The dissatisfaction with the policy of the current leadership keeps on growing, and this turns into the desire to decisively repudiate this policy. In such a situation, people are trying to see what Gorbachev thinks, what his intentions are, what he suggests. The election campaign is about to begin, and they want to get some impression from these meetings. All my trips show that people maintained their trust in Gorbachev. They respect his competence; they want to ask him for his advice and to understand the issues based on my analysis. And lately they keep on asking: ““Who should [come to power], Mikhail Sergeyevich, who?’’ . . . Here a good czar, a good general secretary, a good president is needed. A very experienced person is needed who possesses a good vision, competence, good character and strong will because he will have to make very difficult decisions. Because of this, it is not excluded that people will go back to such personalities as Gorbachev and [former prime minister Nikolai] Ryzhkov. In our situation, it would be difficult even for Jesus Christ. It should be a person who can lead, who knows the West; this is very important. What is not desirable is a regime of a certain type: closed again, separated from everybody. This would definitely be a retreat from democracy.
Raisa Maksimovna is not very much inclined in favor of such a decision [for me to run for the presidency]; nonetheless, she leaves the decision to me. I have to make the decision. That’s why she says, ““Whatever Gorbachev decides, I will accept it.’’ How else could it be? After all, it should be my decision.
I not only didn’t want it, I thought it would be a drama, even a tragedy. It’s impossible to split it up. It’s broken into pieces; it’s all bloody, but still a country. [A new union] should be started with the creation of a nucleus around which new electrons will appear. And that will be a Slavic nucleus again. This means Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, where half of the population is Russian. This will be a long process, and I don’t think it will be a union state but a union of states. Russia assumed that everybody would crawl back to it; at first, the Russian leadership’s outlook was too imperial. Only one approach can be realistic: to acknowledge that there are independent states and, based on this acknowledgment, new forms of cooperation are possible in a new union. But this will not come easily, and it will take a long time. There will be a gradual step-by-step process of establishing a new union. That is what is needed. This will stabilize Russia and remove instability in the republics. The West should not be concerned that an empire is being formed again. This is not the danger. The danger would be if all of a sudden some radical extremist regime appears. That’s why reforms and democracy in Russia should be supported.
