Wern­er Her­zog: ​‘The demon­i­sa­tion of Rus­sia is a mistake’

Across six decades, the pro­tean tal­ents of Wern­er Her­zog have been exposed to many dif­fer­ent modes of film­mak­ing. What he has not pre­vi­ous­ly under­tak­en, how­ev­er, is a project involv­ing a polit­i­cal fig­ure. That’s now changed thanks to Meet­ing Gor­bachev, a riv­et­ing doc­u­men­tary pro­file of the eighth and final leader of the Sovi­et Union, made with co-direc­tor Andrè Singer.

The film is under­pinned by three con­ver­sa­tions with the for­mer world leader. Gor­bachev, in his late-eight­ies and liv­ing a life marked by soli­tude and ill health, is engaged by Her­zog to talk through his life and times, from his child­hood grow­ing up in a rur­al vil­lage in the nook of west­ern Rus­sia to his ascen­den­cy to high office and the shift­ing polit­i­cal sands that he expe­ri­enced while there. Here, Her­zog shares his views on Gorbachev’s lega­cy, the rise of fake news, and his dis­plea­sure over the West’s ​‘demon­i­sa­tion’ of Russia.

LWLies: You say ear­ly on that ​“every­thing Gor­bachev says is gen­uine”. Was that a sur­prise to you?

Her­zog: Well, you do not expect it from a politi­cian. He has main­tained his human­ness and his dig­ni­ty like no one else I have ever seen in politics.

How do you think he has man­aged that?

He [grew up] as a child of poor peas­ants. Deep in his heart he has car­ried the val­ues of poor peas­ants on the mar­gins of the Sovi­et Empire with him. In a way, that was some­thing where we had strong com­mon experiences.

How so?

He grew up bare­foot in sum­mer, so did I. Both of us went hun­gry as chil­dren. We both had no run­ning water. He trav­elled on foot and so did I. We had an almost instant rap­port. I didn’t speak much about my child­hood, but he was curi­ous. It’s not in the film but he knew a lit­tle bit from sources that were some­how dug up for him. He may have seen some of my films. So he did his home­work as well.

Is it true that he was hos­pi­talised at the time of your con­ver­sa­tions with him?

Yes. Each of the three times that we filmed him he was deliv­ered by ambu­lance to my cam­eras and tak­en back to hos­pi­tal [after­wards]. In one of the con­ver­sa­tions, you can see his hand is ban­daged. The intra­venous nee­dle was stick­ing in his hand, so they cov­ered it. You couldn’t over­strain him. We had one hour for each inter­view, but each time he would extend it by half an hour. Then I would realise that he was get­ting tired. We liked each oth­er. You can tell.

You can. What would you say is Gorbachev’s legacy?

It is that the demon­i­sa­tion of Rus­sia is a mis­take. We can have, against all odds, com­mon ground with Rus­sia. Gor­bachev is a bea­con of hope that rela­tion­ships with Rus­sia can some­how be with­out the enforced ten­sions that you see right now.

And what of his time in power?

He has a very, very large role in world his­to­ry. He cre­at­ed a polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al shift that led to the end of the Sovi­et Empire. He didn’t want that dis­so­lu­tion, but he also cre­at­ed huge things. We shouldn’t for­get that Cher­nobyl hap­pened under his watch, which changed pol­i­tics. There was the reuni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many. He end­ed the Sovi­et Union’s Afghan war. Bal­lis­tic, short-and-medi­um range nuclear weapons were not only abol­ished, but com­plete­ly destroyed thanks to his meet­ings with Ronald Rea­gan. A mon­u­men­tal achieve­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Amer­i­ca is rein­tro­duc­ing these dan­ger­ous short-and-mid­dle range systems…

What do you think about the West’s view of Rus­sia today?

The nar­ra­tive of the West demonis­es Rus­sia. The real cat­a­stro­phe was Yeltsin. That was where Rus­sia came apart and where the pop­u­la­tion became des­ti­tute and lost all its dig­ni­ty. Putin restored the dig­ni­ty of the Russ­ian peo­ple. That’s why he’s so tremen­dous­ly pop­u­lar in his own country.

It was dur­ing Yeltsin’s incum­ben­cy that the oli­garchs emerged.

Yeltsin sold the coun­try to what you call ​‘oli­garchs’ but it’s noth­ing but organ­ised crime. Putin has forced them to mod­ernise the oil indus­try and pay tax­es. None of the oli­garchs, quote-unquote, dur­ing the eight or nine years [of Yeltsin’s time as pres­i­dent] paid tax­es. And now the oli­garchs claim to be polit­i­cal dis­si­dents! That is very, very ques­tion­able. I sim­ply do not fol­low the nar­ra­tive of demon­i­sa­tion with­out tak­ing a good look at what is going on.

The com­mon per­cep­tion of Rus­sia annoys you, doesn’t it?

Of course it’s annoy­ing because today it is not so much a ques­tion of what the facts are. The big­ger ques­tion is who owns the nar­ra­tive. I think the film has a clear mes­sage: take a good look at Rus­sia; take a good look at Gor­bachev. I do believe, and it is a sub­ver­sive mes­sage, that we can estab­lish a very dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship with Rus­sia again. Rus­sia is a much bet­ter and more nat­ur­al ally of the West than, say, India or China.

Why do you think there is this polar­i­sa­tion between the two?

I think it is a retar­da­tion of acknowl­edg­ment. It’s the old trench­es. Who is the oppo­nent? The Sovi­et Union: the Cold War ene­my. This is while the real ene­mies are ris­ing. We are slow in acknowl­edg­ing what is com­ing at us.

Gor­bachev adopt­ed glas­nost – the notion of open­ness and trans­paren­cy – dur­ing his time as pres­i­dent. In this era of fake news, it is some­thing we could arguably do with now.

When you take a good look at fake news it stinks against the wind. It stinks to high heav­en. But it’s noth­ing new. Fake news has accom­pa­nied us since the begin­ning of time. You find it in ancient Egypt. You find it in Roman antiq­ui­ty: after Emper­or Nero’s death, three or four fake Neros appeared. Then there were the Potemkin vil­lages, which were no more than the facades of flour­ish­ing vil­lages. Since we have writ­ten doc­u­men­ta­tion of his­to­ry, we have had fake news. We have to learn how to deal with it. We have to be vig­i­lant and learn how to sniff it out.

What are your thoughts on the com­plet­ed film, Meet­ing Gorbachev?

I’m very fond of this film. I am proud we have made it and I am very, very glad that it came out so strong. Gor­bachev likes it. He said it is by far the very best film that was ever made on him.

Meet­ing Gor­bachev is released 8 Novem­ber. Read the LWLies review.