iran is calling the e.u. proposed oil embargo an economic war and strong reaction is the latest in a series of intensifying military and diplomatic responses by tehran i mean a growing pressure from western powers over its nuclear projects. up next peter the bell asked his guests and was a key history maker or just in the right place at the right time crosstalk is next here in our city. if you. 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 don't know when denies the important role he played in creating our present crosstalk continues that series on the collapse of the soviet union twenty years ago. and.

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 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 nine hundred ninety also 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. 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 charge 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 almost election against the will of the government that was an achievement as for that 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 the process was almost complete i would you mind you 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 march forward and yeltsin of course when the soviet union was just virtually collapsed and in some one thousand one thousand lawn he didn't shed tears he started building the russian federation

of the new thing it's employment if 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 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 sense some to be. i've 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 that. with the most commas and the ultimate was ahead of even the us government and the 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 albeit in

a more reformed way but you asked about yeltsin i think he was in many ways one of the most politically courageous people i've ever been around and i was in moscow at the time as a diplomat but also he was a tremendously contradictory contradictory figure whose career has to be separated into a number of phases not all of in not all of which he performed admirably alex in to you in london let's speak 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. 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 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 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 whether it would be better done in small stages is a very very big question dina what do you think about that in the studio here more ideologically driven theory driven in the early years because as our pointed out i mean it in a lot of people now is that the the russian economy contract a division the 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 his speeches now he never said the word capitalism. or the word socialism that was not quite he style i mean i remember him saying in one of his interviews back in the eighty s. that people are tired of ideology people just wanted to leave better and they

wanted more economic freedom and he gave them economic freedom in one thousand nine hundred eighty two the problem was that of course people were poor and the only ones who were to reach an influential were criminals or some former but your boss us so obviously they benefit from this privatization more than in every direction but unfortunately i think it was a global tendency if well look 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 wars thawed by local hopes it in the seventeenth or eighteenth century or that there be some people who say that yeltsin in the russians around him and 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 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 the creation of oligarchy that controlled so much of the economy and the end 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 era ott. i very much agree i think that if he and others have talked about talked 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 problem i'd even be wealthier today just to go back to a point that that demand out said 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 watched this tremendous churning in society and 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 witnessed in the rule of law i think is something where i've followed him very seriously alex what 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 of the outs and it allowed to do deteriorate so badly and have the so much of the economy captured into private hands i mean this is one of the things that went wrong and maybe would not intentionally but i mean the eventually this is the russian state was 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 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 he'll see in seeking broad based capitalism giving people like gaidar free rule rein giving to 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 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 don't swing from over command over state of education to undeceive occasion if you want and in undermining mr to sions 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 and it's another. accusation made against yeltsin is 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 when you look at the kosovo experience yeltsin felt that he had been betrayed by the west but that there was that pendulum i don't agree with this because it was not yeltsin it was the west they changed it dead 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 who changed it was their digital that or the west that changed us for humor i think there were again two very distinct process. yeltsin was a democrat in the early ninety's by the end of the ninety s.

he was a different person talking about their political system it became very difficult to access hear him much more difficult than to access gorbachev in their underweight yes there are all kinds of weird people around him who had absolutely no legitimacy including an authority to base was never elected by anyone. so basically people when they made demonstrations in support of yeltsin one thousand nine hundred one what they wanted was kind of their social democratic you go purely this point of the router and regular continue our discussion of the legacy of boris like the old songs they were going. to. i had a family i lived in a fairly nice community wasn't which was an upscale it was just like you know

archie bunker society ok then they started showing up here what happened was my company decided i could get cheap labor and they got rid of. rosa legally legally we have to get up every morning we have to go to work and you know we have to pay our bills only have to do it and that's just the american dream and if you want the american dream you have to go by the last i figure it's here's one of the trails in the united states. and they run run down my property and about this noise. will mean that cockroaches from coming over the wire is protecting the country i'm the kind of guy who doesn't mindedness pay and sturdy so i come out here you know we're all immigrants as well that we all here some some are out. wealthy british scientists

some. guys. in. markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to the reports. and. welcome back to cross talk i'm hearing remind you we're talking about russia's first president boris yeltsin. but first here's a brief report on yeltsin's can tell. just like us. in recent russian history if you 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 ended communism and ushered in a new area of personal freedoms and western style capitalism. in the ne few are just better perceived through the distance especially 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 and really was 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 craze 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 she was treated as a peer and when she died in two thousand and seven some of the warmest eulogies 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 you know praise from abroad yes. but yeltsin sharpest critics were in the new country that he helped 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 he then ran through constitutional reforms that extended his powers as president at the expense of parliament and few can forget the brutality of the first chechen conflict by the end of his presidency yeltsin like so many russians at the time became wary of the west. i told near to the americans

the germans don't push us toward military action otherwise there will be a european war for sure and possibly world war. there's no doubt that boris yeltsin is an outstanding historical figure you know it may take decades for the russians themselves to find a consensus about a name that changed russian and world history forever. for crossed off our team. ok alex i'd like to 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 were there misperceptions on one side or both sides. i think there are misperceptions on both sides russia expected the west to applaud the end of communism the introduction of a post communist 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 the russian foreign policy we were back to before the discussion is that rhetorically there was a lot of protest about nato expansion and nato militarism and 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 of war and preceding that the economic crisis the banking crisis and the crash that brought about a real disillusionment not just with the with the west among the leaders of russia

but also among the new liberal middle classes done i don't know what years you were a diplomat in the one nine hundred ninety s. and russia but what did you see i mean were the russians expecting too much from the west or the west just thought well that you know the cold war is 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 dissed jim 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 those perceptions i want to say first that i agree with alex that that yeltsin change in the west changed but i would also say that that russia changed i think the west expected a kind of a breakthrough due to a larger version of maybe what pollard in 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 one 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 that what we now criticize as a super thought super presidential regime but i want to go back to ninety one i think that there is 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 ism 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 then once that was misinterpreted a lot of what we saw go on that in the following decade was i think under arrest or a that 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 triumph in does i'm of winning the cold war and russia looks

at it in a very different way it collapsed the soviet union itself would want to do it wanted something different it wasn't a 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 ball and in that sense the west has shown that fenty i would say i think it characterizes the whole period of the ninety's level fantasy of the west would not think would not invent a new russia and. allied state or even a neutral state it returned to the old ways of treating russia with suspicion we just usual you know it was nothing new i asked for one thousand nine hundred and i can tell your. july in one thousand nine hundred one. government delegation came to russia and they came to what was their head of the 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 sorry to do and i think it shows you all the level

found at the time ok alex go ahead jump in here like a friend is a year but it's very difficult to get this. sense of this russia want to be treated in the early one nine hundred ninety s. both as a cove victor a victor against communism sort of self imposed to 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 power it would be to be in a war so at that one of the same time they wanted to be treated as equal victors and also to be bailed out and helped to recover as defeated powers and that was a very difficult pair of conceptions to get people's minds around in the west dan what do you think about that that's a very interesting thing here is i'm very interesting paradigm. off worst of all i should i should tell dimitri that i did not write those comments. in the embassy at the time. i think i very much agree with what alex and franco and i

know the person what the perception in russia is i was being treated like a defeated power certainly i think in policymaking circles in washington that was not the case even if it maybe appear about way to people in russia they basically thought that russia would end up relatively quickly i think being alive and that with us a lot of the trouble that happened in the following decade at least for some people in washington what was the summer. a surprise the second point i would make is that russia itself. was ambivalent about the soviet past about its own past and that made it much more difficult to craft a policy. in one way or the other political or economic to 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 dimitri i mean in and 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 that we just wasn't simply in braced i think he wanted to be able the west and i think it's very unfortunate what happened there was a lot of misstep but you need this you know moment and sort of moving in russia. and america and the europeans just didn't trigger ignite that moment and some were more me they didn't believe it and when they finally believe that the russians started to set in the you know the moment and still when you know but don't let me say one thing i mean i 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 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 you get 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 magination 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 listen we 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 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 and by nine thousand nine hundred ninety six that almost gone because they told 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 yeltsin say one thing one remember we went to warsaw and so poland could join us if he wanted then 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. suggesting 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 to see you next time remember crossed our plans. to.

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