welcome back he would answer you live from moscow recapping our top stories the ripples from the fukushima nuclear facility reaches beyond the no go zone with radiation levels some eighty kilometers away from the plant exceeding legal limits meanwhile the sea and groundwater in the area have been found to be contaminated and. pledges that he will never leave libya as he faces off against a chess grandmaster in the devastated capital tripoli meanwhile nato stepped up its

offensive from declares it's expanding operations against libyan government thugs. and pro a palestinian sentiment wrong across in europe soccer stadium on the government's stop ignoring the israeli occupation off the west bank and calls for a fourth quarter goods from any. part of my colleague bill dollars here in half an hour's time but for now it's crosstalk and us and i pay to live in his guest discuss the legacy of russia's first president. and twenty years after he was elected as the country's leader. hello and welcome to crossfire time 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 crosstalk continues its series on the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago. crosstalk yeltsin's russia i'm joined by dmitry babich here 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 project he is director of russian and eurasian studies center at the university of oxford all right gentlemen crossed out rules in it i mean 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 ninety nine you when you also became the first popularly elected president of the russian soviet federated socialist republic were basically the beginning of the demise of the soviet union that would follow later in the year dimitri. 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 charge but what about yeltsin at this time well i think there are two parallel process 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 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. 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 you know 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 much forward and yeltsin

of course of the soviet union was just virtually collapse and in some one thousand nine hundred one he didn't shed tears you started build in the russian federation and you think that's the entire point of john vines 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 so some to be. i said some looking back i'm very contradictory figure both i would almost say heroic but certainly someone who displayed tremendous political courage and i would note in passing about i agree with the most comments and the ultimate 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 any more reformed 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 in moscow at the time as a diplomat but also he was a tremendously contradictory contradictory figure whose career has to be separated into a number of phases not all of it in not all of which are performed admirably and alex in if i go to you in london let's teed it up a little bit let's have mr yeltsin is 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 there 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 into 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 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 populous leader concerned with people's wealth 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 or with it would be better done in small stages is a very very big question even when you think about it in the studio here more ideologically driven a theory driven in the early years because it is our just pointed out i mean it in a lot of people know is that b. of the russian economy contract fifty percent at one point during his administration and i can point out to my audience here the great depression in the united states the u.s. economy contract to twenty five percent so if we can put that magnitude out there well i think there are yards and was not an ideological president and if you listen to his speeches if you read the speech it's now he never said the word capitalism. all the world soldier it isn't that was not right he style i mean i remember him

saying in one of his interviews back in the ages that people are tired of ideology people just wanted to leave 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 an 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 i what will tendency if you will look at the world was tremendously on just during all of the ninety s. and it continues to be unjust now it's built on some really wrong premises which have little to do with a real leader it is manned with real capitalism a fair wage was thawed by a law called way hopes it in the seventeenth or eighteenth century or that there'd be some people who say that the yeltsin in the russians around him a clear 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 don on this one one of the one of the biggest criticisms to this day is that 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. i very much agree i think that if he and others are taught to pick up 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 probably not even be wealthier today just to go back to a point that the man alex said which i agree with which is whether he was a man motivated by you know it's you 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 it was very difficult to understand sometimes what you. did or was not thought it 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 felt very seriously do 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 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 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 a communist 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 dimitri 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 yields in 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 will be a positive sum game and that wasn't the case and therefore you don't need the state you don't need to regularize redistribute manage in the old command system so it was a typical spindle and swing from over come on over state of occasions or under siege

occasion if you want and that 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 you this i mean that's a another. accusation made against yeltsin his he was such a pendulum person he would go to such extremes if it was for the democrat democracy issue the economy issue go defense security i mean first he braced the west by the end look at the cost of zero experience yeltsin felt that he had been betrayed by the west because there was that pendulum i don't agree with this because it was not yeltsin it was the west they changed the dates 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 which changed it was their ticket or that of the west they changed us for it here my

thinking over 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 hume much more difficult than to access gorbachev in the end of weakness there are all kinds of weird people around him who had absolutely no legitimacy including an authority to beis was never elected by anyone. so basically people when they made demonstrations in support of yeltsin one thousand nine hundred one what they wanted was kind of their social democrat he will believe this point of the outer and regular continue our discussion of the legacy of boris like the old song they've got. to. start.

the wind stream cascading from mountain slopes the view is miss mirage he. brings down at a speed of more than four hundred kilometers from. the step to the lava long. to go to the cooling you the latest in science and technology from around russia. we've dumped the future covered. more than a month. in one of the most extreme environments on the planet this is and charge it up and people have to be aware that they're far away from civilization sean thomas discovers what makes on star to us so special and attractive for many life

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president boris yeltsin. ok. but first here's a brief report on yeltsin's contentious legacy. in recent russian history few personalities remain a spoiler rising 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 ushered in a new area of personal freedoms and western style capitalism you know but sure that anything you learn just better proceed from a distance especially history i think we still need more time for emotions and troubles to give way to serious analysis that would take tannic figure used to really watch 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 one yes 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 openness we really believe that russia couldn't go back to communism or back further to extreme rationalism praise from abroad yes. but yeltsin sharpest critics were in the new country that he hoped to 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 i yelled simply a critical role in ending communist rule the us president he ordered the army to attack and mutinous parliament. given graham. the constitutional reforms that

extended his powers as president of 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 near to 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 and that would may take decades for the russians themselves to find a consensus about a name that changed russian and world history forever washer charney for cross talk martin. ok alex and i forgot about feeling the wind in. the studio brought up a very interesting point about how russia look 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 were there misperceptions on one side or both sides. i think the 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 it. expected the west to get lots of money to support a regime in to stabilize the transition to market democracy but the west responded to russia's softly ration by hearing to be fairly mean it wasn't for the us to be 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 the rhetorical there was a lot of protest about nato expansion nato military zone and european like a friend in the us but in actual fact the actions were pro western until the late

one thousand nine hundred s. it was the combination of the bombing of course of war and preceding that the economic crisis the banking crisis and the crash that 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 guy 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 just well that you know that the cold war is over we won i mean you know they'll find their way with 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 and 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 of the west changed but i would also say 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 that 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 then have existed before and as a consequence to some extent we better what we now criticize as a super authority super presidential regime but i want to go back to ninety one i think that 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 the impulse was there populism anti soviet system and frankly russian nationalism in a modern form which which blended together with a 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

to misinterpret as well you know it's very interesting is because you think in retrospect that the that the west wanted russia to destry invented self in its 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 looks at it in a very different way it collapsed the soviet union itself it wanted you it wanted something different it wasn't a defeat but when she's still in even the mainstream media still treated as a defeated power well i think that's the problem russia was treated as a defeated call and in that sense the west has shown a little fantasy i would say i think it characterizes the whole period of the night just a little fantasy of the west would not think would not invent a new russia and. allied state or a neutral state it returned to the old ways of treating russia with suspicion we just usually you know it was nothing new and i asked for one thousand nine hundred one i can tell your. in july one thousand nine hundred one american government

delegation came to russia and they came to what was there their head of the saudi 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 found there's a pattern here i want to go ahead jump in here like a friend is a year but it's very difficult to get this. great sense of this russia want 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 it deleted poetry 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 don't

you 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 comments. i'm guessing at the time. i think ira much agree with that we're back with our ex and frankly i know the person what the perception in russia is being treated like a defeat of power certainly i think in policymaking circles of washington that was not the case even if it maybe appear about where people in russia big basically thought that russia would end up relatively quickly i think being like us. and us a lot of the trouble that happened in the following decade it was 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 the other political or economic move russia and the way

we've tried 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 that 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 could be a part of the west and i think it's very unfortunate what happened there was a lot of new stuff but uniqueness you know moment and sort of moving in russia. and americans and the europeans just didn't recognize that moment of a movie they didn't believe it and when they finally believed it the russians started to set in you know that moment and still will be you know but it will be seriously i mean we 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 you know the 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 i imagine nation and we mentioned lack of imagination of before but the biggest like an imagination was on the international stage had there been an imaginative sitting down with russia at that time said let's agree draw 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 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 they took it started expanding so russia was let down in a way from a like in malaysia nation the same time russia let itself down by not having a unified strategy of any kind the voices coming out of moscow yeltsin say one thing one month we went to warsaw and so poland could join later if he's wanted then the arena egged on that second time around there were several voices and the most important voices among them were the corporate voices who were pro west and pro western economic looks. as if you've 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 as you darkie see you next time remember crossed party lines. to

take.