Russia in Global Affairs

Perestroika inherited a difficult situation in terms of interethnic and federal relations. I have to admit that when we started perestroika, my colleagues and I did not see the full extent of that problem.

More than three and a half decades have passed since the start of the process of change in the Soviet Union known throughout the world as perestroika. I have been trying to find answers to the questions put to me by scholars, journalists and ordinary people in the letters that I receive. It has not been relegated to the past. The experience and the lessons of perestroika remain relevant today.

The following speech was delivered on November 8, 2014 at the New Policy Forum symposium in Berlin

In our transition to democracy we are somewhere in the middle, still far away. We, a country in transition, have not understood what freedom is and how to use it. We do not use democratic institutions in earnest. We must focus on the development of our country, so that people can be proud of it.