Gorbachev accuses Putin of undemocratic behaviour

Sep 21, 2009, 11:58 GMT

Moscow - The last president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev has accused Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of undemocratic behaviour in an interview with the BBC.

Putin's latest statement that he would sit down with the president to decide whether he would run for the presidency in 2012 was damaging to basic democratic principles, Gorbachev told the BBC in an interview broadcast late Sunday.

'I think that it should be decided by the voters - by the people, and I didn't hear him mention the people. I don't think that this is right,' he said.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the consequent collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev called Putin's party, United Russia, a bad copy of the old Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). He said that Russia now needed more democracy.

He added that modernizing the country could not be done 'by pressure, by issuing commands and orders and administrative commands.'

'It can only be done through democracy,' he told the BBC, 'by establishing a free and democratic environment with people's participation.'

But Gorbachev, who until now has been mostly supportive of Putin, also said that the West must give Russia time to develop its democracy.

According to commentators, Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev have already started their pre-election campaigns for the presidential election in 2012.

The business daily Vedomosti reported that the camps around the two politicians were already trying to establish a clear direction for the elections.

One of Medvedev's key advisors Igor Jurgens has warned that Putin risks becoming a 'new Brezhnev.'

Brezhnev, who ruled the Soviet Union as leader of the CPSU until his death in 1982, was in office for a total of 18 years.

Jurgens suggests the same thing could happen with Putin.

'These risks exist,' he said. 'The cult of personality is in our genes.'