MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, FORMER SOVIET LEADER (Translation): I would have dealt with whoever was available. Reagan was quite a package, he was conservative. He was on the far right, even among the right-wingers. But are the right-wingers brainless? No, they are not. One must deal with everyone, remember who Arafat was? And who the late Prime Minister Rabin was? They were militants, they were generals, they fought wars and then they became Nobel peace laureates.

GEORGE NEGUS: What about Rice and Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, you said this about them - "they are just hawks protecting the interests of the military, shallow people."

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): They wield enormous influence and I must say that the military industrial complex has a strong presence in international politics. It is for the politicians, to solve political problems, the influence of the military industrial complex felt everywhere, but especially in the USA. They have stockpiles, so they need a war to use them up and get new commissions. Today the US military budget is greater than it was at the height of the Cold War.

GEORGE NEGUS: So, do you think that, maybe without their influence, that the situation would be different - that the American policy would be different?

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): Recently George Bush Jr. started to realize they’d gone astray when they rejected the UN, the Security Council, international law, global democratic public opinion, including that in America where many people were against the war in Iraq, they did not get what they counted on. Sometimes force is necessary to stop a difficult process, some conflict or other, but only the political process can solve a problem. People like me, who say what I have said to you, are often regarded as weak. This is very deceptive. But even among the people themselves in one country or another you hear…”He’s a hell of a president. He showed them what-for." Only later do they work it out, once the intoxication passes the moment of realization comes that what was done… was very stupid. And as a result President Bush has lost votes and support, the polls show shrinking support, I think it is half of what it used to be, and I think they will put themselves in a difficult situation, I mean the Administration, if they don’t intervene in conflicts like this one in order to prevent the escalation of those conflicts.

GEORGE NEGUS: What do you say to those people who say Mikhail Gorbachev is a failed leader himself - a man who lost control of his own country - why should we listen to him?

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): That’s the impression that they want to create – that Gorbachev lost. Gorbachev's policies… Gorbachev did suffer a defeat personally, because at a certain stage I did allow the opponents of Perestroika – the people who would not and did not accept democracy, to exploit the existing difficulties, and launch a coup to weaken Gorbachev. Then adventurists like Yeltsin used that to break up the Union. But as a result of Perestroika, we ended the Cold War. We ended all the world conflicts except that in the Middle East, these conflicts had been festering for decades. And the successes of the USSR’s external policies, I mean the internal policies, such as democratisation, freedom, laws on private property, market economics, freedom of conscience, political pluralism, glasnost - all of those things changed the country, and as a result, our example influenced other countries in central and eastern Europe, which had velvet revolutions, and this process is still going on. So tell me, who lost? No. We guided Perestroika past the point of no return. The revisionists won’t turn the clock back in Russia.

GEORGE NEGUS: How does it feel to be regarded as a hero, a political hero, in the West and something of a political villain in your own country?

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): Well, first of all that's a cliché. They stuck me with it, partly thanks to you lot..

GEORGE NEGUS: Journalists are like that.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): “Gorbachev’s a weakling, Gorbachev”.. starting a reform like this in a country like that.. Let them try it.

GEORGE NEGUS: So you don't feel like a failure?

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): I regret that I was not able to see Perestroika through to the end, and that adventurers came and broke the country apart. They exposed us to competition with developed countries and our whole economy collapsed. Of course I feel it. It was a disaster for our country and our people. It caused raging poverty, we’re barely climbing out of today. As for the way people see me in our country, there are quite a few such people even today and they keep cursing Gorbachev, but the educated people especially the young generation, they support Perestroika, they appreciate what Perestroika gave to our country, that it opened our country up, that they can travel, that they can choose, that they can speak. Those that say that there is no freedom in Russia, go to Russia, listen to what people are saying. Just look at the headlines and you will understand. “No, the country isn’t the same. It’s different.” But it still has a long way to go.

GEORGE NEGUS: So, you turned the key and somebody else had to open the door.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): The main door was opened by us, by the people of Perestroika. Had not this change happened then this door would not have been opened.

GEORGE NEGUS: Can I ask you about your country today - because it is hard to work out what you feel about Vladmir Putin. On the one hand, he is regarded by many people - particularly in the West and your own country - as authoritarian, not a true democrat - but you seem to support him. What is going on with Putin. People think there is a danger of going back to really bad old days as he is cracking down on the media, freedom of speech and the like.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): I can give you a short answer or a well-grounded answer. Which would do you prefer? A short answer? OK, the shortest answer is as follows. When our country was falling apart under Yeltsin, when the accumulated wealth of centuries was being plundered with impudence, when two-thirds of the population were living in poverty, and the benefits.. even Yeltsin said when resigning, “I apologise that the reforms benefited only 8 - 10% of the people. So when all of that was happening in my country, the West was applauding. Amazing! That is when Russians thought "Is that what the West wants? Do they want us defeated and weaker so that we could be patted on the back as satellites, as kid brothers, that could be put in their place?"
Today, when Putin has been able to end the chaos that he inherited from Yeltsin, the chaos that spread to all areas of life - politics, economics, army, federation, science, education, etc. - now that Putin has stabilised the situation, now that the country has become more governable as a result of the vertical structures that he created, that the lateral steps that he took, that were somewhat authoritarian, the situation has stabilised. Putin is turning Russian politics towards the interests of the majority, rather than the interests of a couple of oligarchs as Yeltsin did, so I am for Putin. Of course I see his shortcomings and drawbacks, even more than you do. Russia today is getting back to health, Russia is reviving, Russia is rebuilding the democratic process. Why is it that it took you 200 years to build that democratic process? We cannot do it in 200 days. We carry a tremendous burden of the past.

GEORGE NEGUS: I guess, what I am saying is - is Vladmir Putin the leader that Russia should have or is he the lesser of evils.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): Oh no, I would not call him the lesser evil. Had it been possible under the constitution, he would have been re-elected for the third term and the fourth term. He will leave. He was quite firm about it, he wants to follow the constitution, so that Russian leaders should come and go on the basis of the constitution. I say to Americans, "I really don't know why you are surprised at what is happening in Russia." America started off as a democratic country, but even in the 20th century, there were things like Unamerican Activities Committee, you had the Ku-Klux Clan running the show all over the country with those pyres of theirs. To crown it all, racial segregation that set the whole country on the boil. It rose against that policy. You remember that was just a few years ago. Martin Luther King died because he protested against that policy. So why should it be perfect in Russia? We are not stupid people. We are more intelligent maybe than Americans, but even the most talented people cannot solve every problem overnight. Even God is not solving those problems. He is allowing us to do that.

GEORGE NEGUS: You mentioned the Communist Party. What do you describe yourself as, politically, these days - a social democrat or what?

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): Yes, I recreated in Russia the long forgotten social Democratic Party. It’s legal now and alive. It doesn’t carry much weight yet it is still weak. Yes, I am a Social Democrat and I believe that social democracy is an alternative, both to the Communist project to what I call Communist fundamentalism, the Communist model, and it is also an alternative to the neo-liberalism, to the neo-conservatism that benefits a small group of people and they try to solve problems by ejecting the government, the state, from all areas.

GEORGE NEGUS: At the personal level, how difficult was it, has it been, for you to put all of those years of your adult where you were a dedicated, committed Communist - and all that went with that - the fear that people in the West held for Communism and for the Soviet Union. How difficult was it for you to put all that behind you and start again - not just as a politician but almost as a human being.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): It was a long process and a difficult process. When I was in school, I became a member of the Communist Party. My grandfather was an old Communist, my father became a Communist at the front lines, and they supported that decision. It was right after the war, when Stalin for us was a hero, the person who had saved our country, who brought the country to victory in the war. So that was the beginning of Gorbachev, but then it took a long life, it took the evolution at Moscow University, then for 25 years I was in politics in the provinces, then I worked with Breshnev and Andropov for seven years in the central government, and that opened my eyes to many things. So it was not some kind of a revelation, it was not some kind of an angel with white wings that visited me and then gave me the truth - that was a process. It is a process that not everyone is able to kind of undergo.

GEORGE NEGUS: Mikhail Gorbachev, thank you very much for your time.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, (Translation): Thank you. Thank you.

Producer/Researcher
CATHY CAREY

Camera
PHIL LOMAS
TREVOR SMITH

Sound
COLE MCINTYRE

Editor
DAVID POTTS

Subtitling
ELENA MIKHAILIK
FELICITY MUELLER