we're here to provide a safe and secure environment for everybody. the questions the appeals to get everything you needed. looking back at the week's top stories here on r t dozens killed in libya's capital as nato embarks on its most intense bombing raids so far but has been heavy fighting as rebels were new attacks in the oil port city of zawiya and in syria tension is rising as the government continues its severe crackdown on the opposition security forces have now retaken the northern town of juice or else there were reportedly after heavy fighting. in greece anger at the introduction of a new wave of austerity cuts spills into the streets of new measures are to secure

a second stage of the e.u. bailout but problems remain as germany and the european central bank argue over how to get private investors to contribute. u.s. navy vessel in the black sea stars outrage from moscow and claims it's a prelude to the planned nato missile defense shield for europe us as moderate docked in odessa ahead of joint military exercises in the. next peter lavelle and guess a look at the thought of the soviet union and discuss the role of russia's first president boris yeltsin in setting the country's course coming your way next in cross to stay with us. for the full story we've got. the biggest issues get the human voice ceased to face with the news makers.

hello and welcome to crossfire prime people about boris yeltsin was he a great man who made history or was he merely a product of his time opinions differ widely known no one denies the important role he played in creating our present cross-talk continued series on the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago. to cross-talk the olsen's russia i'm joined by dmitry babich here in the studio with me he's a political analyst said ria novosti news agency in washington we have donald

jensen he's a resident fellow at the center for transatlantic relations and in london we go to alex project he's director of russian and eurasian studies center at the university of oxford all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want well the reason why we're doing this we're doing our series here i go on cross talk on the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago and twenty years ago on june twelfth one thousand nine hundred one yeltsin became the first popularly elected president of the russian soviet federated socialist republic or basically the beginning of the demise of the soviet union that would follow later in the year dimitri bob age let's look at that time twenty years ago and how the soviet union unraveled how much was yeltsin involved with that unraveling of the soviet union people talk a lot about what a bitch off what about yeltsin at this time but i think there are two parallel processes going on which should not be mixed up there was the process of democratization and i think it was yeltsin starla for the first time in russian history and man came to power while honest election against the will of the

government that was an achievement as for the collapse of the soviet union it had begun long before that it speeded up back in one thousand eight hundred nine already there was a lot of talk about it and by one thousand nine hundred pro the process. it was almost complete i would you mind your that in march two months before the election . seven republics out of fifteen did not take part in the referendum wondering former soviet union so the process has already gone very very march forward and yeltsin or of course when the soviet union was just virtually collapsed and in some one thousand one thousand vonne he didn't shed tears he started building the russian federation and you think that's the point of if i go to you in washington from a russian perspective in two thousand and eleven that was the good yeltsin ok the yeltsin they did the right thing ok because right now in two thousand and eleven most people in this country are very pleased that the soviet union is gone there's

still a small minority that regret it but yeltsin was seen as a great banner to bring the end of a system that wasn't working for the people anymore so yeltsin twenty years ago what kind of character has some to be. i have some looking back i'm very contradictory figure both i would almost say heroic but certainly someone who displays tremendous political courage and i would note in passing about i agree with the most comments and yeltsin was ahead of even the us government and the outside observers and moving forward were a lot of people and most notably the first president bush seemed to indicate they wanted to preserve the soviet union i'll be it any more reforms way but you ask about yeltsin i think he was in many ways one of the most politically courageous people i've ever been around and i was a mascot with time as a diplomat but also as a tremendously contradictory contradictory figure whose career has to be separate

into a number of phases not all of it in not all of which are performed admirably alex in a if i go to you in london let's turn it up a little bit let's have mr yeltsin as president of the of the of russia the first president of russia how do you see his the beginning of his reform process because this is where people start disliking yeltsin then and very much to some extent hating him today i'm talking about the liberalization of the economy. yeah before i come to that can i say that i agree absolutely with the fact that he's a larger than life historic and historical leader who has huge pluses and huge minus since and this goes with his economic reform program as well you remember that in one thousand nine hundred nine when handing over to putin hilton reflected on his own contribution to russia and he for started by saying of course the great achievement was we broke with communism broke as you just wanted to know the

commodity corner me into broke into a liberal market capitalism but then he added an apology and he apologized for the fact but he was along with others so naive to think they could do it all in one big breakthrough that breakthrough politically breakthrough economically breakthrough socially and if you break through you break things and ended up with a lot of inequality a lot of corruption a lot of the things that yeltsin i don't think would have wanted i remember meeting him in the in the two thousands and he sincerely came over as someone who was a big quote pillars leader concerned with people's welfare and he. reflected that it was a sheen with so many poor people still in russia after all he tried to do so the economic change was necessary whether it could be done in one big leap but whether it would be better done in small stages is a very very big question and even when you think about it in the studio here more ideologically driven a theory driven in the early years because as our actions pointed out i mean in

a little while people know is that the the russian economy contract is fifty percent at one point during his administration and i like to point out to my audience here the great depression in the united states the u.s. economy contract of twenty five percent so if we can put that magnitude out there well i think it was not an ideological president and if you listen to his speech if you read the speech it's not he never said the word capitalism. all the world sort it isn't that was not quite he style i mean i remember him saying in one of his interviews back in the ages that people are tired of ideology he will just wanted to live better and they wanted more economic freedom and he gave them economic freedom in one thousand nine hundred ninety in nature to the problem was there of course people were poor and the only ones who were reach and influential were criminals or some former party bosses so obviously the benefit from

these private days ation more than an average russian but unfortunately i think it was a global tendency if you will look the world was tremendously on just during all of the ninety s. and it continues to be and just now it's built on some really wrong premises which have little to do with the real liberalism and with real capability some of their weight was thought by locals by hopes it in the seventeenth or eighteenth century or that there'd be some people who say that yeltsin in the russians around him and took the idea of a market market economy too seriously because you got rid of you know you privatized the the family jewels that actually created wealth in this country and the rest of it just fell apart i mean and in the process i go to you john on this one one of the one of the biggest criticisms to this day is the creation of oligarchy they controlled so much of the economy and the and this is exactly the inequality the demon here was talking about and it still plagues this country today there's still a concentration of wealth in this country and it comes from yeltsin there ott. i

very much agree i think that if he and others have talked the talk more about strengthening the rule of law i think russians probably would be a lot happier today about what happened in the ninety's and might even be wealthier today just to go back to a point about the man alex said which i agree with which is whether he was a man motivated by politics i think in many ways he was motivated by instinct to sit around moscow and say well he was a democrat he's a democrat but he doesn't really know what it means and we watched this tremendous churning in society and it was very difficult to understand sometimes what you. did or worse not thought he was doing particularly after ninety one when when you had to build a state and this this weakness of institutions as we saw in the rule of law i think is something where i've felt him very seriously alex when you think about it because it's very interesting is because in the two thousand the argument was made

that the state had to restructure the government had to restructure the state because that yeltsin hit allowed it to deteriorate so badly and have the so much of the economy captured into private hands i mean it this is one of the things that went wrong and maybe will not intentionally but i mean the eventually this is the russian state is no longer serving the purposes of what it was supposed to do and this is the legacy of that that that follows the olson to this today. right i mean i think two things come out of there one is that yeltsin came out of a heavily state apparatus dominated system the communist system he reacted against their want to give people the freedom the liberty to be creative and make society themselves but i disagree a bit with dmitri but no ideology no explicit ideology but a culture of seeking panaceas believing that there are solutions out there which will fix things within maybe five or ten years and that's part of a sort of russian cultural heritage seeking marxism combining it with russian

characteristics then yeltsin seeking broad based capitalism giving people like gaidar free rule rein giving should by is handing out and believing it's a belief that if you allow people the opportunity to be entrepreneurs to grab the assets to make things work that everything somehow would be a positive sum game and that wasn't the case and therefore we don't need the state you don't need to regularize redistribute manage in the old command system so it was a typical spend you don't swing from over come on over state of education to under say vacation if you want and an undermining of institutions and a free for all and liberty as we know has enormous costs for most people who haven't got the energy to fight for their rights let me ask this i mean that and it's another. accusation made against yeltsin is he was such a pendulum person he would go to such extremes if it was for a democrat or a democracy issue the economy issue defense security i mean first he braced the

west by the end will look at the cost of zero experience yeltsin felt that he had been betrayed by the west because there was a pendulum i don't agree with this because it was not yeltsin it was the west they changed it to russia. in one thousand nine hundred one the west was applauding russia and unfortunately the country was collapsing. and then in the end of the ninth just when russia tried to say something the west suddenly became very critical so it was not yeltsin what changed it was the editors of that of the west exchanged asked for it here my thinking about again to a very distant process. yeltsin was a democrat in the early an actress by the end of the ninety s. he was a different person talking about the political system it were it became very difficult to access hume much more difficult then to access gorbachev and down to vegas there were all kinds of weird people around him who had absolutely no legitimacy

including on ability to voice was never elected by a. sole basically people when they made demonstrations in support of yeltsin one thousand nine hundred one what they wanted was kind of a social democratic you go purely this point out of the out of regular continue our discussion of the legacy of boris let yeltsin do. you. think. wealthy british scientists i would say that i was. like the. markets. scandal. when i know what's really happening to the global economy because a report on our team. will

. remind you of the latest in science technology from the realms. we'll go to the future covered. it. started. to get in the closet. welcome back to talk about the mind you were talking about russia's first president boris yeltsin. egypt. but first here's a brief report on yeltsin's contentious legacy. in recent russian history few personalities remain as polarizing as boris yeltsin twenty years after the fall of

the soviet union yeltsin is still seen in the west as the politician who ends of communism and i'm sure of it in the area of personal freedoms and western style capitalism you know but sure that anything you learn just there proceed through the distance especially in history i think we still need more time for the emotions and troubles to give way to serious analysis that would take tenet figure you'll see really what's in a moment that later became one of russia's most iconic yeltsin with genuine popular support helped to stare down an attempted coup in one thousand nine hundred ninety one us we declare illegal all of the creeds and decisions by the state emergency committee in the us and in the western world yeltsin was seen as a reformer and a leader who could compromise he was embraced as a friend and told he was treated as a peer and when he died in two thousand and seven some of the warmest eulogies came from western leaders he stood up for freedom and democracy and open this he really believes that russia couldn't go back to communism or back further to extreme

rationalism praise from abroad yes. but yeltsin the sharpest critics were in the new country that he helped bring into being russia in theory yeltsin supported a market economy but the reality was western inspired shock therapy and crony capitalism russia's economy went to. freefall and the russian ruble had to be devalued choice during his time in office for millions of russians this was yet another time of troubles. yeltsin played a critical role in ending communist rule the us president he ordered the army to tackle mutinous parliament even rammed through constitutional reforms that extended his powers as president at the expense of parliament and few can forget the brutality of the first chechen conflict by the end of his presidency yeltsin like so many russians at the time became wary of the west i told me the americans the germans don't push us toward military action otherwise there will be

a european war for sure and possibly world war two there's no doubt that boris yeltsin is an outstanding historical figure though it may take decades for the russians themselves to find a consensus about a name to change russian and world history forever russia charney for crossed off our team. ok alex and i think go back feeling london. in the studio brought up a very interesting point about how russia looked at the west and the west looked at russia during yeltsin's tenure how do you assess that i mean was there a pendulum there whether mr sampson's on one side or both sides. i think there are misperceptions on both sides russia expected the west to applaud to the end of communism the introduction of a post common is purportedly a democratic regime and he. expected the west to give lots of money to support the

regime in to stabilize the transition to market democracy but the west responded to russia's soft liberation by appearing to be fairly mean it wasn't because of economic conditions the big marshall plea marshall plan number two as it were didn't come about and russia became more and more disillusioned about real partnership with the west but the trouble with russian foreign policy we were back to before the discussion is that rhetorical there was a lot of protest about nato expansion nato militarism and european like a friend in us but in actual fact the actions were pro western until the late one nine hundred ninety s. it was the combination of the one we of course of war and preceding that the economic crisis the banking crisis in the crash but brought about a real disillusionment not just with the with the west among the leaders of russia but also among the new liberal middle classes and i don't know what years you were

a diplomat in the one nine hundred ninety s. and russia but what did you see i mean were the russians expecting too much from the west or the west you know the cold war's over we won the i mean you know they'll find their way on the i.m.f. you know does it have a liberal economic system and everything will just be destroyed and dandy but we know it wasn't i mean what were the perceptions of misperceptions during your tenure here. well there were a lot of misperceptions i want to say first that i agree with alex that that yeltsin change in the west changed but i would also say that that russia changed i think the west expected a kind of a breakthrough to a larger version of maybe what polartec republic is today and that simply was never in retrospect going to be the case secondly the west i think it's important to recall the rest champions' the nine hundred ninety three constitutional reforms that gave a much stronger presidency to yeltsin than either existed before and as

a consequence to some extent we better that what we now criticize as a super a for a super presidential regime but i want to go back to ninety one i think there was a lot of misperception about what happened in ninety one where as i and many others thought it was a democratic breakthrough i think there were a lot of impulses there populism at ice over to his arm and frankly russian nationalism in a moderate form which which blended together with the pro so-called pro democratic forces so ninety one i think was misinterpreted and once that was misinterpreted a lot of what we saw go on that in the following decade was i think under arrest or a they've been misinterpreted as well he was you know it's very interesting is because you think in retrospect that the that the west wanted russia to disagree invented self and it's in a western image because that's what it sounds like when you go back and you know it because it's it's the triumph in prism of winning the cold war and russia will look at it in a very different way it collapsed the soviet union itself didn't want to do it

wanted something different it wasn't a defeat but russia is still even in mainstream media still treated as a defeated power and well i think that's the problem russia was treated as a defeated paul and in that sense the west has shown a local fenty i would say i think it characterizes the whole period of the ninety's level fantasy of the west would not think would not invent a new russia. state or a neutral state it returned to the old ways of treating russia with a suspicion. which is just usual in all this it was nothing new i asked for one thousand nine hundred one i can tell your. july in one thousand nine hundred one american government delegation came to russia and they came to what was there. of the sort of government and they said we stayed on you we don't believe these democrats we think you are a serious person a few people remember that i don't know if you are and i think it shows you the level foundation of america i was going to jump in. as like a friend is

a year but it's very difficult to get this. sense of this russia want to be treated in the early one nine hundred ninety s. both as a coup victor a big against communism sort of self imposed victory and therefore be treated as a partner and also to be given this kind of economic aid which would be expected of a defeated pearl it would be to be in a virtual war so at the one of the same time they wanted to be treated as equal victors but also to be bailed out and helped to recover as defeated person and that was a very difficult pair of conceptions to get people's minds around in the west can we think about that it's a very interesting period of time very interesting paradigm. well first of all i should i should tell dimitri that i did not write those current so i understood at the time. i think i remarked agree with what alex and frankly i know the person what the perception in russia is i was being treated like

a defeated power certainly i think in policymaking circles in washington that was not ok even if it may be appear about way to people in russia they basically thought that russia would end up relatively quickly i think being i guess and that were. a lot of the trouble that half of the following at least for some people in washington what was the summit. by surprise the second point i would make is that russia itself. was ambivalent about the soviet past about its own past and that made it much more difficult to craft a policy. in one way or the other political or economic to russia and the way we try we want to go on the fact that because the russians themselves were uncertain about which way they want to go dimitri i mean in and we look at it in retrospect now. after his presidency was it a missed opportunity i mean was it was yeltsin really wanting to be. a partner of

the west and if we just wasn't simply in braced i think he wanted to be a partner or of the west and i think it's very unfortunate what happened there was a lot of news to pick unitless you know moments were moving in russia. and americans and the europeans just didn't recognize that moment and sort of only they didn't believe it and when they finally believe that russian law started to set in you know that moment and still will be you know but it will be very interesting to me always tell me look at the one thousand nine hundred six presidential election i mean it was amazingly fraudulent that everybody in the west wanted to ignore all of the fraud he won he won reelection ok we don't know exactly i mean i haven't gone back on the impersonal evidence myself but i mean just supporting him and not what he was trying to do the democratization of this country its economic reforms they just wanted to base everything on yeltsin hoping that he would do the right thing what do you think about that alex not a systemic change but putting it on

a person. yeah well first of all leaders of states always wants to go to team first and foremost because stability equals security for them so yeltsin was a symbol of some degree of stabilization and stability that's why they backed him but they did like in the early ninety's imagination and we mentioned lack of imagination and before but the biggest like it imagination was on the international stage had there been an imaginative sitting down with russia at that time said let's to redraw the european security system let's end an expansion of nato for inertial bureaucratic safety first reasons and let's look at the ways in which we can structure russia in on an equal founding basis russia always wanted to be a founding member of something new rather than an adjunct union member of something old that was an opportunity missed and by nine hundred ninety five ninety six they're almost gone because they tow it started expanding so russia was let down in a way from electing the nation the same time russia let itself down by not having

a unified strategy of any kind the voices coming out of moscow yields and say one thing one remember we went to warsaw poland could join his wanted then the arena gone that second time around there were several voices and the most important voices among them were the corporate voices who were pro western pro western economic long. as it has been here gentlemen we've got run out of time and we certainly can all agree that yeltsin would lead a revolutionary life when he thinks of my guest today in the studio here with me in london and in washington thanks to our viewers for watching if you are d.c. you next time remember crossing our plans. to take.

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