It is 20 years now since you were president; those others, just as then, still know everything and the country is exactly where it is. Today, on your 80th birthday, by right of being the only person who has known you closely for over half a century, there are some things I want to say about you as a human being, and that means also about politics.
Our world, now global, is characterized by extreme political cynicism. Big politics is entirely subordinate to making profits, either by big business or directly by the state authorities. Where there are not already mature civil institutions, the prime objective of politics is power itself and personal enrichment. And, of course, spheres of influence. If we look around with open eyes, we observe how calmly, how cynically the unbelievably painful problems of entire countries and peoples are ignored: they are denied basic benefits and freedoms.
Why? Because any transnational corporation finds it a thousand times more agreeable and straightforward to reach agreement with any authoritarian and dictatorial regime, in effect, with just one or two people, than to have to deal with civil society, especially if a country has natural resources. In the early 1980s this general picture of the world was complicated by such factors as the political confrontation of two systems, the real threat of nuclear conflict, an unbridled arms race: the Cold War. The world was divided. In the Soviet Union itself, and to varying degrees in the countries of the ‘socialist camp’, a totalitarian regime denied its citizens many essentials but could have gone on existing for a long time to come.
And then you came and said that a politics that ignored fundamental human values, and first and foremost the right to live in dignity and freedom, was immoral. That was your personal belief, born of your nature as a human being, but you succeeded in using that conviction as the foundation of a foreign policy that truly changed the course of world history in the late twentieth century, and of transformations in your own country. In your own land you had to reckon with the reality of a country that had never known democracy or free choice, a country where all property was owned by the state, the dictatorship of the Communist Party, terrible shortages, with a real people that had long forgotten, if it had ever known, what freedom and the right to choose even were; and then, when everything kicked off, also with a real balance of political forces, which shifted and where the forms of confrontation became ever more extreme.
All those opposing you were agreed that you lacked determination, that you were insufficiently radical. Those on the right complained you were moving too slowly, those on the left that you were going too fast. They claimed you did not know, or were afraid, to adopt the correct position. Never in my life have I seen you frightened. In the heat of the struggle, none of them paused to reflect that to adopt one of the extreme options might violate your own human nature. You always looked for the true path to reform of our country between the extremes, but truth, like moderation, is elusive, and finding and keeping to that path is as difficult as walking on a razor’s edge.
You sought consensus, the position that could unite citizens and nations and nationalities. Many jeered. What was this consensus? What were they supposed to do with it? Most damagingly, who needed it? I never waste my time on the plethora of obscure, muddled conspiracy theories that you were working to some secret plan. That just is not you. If you had wanted to be manipulating everything in secret, you could just have remained general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. I still remember every outburst of radicalism in those years, every clash, because every time it grieved you profoundly, and us with you.
You never were naive, and I know that for a fact. They say you did not know the Russian people. What nonsense! You were born and bred in the midst of the people: you were hardly going to grow up in a state of rosy naivety. It is just that your knowledge did not alter your beliefs, and your faith in the ability of the people to change for the better if their circumstances changed. Everything went the way it did, the results were what they are; that was what people wanted. Every people made their choice in the light of perspectives that had opened up for them, made the best of new opportunities. Russia’s path has proved long and arduous.
You have had the courage not just to stay in a country where you had effectively been deposed, where for years they have been trying to defame not only you, but your wife, where they even tried to represent you as the main culprit for the actions of the Communist dictatorship in the entire 70 years of its existence. Despite all that, you had the courage to carry on doing much work to the benefit of your country and all the people of the world. As a human being, you are far stronger and wiser than those who slander and presume to judge you.
We are proud of you. You are the root of our life in every sense, Your Excellency!
President Dmitry Medvedev invited me to the Kremlin, congratulated me warmly and announced I was to receive the highest award in Russia, the Order of St Andrew. I have to admit this was unexpected. I tried to express my emotions one year later when, on the eve of his departure from the Kremlin, the president presented me with the order.
Dear Dmitry Anatolievich,
I accept this highest award of the Russian state with emotion and gratitude.
My whole life passes before my eyes. I am not ashamed of what I have done. Of myself and those with whom a quarter of a century ago I decided to implement cardinal reforms, I can say in the words of Willy Brandt: ‘We did our best.’ We embarked on reform not for honour and glory, but because we understood how vitally Russia needed change. People deserved freedom. They have a right to determine their own destiny and that of their country. That idea was paramount.
We wanted great change to come about without bloodshed. We did not succeed in avoiding it completely, but there were no bloodbaths. We made mistakes, and these torment me to this day. And yet, in a few short years, we managed to make such progress that a return to the totalitarian past had become impossible.
I will never agree that freedom is alien to Russia and that our people do not need it. Of course they do. There are more free people in our country today than ever before.
I am sure that those people who recently took to the streets of our cities to demand fair elections were expressing the view of millions of Russian citizens. These people should not be repulsed! They should not be viewed as enemies!
We need change without chaos, free political competition without a split in society. That is difficult. It calls for maturity and responsibility from everyone, but it is possible. I want to facilitate this, and that is why I consider it my duty to express my opinions, to speak frankly to the people and to those governing the state.
A great, strong and flourishing Russia will be created by the present generations of citizens and political leaders. That is the kind of Russia needed by us and, I am convinced, the world. Once again, I express my gratitude for this august award, and wish to express my firm belief in the democratic future of our country.
I received many good wishes, both from Russia and abroad. George Bush Sr sent a good letter, and told the ITAR-TASS reporter there was nothing scary about being 80, and, as for Gorbachev, there was no question of him being old.
At the end of March a gala concert and charity evening was held at London’s legendary Royal Albert Hall. To tell the truth, I am not enthusiastic about grand celebrations and had certainly never envisaged anything of the sort. Several people proposed the idea, it gained a lot of support and people came on board to organize it all. What finally persuaded me was that the gala was to be a fundraising event for charity, at which ‘A Man Who Changed the World’ awards would be made.