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?
Again and again my conviction was reinforced that ultimately everything comes down to politics and the role of democracy. During those years I saw a great deal of my friends Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev and Yegor Vladimirovich Yakovlev. They had been my comradesin-arms – and, not infrequently, my opponents – in the years of Perestroika and subsequently. One and then the other passed away, in 2005 and 2006. They were very different people, with complex personalities, and encountered many difficulties in their careers. They faced many ordeals, overcame illusions and frustrations, but never lost faith that democracy was the path for Russia.
The death of Yegor Yakovlev was a great blow for me. We became particularly close in the post-Perestroika years. Under his editorship, Moskovskiye Novosti became a real channel of communication for Glasnost and Perestroika, in many instances helping me personally in very difficult circumstances. Yegor and I had our arguments and disagreements. Of course we had. I remember shortly before his death, the three of us were reminiscing like old soldiers about past battles and I reminded them that they had demanded my resignation after the Vilnius events in January 1991. The newspaper put me under terrible pressure. They tried to deny it, but I proved it all to them. By the time Yegor arrived at Moskovskiye Novosti he had been through a lot of bad experiences and done all sorts of things: he had written about Lenin and edited various publications, been removed from various positions, but always managed to come back. It only toughened him. He was a mature and very deep person, and what he had to say was significant, precise and controversial.
He and I agreed on many issues, except one. He could not understand how I found it possible to justify what was happening, how I could find grounds for supporting Putin. I told him: my dear friend, if you had been in the shoes of a president who had all that chaos, that semi-disintegration dumped on him, you would understand it was no time for textbook democracy. That was a salvage operation. Immediate action was called for.
In 2005, I spent a lot of time working on Understanding Perestroika: Why It Matters Now.[2] Together with my associates and colleagues Anatoly Chernyaev, Alexander Veber, Georgiy Ostroumov, Alexander Galkin and Boris Slavin, we reread the documents of those years, recalled events and analysed achievements and mistakes. Revisiting that period, comparing it with what came next, I was strengthened in my belief that, although Perestroika was disrupted before it could realize all its aims, it had nevertheless been victorious. Perestroika brought transformative processes to a point where it was impossible to relapse back into the past. We can, however, never rest. The country must go forward, and only along democratic lines. That has to be fought for. Although my strength was no longer what it had been, with illnesses beginning to take their toll, I felt it incumbent upon me to take part in that battle.
Full of Contradictions: The First Decade of the New Millennium
New elections
The political results of 2005 were a mixed bag. I analysed them in an article in Bolshaya Politika [Big Politics] in February 2006. I wrote about the problems the president had inherited and which had yet to be overcome:
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.
What should happen next?
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.
In this article I spoke out about an issue that was exercising me, together with everyone else in Russia, and which the authorities, in my view, were not taking seriously enough:
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.
I thought long and seriously about the forthcoming elections, and shared some of my conclusions with the readers:
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.
2
M. S. Gorbachev,