GORBACHEV: I thought with time I would feel less sorrow, but so far I have not. My friends, my daughter tell me you have to move on, you have to live for yourself, your children and grandchildren. I’m an optimist. I love life. I’m trying to travel a lot, to talk to people. But wherever I go, when I’m alone, the memories come back.
No. Even when there seems to be a danger of a rollback, those moments pass. Perestroika enabled democracy to take root. Right now, it’s very important to make sure that continues.
You’re right. My position is the same. What’s more, I told President Putin that. He said to me, “Yes, I agree. Without a free press,” and he added, “a free and responsible press, we would not be able to cope with our tasks.”
Yes. The most important point, underestimated in Russia and not known abroad, is the difficult legacy [Putin] inherited. Once he said to me, “I inherited chaos.” The task is to pull the country out of chaos. The important thing is that [he] should not slide into authoritarianism.
He is under very strong pressure. It’s very hard to break with the “family” [the Kremlin elite under Boris Yeltsin]. He is moving gradually to do so. Some people are ready to support the president without reservation; others demand to know what kind of Russia he is committed to. Very soon, it will become clear. A lot will be decided this year.
In the name of what?
Ruthlessness in the name of what? None of that has anything to do with people who are committed to freedom, democracy and humanism. Before me, those who gained power wanted just one thing–to consolidate that power. I started to reform and decentralize it. Ultimately that pulled the country out of totalitarianism and moved it toward democracy. I did that for my people, who rejected the society in which they lived.
With perestroika and reforms in our country, should we say the Czechs and Poles weren’t good enough to have the same? Or the Hungarians, the Bulgarians? And the Germans, when they wanted to reunify? I told the leaders of those countries at the very beginning of my tenure, “We will not interfere in your affairs. You are responsible.” They thought this was just more of the same from another Soviet general secretary. I never violated that pledge.
I don’t think it played a role. The Soviet Union was a victim of the political battles within the country itself. It was not adapting to the challenges of science and technology. It missed the boat on structural reforms. The people were unhappy. The arms race was not decisive.
Not that.
The United States needs to carefully consider the problems of missile defense, NATO expansion and nuclear nonproliferation. What is it all for? Rather than covering yourself with defenses, it would be a lot better to enter a new phase of cooperation and partnership. If the United States goes further in the wrong direction, it could cause a new arms race.
This is the world’s top priority. I became involved during the Brezhnev era, when I was working in the Caucasus. I saw that our rivers and lakes were in bad shape, and when I became leader of the Soviet Union, this became a primary focus. We closed down 1,300 factories in the Soviet Union for environmental reasons. And at the United Nations I proposed we create a global organization to unite our efforts in dealing with such problems. We need to change the paradigm of economic development. We need to normalize the relationship between man and nature and create a new global environmental consciousness.
