mindstream cascading from mountain slopes the view is miss mirage. brings down at a speed of more than two hundred kilometers per hour. the stampede the avalanche. come to life in the russian capital this is r.t. top stories this toxic ripples from the focus shima nuclear facility reach beyond the no go zone with radiation levels some eighty kilometers away from the plant exceeding legal limits meanwhile seeing groundwater in the area being found to be contaminated. going to duffy pledges that he'll never leave libya easy faces off against a chess grandmaster in the devastated capital of tripoli meanwhile nato steps off its offensive and declares its expanding operations against libyan government forces. from palestinian sentiment spreads across europe is activism on the

continent stop ignoring the israeli occupation of the west bank and call for a boycott of goods from israel. but out with more news for you in less than thirty minutes from now in the meantime it's our debate program cross talk and today peter lavelle and his gas discuss the legacy of russia's first president. twenty years after he was elected the country's leader. can. follow in 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 crosstalk continues that series from the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago. came.

across tokyo since 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 proud he is director of russian and eurasian study center at the university of oxford all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect 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 one thousand anyone else who came the first popularly elected president of the russian soviet federated socialist republic would basically the beginning of the demise of the soviet union that would follow later in the year dimitri babbage 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 chop off what about yeltsin at this time but i think there

were two parallel processes going on which should not be mixed up there was the grossest of democratization and i think it was yeltsin star all 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 on the pro the process was almost complete i would you mind your that in march two months before the election . seven republics volatile fifteen did not take part in the referendum on the reform of the soviet union so the process has already gone very very much walt and yeltsin of course when the soviet union was just virtually collapsing in some one thousand nine hundred one he didn't shed tears he started building the russian

federation and the new state at that point and i go to you in washington from a russian perspective in two thousand 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 some to be. i have some looking back i'm very contradictory here both i would almost say heroic and certainly someone who displayed tremendous political courage and i would note in passing that i gree with the most comments and yeltsin was ahead of even the us government many outside observers and moving forward where 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 in a 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 in not all of which are performed admirably. 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. if 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 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 you'll see 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 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 what do you think about that in the studio here more ideologically driven in theory driven in the early years because it is our it's just pointed out i mean it in a minute a lot of people know is that the the russian economy contract with 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 the speech it's not he never said the word capitalism. or the word socialism that was not right he style i mean i remember him saying in one of his interviews back in the eighty s. that people are tired of a door which people just wanted to live better and they wanted more economic freedom and he gave them economic freedom in one thousand eight hundred nine

hundred eighty two the problem was that of course people were poor and the only ones who were reach and influential were criminals or some formal party was us so obviously they benefit from this privatization more than the average russian but unfortunately i think it was a global tendency if you will look at the world was tremendously unjust 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 the real liberalism and with real capitalism they wage was thawed by a wall called by hopes in the seventeenth eighteenth century or that there'd be some people who say that yeltsin in the russians around him took the idea of a market market economy too seriously because you got rid of you know you privatized 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 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's or but. i very much agree i think that if he and others are top of the top 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 part might be wealthier today just to go back to a point about the man outside 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's it was very difficult to understand sometimes what yeltsin 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 our fault i'm very serious alex when you think about eggs that'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 they yeltsin had 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 will intentionally but i mean the eventually just the russian state was no longer serving the purposes of what it was supposed to do and this is the legacy of that that they followed the altar 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 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. no ideology no explicit ideology but it 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 to bias 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 to learn swing from over come on over stated location to understate occasion 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 him of that i mean

that's a lot another. accusation made against you also his he was such a pendulum person he would go to such extremes if it was for on the democrat our democracy issue the economy issue 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 it was the pendulum i don't agree with this because it was not yeltsin it was the west they changed the 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 the west suddenly became very critical so it was not yeltsin which changed it was the attitude of that of the west that changed 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 the political system it were it became very difficult to access him much more difficult than to access gorbachev in the end of vegas there were all kinds all weird people around him who had absolutely no legitimacy including on a political base was never elected by a. soul basically people when they made demonstrations in support of us in one thousand nine hundred one what they wanted was kind of where social democratic woke early this morning out of the router and radio continue our discussion of the legacy of boris led yeltsin they were going. to. be. to. blame.

today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world. told for a show the e.u. . more than a month. in one of the most extreme environments on the planet this is antarctic dots and people have to be aware that they're far away from civilization sean combs discovers fluff to make sounds article is so special and instructive for many wildlife in antarctica is the place you live and from the. expedition to the bottom of the earth r.c. .

will. bring you the latest in science and technology from around russia. we've got the future of coverage. it. started. the day. welcome back to talk about remind you we're 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 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 the area of personal freedoms and western style capitalism here but sure anything you learn just they're perceived 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 chantix 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 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 or 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. yeltsin played a critical role in ending communist rule the us president he ordered the army to tackle mutinous parliament even granting constitutional reforms that extended his powers as president of the expense of parliament and few can forget the brutality of the first church and conflict by the end of his presidency yeltsin like so many russians at the time became wary of the west i told me 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 though it may take decades for the russians themselves to find a consensus about a name that change russian and world history forever russia cross-talk our team. ok alex and i 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 they were 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. 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 the best 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 went back to before the discussion is the 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 way of course of war and preceding that the economic crisis the banking crisis and 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 class 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 just you know the cold war's over we won i mean you know they'll find their way on the i.m.f. you know you have a liberal economic system and everything will just be decision 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 changed in the west changed but i would also say that that russia changed i think the west expected a kind of a great through to a larger version of maybe one pole or the czech republic is today and that simply was never in retrospect going to be the case a second ago west i think it's important to recall the rest champions' being 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 that what we now criticize as

a super earth or a 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 impulses there populism anti soviet citizen and frankly russian nationalism that in a moderate form which which blended together with the pro so-called pro democratic forces so ninety one i think was misinterpreted and then once that was misinterpreted a lot of what we saw go on out in the following decade was i think underestimated the 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 look into it because it's it's the triumph in prism of winning the cold war and russia looks at it in a very different way it collapsed the soviet union itself didn't want to do it wanted something different it was going to defeat but russia is still even the 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 little fent here i would say i think it characterizes the whole period of the one just level fantasy 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 we had that suspicion we just usually you know there was nothing you asked for one thousand nine hundred one i can tell your story in july in one thousand nine hundred one american government delegation came to russia and they came to what was there of the 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 am trying to do and i think it shows you the lack of foundation of america i want to get a job in you know like a firm does a year but it's very difficult to get this. great 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 italy 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 pearls and that was a very difficult pair of conceptions to get people's minds around in the west god when you think about it it's a very interesting period of time very interesting paradigm it off first of all i should i should tell dimitri that i did not write those karma so. cynical time. i think ira much agree with what alex and frankly i know the person what the perception in russia is as being treated like a defeated power certainly i think in policymaking circles in washington that was

not pick a even if it may be appear about way to people in russia they basically thought that russia would and are relatively quickly i think being like us and that with us a lot of the trouble that happened in the following was for some people in washington what 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 move russia and the way we tried we wanted it to go and the fact that because the russians themselves were uncertain about which way they want to go in the tree i mean in when 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 partner or of the west and i think it's very unfortunate what happened there was a lot of new stuff but unitless you know moment and sort of moving in russia. and americans and the europeans just didn't recognize that moment and summer movie they didn't believe it and when they finally believe that russian law started to set in you know that moment and still we you know but i don't really seriously i mean when you 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 they just wanted to base everything on yeltsin hoping that he would do the right thing when you think about that alex not a systemic change be putting it on a person. you know well first of all leaders of states always want stability 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 didn't like in the early ninety's i imagine nation and 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 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 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 started expanding so russia was let down in a way from a lack of imagination 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 we went to warsaw and so poland could join us with his wonted 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 western pro western economic links. 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 many thanks to my guest today in the studio here with me in london and in washington thanks to our viewers for watching if you are v.c.u. next time remember crossed our plans. to keep.

mission. couldn't take three months for charges free. m.h. three. stooges free.