Paris - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have mismanaged the profits from oil sales and not done enough to end corruption, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview published Monday in the French daily Le Figaro. "I ask myself how these millions of petrodollars were used," Gorbachev said. "I think that a large part of the money was wasted and not used to modernize the country. They should have acted much sooner to improve the economic situation, modernize Russia and also democratize it."
Putin's record during his first term as president was "positive," Gorbachev said. "He stabilized the situation."
However, he added, "I don't see a real effort at modernization. This is the main problem."
Russia needs a new model for development, Gorbachev said. "To construct it, corruption must be ended. For the moment... this is not the case."
The interview was held on the occasion of the upcoming 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Asked about those events, Gorbachev said that he had believed that the Soviet Union (USSR) could be saved.
"At the time, we prepared a program to improve the economic situation in the USSR. This program was supported by all the republics, even the Baltics," he said.
The government had also prepared a new treaty for the union and had planned a to hold a congress in November 1991 to reform the Communist Party, Gorbachev said.
"We thought in this situation that it would be irresponsible for someone to mount a coup d'etat," he said. "Unfortunately, they did, and some of those who organized the coup came from my close circle of advisors."
In August 1991, a group of hard-line members of the Communist Party, who were against Gorbachev's reforms and the new union treaty, tried to take control of the country while he was on holiday.
The coup collapsed in only three days and Gorbachev returned to government, but the event destabilised the Soviet Union and is believed to have been instrumental in the demise of the Communist Party and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
