Georgi Arbatov, the éminence grise of the Soviet foreign policy apparatus, was waiting for me at the bus stop an hour out of Moscow. A little bowed at 84, he grabbed me by the arm and leant on his homemade walking stick, cut from a nearby birch, and led me through the wood I had arrived in to a clearing in which stood a small, shabby block of flats, paint peeling in the entrance, a year's dust and leaves on the staircase. Like his mentor, Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief and later head of the Soviet Union, Arbatov has always shunned many of the perks of the apparatchiks, content with a modest flat in the city and this "dacha" in the countryside.
We talked, as we did 30 years ago, over vodka, coffee, cucumber and beetroot. The adviser to every Soviet president from Brezhnev to Gorbachev remains as lucid as he was when he told me in 1978 that if the west pursued a closer relationship with China, turning China "into some sort of military ally to the west"… then there would be "no place for détente."
My full-page interview with Arbatov—which ran first in the International Herald Tribune and later in many other papers—caused an enormous stir. It was the first time a senior Soviet official had talked at length to a western journalist on the record, without notes and answering every question put to him. Edward Crankshaw, the distinguished Sovietologist, described it in the Observer as "the most interesting thing to come out of official Moscow since the fall of Khruschev 14 years ago." The Economist made it its cover story.
JP If you had died when you were 55, would you have been as at peace with yourself as you obviously are now?
GA I was very critical of many aspects of our way of life, but of course you couldn't speak about it. But I don't feel I compromised. Maybe I was fooled by these stupid ideological things we were saying all the time. But I felt the initiators of the cold war were the Americans. I think that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in reality the start of the cold war. In his memoirs, Henry Stimson, the American secretary of war during the second world war, says that it was done to teach the Russians to play according to the new rules of the game.
JP You don't think Stalin was planning a confrontation with the west after his victory in the war?
GA No. When Stalin met the French and Italian communist leaders, Maurice Thorez and Palmiro Togliatti, they asked for his advice, saying they had revolutionary situations in their countries and that it might be the moment to start a revolution. But Stalin replied, "Under no circumstances. It will not be tolerated by the west."
Stalin was an awful figure but he was a realist. He understood that his country was on the edge of a terrible future. People couldn't tolerate much more hunger. Every family had experienced the awful losses of the war.
JP But he was committed to an expansionist Marxist ideology.
GA Yes, he thought the victory of revolution was inevitable. But after the terrible war, he was afraid to start something new and dangerous. He preferred to wait and allow persuasion, the contradictions of the capitalist system and new economic crises to play their course.
JP In your book, The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics, referring to the Soviet intervention in Angola and Afghanistan, you wrote: "Why did we in the eyes of the world become an aggressive expansionist power in the second half of the 1970s?" But you didn't really answer the question.
GA My guess is that the military-industrial complex had grown to such proportions that it escaped political control. The leaders depended on the military-industrial complex to stay in power. So they didn't want to estrange their relations with it. Not everything was controlled by one man.
JP Why did Gorbachev fail? Why didn't he use his immense power to push things forward faster?
GA Gorbachev was frightened to go forward because he wasn't sure that public opinion was ready for it. It was a pity. I consider him the best leader we ever had, even better than Andropov.
JP Yet in your book you are very critical of him.
GA It is because he didn't use his opportunities. And he allowed the Soviet Union to disintegrate. Three drunken men plotted it in the forest—Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk from the Ukraine and Stanislav Shushkevich from Belarus, in the Bialowieza forest. This meeting is well known, but the fact that they were very drunk is not so well known.
JP How do you know that?
GA I heard this from one of those present.
JP Are you prepared to say who this was?
GA No.
JP And what about the influence of the military-industrial complex in today's Russia? Has it been brought under control?
GA The economic difficulties of post-Soviet Russia made military expenditures much more modest, to the detriment of our security, but Putin is in the hands of this military-industrial complex, and a lot of his appointments go to these people. I don't know how much control he has over them. In general they have to worry about their survival in the military-industrial complex, not about enhancing peace.
It is very difficult to justify big military expenditures when the country is in so much need. I don't know Putin or the people around him—but looking from the outside, maybe he is afraid of being blamed for neglecting the needs of the military. The communists would blame him, Vladimir Zhirinovsky would blame him. You have a lot of adventurers now.
JP Has the west missed its chance of engaging Russia?
GA Was the end of the cold war really used by both sides? No. The US was infatuated by being the only superpower and started some adventures. Not all of them were bad. Kuwait was OK—it had to be done. But Iraq was just not well prepared, the intelligence agencies didn't do a good job, and it was not well executed. So now they are engaged in a bad war with a very doubtful outcome. Iraq can make America so tired that it will go away as happened in Vietnam.
Russia has also failed to respond properly to the end of the cold war, because of our internal problems. Our leaders were satisfied by being accepted as a member of the G8. I don't think another cold war is imminent, but we have entered into a period of multilateral international relations with many centres of power. We had this before the first world war. It is not easy politics. It demands a very big effort and a lot of brainwork. I'm not sure that both sides have prepared for this. We can slip into worse and worse situations, step by step.
JP So why has it become so bad? Why the decisions being made on arms control and troop control? Why the tense situation with Britain?
GA The main thing is that real negotiations have stopped. Both sides are at fault. They lose interest in each other.
JP If you were president of Russia today, what would you do to stop this situation?
GA I would start serious negotiations—two or three summits to discuss the new international situation, possible lines of behaviour and the responsibilities of big countries. We need negotiations all the time. If you do this, you become interested in the other country. You meet your adversary regularly and you get to know him. I know how the old summit meetings were. All organisations, including mine, were busy up to the ears. We had to work, work, work. Now they have lost interest. In my country the government has lost interest in consulting the academic community. I fear it is similar in the US. Now it just theatre, just show. They shake hands, a couple of photos, but no serious negotiations.
Now nobody is interested in anything. I have no idea where they get their information and ideas. Putin's is the least transparent governmental system in my memory. I don't know the people around Putin. What do they think? Medvedev? I don't know. He's not a public figure. He doesn't express himself.
Putin has done a lot of good work—he has re-established the governmental system. But at the same time he fails to explain himself. What are we striving for? What do we want to have in internal policy, in foreign policy? The average mental weight of people in power is falling. And you don't get to know them. It started with Yeltsin. On Sunday someone prompted a name. On Monday he named a new prime minister.
JP Are you worried that the west will once again start to consider Russia a military adversary?
GA It depends on what the Russians do. If they act like mad, then it is possible. But I don't think we will do it; the whole economic situation forbids it. You have seen, on the way here, these small towns with big, expensive houses. This is what the bureaucracy are interested in. They are not interested in work or war or confrontation or world revolution. You could send the police to any of these houses and ask them where they got the money. It is all dishonest money. There are no such salaries that allow you to buy such places.
JP Putin thinks the US took advantage of Russia when it was weak—the expansion of Nato, expanding influence into the old southern Soviet Union. Now Putin is fighting back, abrogating old agreements, threatening to re-target Europe with missiles.
GA I am not too worried. I'm more worried about what happens inside Russia. The new generation. What will it do? What will it think? They have no knowledge of the past and they seem uninterested in the future. It is just today's material needs. Tomorrow these young people will become important.
The other is the economic situation. We are so dependent on the high oil price, which will drop. I don't know how Putin will deal with it. We are like a drug addict, sitting on the needle of high oil prices.
JP I decided to come and see you today because we now appear to be entering a new dangerous phase—the ghosts of the past, after all, have not been laid to rest.
GA We have to stop this stupid talk about how Russia will go its own way. It's nonsense. The leadership must think more about where the present situation is leading the country, how to solve these problems and where exactly they want to lead the country to.
JP Why has the relationship with Britain soured so badly?
GA In the absence of real problems we have these kind of blown-up problems. The villains are Russian citizens who are here now but at the time were in Britain.
JP Is there a cover-up to protect the killers of Litvinenko?
GA It's very far from me and my work so I don't have the real picture. There may be a cover-up. There might be sheer stupidity—I know the quality of the people around Putin. This kind of thing is what I'm afraid of: small things that just appear, that haven't been planned before, but that have bad consequences.
JP Are you worried about poor control of Russia's nuclear arsenal?
GA We have had a lot of technical catastrophes, which makes the mass of weapons a dangerous thing.
JP But is the political climate benign enough to consider more cuts in nuclear weapons?
GA Both sides have lost their enemy. They see no imminent danger from the other side. Neither seems to understand that it can quickly reappear. Just the existence of so many weapons makes deteriorating relations more likely and stability less dependable.
If you have so many nuclear weapons, you have to say there is a plan to get rid of them even if you can't give the exact date. Otherwise, other countries say: if you have them, why can't we? Possession of nuclear weapons is now becoming a sign of a "great country." What enemies does North Korea have? None, but it wants to be great and mighty.
In the cold war days we were afraid that we would get into serious trouble because something bad was done. Now we must be afraid because neither side does anything good and just hopes things will go on like they do. But they will not simply go on. The situation is constantly changing. We can have new dictators appearing from nowhere who wish to have such weapons.
The blame for a lack of nuclear disarmament in the US and Russia must be shared equally. Being honest, we in Russia are not right in our approach. We could decrease our number of weapons unilaterally and show an example. We could dismantle our rockets and take others off alert, and the Americans would be obliged to follow us.
JP Who do you blame most for this on the American side, Bush or Clinton?
GA Bush has to be blamed more—because of his use of military force.
JP Do you think a new cold war is starting up?
GA It is not. But we can get into one. It'll be different—not ideological. It will be more difficult than the last one because we now live in a multipolar world with small states possessing nuclear weapons. Before, the US and USSR could control everyone; now everybody is becoming uncontrollable. I'm not saying we are, but we could be on the threshold of a more dangerous period than the cold war. Two years ago it was impossible to think of this. Now it is possible. Much will depend on the personalities of the future leaders of the US and Russia.
JP Who would you like to see become US president?
GA Hillary may not be a bad president. Barack Obama, I don't know him.
JP Obama said recently: the US "must lead the world once more."
GA If he wants to become leader, to command the world, then he is naive. Even if he thinks it, he shouldn't say it aloud.
JP Mitt Romney wrote that "Radical Islam's threat is just as real" as that once posed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. "The consequences of ignoring this challenge—such as a radicalised Islamic actor possessing nuclear weapons—are simply unacceptable" he said.
GA They've found the lost enemy! Now everything can be explained and justified, military expenditure, military action, everything. A "war of civilisations" is quite artificial.
JP Will all this continue after Bush?
GA It will. We have to find a way among various Islamic leaders to negotiate because this is bad for Christianity and for Islam. We need maybe a conference of China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt and some from the Christian world.
We must avoid a whole new generation growing up with this "war of civilisations" idea. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Iran may have them one day. We can stop this proliferation only in an improved climate brought on by the big powers reducing their own stocks. We should set the example and then say: why do you need them? Do you fear other countries? If you do, let's discuss it and see if we can help you find a way to negotiate.
GA I'm not very at ease with the idea. It's more of a military threat to Russia than it is to the US. But I don't see a clear and present danger. China is doing rather well, in a peaceful way, by entering the world market.
For so long China was deprived of a place in the international community. It made an imprint on their psychology. Now they are involved in a real attempt to build their country. At the same time we have no guarantees that military people won't come to power. This will be bad for China and for its neighbours. Continuing negotiations with China is important. We have to build a multipolar international system and have to base our common security on this.
JP Do you think, like Gorbachev, that Russia should be part of the European "house"?
GA Of course. Russia has a lot to contribute to the EU. Why should it be kept outside, as Estonia and Poland want? That bad history has passed. If we lived only in the past, no one would shake the hand of a German. The EU has to help now, even symbolically—to make it clear that it is not against Russia coming into the EU. If the EU could say that in a decade or two Russia could enter, it would help stabilise Russian politics.
