Gorbachev Defends Putin’s Leadership

In a visit to Harvard yesterday, former Soviet premier Mikhail S. Gorbachev defended the legitimacy of Russia’s Dec. 2 elections, called for sweeping multilateral action to eliminate nuclear weapons, and criticized U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

Speaking through a translator at the Institute of Politics, as well as at an earlier question-and-answer session with reporters, Gorbachev said repeatedly that Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Russia should be respected. The elections, which President Vladimir V. Putin’s United Russia party won with 64.1 percent of the vote, have drawn criticism from international observers.

“Certainly they are legitimate,” Gorbachev told reporters when asked about the elections. “So far as I know, there were some irregularities, but overall it’s very important that many voters turned out to vote.”

In his speech last night, Gorbachev praised Putin but deflected questions about the United Russia party, insisting that its success or failure could only become clear with time.

“Putin came to [the party’s] help,” Gorbachev said, “but now United Russia must answer all the commitments that they took to the people.”

Gorbachev is at Harvard for a conference commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Signed in 1987, the treaty substantially reduced the nuclear arsenals of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Decrying a U.S. “victory complex” that he said has marred the last decade and a half of nuclear diplomacy, Gorbachev worried that the world is witnessing a “remilitarization of thinking.”

“We have to recognize that, as of today, all nuclear states are basing their policy on the long-term presence of nuclear weapons,” he said.

That trend, he contended, reflects the lack of recent progress on multilateral nuclear treaties and their enforcement.

“There is an ineluctable law in politics,” he said. “If you don’t move forward, sooner or later you begin to move backward.”

Gorbachev cited Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires recognized nuclear powers to make good faith efforts to reduce their arsenals over time. The major powers have not adequately honored that commitment, he said, and have thereby reduced the incentive for non-nuclear powers to comply with the treaty.

That lack of progress on multilateral treaties has been compounded by a lack of commitment to their enforcement, Gorbachev said.

“We cannot allow the system of verification to fall apart,” he cautioned. “Today we are still persuading the United States of the need for a verification program.”

U.S. reticence on nuclear enforcement reflects increasing militarism and disrespect for international law, he said.

“I really don’t know who the United States wants to go to war with,” he quipped, noting that U.S. defense spending today is higher than it was at the height of the Cold War. “No one wants to go to war with the United States.”

Responding to questions about democracy in Russia and the former Soviet satellite states, Gorbachev emphasized that democratic institutions require a historical foundation.

“If we hope to be able to spread democracy by distributing it like instant coffee,” he said, “we will fail.”

When he first approached the podium, Gorbachev drew a standing ovation from a crowd that included hundreds of students along with media mogul Ted Turner, a former French prime minister, and a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.

“The stars came out at the IOP,” Ari S. Ruben ’08 said. “Not just one of the most important men in the history of the world, but also Ted Turner.”

Turner, 69, said he was not sure what to think.

“I’m a little hard of hearing,” he said after the talk, asking for his “handler.” “I’d have to read it to see what I thought of his speech.”

—Daniel J. T. Schuker contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer David K. Hausman can be reached at dhausman@fas.harvard.edu.