Interview with Milhail Gorbachev at Earth Dialogues 2006 by Phillip Adams ABC Online - Late Night Live 4:55pm 2nd Aug, 2006   In 1993, former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, founded Green Cross International (GCI). Green Cross promotes legal, ethical and behavioural norms that encourage basic changes in the value, actions and attitudes of government and private sector and civil society necessary to build a sustainable global community.    Phillip Adams spoke to Mikhail Gorbachev at Earth Dialogues Brisbane 2006: A World Forum for Sustainable Development and Resource Management.    Phillip Adams: The reason I"m speaking fluent Russian is because I"m about to interview President Mikhail Gorbachev. The scene is Earth Dialogues 2006 in Brisbane. It"s a world forum for resource management and sustainable development, and President Mikhail Gorbachev is the chair of Green Cross International, a very influential NGO concerned with environmental and security issues. He talks to us via his devoted translator Pavel Palazchenko who was with him, it seems to me, 24 hours a day for the last 25 years. I think it"s a fascinating encounter. I hope you enjoy it.    Well, dear listeners, for the next hour, one ex-communist will be interviewing another ex-communist, the most famous of all ex-communists.    Mikhail Gorbachev: So what are you now? I am now a social democrat, what about you?    Phillip Adams: Me too, we are both social democrats, and we are also united on the issue of the environment and climate change.    Mikhail Gorbachev: Good. So I think that we have chosen the right direction in our life and that"s very important because people should be able to choose, otherwise they get too nervous and they become irritable, they become bitter in front of the world.    Phillip Adams: There is no sign of bitterness in you.    Mikhail Gorbachev: Not at all.    Phillip Adams: Despite the fact that whilst in the West you are eulogised, you are a great hero, but back home you would have many critics.    Mikhail Gorbachev: Many critics, but in this respect too the situation is gradually changing because time is doing its work and the situation becomes clearer and people better understand the ideas of perestroika compared to what happened after perestroika. And younger people in particular, and this is something that I particularly appreciate, better educated people, they take a stand, they take a position toward me that is a lot more positive, not just toward me personally but also toward what I did in the past and toward what I"m doing now. You may know that your neighbours, the Chinese, who are not too far from you, years ago they invited a French delegation to come to China. That was when Premier Zhou Enlai was still alive. A young woman from that French delegation put this question to Zhou Enlai, "Mr Premier, what is your assessment of the impact of the French Revolution on the world and, in particular, on China?" He answered very quickly, almost without missing a beat, he said, "It is too early, it is too soon to tell," and that was 170 years after the French Revolution.    So I think that with time people will more and more see the importance of perestroika because the humanistic and civilisational meaning of perestroika was very important. Perestroika meant an invitation to cooperation, to openness, it meant humanisation of our society and of the world community, and this will gain with time. What worries me is that the 21st century could become a very difficult century because it will be a century when the entire world will be moving toward a new form of living and this is also always very difficult, but I am sure that the world will be moving generally in the right direction.    Phillip Adams: I"d like to look at your transition from hammer and sickle to Green Cross, but first an observation. You and I are talking in Brisbane, in Australia. A few days ago in Moscow an unimaginable event took place in terms of when you and I were a little younger, the G8 leaders meet in Moscow, a measure of the transformation that you brought about, but I suspect you might share my concern, my disquiet about the quality of leadership shown at G8. The world is in a great state of crisis, you"ve talked about it a lot. There was not really a word of reference to some of the great conflicts on our planet. Nothing was said, for example, about what"s happening in the Middle East at the moment. Terrible silence. You belong to an era of enormously significant political leaders, whether one approves of them or not. Do you see another generation of leaders who are up to the job of the 21st century?    Mikhail Gorbachev: When we were younger, the representatives of the older generation looked upon us in the same way. I think that the position of current leaders is being made more difficult by the fact that they are facing unprecedented challenges and they must find responses to those challenges, to the fundamental changes that are happening in the very conditions of our existence and the existence of the world community. Those are not particular changes, it"s not just a sequence of smaller reforms that is necessary. What is necessary is really a civilisational shift...    Phillip Adams: But you"ve faced unprecedented dramas and you dealt with them.    Mikhail Gorbachev: I think that today it"s quite appropriate to put greater demands on the current generation of political leaders, but at the same time we have to take and assume our own share of responsibly for what is happening in international politics. I believe that the think tanks, the intellectual centres should be more active in trying to help political leaders, both in the evaluation of the current situation and the context in which political leaders operate, but what is even more important is helping them to understand that they will not be able to successfully deal with their nation"s problems unless they consider the impact of the global factors. This concerns security, this concerns poverty and backwardness, and this concerns the environmental crisis which has become a global environmental crisis.    We are all interdependent. The financial system is globalised, information is global, and so the question of governments, given these global processes, is something where we don"t have previous experience, we have to create new experience. Some people after the break up of the Soviet Union were tempted to engage in geopolitical games, in fighting, struggling for spheres of influence, and they are still marking time. But then the old paradigm; how do you win the next election? And here I have to recall the words of Churchill, that a politician thinks about the next election but the statesman thinks about the future. We need politicians who think more about the future. This will make it possible to address current problems as well, and to address any kind of problems it is necessary to have cooperation.    You will say that I am defending the current generation of politicians...yes, indeed, because this is a time when political leaders need support, they need intellectual support because the problems that we are facing today will only spread. Look at the results of globalisation; we were hoping that we would be able, through globalisation, to solve the problems of poverty and backwardness, but globalisation is working like a soulless machine. It is like a mincer of cultures and nations. We need a globalisation with a human face. We need a globalisation that has an ecological dimension, a humanitarian dimension, a social dimension, or else it would be a destructive force. So we need to enrich globalisation with this kind of thought and practice. So you are right in being very critical and in raising this issue of leadership. But I do the same thing but I also say history is not preordained, there are always alternatives in history, and each age produced it own leaders.    Phillip Adams: It may, it may.    Mikhail Gorbachev: And I believe that the new generation of leaders is coming.    Phillip Adams: I think you"re too kind. You and I this morning briefly discussed Churchill. The situation...    Mikhail Gorbachev: I think being kind is better and it"s more effective than being bitter.    Phillip Adams: I don"t want bitterness, but we were agreeing that from time to time difficult circumstances produces an appropriate political leader. Churchill was clearly one, you were another. But if we move onto the issue that this conference is about, the issue of climate change, the issue of environment; I find it very hard to think of an active politician who is crusading on this issue. Tony Blair, perhaps. Al Gore, perhaps. But who at the G8? Not so easy.    Mikhail Gorbachev: No, I think they"re all aware of the environment. I believe that the Germans, the French, the Italians, Spanish...in the governments of those countries there are many young people who will, I am sure, show their worth. The president of Russia, recently he has emphasised these issues because for Russia the problems of the environment are very urgent. We have seen that the highest bodies of government are finally giving attention to this. The parliament is working on important environmental programs. Recently we had a major conference on restoring the health of the Volga. There was a time when Volga became a huge sewage dump, now this is changing and this will continue to change. After all is said and done, one has to say that life is pushing politicians to action. But I agree with you that politicians need intellectual help. We need to equip it intellectually, but politicians also need the impact of civil society. A strong democratic civil society is very important because politicians alone will not be able to cope, and I think that the time has come and the environmentalists will put more and more pressure on governments because the environment is the number one problem in the 21st century.    Phillip Adams: I appreciate and admire your optimism. I hope you"re right.    Mikhail Gorbachev: You may have noticed that our journal, the Green Cross journal that we are publishing is called Optimist and it is being published in several languages already and there is a lot of meaning to that work.    Phillip Adams: I have a copy. Let"s look at the importance of glasnost and perestroika to the world now. It needs it badly. Almost the entire world needs glasnost and perestroika, doesn"t it?    Mikhail Gorbachev: Well, I thank you for putting it this way, because last year I attended three conferences in Barcelona, the Barcelona forum on the environment and culture. And in my three presentations there I proposed the idea of the need for planetary glasnost, which means that people should be, first of all, informed of the situation. The situation is alarming, and if people are informed then people will require politicians to act. This point was applauded; people were applauding that point at those conferences at which dozens of countries were represented. Practically those were global conferences and I agree with you, with what you have said. I think it is good that the media has been writing more about the environment because until recently the media was not paying much attention to these problems.    Phillip Adams: Our country could do with some glasnost and perestroika. The Bush administration could do with some glasnost and perestroika. What about Russia? Does Russia not need it again?    Mikhail Gorbachev: When I spoke about glasnost I was speaking about global or planetary glasnost...    Phillip Adams: I was trying to trick the president.    Mikhail Gorbachev: Well, don"t try to trick me, I think it just confirms that we are on the same wavelength in our view of the world and what the world needs..    Click on the link below to access the complete transcript. The program is also available as an Audio Download.    * (The ABC Radio National program - Late Night Live hosted by Phillip Adams is considered the best cultural and topical issues radio program in Australia. Mr Adams interviews include many leading world thinkers, academics and international journalists. Many programs are available as audio streams and podcasts that can be downloaded. Click on the home link to access the latest programs). Visit the related web page
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