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?