russian president and to discuss this with me i have in the studio our political commentator peter lavelle well peter we've just heard president viejo of talk about a lot of things here and yes and he in the first part of his speech he was very positive it started off in a very positive now outlining russia's achievements and achievements during his presidency and then he talked about what needs to be done and talked about what everybody wanted him to talk about ok and i think i'm going to quote him a little bit here. to be ready for dialogue on all issues treat with respect criticism criticism is legitimate russia needs to mocker see not chaos and the recent elections were a good a maturity sign of russia's democracy not a negative as so many people like to put it but it was very very adamant that civil society is active and it must be listened to i think he's obviously we are going to the reaction of some people to the election and some of the protests that we've seen since the election so he's seeing reality it's very very sobering reality that we've got well you know in fact of the statement that

peter lavelle and his guests discuss the legacy of the last soviet leader mikhail gorbachev in crosstalk. if you. follow in well no cross-talk i'm peter lavelle as he turns eighty male got a bunch of salacious each season loved abroad in a low third home as glasnost and perestroika become distant memories we ask how will history judge the man who seemingly ended history. and you can. 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 yale and securities and another member of our crosstalk team on the hunt all right gentlemen this is crosstalk 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 about our positions 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 down gorbachev will 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 former he knows that and that's why his blood pressure about what's going on in russia is rising on his eightieth birthday already 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 a bunch of 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 that would be my first ball and secondly i would argue that russian democracy is proceeding on course i don't think that little bit of authoritarianism and in the meantime to stabilize the political system to stabilize the economy will actually do very much harm and i would do that president go to visit in that video it is now leading a new way if similar to perestroika and i would guess that in about ten years we've been seeing a genuine democratization in the russia it's very and it jeff i got 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 of a child's 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 go to you i mean one of the things we talk about what a striking glass notion is reforming the soviet union but was it reform a bowl of 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 gorbachev tried to do the reverse to introduce market into a state economy the chinese did it the hungary and had done it even before gorbachev 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 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 garbage. 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 if 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 soviet 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. what do you think about that. i think the soviet economy will so dysfunctional so wasteful it was impossible today for me the only way it was actually what as 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 employment market reforms on the basis of central control in from moscow you really had to devolve power to do with 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 here we're just in the economic reform here by going to stephen here and then having political freeform simultaneously that 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 collision and i would 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 finally you let me give my sense of it i'm and i'm a gorbachev skeptic i'll be open about it. i'm i'm 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 makeshift decision going from crisis to crisis to crisis like i never understood any kind of broad plan it was forced upon him well in many ways now 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 have really kept on running up against difficulties as steve has 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 i just hate 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 actually. we believe 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 pretty plant manner you know you just have to go along and try your best and i think this is that it 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 a tino so i don't i don't believe that although he did not have a plan but it was he had the inside him in the feeling that he could actually achieve this process so you know i think it's a you know if you look at the situation i would say middle east do we have a plan for the need certainly not lately obviously we see how things happen and i think it's realistic to expect anyone to have a plan steve even if you're lucky guy had just had a detailed plan you know 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 of the 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 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 good order was short break or after a short break we'll continue our discussion i got a job so i guess he stayed with marking. it. the are. the losers. let's just say. the beasts. to. slug on. the chance to be soo much brighter. about sums from place to. sleaze for instance on t.v. dot com. sluggish the slowest so come up with the beasts the welcome back to cross talk i'm purely about you mind you were talking about the legacy of me help out of a child's. mother and. sister just so. but first let's see what russians think about it it is. the last leader of the soviet union gorbachev is now eighty years old his name was 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 who was thinking about the betterment of his country but made a number mistakes sixteen percent called him this honest man who most of my did 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 that's what russians think about the legacy of mr gorbachev well our sophie shevardnadze interviewed mr got a bunch off and this is what he said to her about what he thinks his legacy is. going to ensure i think it is a united world. removed personas a world where. you could tell the world free of ideological struggle. but you have to put the pieces perhaps the most important creating necessary prerequisites and 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 o