an entrepreneur. I want to thank you for your contribution to the development of Russia. I am grateful to you personally for the freedom I enjoy today.

May God grant you good health and all the very best. I wish also that you may see your achievements develop and not be lost with the passage of time. This is something we all really need.

A huge number of dynamic people are very grateful to you for what you did. Thank you! I wish you happiness and peace.

Yours respectfully,

Ivan Yablonka

3 June 2013

Dear Mr Gorbachev,

I recently read your book Alone With Myself and want, if I may, to share some of my reactions with you. I am 47 years old and was born in Shchelkovo in Moscow Province. I grew up in Armenia, in Yerevan.

During your presidency, I was already sufficiently grown up to understand and reflect on all that was happening. I remember most people were dissatisfied with your policies.

I always had the feeling that we did not have the full picture, so I never laid all the blame on one person, trying to be impartial.

Your book has given me a chance to form a clear understanding of the reasons for what happened, and now I am certain that no one could have prevented that outcome or improved the situation.

Despite all the mistakes made in the past, and those which all of us, including myself, are still making, I greatly appreciate what you were trying to do. Years will pass, but new generations will still be talking about you and often recall you as a man who turned the country to face in the right direction. I believe that is a great achievement.

I also greatly respect the way you remember your wife, Raisa, in the book. She was and remains to this day the only first lady of the state who could openly discuss the country’s problems with wit and insight. Our people never liked that.

I wish you good health and many, many more years of life. God bless you!

Pavel Sarkisyan

11 June 2013

I wish particularly to emphasize that you are one of the outstanding personalities of your time and your place in history is assured. Not because you supposedly ‘destroyed the USSR’. That is absurd. You noticed the cracks in the USSR and took steps to put matters right. You raised the priority of the human factor, reformed society for the benefit of people, terminated the international isolation of the USSR, and opened the road to modern civilization. Those who destroyed the USSR were the little nabobs, those with too much love of power and money. If the USSR had been restructured in accordance with your model, it would exist to this day, doing no harm to our population or other nations. Its concentration of energy, the economy and culture would have been preserved.

I wish Your Excellency success, endurance and robust health!

Professor Teo-Teodor Marshalkovski, DSc

Beltsy, Moldova

18 October 2013

I would like to wish Mikhail Sergeyevich health, fortitude and success, and to say thank you for his hard work in the past and present for the benefit of society, for his concern for freedom and justice in Russia. I hope that some day Russian people will, in spite of everything, cease to be slaves, will open their eyes and pay due respect not to today’s reformers on paper but to a man who genuinely sacrificed his privileges and position for the sake of others, and that instead of all the innumerable monuments to mass murderers will erect one at least to a true human being.

T. A. Kasumov

St Petersburg

20 October 2013

I believe in the sincerity of a man who ruled a country whose people have been destitute and cowed throughout history, and I believe it was that very sincerity that gave the impulse that awakened a sense of national pride and a feeling of inner freedom in many of our country’s citizens.

History cannot be written in the subjunctive. The Soviet Union collapsed for systemic reasons, and we should long ago have faced up to that fact. What Russia has today is a police state with an immature political system and, consequently, a lack of choice. The sense of freedom, pride and mutual respect can never be eradicated. It makes no sense to react to mean-spiritedness. It will come to nothing and die out because it is contemptible. We need to get on with real work. That is the only way to prevail.

With respect and sincerity,

Ilya Alexeyev, Architect

Rostov-on-Don

12 November 2013

Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich,

I have for many years been very grateful to you for releasing me from the daily expectation of nuclear war. It was palpably real for me from about the age of 8. You and you alone freed me from that fear, which had become part of my life.

I thank you also for the wonderful books I was able to read when I was young and wonderful literature flooded the minds of everyone in the country.

Thank you for the live broadcast of the proceedings of the First Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR in 1989, which I watched at the same time as revising for my exams.

Yours sincerely,

Yelena Rodina

1 December 2013

We would like to address to greatly respected Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev these words of support and gratitude. Yet again we have stumbled upon vile rumours about him on the Internet. We would like Mikhail Sergeyevich to know that, despite the incessant sordid campaign to denigrate him, there are people who love and deify him.

Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich, during our childhood and teenage years you were at the helm of the state. We are extremely grateful to you for the policy of Glasnost (what a splendid word that is!) which gave our country a real chance to become free and prosperous. It is a pity that we have not so far succeeded in making use of the opportunity. Perhaps all is not yet lost.

Good health to you and those close to you, and again, thank you.

Alexander Yagodkin and family

26 December 2013

Politics is increasingly becoming a simulation of democracy. All the power is concentrated in the hands of the executive branch, the president. Parliament merely rubber-stamps his decisions.

We lack an autonomous judiciary.

The economy has been monopolized and is like a junky addicted to oil and gas exports. The initiative of entrepreneurs is fettered, and small and medium-sized businesses face enormous hurdles.

There is an unacceptably large gap between the incomes and living standards of the most well-off stratum of the population and everybody else. Corruption has reached extraordinary levels.

Such areas as education, health and science give grounds for very great concern.

Since 2004–5, I have been speaking constantly about these problems. They are issues that have been raised very audibly by others besides myself, but the government has not responded meaningfully to the signals coming from society. Ultimately, that behaviour has caused society to react.

Society woke up. It claimed its rights. People again demanded change, but instead of initiating a dialogue, the government resorted to subterfuge with the sole aim of keeping itself in power at all costs. It has succeeded for a time in resisting the tide of protest, but Russia’s problems have not gone away, and if nothing changes, they can only get worse.

That means that Russia is again facing the historic task of breaking through to genuine democracy.

People can influence the course of history only by participating in politics. The reality is that they have almost no opportunity to influence decision-making through genuinely effective party and social organizations that represent their interests. They are obliged to look for other ways, through the Internet, through spontaneous or organized protest demonstrations, or angry calls to radio programmes.

What is needed, however, is authentic political participation. That, however, is funnelled off, as if into a sinkhole, by United Russia and other official or quasi-official organizations.

If anybody falls out of the officially approved establishment, he is subjected to a rapid process of marginalization and banned from the political stage. I could name dozens of people who were active in politics five to ten years ago and who today have simply disappeared from view. However one may have related to them, it is bad when people are just turfed out of politics.

Aping the Communist Party, United Russia has become the ‘leading and directing force’ in Russian politics, but the actual problems facing people are not dealt with and break through to the surface, requiring intervention ‘at the highest level’. Before our startled gaze, micromanagement of politics from the top degenerates to the level of directing the traffic and compiling railway timetables.

All this is explained away on the grounds of the need to maintain stability. Yes, of course we need stability, but the stability of democracy, which is achieved through dialogue, through the contending of responsible political forces, by making provision for the formulation and advocacy of competing programmes.

That is something we do not have, although we came part of the way in that direction, halfway, perhaps. Maybe less. If we do not go further, we may slide back and be forced to rediscover the road some time in the future. We will lose momentum, we will lose time, and that, in today’s world, is dangerous. Our neighbours in a globalized world have already made that leap, or are about to do so.

We cannot afford to lag behind. Without political modernization, we will be mired in the past and will drift downwards in the international league table. I believe that both the present government and society face a historic choice. It is vital that both should understand that Russia’s complex problems can be resolved only by means of democratic cooperation. The rift between government and people can no longer be tolerated.

I will say frankly that, right now, it is mainly for the authorities to make the first move. To carry on along the path of tightening the screws, passing laws to restrict people’s rights and freedoms, attacking the media and civil society organizations is destructive and will ultimately lead nowhere.

I am sure that if the government chooses the path of dialogue with the active, concerned part of society, it will meet a positive response. From young people too.

The young have taken an active part in the rise of the civil protest movement. I was heartened by their energy and how they behaved at meetings. The whole experience of my life in politics warns, though, that it will be difficult: major change is not easily gained. Energy and enthusiasm need to be backed by persistence, the ability to organize yourselves, to think clearly, to listen to and take account of the opinions of others. In short, the need is to learn to fight for democracy while practising democracy.

One very important point I want specifically to mention and emphasize: avoid rifts. There should be no gap between the generations or between different trends within the forces of democracy.

You will need to show maturity and true patriotism, that is, to remember your responsibilities to the country, to society, and to the future of Russia. If you can do that, you will have shown that people can change history, and that Russia’s citizens are well able to take the country’s future into their own hands and build it on the path of democracy.

The truth of the matter is that that is our only viable option.