to discuss the legacy of the last soviet leader i'm joined by stephen cohen here in the studio he's a professor of russian studies and history at new york university and his latest book is the victims return survivors of the gulag after stalin in london we go to geoffrey hosking he is an emeritus professor of russian history at university college london and his latest book is rulers and victims the russians in the soviet union and also in london we have lad sobel he's an analyst at the securities and another member of our crosstalk team on the hunger all right gentlemen this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want stephen i want to go to you first here as got a bunch off is eighty years old today and let's talk about global legacy and then let's go to specific to russia what is his contribution to history at eighty years old remembering his rule ending the soviet union well one contribution is already recorded in history he set free the countries of eastern and central europe that's done where they go from here is up to them what's not settled or written history is

the fate of democracy in russia there are different opinions about the condition of democracy in russia whether and he has very strong opinions as i was and for good reason he wants to go down in history as the father of russian democracy in the west we attribute it to yeltsin but that's not true now if. democracy flourishes in russia one day and stabilizes russia will go to gorbachev or go down as the greatest reformer in russian history if democracy falters and fails in russia and he'll go down in history as another tragic russian reformer he knows that and that's why his blood pressure about what's going on in russia is rising on his eightieth birthday or a maybe he's just protecting his legacy here ok i was going to go to you anyway go ahead life the thing is here is that maybe some people attribute democracy to one leader or another but most russians don't attribute democracy to either yeltsin or got to go ahead. i would just like to make one point i think that gorbachev was

actually responsible for peaceful disintegration of the soviet union and i think this is a very important point especially when we see what's happening in the middle east so i that would be my first point and secondly i would argue that russian democracy is proceeding on course i don't think that little bit of forethought italian isn't in the meantime to stabilize the political system to stabilize the economy will actually do very much harm. to the president go to visit in that video is now leading a new way if similar to perestroika and i would guess that in about ten years we will see genuine democratization in the russia it's very and it jeff i go to you in london i mean it's very interesting here because we see it live lived here for twelve years and and we don't hear the word perestroika but a lot of people would attribute the attributes what we you all of us here would think of us had a strike is coming about under putin not under yeltsin or got

a bunch of. well i was going to say that i don't think reputation depends on what happens in the future now i think his reputation is there to see he was in charge for five years he launched democratic reform there's no doubt about that he started the process he dissolved the communist party of the soviet union he set up elections in which there were genuine parties conducting a fight with each other but he didn't and couldn't take the process through to its end i mean for one thing he never himself stood for election as president of russia which would have been or of the soviet union which would have been the logical outcome of his democratic reforms he didn't have the courage or the insight it seems to me to take that process of democratization through to its logical conclusion it steve if i am one of the things we talk about would perestroika and glasnost is reforming the soviet union but was it reform a ball ok let's look at the economy ok the that type of command economy failed now how do you fix that you just have to exit don't you know i mean many countries

of introduced elements of another economic system into their economic you're saying my bread would have worked better it's not a hybrid i mean most economies of the twentieth century have been mixed economy state market economies i mean what would roosevelt's new deal was an attempt to introduce a large state sector into what had been an uncontrolled private sector group which tried to do the reverse to introduce market into a state economy the chinese did it the hungary and had done it even before but short of course it's doable but it's going on around the world you know it was going in reverse direction because what do you think that that's the data that's the difference but on the other hand there's no evidence that it wasn't possible i mean it's a long process and i don't actually agree with jeffrey in the sense that he didn't carry the process through to the end you would have had to have the temperament in the power of stalin to impose full democracy on russia in one thousand nine hundred nine hundred ninety the problem was group which off was the quintessential anti stalinist he had come to dismantle the system and let me remind you of one other

thing i admit i've known go. for twenty years i'm not entirely objective to be fair but george washington was elected president the united states by the american congress not by popular vote it's a process that has to begin someplace that was a step forward ok you're talking about other countries and i agree with you that a mixed economy is in fact a general rule in the twentieth century but the question really is was the soviet union reformable now when introduced elements of private enterprise into the service economy what the private enterprise did was to suck goods out of the state economy and create an economic crisis where there were desperate shortages in the cities so that the way he carried out the reform did not work or it worked badly vlad what do you think about that. i think the soviet economical so dysfunctional so wasteful it was impossible to reform it the only way was actually what is a and complete collapse and disintegration of the soviet union and i would actually argue that the economic factors was really very much behind the disintegration of the

soviet union because you couldn't carry on implement market reforms on the basis of central control in from moscow you really had to devolve power to develop the various republics and this is the seed of this integration and we're seeing similar such processes in central europe as well in czechoslovakia and yugoslavia so you know i don't i don't believe that the idea that the soviet economy could be risky would in some form i think it's as delusional if i can add on top of it he will do so you know the economic reform here finally stephen here and then having political freeform simultaneously creates high expectations when the shelves are empty i mean at a certain point there is a collision and there was a collision there was a collusion and i would i would build on what you say because the point is correct that the economic crisis that came in one thousand nine hundred ninety one was actually a political crisis it wasn't caused by the economy it was caused by political decisions first made by you by gorbachev then by you also. for example the moment

that gorbachev and yeltsin once you also had been elected president of the russian republic announced that prices would increase suppliers of goods refused to deliver into the market to the stores because they were waiting for the price increase it wasn't a failure of production it was a failure of distribution that's not a failure of this of the economic system those were bad political decisions jeffrey if i'm going to you let me give my sense of it i'm a gorbachev skeptic i'll be open about it. why my one of my biggest problems with him is historical figures that i never really got to grasp it he had a grasp on really really what he wanted to do it was basically. a make shift decision going from crisis to crisis to crisis like i never understood any kind of broad plan it was forced upon you well in many ways and i don't entirely agree with that i think when he came to power he did have a vision about how to revive soviet communism and make it a real force in the world and he hoped at the same time to revive the soviet

economy and to make it a country less hated in the world he had grasped that the soviet union was hated by most european peoples so i think it was a humane vision and an ambitious vision and when he started to implement it however he kept on running up against difficulties as stephen said i think in fact the economic decisions were mainly economic ones but in order to carry in the through it was necessary to carry out political reform as well and that further destabilize the country i think that gorbachev didn't have a good understanding of the nationalities problem in the soviet union because as soon as he loosened up the political system then the non russian nationalities began to raise their heads form their own political organizations and educate for greater autonomy or even in the end to secede from the soviet union it seems to me gentlemen that go ahead lie but it seems to me they forgot about china to succeed he had to fail it's a very ironic go ahead yes i think you're probably right but i'm just like to return to your point about his plan. believed that it was impossible to have

a plan like this you know you cannot you cannot dissolve an organization such as the soviet union in any sort of peaceful coherent very pre-planned manner you know you just have to go along and try your best and i think this is that it is really very gorbachev revealed his strengths because he was he was at every point given the system started to resisting when there was the possibility of retreating to the previous system he pushed for over again oh so i don't i don't believe that although he did did not have a plan but it was he had the insight in the in the feeling that he could actually achieve this process so you know i think it's a very you know if you look at the situation i would say middle east do we have a plan for the need certainly now lately obviously we see how things happen and i think it's realistic to do expect anyone to have a plan steve. go ahead john kerry had a detailed plan here i don't think he had a detailed plan i think he had

a vision both of the soviet union and of the world and let's face it on the world stage achieved a great deal by ending the cold war by reducing the number of nuclear weapons by achieving agreement with reagan those are all tremendous achievements and we should remember that although of course in the end they also helped to lead to the breakup first of all of the warsaw pact and then of the soviet union so that gorbachev as a result of his vision kept facing problems which probably he had not fully anticipated and which led him into one crisis after another and then i think indeed he lost control of the process are a gentleman going to a short break here after a short break we'll continue our discussion and got a job so i guess he stayed with marking. it.

i think it's. a.

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up her kitchen sisters. to. welcome back to cross talk on funeral about a minute we're talking about the legacy of me help out of a child. kitchen. but first let's see what russians think about him the last leader of the soviet union much of is now eighty years old his name is forever linked with attempts to reform the soviet system and his policies have received different assessments through the years the russian public opinion research center asked russians to define his

historical role fifty one percent of the respondents said his opposed to show who was thinking about the betterment of his country but made a number mistakes sixteen percent called him this onerous almost a moderate the collapse of the country and another twelve percent see him as a brave man who took responsibility to oversee vital reforms in the country gorbachev attempted to create a more open and prosperous country through the paula says of glasnost and perestroika back to peter ok that's what russians think about the legacy of mr gorbachev well our sophie shevardnadze interviewed mr gorbachev and this is what he said to her about what he thinks his legacy is. i think it is a united world. pursues a world where. the world free of ideological struggle.

has to put this is perhaps the most important creating necessary prerequisites in conditions to move them. ok stephen you heard that ok you know and you know got a bunch of extremely well and i would say you know get you both are friends. do you think he's being fair to himself you think fair to reality when his seventy fifth birthday five years ago he had a conference and i gave i gave a paper called there is a new cold war and he became very angry at me because he considers his great achievement certain achievement the ending of the last cold war so if there's a new cold war something went wrong the fact is something went wrong after nine hundred ninety one now we could have a whole separate program remember the soviet union into twenty years ago and yet obama said we have to have a reset which suggests something has gone badly wrong for relational you and i

disagree on a lot of things but on this one we do what i told a russian is did what did we squander did we i mean our government squanders something that gorbachev had given us at the end i think the answer is we have it could possibly be retrieved i'm not very optimistic but it's possible but i think this legacy too might have been squandered jeff if i got to you this is this is good because one of the interesting things is here is that a lot of russians don't have a good opinion and got a child but they most russians will say also is that it's the west that hasn't ended the cold war and that some of the greatest frictions we've seen over the last twenty years is that the mentality coming out of the west hasn't changed but the mentality certain his change certainly changed here in russia. ok well i do think that ending the cold war was just great a single achievement and it was a very great achievement i don't think he handled it terribly skillfully towards the end i think he had it is it end of the negotiations with the u.s. and with the west rather weakly i mean for example here he dissolved the warsaw

pact but didn't really get anything in return for it he loved the g.d.r. to join nato without getting any written commitment in return that nato would not expand further east would see understood that nato had made a promise but there was actually no very definite promise on the other hand i think obviously the main fault for the for the the kind of renewal of the cold war really does lie with the west because we didn't respond strongly enough to gorbachev needs and then indeed to yeltsin's needs in the early years of post soviet russia we needed to do i think much more to help them economically for example by creating a stabilization fund to provide against the inflation of the ruble which was catastrophic in the early years after the fall of the soviet union so we made a number of very serious mistakes i think of which i've made some mistakes but they're far of overshadowed by ours that if i go to you is that's the criticism i hear all of the time and it's already been mentioned it is what did go to which i get in return for helping to end the cold war and what russians will tell you today

is that nato expansion that's what russia and this is really people are a very bitter about that and even to that we have to remember august two thousand and eight where we had a nato supply georgia start of war so that the this brings back the feelings that go bitch i betrayed the new russia and that's what you still consistently get right . i would very much like. i would i would suggest that gorbachev was a peacemaker but unfortunately the west has not responded in a like manner and the expansion of nato overseen is an aggressive and rightly so and as you as you mentioned the events in georgia have a really terrific really very very dangerous very concerning and i can understand why by this russian population sees this as a retreat is giving up concessions to the west but we have to understand that you know through europe eastern europe to be free we. are now imposing post-imperial

face and i think that's one of the major major achievements that will be actually also understood that this need to be done and so he has restored the balance of power in europe again and he's a great peacemaker still. we did go back to his project of democratizing. the soviet union at the time again you know him very well how did he understand that without the dissolving the communist party because you are of the you have the thesis that the communist party could have been reformed it could have been democratized and i think that's a minority opinion in the world right now but i mean it's a very interesting thesis knowing him how did he see that going about you have to remember who he was where he came from and his generation he was of this generation that came to consciousness under khrushchev and the speech against stalin gorbachev was an anti stalinist later when he got power he wanted to be a de stalin nizer that meant to dismantle the controls that stalin had imposed on

the soviet union in the thirty's and then he said something remarkable in one thousand nine hundred seven he said lenin made a big mistake he carried out an economic new policy that after the civil war he didn't carry out a political new policy in other words he said lennon is a mistake was not becoming a democratize or he thought he had come at last in gorbachev gorbachev's road to democracy was removing stalin's controls not only on society but on the party itself now he may have had a real man of size view of what the communist party had been in at the beginning but it certainly wasn't then in the beginning what it was when gorbachev came to power he then said in one nine hundred eighty nine to the party you have to become an electoral party and they nearly passed out of a mess of the last thing in the world one of the cars but why not why couldn't the party of split into a gorbachev electoral party and the party that's now headed by you gone if which by the way don't ever forget this that after the end of the soviet union the new

russian communist party was the most successful electoral party in the duma until something else happened i we can debate what happened to the party had an electoral capacity it had to get it was too big it wasn't a real party had nearly twenty million members in those twenty million members was . kind of four or five million men well i mean you actually can always make the argument today it's still the only political party in russia i mean well it is the only national nationwide electoral party in russia it's a fact so i don't i'm not prepared to say it was on reformable i mean why say things are only formal if the process was underway well jeff if i go to you i mean we've been living in poland at the time when this was going on and when they had their first democratic election there wasn't one member of the with their version of the communist party that was elected to parliament they were completely wipe out and so i couldn't well imagine that you would have the communist party of the soviet union seeing what was going on in eastern europe that some of them could be the entire party could be electable which in retrospect seems what of course it was

a national party wasn't a party perceived as being a russian party in poland here they could call even on nationalism as they do today i guess maybe the question is is that i mean the lack of social democracy and i mean that they because that's what a lot of the eastern european communist party said they just won social democratic . well i do think actually steve is wrong about that i think the communist party was unreformable really because it was not really a political party and it couldn't really become one it was the backbone of the soviet union the soviet union as distinct from russia and once there was no no more any will from moscow to hold the thing together by means of the communist party then the other nationalities starting with the baltic and carrying on with georgia and armenia and so on they started to go their own way and at that point the communist party of the soviet union really lost much of its or is on that now gorbachev perhaps could get a say in the early months of one thousand nine hundred one have split the communist

party and lead a kind of social democratic wing of it himself and that might have been successful but significantly he didn't do that so i think really the evidence suggests that the communist party of the soviet union was really unreformable ok vlad you want to jump in on this one yeah i would i would i definitely agree there is this going collusion and i would just that the united russia party is in a sense a revival revived communist party because you know it's the party of the officials of the of the state you know some wondering about their you know their actual political culture needs this kind of party you know and whether we could see united russia in a sense a revival of the of the idea of the communist party communist party was beyond reform in my opinion ok one of the gentlemen one of the things i think is very interesting is that if we were if we look at what got a bunch of left behind left a lot of new republics the former soviet republics became independent in an interesting way if i go to you on this one joke he's really the father of a lot of new nations in the world even though we don't really tie his name to them

if i'm thinking of all the republics minus of course the russian federation. yes well they had very different histories actually and they didn't all leave the soviet union in the same way i mean the baltic republics we were first to go because the baltic pete rose hated communism the soviet union and russia all three . they had memories of the terrible deportations at the end of the second world war beginning of the second world war two actually and they just wanted to get out as soon as they thought it was practically possible the georgians hated russians as well and of course the north cookies in peoples and yet in central asia you find people who really didn't want to leave the soviet union at all they had no particular reason for wanting to do a new crane was somewhere in between you claim with was split to simplify things a bit on the whole west ukrainians felt rather like the baltic peoples whereas east ukraine is very much wanted to stay with russia in the soviet union we had at that time and a human chain which extended from live with two key if but no further east protesting

about ukrainian membership of the soviet union so it was really they were very different in their in their approaches to leaving the soviet union and they history has been similarly very different i think one could say ok stephen got thirty seconds left what's his legacy well i was astonished by your hunger as report their poll shows that fifty one percent of russians today think he did have even if he made mistakes in thirty nine change the best interest of his country what this means is that as the country stops demonizing gorbachev and focus not on his character but his mistakes we're going to have a new great debate in russia word belongs not in the united states about what happened in eighty five to nine hundred ninety one and that's going to be very valuable for russia because russia has to sort this out and now that fifty one percent think which i was trying to help the country but maybe did it the wrong way future leaders can join this debate and say ok he was right in his goal but i have a better way to do ok so where history will judge many thanks to my guest today in

london and here in the studio with me and thanks to our viewers for watching as you darkeys. see you next time and remember crosstalk full. time occupation in a. moment. you want to. get are sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charged welcome to the big picture. of.

me leave. immediately. see.

welcome to the la nischelle we'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey we can continue looking at the top stories of two thousand and eleven and specifically tonight we're going to focus on the latest developments as well as the lingering effects of the now ten years of the war on terror on september thirtieth of two thousand and eleven the united states assassinated an american citizen without any trial or due process by launching a drone strike in yemen that man was american born muslim cleric anwar al a law.