You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today had a

ringside seat for the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russian nation.

But he never quite had the influence on events he would have wished.

Grigory Yavlinsky was a rising star of the reformist wing of the Soviet bureaucracy.

He presented an economic reform program to Mikhail Gorbachev,

which, had it been adopted, might have averted some of the economic chaos that came after

1991. He then became an advocate of liberal economic reform and pro-Western politics

in Boris Yeltsin's Russia. But his star waned as Vladimir Putin took control of

the Kremlin and imposed his own brand of state-controlled capitalism, authoritarianism and

nationalism. Yavlinsky has long-headed the Yabloko opposition party and has fought three presidential elections. Back in 96,

he won 7% of the vote, but by 2018 he attracted barely 1%. Why is it that Vladimir Putin's

victory over Russia's liberals has been so utterly conclusive? Well, Gregory Yovinsky joins me now. Welcome to

Hard Talk. Thank you for invitation. You have had many years, I guess you would say too many years,

to consider why Vladimir Putin has succeeded and you, in politics in Russia, have consistently failed.

What is the key to understanding that?

History of Russia is a very long story and tradition in Russia, as you know, is not very liberal. And I'm fighting for a new era in Russia,

for liberal reforms, for human rights, for justice, for divisions of powers. That never

happens in Russia. But I'm doing that only for 30 years.

It's not enough.

Is it your conclusion that the Russian people simply aren't interested in some of the concepts

...