For me, a significant role in that quest was played by my meetings and conversations with prominent social democratic leaders of the West, and in particular with Willy Brandt, a great German politician who for a quarter of a century stood at the helm of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and, for 16 years, of the Socialist International. During the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress I received a message from him which read:
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.
After I had already left the Kremlin, I received a letter from Brandt inviting me to take part in and speak at the Nineteenth Congress of the Socialist International. I very willingly accepted the invitation. Brandt was already ill. Unable to attend the congress, he died a few weeks later.
I felt that loss very keenly. For me, Willy Brandt was not only a politician with whom I conducted a continuous dialogue both verbally and through correspondence; he became a personal friend. He fully understood and agreed with the ideals of our Perestroika, and that gave me great moral support.
Speaking at the Nineteenth Congress of the International, I said,
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.
How I arrived at these views, how I and other supporters of Perestroika gradually overcame the dogmatic thinking and ideological stereotypes of Stalinism, the reader can judge from my dialogue with a friend from my student years at Moscow State University. Zdeněk Mlynář was later to become one of the leaders of the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968.
Fate brought Mlynář and me together long before these events. We were both studying in the MSU law faculty, and were not only in the same faculty, but in the same year and the same group, attending the same lectures and seminars and living in the same hostel. In the evenings we passionately debated between ourselves and with other students the problems exercising everybody at the time, and especially the young. Our liking for each other was to grow into a friendship that lasted almost half a century, until Zdeněk’s death in 1997.
After I was obliged to forsake the office of president of the USSR, we felt an urge to discuss in greater detail all we had experienced over the course of the past 40 years and agreed to meet up regularly for the purpose. Our priority was to sort out our thoughts and feelings about our political careers, to help each other to better understand what we had done or not done, what we had achieved or failed to achieve and why, and how justified our actions had been at particular moments. Because we had arrived at similar conclusions by different paths, we really wanted to explain to each other our view of the events we had witnessed and participated in and the problems we had tried to resolve. We argued, but this was debate between friends keen to understand each other.
For many years, Zdeněk had agonized over the lessons of the Prague Spring. It had been his finest hour and he remained true to the principles that had inspired the reformers in Prague in 1968. He also, however, had an acute sense of responsibility for the consequences of that movement, not least for the Soviet military intervention. Underlying our discussions was, of course, the issue of our attitude towards communism as an ideology and a system. It was, after all, the starting point of our shared political biography, which subsequently made him a leader of the Prague Spring and brought me to Perestroika.
We talked about the vagaries of socialism in the twentieth century and the future of the socialist ideal. Like Zdeněk, I needed time to gradually overcome, on the basis of my own experiences in life and discovery of other trends of social thought and opinions, a dogmatic understanding of socialism imposed on us in a closed society from our student days.
We did not repudiate socialist values, principally the values of freedom, equality, justice and solidarity, in all their complex interrelatedness. For me, these imply equal opportunities, access to education and satisfactory healthcare, a socially responsible market and a minimum social welfare safety net. This, of course, calls for involvement of the state, which is essential where the market fails to provide.
While still socialists by conviction, we acknowledged that we could not isolate ourselves from other trends of democratic and humanitarian thinking. Fundamentalism in all its manifestations, remaining blinkered when confronted by alternatives and the unfamiliar, is counterproductive and dangerous. It distracts us from addressing serious issues faced by an increasingly globalized world. Reflecting on the experience of Perestroika and Soviet history in its entirety, pondering the realities of modern times and the different ways in which a globalizing world might develop, I came to the conclusion that nowadays we should speak of socialism not as a system but as a policy.
For me, that is a logical conclusion. When I embarked on Perestroika, I saw it as a radical change from a policy of the CPSU that had brought the country to a standstill. Dogmatists of the left and the right to this day reproach me for not having presented a programmatic goal in full detail, for not having put forward an obligatory plan of action. I believed, and still do, that it was fanatical faith in the miraculous power of plans, unchallengeable dogmas and programmes that deprived our great country of the opportunity to develop in a healthy manner.