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hello and welcome to crossfire gang peter lavelle boris yeltsin was he a great man who made history or was he merely a product of his time and opinions differ widely so no one denies the important role he played in creating our present cross-talk continued series on the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago. you. could cross stockyards and 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's director of russian and eurasian studies center at the university

of oxford all right gentlemen crossed no rules on that 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 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 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 to power 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 speed. 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 warts 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 he started building the russian federation of the new state at that point 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 you know it's in 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 have 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. with the most 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 he wanted to preserve the soviet union i'll be it 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 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 alex in if i go to you in london which speeded 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 and i have to 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 yeltsin 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 exact 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 a true 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 where there 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 a theory driven in the early years because it is our it's just pointed out i mean it in a in and it 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 at twenty five percent of 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. 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 a.p.'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 q native and you needed to the problem was there of course people were poor and the only ones who were reach and influential were criminals or some former party boss us so obviously they benefit from this privatization more than an 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 capabilities and their weight was thought of by a local holds it in the seventeenth eighteenth century to be some people who say that yeltsin in the russians around him i took the idea of a market a 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 all 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's or ott. i very much agree i think that if he and others have talked a lot more about strengthening the rule of law i think russians probably would be

a lot happier today about what happened in the ninety's and might even be wealthier today just to go back to a point that the man out said which i agree with which is whether he was a man motivated by it i would say i think in many ways he was motivated by instinct to sit around moscow and say well he was a democrat he's a democrat but he doesn't really know what it means and we watched this tremendous churning in society and it was very difficult to understand sometimes what you. did or worse not thought he was doing particularly after ninety one when when you had to build a state and this this weakness of institutions as we saw in the rule of law i think is something where our fault and very serious 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 they had yeltsin who had allowed it to deteriorate so badly and have the so much of the

economy captured in the private hands i mean it this is one of the things that went wrong and maybe will not intentionally but i mean the eventually the russian state was no longer serving the purposes of what it was supposed to do and this is a legacy of that that that follows yeltsin 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 dmitri but no ideology no explicit ideology but a culture of seeking panaceas believing that there are solutions out there which will fix things within maybe five or ten years and that's part of a sort of russian cultural heritage seeking marxism combining it with russian characteristics then yeltsin seeking broad based capitalism giving people like

gaidar free rule rein giving 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 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 spindle and swing from over come on over state of education to understate occasion if you want and at undermining of institutions in 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 a minute i mean that's a another. accusation made against yeltsin is he was such a pendulum person he would go to such extremes if it was for the devil on 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 but there was that pendulum i don't agree with this because it was not yeltsin

it was the west they've 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 editors of that or the west it changed us for us here my thinking about again cool very distinct process. yeltsin was a democrat in the early ninety's and 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 then to accept gorbachev in the end of vegas there were all kinds a weird people around him who had absolutely no legitimacy including on a political base was never elected by anyone. so basically people when they made demonstrations in support of us in one thousand nine hundred one what they wanted

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a. look. i'll come back to the 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 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 i shared in any area of personal freedoms and western style capitalism by sure that

anything large is better 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 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 one thus we declare a legal all of the crees 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 human g.'s came from western leaders he stood up for freedom and democracy and openness he really believed 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 attack and you've missed parliament he then ran through 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 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. there's no doubt that boris yeltsin is an outstanding historical figure though it may take decades for the russians

themselves to find a consensus about a name that changed russian and world history forever washer charney cross-talk r.t. . ok alex and i think about feeling london. 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 democratic regime and it. expected the west to get lots of money to support the regime and to stabilize the transition to market democracy but the west responded to russia's soft liberation by appearing to be fairly mean wasn't that has 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 the russian foreign policy we were back to before the discussion is that rhetorically there was a lot of protest about nato expansion nato military zone 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 bombing of course 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 class since 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 but west you know the cold war is over we won the 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 first that 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 one polartec republic is today and that simply was never in retrospect going to be the case second 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 i thought a super presidential regime but i want to go back to ninety one i think there was a lot of misperception about what happened in ninety one were 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 in a moderate form which which blended together with the pro so-called pro democratic forces so ninety one i think was misinterpreted and once that was misinterpreted a lot of what we saw go on 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 looks at it in a very different way it collapsed the soviet union itself it wanted you he wanted something different it wasn't a defeat but when she's 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 bowl and in that sense the west has shown

a level fenty i would say i think it characterizes the whole period of the night just a little 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 with that suspicion we just usually you know that it was nothing new and 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 was there their head of the saudi government and they said we stay going 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 at a time ago i would jump in yeah i'd like a friend is a year but it's very difficult to get this around you could make sense of this russia want to be treated in the early one nine hundred ninety s. both as a coup victor

a victory against communism so 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 at a piece of poetry in a virtual war so at 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 god when you think about it it's a very interesting paradigm very interesting paradigm it offers to russia i should tell dimitri that i did not write those comments. cynical time. i think i were much agree with what alex and frankly i know the person what the perception in russia is as being treated like a defeat of power certainly i think in policymaking circles in washington that was not the case even if it may be appear about way to people in russia they basically

thought that russia would end up relatively quickly i think being like us and that were to us a lot of the trouble that happened in the following that was forced on people in washington where it was a 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 the other economic move russia and the way we've tried we have 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. 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 mr putin yes you know my moment and sort of moving in russia. and america and the europeans just didn't recognize that non-consumer me they didn't believe it and when they finally believe that russian law started to set in you know the moment and still will be you know but it will be very interesting i mean all the gentlemen 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 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. yeah 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 instability that's why they backed him but

they did like in the early ninety's imagination and we mentioned lack of imagination of 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 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 the 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 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 we went to warsaw poland could join a sort of is wanted then the arena go 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. interests 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 us here r.t. see you next time remember cross talk. listen

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