Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [500]
I totally agreed with this. What struck me was that Mr Yeltsin, unlike President Gorbachev, had escaped from the communist mindset and language. He it was who also first alerted me to the relationship between economic reform and the question of what powers should be devolved to the individual republics. He explained just how little autonomy the governments of the republics really had. They were essentially agents — though frequently incompetent and corrupt agents — of central decisions. He said that they must now be given proper budgets and the power to decide how to spend them. Each republic should have its own laws and constitution. He argued that it was the failure to grapple with the issue of decentralization which had led to the present troubles. With so vast a country it was simply not possible to run everything from the centre. As a result of this discussion I looked not just at Boris Yeltsin but at the fundamental problems of the Soviet Union in a new light. When I reported later in Bermuda to President Bush on my favourable impressions of Mr Yeltsin he made it clear that the Americans did not share them. This was a serious mistake.
VISIT TO THE SOVIET UNION, JUNE 1990
On my visit to the Soviet Union in June 1990 I was to encounter all the different elements which constituted Soviet politics at this time — not just President Gorbachev, but also more radical reformers, nationalists and those who posed the greatest potential threat to reform, that is the military. I flew into Moscow on the night of Thursday 7 June to be met by Prime Minister Ryzhkov. The following morning I met the reforming Mayor of Moscow, Mr Gavriil Popov. I had never met a Russian like Mr Popov. He was the complete opposite of the staid Soviet bureaucrat — informal, slightly scruffy and (as I was subsequently told) probably wearing a tie for the very first time, in honour of my visit.
I found him a devotee of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. He had grasped the crucial point that you could not create a market economy in Moscow — or anywhere else for that matter — without both private property and a clear framework of law. It was the fact that the distribution of property was lagging far behind the other reforms which he saw as at the root of the current political turmoil. So he wanted people to be encouraged to own their own flats and shops and he wanted the service industries to be transferred to private ownership.
I went on to talks and a working lunch with President Gorbachev. I found him rather less ebullient than usual but equable and good-humoured. I took the opportunity to tell him that I continued to believe passionately in what he was trying to achieve in the Soviet Union. Many commentators and journalists had become blasé about how much had already changed. I assured him that he would have my full support both privately and publicly. As regards the changes which were taking place in central and eastern Europe, I tried to convince him that it was in the Soviet Union’s own interests that a unified Germany should be part of NATO, because otherwise there would be no justification for the presence of US forces in Europe. It was this presence which was the crucial condition for European peace and stability. I also described to him my ideas about the development of the CSCE. Slightly to my surprise, I noted that at no stage did he say that a united Germany in NATO was unacceptable; so I felt on this matter at least I was making progress. The only significant differences between us were over Lithuania — as I have mentioned earlier — and my decision to raise with him the evidence which we had gleaned that the Soviet Union was