Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin Speak out Against Putin’s Reforms

Soviet Union’s last president Mikhail Gorbachev and Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin expressed criticism regarding Vladimir Putin’s proposed reforms in Russian electoral system. Statements by Yeltsin and Gorbachev were made in exclusive interviews to Moskovskie Novosti (The Moscow News) weekly, and will be published in that newspaper’s Friday issue. MosNews, which is a partner publication of Moskovskie Novosti, posted full translation of both statements on our website on Thursday.

Our common goal is to do everything possible to make sure that bills, which, in essence, mean a step back from democracy, don’t come into force as law. I hope that the politicians, voters, and the president himself keep the democratic freedoms that were so hard to obtain, — reads Mikhail Gorbachev’s statement. Soviet Union’s last president, who ruled the country from 1985 to 1992, is convinced that Russian authorities “must search for political solutions, negotiate with the middle-of-the-road militants, separating them from the unappeasable extremists”.

His successor Boris Yeltsin, whose second presidential term ended on December 31, 1999, with a surprise announcement of his voluntary resignation (

Vladimir Putin was named acting president three months before actually getting elected in March 2000), calls on the Kremlin to refrain from undermining the existing constitutional framework, despite the necessity of fighting terrorist threats.

I firmly believe that the measures that the country’s leadership will undertake after Beslan will remain within the framework of democratic freedoms that have become Russia’s most valuable achievement over the past decade. We will not give up on the letter of the law, and most importantly, the spirit of the Constitution our country had voted for at the public referendum in 1993. If only because the stifling of freedom and the curtailing of democratic rights is a victory by the terrorists. Only a democratic country can successfully resist terrorism and count on standing shoulder to shoulder with all of the world’s civilized countries, — Yeltsin says in his statement.

Boris Yeltsin’s statement is viewed as a surprise move by many observers in Moscow. Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, who is still active on Russian political scene, Yeltsin chose to refrain from public comments about Vladimir Putin’s politics ever since his retirement. Recently Boris Berezovsky, an exiled tycoon, renowned for his criticisms of Kremlin and Putin, published an open letter to Russia’s first president, urging Yeltsin to speak up and reminding him of his responsibility for the establishment of Russian constitutional democracy. Yeltsin makes no mention of Berezovsky’s call in his statement, but some observers tend to link his decision to break silence with the exiled oligarch’s request.

"If you cannot recognize the obvious, or are in a contained-hysteria denial-of-reality, further discussion about it with someone on a message board forum is not going to influence your opinion."

Yours is the typical zealot response, not much different than a Muslim extremist:"believe what I believe because I am absolutely right, and no one else's opinions but mine own count."

"I'm sure you've been involved with these discussions before and simply refused to accept what others are telling you."

In other words, in your world free thinking is a negative thing, and people should simply accept what they are told by those who deem themselves their betters. Again, your mentality is akin to that of a Muslim extremist, who accuses anyone who questions their words and opinions as being everything from an infidel, to an Israeli spy.

"Being wrong on a key issue like this is what brings people to a morally inverted view of reality--like the European's ideological outlook today."

I think that YOU are wrong.

This entire discussion between you and I, began on post #253, where you asked me some questions, and attempted to draw some sort of equivalency between the Patriot Act, and Putin’s move to revert to the old Soviet method of appointing regional governors according to Party line.

I responded to them in my post #303, and try as I might to find irrational verbiage in my response, I see none.

I did however engage in a bit of fortune telling, insofar as I asked you whether you were now going to correct my beliefs.

Sure enough, you came back and began doing just that in your post #368

"Luis, another words, you have utterly marred judgment."

That of course, marked the start of the usual personal assaults.

I responded to your absurd proposition that Beslan was the norm in the Muslim world ("…the behavior at the Beslam school is hardly an aberration in Muslim world.") in my post #377 by citing figures of the major Muslim countries in the world, A.K.A, the Muslim world, pointing out that the vast majority of Muslim nations do not engage in the sort of behavior witnessed at Beslan, and that in fact, Chechnya, Sudan, Syria are the actual aberrations of the Muslim world.

You responded in post #380 with some more unsupported, erroneous fact about "...14 centuries of Islamic history", I assume that you mean wars of conquest and expansion; things not mirrored in the Christian world…

That post of yours fulfilled my little exercise in fortune telling way back in post #303, as you began correcting my beliefs, and went full-tilt on the personal attacks and character assassinations:

"If you cannot recognize the obvious, or are in a contained-hysteria denial-of-reality, further discussion about it with someone on a message board forum is not going to influence your opinion. I'm sure you've been involved with these discussions before and simply refused to accept what others are telling you. Being wrong on a key issue like this is what brings people to a morally inverted view of reality--like the European's ideological outlook today."

In my response to you, post #381, I pointed out the similarities between you and extremists, insofar as you both believe that anyone who does not see the world exactly as you do, is wrong, or mentally sick. My statements are self-evidentiary.

What’s truly, truly funny, is that you accuse me of responding in an irrational manner, and engaging in hysteria as you try to actually explain that what you said was not what you meant, after failing to support one single one of your propositions with any evidence, and after calling me all the names for not believing as you do, you question the fact that you have thus far behaved exactly as a Muslim (or any) extremist behaves, and have now begun using foul language in your responses.

I would say that the only one behaving hysterically and irrationally here is you.

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