Listening to Mikhail S. Gorbachev

Excerpts from speeches and interviews of the ousted Soviet leader:

Sticking to his Guns

* “I think if I had to begin again this whole process I would certainly have done it again. Now that I know more about my country and the world, I am even more convinced that what we are beginning was necessary but we should have begun much earlier, 10 or 20 years earlier, or maybe more.”

July 19, 1991, interview at the Soviet Embassy in London for ITN.

Perestroika

* “Perestroika has already awakened our people. They’ve changed. We have a different society now. We will never slip backward . . . There might be certain zigzags along the way. That’s unavoidable when a country is undergoing major changes. But the fact remains that this change, perestroika, is a fitting conclusion to the 20th Century.”

Interview with Time magazine in 1990.

History

* “In my opinion, we are living through an extremely interesting period. We are destined to succeed. Otherwise, this country can find itself on the roadside of historical progress. This would affect the destiny of our nation and society, as well as the destiny of the world in general.”

Aug. 6, 1989, Moscow Radio.

Progress

* “We’re still making progress, forward progress. And it is for that I live. If anybody is writing off Gorbachev, that’s a superficial judgment.”

July 29, 1991, ABC-TV interview.

On Chaos

* “People are saying ‘Chaos, chaos, collapse, collapse.’ When Lenin watched a similar revolutionary process, he said: ‘You know, this chaos will crystallize a new form of life.”’

May 17, 1990, news conference in Moscow.

Personal Style

* “I have been personally criticized for being too soft or too democratic. I don’t know if it’s possible to be too democratic, but that’s what is sometimes said.”

Interview with Time, 1990.

Looking Back

* “If what was achieved . . . (in) the last Administration and in the George Bush period is undermined, the world could again plunge into the abyss of the Cold War or a semi-Cold War.”

May 5, 1991, interview with Western press magnate Rupert Murdoch published by Tass.

Change

* “We are full of confidence. We have a theory and a policy, and also the vanguard force of perestroika-- the party, which also is restructuring itself in accordance with new tasks and fundamental changes in society as a whole.”

Dec. 7, 1988, in Gorbachev’s first speech to the United Nations.

Policy

* “There are attempts to make you believe I am working on behalf of someone, that I want to rip up the party and bury socialism and dissolve the (Soviet) federation. I reject that categorically . . . It is also said that Gorbachev is sitting on two (ideological) chairs, and I say publicly that I am sitting in my own seat, the one you put me in.”

Dec. 23, 1989, speech to the Congress of People’s Deputies.

Inspiration

* “This act inspires us. It nourishes my position, my mood, my condition--intellectual, emotional and physical--that we are on the right road. But the move we are making, the changes we are making, are very deep . . . It is not easy and it is not painless, but it is necessary.”

Oct. 15, 1990, news conference in Moscow after winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Past

* “Socialism and the market are not just compatible--they are inseparable. What a monstrous price we have had to pay in adhering to doctrinaire positions, for our limitless faith in ideological axioms and myths.”

July 25, 1991, to a Communist Party Central Committee meeting.

Need for Reform

* “We stayed in a past age, while the developed countries of the West moved into the new era of high technology . . . At first it seemed to us all we needed to do was improve something here and make something else more perfect there . . . Today, we have come to the firm conclusion that we must reform everything fundamentally and ensure deep-going changes in the very basis of our society.”

Speech to Soviet students in 1989.

Leadership

* “I disagree with what is sometimes said that the course toward the renewal of socialism is personally associated with the name of Gorbachev. If there were no Gorbachev, there would have been someone else.”

Speech in Prague, April, 1987.

Commitment

* “Restructuring is not a cavalry charge but a long-term policy aimed at profound changes, genuinely revolutionary changes in our society.”

Comments by Gorbachev during a trip to Latvia in 1987.

A Vision

* “What we have been doing and intend to go on doing is not a reflection of just my point of view. It is the common view of our leadership.”

In an interview with Time, Sept. 9 1985.