Working with Gorbachev

It was Mr. Gorbachev who then brought you back from your tour of duty as ambassador. Let's talk about your relationship with him. Were you his intellectual mentor, is that the way to describe the relationship? Or is it more complex than that?

"More complex." [spoken in English] I knew Gorbachev before Canada. Let's not make a secret out of it, but when I headed the Ideology and Propaganda Department for the Central Committee and I had difficulty getting confirmation, I actually proposed Gorbachev to fill that post. He was, at that time, the First Secretary of the Stavropol Region Party Committee. Even Mikhail Andrievich Suslov, who was in charge of propaganda and was really de facto the Number 1 man on the Politburo (de jure, he was Number 2), he actually did issue an invitation to Gorbachev to come to Moscow and help the department. What struck me at that time is that he turned it down. He had enough brain to say no.

Later on I arranged for him to come and visit Canada several times. I wanted very much for the man who was responsible for agriculture in Russia to visit Canada. Actually he had conveyed through a mutual friend of ours that he was ready to come to Canada as long as I would be the one to organize his trip. He didn't want to have anything to do with the organization of the trip. So I began terrorizing the Central Committee with my diplomatic cables demanding Gorbachev's visit. And Andropov ultimately said OK. It was a very useful visit for Gorbachev. What struck me is the kind of detailed interest and care Gorbachev took in the farmer economy, and that really struck me very positively and very much.

At first we kind of sniffed around each other and our conversations didn't touch on serious issues. And then, verily, history plays tricks on one, we had a lot of time together as guests of the Minister of Agriculture in Canada who, himself, was too late for the reception because he was stuck with some striking farmers somewhere. So we took a long walk on that Minister's farm and, as it often happens, both of us suddenly were just kind of flooded and let go. I somehow, for some reason, threw caution to the wind and started telling him about what I considered to be utter stupidities in the area of foreign affairs, especially about those SS-20 missiles that were being stationed in Europe and a lot of other things. And he did the same thing. We were completely frank. He frankly talked about the problems in the internal situation in Russia. He was saying that under these conditions, the conditions of dictatorship and absence of freedom, the country would simply perish. So it was at that time, during our three-hour conversation, almost as if our heads were knocked together, that we poured it all out and during that three-hour conversation we actually came to agreement on all our main points. He left, and literally two weeks later I received an invitation from the Academy of Sciences to take the post of the head of the Academy of Sciences Institute of International Relations and the World Economy. I had a good-bye dinner and I went back to Russia.

Now what follows is extraordinary in historical terms. What do you think is most important to remember about your relationship with Gorbachev and how it evolved over the next couple of years?

What I'm going to say should be understood in the context of my deep respect for Gorbachev, my deep respect for the great changes that he had effected in the history of Russia. I believe that given the psychology, no other man, no other character could have accomplished what he accomplished. He was a man of compromise. And at that stage in the reform movement's development, you could not have accomplished anything without compromise. I would not have been able to carry out that function. I would have acted in a more radical manner. And back in December 1985 I wrote to him a memorandum telling him it is important to split the party in two. But the problem is that over time Gorbachev transformed himself from being the master of compromise and dictating the conditions for compromise into someone who became the slave of compromise. In January of 1987, at the plenary session of the Central Committee, we proposed competitive elections in the party. The party apparat showed its teeth and began fighting back. That was the time for decisive action and Mikhail Sergeyevich [Gorbachev] was unable to carry it out. This was the time when one had to orient oneself away from the apparat, which was absolutely necessary at the beginning, toward working with the people, to using grassroots. This is where all the accusations of Gorbachev and his indecisiveness and a lack of direction stem from. But I don't believe that he is the only one to blame. I believe that we are all to blame. I could have, for example, insisted that many people working in the mass media ought to be fired, but I didn't. I mean the editors of the most conservative publications, such as Mr. [Valentin Vasiliievich] Chikin, the editor of Soviet Russia, a highly right-wing newspaper. And I was unable to insist on that and I really ought to have insisted. So it's really unfair to blame Gorbachev for everything.

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