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the. following welcome to crossfire timekeeper labelle boris yeltsin was he a great man who made history or was he merely a product of his time opinions differ widely don't know when denies the important role he played in creating our present continued series on 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 project he is director of russian and eurasian studies center at the university of oxford all right gentlemen crosstalk rules and 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 nine hundred one the ultimate game the first popularly elected president of the russian soviet federated socialist republic well basically the beginning of the demise of the soviet union that would follow later in the year dimitri. well 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 going to chop off what about yeltsin at this time well i think there are two parallel process that's going on which should not be mixed up there was the process of democratization and i think it was yeltsin starro for the first time in russian history and man came to power on a selection against the will of the government that was an achievement as for that 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 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 much forward 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 you started building the russian federation of the you think it's the at that point 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 do you see as some to be. i saw some looking back of a 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 yeltsin was ahead of even the us 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 i'll be at 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 with time as a diplomat but also as 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 alex in 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 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 minuses and this goes with his economic reform program as well you remember that in one thousand nine hundred nine when handing over the akutan yeltsin reflected on his own contribution to russia and he fought started by saying of course the great achievement was we broke with communism broke as you just wanted to know the commodity kaname into broken to 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 drac 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 but will 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 it is our just pointed out i mean it in a in a lot of people know is that the the russian economy contracted 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 there are yards and was not an ideological president and if you listen to his speeches if you read his just now he never said the word capitalism. all the world sort of 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 a georgian people just wanted to live better and they wanted more economic freedom and he gave them economic freedom and then came native on them to native but problem was there of course people were poor and the only ones who were reach and influential were criminals or some form of budget process so obviously the benefit from this privatization more than ever it russian but unfortunately i think it was a global tendency if you will look at the world was tremendously on just during all of the ninety s.

and it continues to grow and just now it's built on some really wrong premises which have little to do with the real leaderless and with real capitalism they wage war stored by all caused by holds it in the seventeenth or eighteenth century or that there be some people who say that 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 family jewels that actually created wealth in this country and all the rest of it just fell apart i mean and in the process i got to you dan on this one one of the one of the biggest criticisms to this day is the creation of our darks 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 talked to pickup 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 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 etiology 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 also did or was not talk he was doing particularly after ninety one when when you had to build a state and this this weakness of institutions when it's in the rule of law i think is something where i've thought him very seriously do you think about that 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 the 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 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 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 the thing to be true 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 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 spend you can swing from over come on over state of education to under state 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 the olson is he was such a pendulum person he would go to such extremes if it was for other given 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 yachts and 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 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 ninety s. when russia tried to say something the west suddenly became very critical so it was not yeltsin which changed it was their attitude or that of the west exchanged us for it here my thinking about again cool very distinct process. is 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 access gorbachev in the end of weakness there were all kinds a weird people around him who had absolutely no legitimacy including an authority to place was never elected by anyone. so basically people are when they made demonstrations in support of us in one thousand nine hundred one what they wanted was kind of their social democratic you were going to this point out of the browser

and regular continue our discussion of the legacy of boris like the old songs do. you. still. to a substantial degree and one problem or another socialism has spread the shadow of famine regimentation over most of the nations of the earth and the shadow is encroaching upon all the for. the early twenty first century military bases a network of military bases all around the world forms that believe. that the united states is trying to get its astonishing most americans have no idea there

are more than a quarter of a million more than two hundred fifty thousand u.s. troops stationed on these bases all around them. we don't have a problem bases of america we don't have any british base we don't have any korean base we don't have any french bases or you know we just all american bases in in the last isle bases or five or the noise is our noise it doesn't bother us at all because they're all bases but for other people it's almost like a cancer here for these people since the end of world war two the spaces i've been . working here to provide a safe and secure environment for everybody. the questions me up because you get everything you need to.

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i can. start. cutting the excess in the bank. welcome back to france talk about the mind you were talking about russia's first president boris yeltsin. played the take sister to cut. 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 up communism and i'm sure they are in the area of personal freedoms and western style capitalism you know but sure anything you learn just their perceived from a distance especially in history i think we still need more time for the emotions and troubles to give way to serious analysis of what to take tannic figures 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 night. we won first we declare a legal decrease 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 in place as a friend and told he was treated as a peer and when he died in two thousand and seven some of the were most 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 place 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 tack and humus parliament he then graham for constitutional reforms that extended his powers as president of the expense of parliament and if you can forget the brutality of the first church on conflict by the end of his presidency yeltsin like so many russians of 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 and that what may take decades for the russians themselves to find a consensus about a name that changed russian and world history forever. across party.

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 the 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 a 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 national 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 it was a lot of protest about nato expansion nato military isn't european like a friend in the 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 course civil and preceding that the economic crisis the banking crisis and the crash that brought about a real disillusionment not just with the west among the leaders of russia but also among the new liberal little classes i don't know what years you were a diplomat die 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 the cold war is over we won i mean you know they'll find their way 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 that first of all i agree with alex that that yeltsin change of 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 pole or the czech 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 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 bet it what we now criticize as a super authorise super presidential regime but i want to go back to ninety one i think that there was a lot of misperception about what happened and i did one were as i and many others thought it was a democratic breakthrough i think there were a lot of impulses there populism anti soviet his arms and frankly russian

nationalism that in a moderate form which which will end in together with a pro so-called pro democratic forces so ninety one i think was misinterpreted then 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 west wanted russia to does reinvent itself 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 triumph into some of winning the cold war and russia will look 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 and well i think that's the problem russia was treated as a defeated bowl 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 level fenty here in the west i would not think would not invent

a new russia and. it's the sort of neutral state it returned to the old ways of treating russia with suspicion we just as usual you know that it was nothing new and i asked for one thousand nine hundred and i can tell your story in one thousand nine hundred one american government delegation came to russia and they came to what do you know who was there their head of the saudi government and they said we stay when you we don't believe these democrats we think you are a serious person a few people remember that i am going to do 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 is heated perfectly 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 when you think about that it's a very interesting there is i'm very interesting her and i'm going. off worst or i should i should say odd to me too and i did not write those comments. we understood 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 to feed a power certainly i think in policymaking circles of washington that was not the case even if it may be appear about way to people in russia they basically fart that russia will end up relatively quickly i think being like us and that will last a lot of the trouble that happened i forgot that it was for some people in

washington what's the summit. a surprise the second point i would make is that russia itself. want about the soviet past about its own past and that made it much more difficult to craft a policy. in one way or other economically to russia and the way we tried we wanted it to go in fact because the russians themselves were uncertain about which way they want to go dimitri i mean in when we look at it in retrospect now. and after his presidency was it a missed opportunity i mean it was really wanting to be. a partner of the west and it was just wasn't simply embrace 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 mr park uniqueness you know moment and sort of moving in russia. and americans and the europeans just didn't recognize that moment and some were more me

they didn't believe it and when they finally believed it the russians started to set in you know the moment and still do you know but i don't. mean we look at the one thousand nine hundred six presidential election i mean it was amazingly fraudulent but 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 and on the empirical 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. 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 did like in the early ninety's i imagine nation and we mentioned lack of imagination of before but the biggest like of 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 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 and any kind of voices coming out of moscow yields and say one thing one remember we went to warsaw poland could join his wanted then they renamed gone that second time around there were several voices in the most important voices among them with corporate voices who were pro western pro western economic. loser people this is interesting 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 darkie see you next time remember crosstalk. they tell me here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.