After the war, I worked for five years on the combine harvester with my dad. We became very close, talked a lot, and I asked him a lot of questions. We developed a man-to-man relationship. The most serious ticking-off I ever got from him was routed through my mother. I was 18 and he said: ‘Tell Mikhail he is staying out too late. He should come back earlier.’
Life is passing and people are passing away.
In a television interview, Vladimir Pozner asked me: ‘Supposing it was possible, and you were invited to phone someone no longer with us. Who would you like to talk to?’ I answered: ‘I think for Gorbachev everyone knows the answer – his wife.’
Raisa and I were together for 46 years, and for 40 of them we went for a walk every day, wherever we were. In all weathers: in blizzards, snow, rain, but Raisa especially loved blizzards. I would say: ‘No, for heaven’s sake, there’s a blizzard outside!’ She would just say, ‘Come on, let’s go!’ and out we would go. I got used to walking in blizzards. When she died I stopped going for walks.
I used to wind Raisa up. One time I said: ‘You don’t want to make me angry.’ I gave a menacing sigh and added: ‘Because I just need to raise my fist, just bring it down once and that will be it. It won’t take two blows.’ She said: ‘What, are you thinking of beating me. You’ve gone nuts!’
In old age it gets difficult to hold back tears.
I take better care of my health now. I want to keep a promise I made to my friends to invite them to my 90th birthday. It was a bit of a cheek, but I think that’s the way to behave, setting goals that challenge you.
I slept well last night, but the night before was grim. I took a double dose of painkiller but couldn’t come to an amicable arrangement with sleep. I dozed off towards morning and had the most amazing dream. The day before, I had watched a film about the Civil War. The commentary said 15 million people died in Russia in those years. Anyway, in my dream I was walking with someone and they showed me all the dead people. Countless numbers of them. At the end I came to a bright, open space and asked: ‘What’s over there?’ My guide said: ‘That’s where the dead go.’
Often when I am asleep, I find the answer to questions that have been tormenting me while I was awake. Someone told me I should keep a pen and notebook by the bed to write it down. I tried that, but when I read what I’d written, I decided it hadn’t been worth waking up for.
Morning is my favourite time. I wake at 6:00 or 6:30, throw off the blanket, smooth the bedclothes, lie down again and do exercises. Completely basic things, stretching, push-ups. I can’t be sure whether the cat is imitating me when it stretches or I am imitating the cat.
I may be a hunter, but I’m not a destroyer.
A missile the Americans call the Satan and we call the R-36M has the power of 100 Chernobyls. In one missile! When you hear that while occupying the position I held, you feel a bit unhinged.
When I hear people talk about a ‘Soviet stooge’, I feel nothing. For a politician at my level the expression is meaningless.
In tenth grade I had to produce an essay for my school-leaving exams and chose to write on ‘Stalin is our military glory, Stalin is the soaring of our youth’. It got a mark of ‘Excellent’. Today I consider myself one of the staunchest opponents of the evils of Stalinism.
Russia’s history is complicated. It is hard to say what was the golden age. Everything was always becoming, becoming, expanding, assimilating territory.
When people ask me what Russia will be like in 20 years’ time, I can’t bring myself to say things might be worse.
Russia’s biggest problem is that the people are pushed out of politics.
There are similarities and dissimilarities between today’s protests and those of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but what matters is something different: today’s demonstrations are very earnest. It’s not just a lot of yelling. This is thought-through protest giving voice to people’s innermost feelings and wishes. That cannot just be ignored.
I sometimes hear it said that the slogan ‘For Fair Elections!’ is no longer topical. I don’t agree. Under no circumstances should it be abandoned. It is the whole crux of the matter.
A proper leader wants a lively, fully functional, serious opposition. The weakness of Russia’s current leaders is that they don’t understand that. To put it mildly, they resent opposition.
I really wish the president would understand how important it is to step down at the right time, to put everything aside and make way for new faces. That takes courage, but it is the sort of decision that tells you a lot about a person and what they’ve got in them.
The best word for what is presently going on in our country is ‘troubles’.
You need to walk the path of freedom.
The Americans made a big mistake. They shouted louder than anyone that we needed a new world order that would be more democratic and just, and then were the first to turn their backs on it.
It upsets me that Europe cannot put its house in order and finally become a global driver of change for the better.
My first trip to Canada was amazing. In 1983 I spent seven days there and an American radio station managed in that time to arrange my funeral. They reported I had drunk myself into a stupor at a party with the minister, had a heart attack and died. It’s just what they do. They can’t seem to grow out of it.
Pass the author his book! This is my first book of memoirs, published in 1995. I want to read you a passage from it about the land our hut stood on: ‘There were apple and pear trees of different varieties. Which exactly was of no interest to me at the time. I remember only that they were delicious and, crucially, ripened at different times, so we had them all through the summer and autumn. Beyond the apples and pears were the plums, black and white. Beyond that the orchard gave way to an overgrowth of elm, a real jungle that took up almost a third of the land. I had my own hiding places there, and one time got my hands on a book called The Headless Horseman. I disappeared for nearly three days. My mother was going crazy, not knowing what to think, but until I had read that book from cover to cover I hid away.’
Recently I have found myself going down from the first to the ground floor to do something, but by the time I get there I’ve forgotten what I went down for.
I am an optimist. I end many of my interviews by saying it, so let’s finish on that.
Life teaches you more than any teacher.
(Published in the Russian edition of Esquire, September 2012.)
Index
Notes: MG and RG in various sub-entries and parentheses refer to Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev(a) respectively. Chinese and Korean names are indexed as written, i.e. family name followed by given name – no comma separator. Japanese and some other names are listed according to usual Western practice. Plates are indicated as individually numbered, in bold type, e.g. P10.
Abalkin, Leonid
Abdullah II, King of Jordan
Aberdeen
Abkhazia
independence recognized by Russia
Acceleration
Adamovka
Adenauer, Konrad
Afghanistan
military action against
Soviet invasion (1979)
Africa
people with AIDS
see also Botswana; Egypt; Ghana; Nigeria; South Africa; Tunisia
Ageyeva, Valeriya
agriculture
protecting and supporting workers
subsidized
Aitmatov, Chingiz
Akhmadulina, Bella
Akunin, Boris
Albanian separatists