Mikhail Gorbachev - The New Russia

I also said I was shocked by the levels of corruption in the current state institutions, to which we had entrusted the reforms and our own destiny. ‘It has come to such a state of affairs that a guidebook has been published in America listing the names of officials in our new government and other institutions and specifying the number of dollars they require as bribes for resolving issues.’

Under the guise of ‘popular privatization’, there are plans to rob the population. Everybody will be given a voucher equivalent to a month or a half-month’s salary, and those who have been stealing and looting the economy will buy up the securities from the people and seize, first, economic and then political power.

My judgements were harsh but, unfortunately, proved only too accurate.

I had also to mention the discreditable role of the press: ‘My statements to the people are often simply ignored and suppressed. If anything does get published, it is only in a much curtailed form. The press has become subservient to the government. It too toes the line, aiming only to survive.’ What was needed, I said, was a programme of emergency measures for Russia: ‘We need a new economic reform programme around which all patriotic democratic forces can unite. On a basis of consent it will be possible to take wide-ranging, radical decisions to stabilize society and avert a rift and further deterioration of the situation.’

The pressure on me was ramped up. It was insisted I must take part in the charade of the Trial of the Communist Party, whose dangers were becoming increasingly obvious. I decided I should state my position publicly in the form of an open letter to the Constitutional Court. Here it is in its entirety:

Dear president and members of the Constitutional Court,

In connection with your decision of 30 September to summon me to attend the court as a witness, I wish to make the following statement:

I stated my position on this trial some time ago, and gave my grounds for not participating in it, which seemed to meet with understanding. Since, however, for unknown reasons the Court has nevertheless decided to summon me, I feel obliged to lay out my reasons in the form of an open letter.

Despite my deep respect for the Constitutional Court as an important democratic institution of Russia, I do not find it possible to take part in its trial of this case. By agreeing to consider it, the Constitutional Court has become embroiled in actions inappropriate to its status. It has become a hostage in a political conflict, to the detriment of its authority. At the same time it is contributing to aggravation of the social and political situation in the country. Accordingly, no matter how professionally, from a technical point of view, this trial is conducted, it cannot be free of the character of a political trial. It is by now obvious that it is being exploited by the parties in a conflict in their narrow political interests.

One side is seeking to destabilize the situation by trying surreptitiously to rehabilitate those members of the Party leadership, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU and other Party institutions who supported the coup of August 1991, or who even directly participated in it; a coup that dealt an irreparable blow to democratic reform, disrupted the signing of a treaty for a Union of Sovereign States, the beginnings of a programme to overcome the crisis, and the holding of an extraordinary congress of the CPSU to complete democratic reform of the Party.

The other side, losing public support for its policies and seeking a scapegoat, wants to put our history in the dock and to argue that the Party was unconstitutional. These efforts could signal a return to suppression of dissent and recreate a climate where reprisals for the holding of political views and beliefs is seen as legitimate. I spoke out strongly against that kind of approach in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR after the coup and adhere firmly to that view.

One further point. I cannot participate in this trial, on moral grounds. At this time society is in a state of crisis. As winter approaches, people are greatly concerned about the provision of food and heat. The economic reform as currently implemented has not delivered on the promises made to the people, millions of whom are already experiencing poverty. There is increasing uncertainty in the country about the ability of the current leadership to conduct affairs, about what policies it is currently planning to implement and about whether it will really prove capable of delivering cooperation with other states of our Commonwealth.

Without this, there can be no prospect either of the resolution of urgent problems or of further progress through reform to ending the crisis. Efforts to revive a lawsuit that had essentially stalled and to give it a sensationalist veneer is nothing short of an attempt to distract our citizens’ attention from genuinely vital issues. What is needed now is not a deepening of society’s divisions, not inciting people to attack each other, but consolidation and unification of the forces of reform and democracy.

As a Russian citizen, I respect the law and the constitution of my country. I participated as a witness in the investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office of the activities of the State Emergency Committee and the finances of the CPSU. I met the investigators and gave evidence. I do not believe I gave any grounds to suspect me of a lack of respect for the law.

Nevertheless, I am not prepared to become involved in a political trial whose consequences can only be uniformly negative. I find that unacceptable.

As regards history, no matter how tragic it has been, treating it as something amenable to legal proceedings strikes me as futile. It has been attempted in the past and resulted only in bathos.

Respected Constitutional Court, I hope that the reasons and considerations I have given, and no less my moral position, will be received with due understanding.

Yours sincerely,

My open letter to the Constitutional Court enraged the instigators and perpetrators of this piece of nonsense, because it undermined the whole sensation on which it was premised: a show trial of the president of the USSR. The court gave a ruling ‘officially requiring’ me to ‘appear when summoned to give witness statements’.

The president of the court, Valeriy Zorkin, accused me of contempt of court. One of the judges, and after him Minister of Justice Nikolai Fedorov, threatened to instigate criminal proceedings against Gorbachev for failing to appear before the Constitutional Court, although the law regulating the court provides for no penalties other than a fine of 100 roubles. They all seemed to be overlooking the classical principle, going back to Roman law and familiar to every law student, of nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege [no crime, no punishment without a law]. Some Russian judges and courts in the twenty-first century could do with being regularly and loudly reminded of this classic principle.

It finally came to the point where the former president of the USSR was banned from travelling abroad. The announcement was published by the Press Service of the Constitutional Court. They had evidently suddenly forgotten or, on the contrary, had decided to remind everyone, of the effect of being banned from travelling abroad during the Soviet period: that very wall of prohibitions which had been demolished by none other than the president of the USSR.

On 3 October I wrote to the Constitutional Court, the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Security asking to be informed by whom and on what legal basis measures had been taken that affected my civil rights, responsibilities and legitimate interests. The Constitutional Court replied, ‘All decisions of the Constitutional Court affecting your interests have already been made known to you. You may familiarize yourself directly with the other documents at the Constitutional Court.’