Arkady Ostrovsky. The party*s over

By Arkady Ostrovsky
Financial Times; Mar 27, 2004

I had wanted to meet him for a long time. Not because I thought he would tell me something he had not told others, but because I wanted to meet the man who changed my life and the life of my generation in Russia – Mikhail Gorbachev. I am a product of Gorbachev's perestroika. Without his reforms I would never have studied in England, never worked for a "capitalist" newspaper such as the FT.

We meet in the swanky new Gorbachev Foundation, built with the proceeds from a Pizza Hut advertisement and sponsored by Ted Turner. He has just flown in from a business trip to Spain. Wearing a black polo shirt and suit, he looks tired and aged.

I begin by thanking him for what he did for my generation. He is clearly taken aback. Few in Russia feel grateful to the man blamed for the collapse of the country. "The middle generation, those who are 50 today and got caught in the transition, is only now coming to. It is my grandchildren's generation of 20- to 30-year olds who are benefiting from perestroika. They are more confident, freer, they know that they must rely on themselves. They have a different mentality."

Gorbachev's own mentality was shaped during the 1950s and 1960s by Russian literature and theatre. As a student he frequented the Moscow Art Theatre and in April 1986, as general secretary of the Communist party, he returned to see Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, a play about the wasted energy of the Russian intelligentsia. "When I saw Uncle Vanya I realised that we, the whole society, were seriously ill and that we needed immediate surgery," he would say later.

The surgery that followed opened up the country, brought down the Berlin Wall and put an end to the Soviet Union. He regards the fact that this was done without bloodshed as his greatest achievement. "We pushed the reforms beyond the point of return, but even more importantly we managed to avoid a civil war. It was a bloodless transition. To this day many people are surprised how it was possible in a country of this size and complexity."

It was possible only because Gorbachev trod carefully: reforming rather than abolishing the Communist party, modernising rather than overhauling the economy. Sometimes he trod too carefully. "We were too late reforming the Communist party, which turned from being the engine of perestroika into its braking mechanism." In August 1991, a group of party hardliners led by Vladimir Kryuchkov, a KGB chief, put Gorbachev under house arrest and declared a state of emergency.

Every Russian remembers where they were that day. I was on a building site in Woking, in the outer suburbs of London. Nigel, a 6'5" Scottish builder, broke the news in a broad Glaswegian accent: "I hear there is a coup in your country. Is it f***ing good or f***ing bad?" Suddenly I was not sure if I would be able to go back.

Gorbachev recalls a meeting in his office not long before his arrest. "Yeltsin, Nazarbaev [president of Kazakhstan] and I decided we would sign a decree reforming the party and the Soviet Union. We talked about those who could not cope with the new reality and had to go. We mentioned the names, including the head of the KGB and the defence minister. But the KGB had tapped the conversation. The coup leaders told the country they were trying to save it from a collapse. In fact, they were trying to protect their feeding troughs."

After his release, Gorbachev found a different country. The Soviet Union was no more. He never meant it to disintegrate. "None of the republics had raised the question of separating. But we did not reform it in time... 50 to 60 percent of our problems today are the result of a collapse which could have been avoided."

His sentiments were echoed recently by Vladimir Putin, who called the collapse "a great tragedy". Assessing Putin's regime, Gorbachev again treads carefully. "On the one hand, things have improved, particularly in comparison to Yeltsin's years. Putin has pushed through tax reform, he has done something for business. On the other hand, [his presidency] has raised questions about freedom of speech and democracy."

I ask what disappoints him most in today's Russia. "Cynicism - it is the most dangerous illness. It has engulfed our politics and engulfed young people. Yes, young people are more confident and free than we were. But there was more decency and more conscience in the past. Without these qualities, any economic or political reform means so little."

As I leave, I realise how out of place Gorbachev seems in today's Russia -not because his ideas have aged, but because his decency and conscience have become almost unique in Russian politics.