little beasts in which bryson if you remove the song from the stupid. stunts on t.v. don't come. here with r.t. and live from moscow top stories new radiation leaks exceeding legal limits acted in seawater near japan's crippled fukushima plant comes amid growing criticism facing all floridians accused of underestimating the ongoing nature of the nuclear crisis. nato plans to expand its strikes to libya's northwest to target gadhafi forces meanwhile the couple in himself used a high profile game of chess to reiterate his refusal to leave the country despite

mounting international pressure. and a fresh protests on a massive scale are expected in greece following sunday's rally against a second round of austerity measures the e.u. demands new cuts before the country can receive over one hundred billion euros in the bailout money. well those are the headlines here nazi time now for our debate show cross talk that's it i guess discuss the legacy of russia's first president boris yeltsin it's twenty years after he was elected the country's leader. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm hearing about boris yeltsin was he a great man who made history or was he merely a product of his time opinions differ widely though no one denies the important

role he played in creating our present cross-talk continued series from the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago. to cross-talk yeltsin's russia i'm joined by dmitri barber chair in the studio with me he's a political analyst at 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 probably he is 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 on cross talk on the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago and twenty years ago on june twelfth one thousand ninety 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 barbet let's look at that time twenty years ago and how we as

soviet union unraveled how much was yeltsin involved with that unraveling of the soviet union people talk a lot about going to chaff what about yeltsin at this time well i think there were two parallel processes going on which should not be mixed up there was the process of democratization and i think it was yeltsin storrow for the first time in russian history and man came while almost 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. 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 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 on the reform of the soviet union so the process has already gone very very march fourth and yeltsin of course when the soviet union was just virtually collapsed and in some one thousand

nine hundred one he didn't shed tears he started building the russian federation and you think that's the entire point a gun and i go to you in washington from a russian perspective in two thousand and eleven that was the good yeltsin ok the else and 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 do you system to be. i assess i'm looking back i'm very contradictory here both i would almost say heroic but certainly someone who displayed tremendous political courage and i would note in passing that i gree with themas comments and yeltsin was ahead of even the u.s. government many 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 albeit in a more reformed way but you asked about yeltsin i think he was in many ways one of the most politically courageous people i've ever been around and i was in moscow with time as a diplomat but also he was a tremendously contradictory contradictory figure whose career has to be separate into a number of phases not all of him not all of which have performed admirably alex in going to you in london let's stand up a little bit let's have mr yeltsin as president of the of russia the first president of russia how do you see his to 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

minuses 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 command economy in two broke into a liberal market capitalism but then he added an apology and he apologized for the fact that he was along with others so naive to think they could do it all in one big breakthrough drug 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 that in the two thousands and he sincerely came over as someone who was a big populist 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 with 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 theory driven in the early years because it is our just pointed out i mean it in a lot of people know is that the the russian economy contract it 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 speeches if you read his speech it's not he never said the word capitalism. or the word socialism 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 native on the if you needed to but problem was there of course people were poor and the only ones who were reach and influential were criminals or some former party boss us so obviously they benefit from this privatization more than average russian but unfortunately i think it was a global tendency if you will look the world was tremendously unjust during all of the ninety s. and it continues to be i'm just not it's built on some really are on premises which have little to do with the real liberalism and with real capabilities and their weight was thought by locals by hopes it in the seventeenth or eighteenth century there be some people who say that yeltsin in the russians around him and took the idea of a market cap a market economy too seriously because you got rid of you know your 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 don on this one one of the one of the biggest criticisms to this day is the creation of our darks the 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's or. i very much agree i think that if he and others have talked about talking 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 and might even be wealthier today just to go back to a point about diem and outset which i agree with which is whether he was a man motivated by idiology 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 watch this tremendous

churning in society and it was very difficult to understand sometimes what yeltsin did or was not thought he was doing particularly after ninety one when when you had to build a state and this this weakness of institutions was weakness in the rule of law i think is something where our fault i'm 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 yeltsin had allowed to do 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 eventually the russian state was no longer serving the purposes of what it was supposed to do and this is the legacy of the that that follows the also to this day. right i mean i think two things come out of that one is that yeltsin came out of a heavily state apparatus dominated system the common is a system he reacted against that wanted 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 the sort of russian cultural heritage seeking marxism combining it with russian characteristics then yield since seeking broad based capitalism giving people like gaidar free rule rein giving true buyers 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 command over state of education to under save occasion if you want and that undermining mr to sions 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's a another. accusation made against the odds and as he was such a pendulum person he would go to such extremes if it was for other democrat our democracy issue the economy issue defense security i mean first he embraced the west by the end when you look at the cost of zero experience yeltsin felt that he had been betrayed by the west but you know that was the pendulum i don't agree with this because it was not yeltsin it was the west they changed. 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 nine just when russia tried to say something but west suddenly became very critical so it was not yeltsin who changed it was the editor of all that of the west exchanged us for it him i think there were again cool very distinct process. yeltsin was

a democrat in the early ninety's by the end of the ninety s. he was a different person talking about their political system it were it became very difficult to access hear him much more difficult than to accept gorbachev in the end of weakness there were all kinds all weird people around him who had absolutely no legitimacy including on a political base was never elected by a. sole basically people when they made demonstrations in support of us in one thousand nine hundred one what they wanted was kind of their social democratic political girl is this point out of the road regular continue our discussion of the legacy of boris late yeltsin.

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welcome back i'm also talking about the mind you we're talking about russia's first president boris yeltsin. taken seriously. but first here's a brief report on the else and contentious legacy. in recent russian history few personalities roominess polarizing is 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 they're in an area of personal freedoms and western style capitalism. anything you learn just their perceived from a distance especially history i think we still need more time for the emotions and troubles to give way to serious analysis of what to take ten eight figure you'll see really was in

a moment the. leader 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. we declare a legal crease on decisions by the state emergency committee in the u.s. and in the western world yeltsin was seen as a reformer and a leader who could compromise he was embrace as a friend and tool 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 openness he really believes that russia couldn't go back to communism or back further to extreme rationalist praise from abroad yes. but yeltsin 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 mutants parliament he then ran through constitutional reforms that extended his powers as president at the expense of parliament and you can forget the brutality of the first church and conflict by the end of his presidency yeltsin like so many russians of the time he came weary 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 is 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 that change russian and world history forever. for cross-talk r.t. . ok alex and i think go back to you in 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 where there misperceptions on one side or both sides. i think there misperceptions on both sides russia expected the west to applaud to the end of communism the introduction of a post common is purportedly democratic regime and it's. expected the west to get 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 the best of economic conditions the big marshall plea marshall plan number two as it were didn't come apart and russia became more and more disillusioned about real partnership with the west but the trouble with russian foreign policy we went back to that before the discussion is

that rhetorically there was a lot of protest about nato expansion nato militarism and european like 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 bombing of kosovo and preceding that the economic crisis the banking crisis and the crash but brought about a real disillusionment not just 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. in russia but what did you see i mean were the russians expecting too much from the west or the west to stop well that you know the cold war is over we won i mean you know they'll find their way of the i.m.f. you know you have a liberal economic system and everything will just be just jim dandy but we know it wasn't i mean what with the perceptions and misperceptions during your tenure here . well there were

a lot of misperceptions i want to say that i first thought i agree with alex that that yeltsin change of the west changed but i would also say that the russian changed i think the west expected a kind of a breakthrough due to a larger version of maybe what poland of the czech republic is today and that simply was never in retrospect going to be the case second to the west i think it's important to recall the rest championed the nine hundred ninety three constitutional reforms that gave a much stronger presidency to yeltsin than have existed before and as a consequence to some extent we are better than what we now criticize as a super super presidential regime but i want to go back to ninety one and 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 anti soviet system and frankly russian nationalism that in a moderate form which which will end it 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 out in the following decade was i think underestimated and misinterpreted as well 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 triumphant ism of winning the cold war and russia will look at it in a very different way it collapsed the soviet union itself did want to do it wanted something different it wasn't a defeat but when she's 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 level fenty i would say i think it characterizes the whole period of the ninety's the level fantasy of the west would not think would not invent a new russia and. it's the only neutral state you treat turned to the old ways of

treating russia with that suspicion we was just usual you know it was nothing new i asked for one thousand nine hundred one i can tell your. july one thousand nine hundred one american government delegation came to russia and they came to what you may recall was their head of the government and they said we stayed on you we don't believe these democrats will think you're a serious person a few people remember that i don't want to do i think it shows you the level of the climate here i would jump in here as like a friend is a year but it's very difficult to get this. sense of this russia wants to be treated in the early one nine hundred ninety s. both as a cove victor a victory 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 edited perjury in

a war so at that one of the same time they wanted to be treated as equal victors and also to be bailed out and helped to recover as defeated perl's and that was a very difficult but pair of conceptions to get people's minds around the worst gun when you think about it that's a very interesting theories i'm very interested in paradigm. well first of all i should i should tell dimitri that i did not write those comments i was never seen at the time. i think i were much agree with what alex and frankly i know the person what the perception in russia is i was being treated like you can feel the power certainly i think and policymaking circles the russians and that was not the case even if it maybe appear about where people in russia they've basically thought that russia would end up relatively quickly i think being like us and that with us a lot of the trouble that half of the following back at least for some people in washington what the summit. a 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. russia and the way we try we want it to go and in fact 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 really wanting to be a partner of the west and it was just wasn't simply in braced i think he wanted to be a part of the west and i think it's very unfortunate what happened there was a lot of nice to put uniqueness you know moment and sort of moving in russia. and america instead of the europeans just didn't recognize that moment and some were more me they didn't believe it and when they finally believe that russian law

started to set you know that moment and still you know but i don't really seriously i mean you know all germany will 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 imperial evidence myself but i mean just supporting him and not what he was trying to do the democratization of this country its economic reforms and he 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 we are putting it on a person. yeah well first of all. leaders of states always want stability first and foremost because the earth 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 magination we mentioned lack of imagination before but the biggest lack of imagination was on the international stage had there been an imaginative sitting down with russia at that time said listen redraw the

european security system let's end an expansion of nato put inertial bureaucratic safety first reasons and let's look at the ways in which we can structure russia in an equal founding basis russia always wanted to be a founder member of something new rather than an adjunct junior member of something old that was an opportunity missed them by nine hundred ninety five ninety six they're almost gone because nato it started expanding so russia was let down in a way from a like emerging 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 month we were to warsaw and so poland could join us or if he's wanted in the arena egged on that second time around there were several voices and the most important voices among them with the corporate voices who were pro western pro western economical long. as it has been here gentlemen we've got run out of time and we certainly can all agree that yeltsin will lead

a revolutionary life many thanks to my guest today in the studio here with me in london and in washington thanks for viewers for watching in security to see you next time remember crossed our plans.

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