indeed. if you can. follow in welcome to cross talk i'm 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 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. 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 proud day he is director of russian and eurasian studies center at the university of oxford all right gentlemen crosstalk rules and in fact that means 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 all 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 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 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 that collapse of the soviet union it had begun long before that it speeded. back in one thousand eight hundred nine already there was a lot of talk about it and by one thousand nine hundred that brought the process was almost complete i would you mind you that in march two months before the election. seven republics fifteen did not take part in the referendum on the reform of the soviet union so the process has already gone very very much fault and yeltsin of course when the soviet union was just virtually collapse and in some one thousand one thousand vonne he didn't shed jeus he started building the russian federation of the you think it's the attempting to. 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 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 that. with the most common sense and the ultimate 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 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

a if i go to you in london let's teed 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. 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 broken to

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 shame that was 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 do you know what do you think about that in the studio here more ideologically driven theory driven in the early years because it is alex just pointed out i mean it in

a lot of people know is that the the russian economy contract advanced 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 one thousand nine hundred two the problem was that of course people were poor and the only ones who would reach an influential were criminals or some formal party boss us so obviously they benefit from these privatisation more than in every

direction but unfortunately i think it was a global tendency if well look the world was tremendously down just during all of the ninety s. and it continues to be unjust now it's built on some really a wrong premises which have little to do with the real liberalism and with real capitalism they wage was told by a local hopes it in the seventeenth and eighteenth century maybe some people would 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 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 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 era. i very

much agree i think that if he and others have talked about talk 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 when it's in the rule of law i think is something where at fault him very seriously alex what do 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 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 will intentionally but i mean 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 swing from over command over state of education to undeceive occasion if you want an 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 that's another. accusation made against yeltsin is he was such a pendulum person he would go to such extremes if it was for the democrat 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 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 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 nine just when russia tried to say something the west suddenly became very critical so it was not yeltsin which changed it was their digital that or the west that changed us for it here my 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 the end of weakness there were 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 peerless point after the router and regular continue our discussion of the legacy of boris let yeltsin stay with. you. steve. the close up team has been to the birthplace to the most ambitious football club in the world. if. not all goes to the far east where the timber industry attracts the legendary siberian tigers where the ancient native community loses its weight in the modern world. and where the

country's mineral wealth starts its way across the ocean. to the bars creature russia. download the official. phone on called touch from the top story. one life on the go. video on demand on t.v.'s mine costs and feeds with the palm of your. question.

i had a family i lived in a fairly nice community which was an upscale it was just like you know archie bunker society. then they started showing up here what happened was my company decided i could get cheap labor and they got rid of us. negroes a legally blind 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 law psycho. this here's one of the major trails in the united states senate. i watch and they run run down my property i'm sorry about this noise. bothers people that mean that cockroaches from all over the wire is protecting the country and the kind of guy who doesn't mind your newspaper and sturdy so i come out here you know we're all immigrants as well that we all here from somewhere else.

and you. want to. welcome back to france talking about remind you we're talking about russia's first president boris yeltsin. but first here's a brief report on yeltsin's contentious legacy. in recent russian history few personalities remain a spoiler arising 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 i'm sure they're a new area of personal freedoms and western style capitalism but sure anything you learn just better perceived from a 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 figure you'll 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 a legal all of the crees 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 world. came from western leaders he stood up for freedom and democracy and openness he really believes that russia couldn't go back to communism or back further to extreme nationalism 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 though 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 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 whether misperceptions on one side or both sides. i think they were misperceptions on both sides russia expected the west to applaud to the end of communism the introduction of a post 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 play

a 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 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 kosovo and preceding that the economic crisis the banking crisis in 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 i don't i don't know what years you were a diplomat in the one nine hundred ninety s. and russia but where 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 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 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 that 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 was a lot of misperception about what happened in ninety one where as i and many others thought it was a democratic breakthrough i think there were

a lot of impulses there populism anti soviet tism 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 and does them 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 well i think that's the problem russia was treated as a defeated ball and in that sense the west has shown a little fantasy i would say i think it characterizes the whole beaded of the

ninety's level fantasy the west would not think would not invent a new russia and. allied state or even a neutral state each return to the old ways of treating russia with suspicion we just usual you know there was nothing new i asked for one thousand nine hundred and i can tell your story in july one thousand nine hundred one. government delegation came to russia and they came to what was there their head of the government and they said we stayed on you we don't believe these democrats we think you are a serious person a few people remember that i am sorry to do and i think it shows you all the level found at the time ok alex go ahead jump in. like a friend is a yeah 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 victor against communism sort of self imposed to victory and therefore be treated

as a part 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 don when you think about that that's a very interesting to hear 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 frankly i know the person what the perception in russia is as being treated like a defeated power certainly i think in policymaking circles in washington that was not 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

way to us a lot of the trouble that happened in the following decade at least for some people in washington what to some of. a surprise the second point i would make is that russia itself then 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've tried we want 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 bottom of 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 recognize that moment and some were more me they didn't believe it and when they finally believe that the russians started to set in you know the mountain still moving you know but i don't really seriously 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 imperial evidence myself but i mean just supporting him and not what he was trying to do the democratization of this country its economic reforms they just wanted to base everything on yeltsin hoping that he would do the right thing what do you think about that alex not a systemic change but i put it on a person yes 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 magination and we mentioned lack of

imagination of before the biggest like of imagination was on the international stage had there been. when an imaginative sitting 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 on an equal founding basis russia always wanted to be a founding member of something new rather than the adjunct junior member of something old that was an opportunity missed him by in one 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 member we want to warsaw poland could join me later if he wanted then they read on that second time around there were several voices and the most important voices among them were the corporate voices who were pro west and pro

western economic. picture has been here gentlemen we've all run out of time and we certainly can. 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 will. take you. to.

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