On November 28 the NON/FICTION Book Fair held a launch of the first five volumes of M.S. Gorbachev’s Collected Works, Ves’ Mir Publishers, 2008.

November 28 was the third day of the Book Fair. On that day Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev came to his readers as a guest. The first five volumes that Ves’ Mir Publishers brought out by the beginning of the Book Fair was an excellent occasion for presenting this large-scale project to the reading public in Russia. 

The central hall of the Fair where the presentation was held was packed with people. And what was particularly important, these were intelligent and sensitive people. In fact, this is exactly the kind of visitors that the Book Fair permanently attracts. So it is in no way accidental that this Fair is also called a fair of intellectual reading. The audience gave a very cordial welcome to Gorbachev and to all the participants in the presentation conducted by O.A. Zimarin, the Director of Ves’ Mir Publishers. 

Prominent historian Vladlen Terentjevich Loginov was in charge of the group that had prepared the Collected Works for publication. He told the audience about the arrangement of work to select the documents included in the Collected Works and on the commentaries thereto. He stressed paramount importance of the Collected Works as a collection of documents that had historic significance and it not only contained the works by M.S. Gorbachev but also several hundred materials that had direct relevance to the activity of the USSR’s last CPSU CC General Secretary and its last President. 

The motive behind the preparation of the Collected Works was, among other considerations, the desire to supply any reader with genuine and most complete documents that enable one to make an independent judgment about what perestroika was and why and in whose interests it was curtailed. A goal of this project was to expose the piles of lies that have surrounded the name of Gorbachev. 

Mikhail Sergeyevich made a very energetic and hearty speech. He told his audience about the difficulties that he had faced when he had tried to break the blockade and the glossing over of the truth in the mid-1990s. According to him, this was exactly the reason why he decided to take part in the 1996 presidential vote although he knew he had no chance of winning the election. The important thing for him at the time was to get access to media again, to win himself an opportunity to address people, and to get a rostrum for making his opinion known. And he did achieve his goal. 

Gorbachev was candid in telling about his present life, about the size of his pension and how much money he was earning by lecturing abroad and from his participation in commercials. This money is spent to support charitable foundations and projects by the Gorbachev Foundation that is not getting any support from the state. 

Incidentally, this was the only part of his speech that caused the interest of our yellowish media that took delight in telling their audiences about a charity dinner that Gorbachev had with Hugh Grant and also when someone burst a fire-cracker during Gorbachev’s speech at the Fair. One could have thought that this was the only thing that Gorbachev came to the Book Fair for. Gorbachev’s reaction to the idiotic escapade with the fire-cracker was absolutely calm. He simply pitied the girl who had the fire-cracker landed in her lap and made the worried audience quiet. 

There were many questions that Gorbachev was asked, and his replies were clear and non-evasive. Here goes a retelling of some question and what Gorbachev replied. He was asked what he would have done differently if the time of perestroika were back. After a moment’s though he gave several points. First, severe deficit of consumer goods that hit the USSR in the end of the 19980s should not have been allowed. There was a possibility to take 20 billion out of the military budget and channel them into the consumer market. But Nicolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was against doing this, and Gorbachev agreed with him. This had been a mistake. 

Second, and, perhaps, the most important: perestroika should have been started already in 1986 with the reform of the communist party when many communists in the grass-root branches were urging that this be done. The party apparatus became the brake that ruined perestroika within the country. This was another mistake. 

Representatives of Ukrainian media asked who was to blame for the deterioration of relations between Russia and Ukraine. It clearly ensued from what Gorbachev was saying that he though the blame was on President Yushchenko. Gorbachev was particularly indignant at the cynical campaign around famine in the 1930s: in his family that lived in the Stavropol region three persons died of hunger. And Gorbachev asked a rhetoric question: weren’t the Ukrainians in the USSR government? So, why blaming faults on others now …  And he repeated twice that the Ukrainians should be settling their internal affairs themselves. 

Gorbachev was quite skeptical in what he said about the future of the CIS. He said that that the initial opportunity of building a well-established union “no worse than the EU” had been buried by the 1990s policy architects. The union between Kazakhstan, Byelorussia, Ukraine and Russia comprised 80% of the USSR’s potential. This may be possible again, sometimes, in the remote future, but if seen in terms of such a perspective, the unification within the framework of entire Europe is quite conceivable too. 

Asked about the world economic crisis and the future of the US, Mikhail Sergeyevich expressed a very interesting idea. He said that as far back as in the late 1980s many Americans recognized the need for some sort of a “perestroika” to restructure the USA. Had it been not for the collapse of the USSR, Gorbachev went on, the USA and the West would not have had the euphoria about their own impeccability and omnipotence which encouraged them not only to belittle the role of Russia and set into oblivion all the accords they had made but also made them the engage in foreign policy adventures and an irresponsible economic policy, i.e. the factors that had accounted for the present crisis. USA needs perestroika, and Barack Obama with Hilary Clinton as the Secretary of State were a good chance to get it underway. 

There was also the topic of Putin in Gorbachev’s speech. He gave a very positive assessment of Putin’s first presidential term when he “was getting together” the country that had fallen apart and building back Russia’s prestige.