After everything you have seen and lived through and learned,
do you believe that some version of communism
is still a defensible idea?
(Speaking Russian)
ENGLISH VOICEOVER: Well, I would say so.
Absolutely.
Hi, I'm Daniel Kitts at TVO.org.
On August the 13th,
with former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
I helped produce that interview, and I consider it
one of the highlights of my career.
And I'm with two other people who, I assume, also consider it
one of the highlights of their career.
Steve Paikin, who did the interview,
and Dan Dunsky, the then-executive producer
of
Daniel, good to see you.
Hi, Daniel. Hi, everybody.
Good to see both of you, too.
Let me just start off by, you know, this guy,
for all of us, was a giant of history.
We all, you know, we all remember the Cold War.
And remember Perestroika, and his tenure in the Soviet Union.
Steve, let me start with you.
What did you think when you first saw him?
Well, that's the thing, you walk in the room,
and there, standing in front of you,
is a man who changed the course of history.
And I don't know about anybody watching this
and I don't know about you two guys,
but it is not a frequent occurrence
when you walk into a room and you are standing
six inches away from somebody who absolutely changed
the course of the history of the entire world.
ENGLISH VOICEOVER: When, um,
the prime minister of China, Zhou Enlai,
was still alive,
he talked to a French delegation
and the French asked him,
"Mr. Prime Minister, what do you think,
"what is your evaluation of the impact
"of the French Revolution on the world and on China?"
And that was about 180 years after the French Revolution
and he said, "Well, it's too soon to tell."
(Chuckling)
And Perestroika, well,
I must say,
it was perhaps even a bigger project.
STEVE: So that's a pretty heavy thing.
And I-- I don't mind telling you, you know,
you do a double take, you are nervous,
you, um...
you can't help but be impressed
at what this man was able to accomplish,
and then you very quickly try to put that in your back pocket
and focus on the task at hand.
What about you, Dan?
Um, everything that Steve just said,
but the paradox for me, and you started off, Daniel,
by saying he was a giant of history,
and I think I expected him to be taller.
(Chuckling)
And he wasn't, he was-- I'm not a particularly tall guy,
and he was a little bit shorter than me.
What do you remember most about meeting him and the interview?
I'll start again with you, Steve.
I remember asking a friend of mine
who was born in the Soviet Union,
"Give me a couple of things I can say in Russian,"
just to kind of establish something,
because obviously he didn't speak any English,
I didn't speak any Russian,
and the most difficult thing about doing an interview
under those circumstances is trying to create
any sense of bond or connection or chemistry
with somebody that you don't speak the same language as.
I can also tell you that the Russians who are here
in Toronto, some of them are very good hockey players.
But that's another story.
(Speaking Russian)
ENGLISH VOICEOVER: Well, that's an old story and a good story.
Canadians and Russians can play hockey, sure.
So I knew that was going to be a problem and I thought
if I can drop a couple of words, a couple of sentences in Russian
to get things started, that might make him feel
a little more comfortable. So I said to him--
(Speaking Russian)
Which basically is Russian for, you know,
"Nice to meet you, how are you doing?"
That kind of thing.
And he-- I remember this, he stuck out his hand,
we shook hands, he didn't really look at me.
He sort of looked off in the distance, and he went--
(Speaking Russian)
which is just "Hi" in Russian,
so we had that established off the top,
and I guess I remember thinking,
"Well, my big attempt to speak a little bit of Russian
"to get him more comfortable fell flat on its face."
Because he didn't even look me in the eye
and we really didn't establish any kind of contact,
and I just thought, "Okay, that didn't work,
"focus, try something else."
So we then sat down, and off to the races we went.
It's interesting that you say that, Steve,
because you know, what stood out for me, in part,
was how formal he was
in his responses.
Now I haven't seen the video, I'm looking forward
to seeing it when it gets re-aired.
I haven't seen it in, whatever, almost 20 years.
But, um, he had this demeanor
that was quite formal...
and, well, formal.
And your interview--
I mean, we've done many interviews with-- with,
perhaps, not people of the same stature as Gorbachev,
but I know your interview style,
and I know how we liked to do interviews
for these kinds of programs, and I remember thinking
as the interview was going on, "How is this going?"
I mean, you know, "Is this a little too formal?
"Is it a little too stiff?
"Are-- is the audience going to react to that?"
And I put that out of my mind, of course,
because just given, like, who he was
and what it was that we were talking about.
So it's interesting that you-- that you point that out.
You know, in 2005, he'd been out of power for a long time,
but he still seemed like a real giant of history.
And I'm not saying he isn't anymore,
but his legacy seems to be very much diminished,
I would say.
You know, in the 15 years since we spoke to him, because--
or 16 years, I guess, since we spoke to him.
Because you know, today Russia is a corrupt police state
run by a former KGB agent who is constantly scheming
against the United States and the West.
Um, you know, authoritarianism seems to be on the rise
in many parts of the world, and you know,
that seems very far from the vision that Gorbachev had
of a democratic Russia,
or the former Soviet Union being democratic
and basically, having a good relationship
with its former foes in the West.
ENGLISH VOICEOVER: A lot of good things are being said
toward Russia in Western Europe.
55% of Russia's trade
is with Western Europe.
So, tremendous resources are being exchanged.
And, so, it would seem that we are the closest of friends.
We're all Europeans,
but I do have the impression,
I do have the impression that it's all fine,
let Russia move forward, but slowly.
Not too fast. Let Russia be bogged down
in Chechnya and some other place,
and let that continue for some time.
I'm wondering what you two think about that.
Let's start with you, Dan.
Um, it's-- it's remarkable,
how in such a short period of time,
there is a kind of a historical...
more than amnesia, there is... (Stammering)
I wonder how many younger people today
would even recognize the name Mikhail Gorbachev.
And, um, as we said a little bit earlier,
he was a giant of the second half of the 20th century,
and obviously somebody who had a major hand
in ending the-- the Cold War,
which was a defining part of all of our childhoods,
and our early adulthood.
And it's remarkable to me
that he is a bit of a forgotten man.
I would just piggy-back on that by saying that if there is
anybody watching this who is, say,
under the age of 45 years old, they may not truly appreciate
what a potentially glorious moment that was,
back in the early 1990s
when we thought the Soviet Empire,
the "evil empire," as Ronald Reagan had called it,
was actually going to come to an end.
Something that was completely in-- unimaginable.
It was unimaginable six months before it happened,
and yet, there it was happening,
and Gorbachev was the guy who did it.
And I also remember, at the time,
president George Bush, the father,
because he was the president at the time, saying,
"You know, we're not going to be having ticker tape parades
"down, you know, Broadway in New York City
"to celebrate the fact that the West won the Cold War,
"because we want to make Gorbachev a partner,
"and we want a better relationship
"with the former Soviet Union,
"or its constituent republics now.
"And therefore, we don't want to humiliate them."
Which seemed like the right thing to do,
and that moment in history seemed so hopeful.
You know, for a moment,
Gorbachev gave us an opening
where we thought we actually had a chance to be optimistic
about... about a future which did not involve nuclear missiles
from the West and the Soviet Union facing each other,
and the-- and the possibility of imminent annihilation.
And unfortunately, it was a brief moment.
And you know, here we are.
It's like everything old is new again.
In that moment of optimism, it's important to remember
that the collapse of the Soviet empire was relatively bloodless,
and you know, far less bloody than the collapse
of the British Empire, for instance.
And, um, we owe--
and certainly the former--
and all the subjects of the former Soviet Empire
owe a debt of gratitude to Gorbachev
for making that happen.
That's a great point, that is really, really significant.
Think of the hundreds, thousands,
tens of thousands of people who did not die
because of Mikhail Gorbachev.
He deserves some recognition for that, to be sure.
Absolutely.
Mr. Gorbachev, it is very good of you
to spend so much time with us.
Spasiba, spasiba, spasiba.