#3 - JRL 2006-183 - JRL Home
Gorbachev Criticizes Yeltsin's Policies, Praises Putin

MOSCOW. Aug 12 (Interfax) - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, in a radio program on Saturday, credited former Russian president Boris Yeltsin with playing "the decisive role" in crushing the hard line coup of 1991 but said Yeltsin's subsequent policies "made us lose our country."

"At that moment (during the 1991 coup), he played the decisive role to stop those machinations. But he got so carried away that he couldn't stop, and this made us lose our country," Gorbachev told Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy.

"Even with Yeltsin's ambitions there was a chance to sign the union treaty, but then came August 1991. They had already arranged chairs in the Kremlin where everyone would be sitting during the signature of the union treaty on August 20. I had already booked a plane for myself to pick me up from Foros," Gorbachev said in reference to a planned accord to overhaul the Soviet Union.

He was vacationing in Foros, a resort Crimea, Ukraine, at that time.

"Sixty percent of all that we have been experiencing in recent years stems from the collapse of the Union," Gorbachev said.

At the same time, "it is not serious" to seek to restore the Soviet Union, the perestroika leader said. "One needs to base oneself on new realities," he said.

Gorbachev said he supported Russian President Vladimir Putin "because he has dragged the country out of chaos" and "is adjusting his policy to the interests of the majority."

Russia would have been unable to stay on the path of democratic reforms without what Putin had done, Gorbachev said.