Gorbachev visits Evening Standard

By Nick Higham BBC News

Mr Gorbachev's friend Alexander Lebedev recently bought the Standard

Last night, he was at a dinner with Lady Thatcher. In the afternoon, he was flying out on a trip to Berlin and Washington, among other cities.

With a free morning to spend in London, some people might have gone shopping.

But Mikhail Gorbachev decided to drop in at a newspaper - specifically, the London Evening Standard, recently bought by his friend, the Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev.

The visit, according to Lebedev, was Gorbachev's own idea and it certainly caused a stir in the Standard newsroom.

Introduced by the paper's new editor Geordie Greig as "the man who changed the world", the former Soviet leader was in genial mood.

With Lebedev translating ("I want the editor-in-chief to know I am a very expensive interpreter," he joked) the godfather of glasnost and perestroika stood on a box to talk about the global financial crisis, about Russians' continuing fascination with Stalin and about democracy in Russia.

Asked if capitalism had collapsed, he said that to claim it had was to talk "the same rubbish as saying communism and socialism" had collapsed.

BBC? My old friends! Mikhail Gorbachev

But he conceded that modern capitalism had failed.

"We need to find a new model," he said, one that combines the competitiveness and stimulation of capitalism with the commitment to equality and social justice of socialism.

No country was unaffected by the global crisis, he said, even Russia, which had once thought itself big enough and independent enough to stay out of trouble.

Press freedom

Between them, Gorbachev and Lebedev - who developed his affection for the Standard as a KGB agent in London in the 1980s, and bought the paper for a nominal �1 earlier this year - control Novaya Gazeta, one of Moscow's few campaigning newspapers independent of Kremlin influence.

Its journalists have included Anna Politkovskaya who was murdered in 2006, apparently on account of her investigations into Russian involvement in Chechnya. Others too have been killed.

When I asked him how much freedom the press and media now have in Russia, Gorbachev replied by first flattering the questioner.

"BBC? My old friends!" he said.

His enthusiasm dates back to the attempted coup against him in 1991 when he was imprisoned in his holiday home in the Crimea with only the BBC World Service to keep him abreast of events.

Then he turned the question, conceding that the life of independent newspapers in Russia wasn't easy, but that it wasn't easy for newspapers in the West either at a time of recession which threatened to close some down completely.

But he and Lebedev also agreed that the strict controls imposed on television stations in Russia were a problem, and that the lack of freedom of speech in Russia reflected a lack of wider freedoms in Russian society.

I go to a lot of funerals Alexander Lebedev

According to Alexander Lebedev, the former president is also interested in newspaper technology, though his visit left no time to discover how the Standard's production processes work.

Job cuts

The Standard's new owner said the two men were looking for possible synergies between the Standard and Novaya Gazeta.

"Though there are some synergies you would not want," he added drily. "I go to a lot of funerals."

Before he left, the Standard presented the former Soviet president with not one, but two commemorative front pages - one fake, showing a photograph of his arrival at the newspaper office and run off in just minutes; the other real and framed, showing him on his release from captivity in 1991.

Some Standard journalists may be facing redundancy as the new owner seeks to cut costs in the face of the advertising recession.

But as they handed Mr Gorbachev his mementoes they could reflect that, unlike their counterparts in Russia, few British journalists risk assassination for practising their craft.

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