Worst Fears Coming True, Gorbachev Says : Transition: The former Soviet leader has sharp words for Yeltsin and the Bush Administration.

Almost three months after he was forced out of office, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Monday that some of his most pessimistic predictions about the disintegration of the world’s largest country are already being realized.

In a wide-ranging interview, the last leader of the Soviet Union criticized the Bush Administration for suggesting that the United States had won the Cold War and could now preside over a one-superpower world.

But he directed his harshest criticisms at his successor, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, and other leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, accusing them of pursuing personal political ambitions while the economy of the former Communist superpower unravels.

“I have turned out to be too much of a prophet, one whose prophecies have begun to come true within a few weeks. The country is being torn apart, economic ties are being broken,” he said.

“This is sheer madness. It reminds me of the atmosphere in an insane asylum. After all, politicians can be crazy, but society cannot be crazy. It can never reach such a point. It will right itself.”

And Gorbachev promised to stay “in the political arena” himself to try to keep the remnants of his country on the right track.

After handing over control of the Soviet nuclear codes to Yeltsin on Christmas Day, the 61-year-old ousted president left Moscow for what he described as his first real family vacation in years. He has gradually re-emerged into public view over the past few weeks, launching a Moscow political think tank called the Gorbachev Foundation.

The former president said he now spends much of his time running the Gorbachev Foundation and working on a new volume of memoirs. But he also made clear that he still sees a substantial political role for himself in helping to ensure Russia’s transition from totalitarianism to democracy.

“I do not intend to leave the political stage, this is for sure,” Gorbachev said.

While Gorbachev insisted that he agreed with Yeltsin on the “broad principles” of Russia’s democratic transformation, he sharply criticized the Russian leader’s program of economic shock therapy.

Despite the harsh tone of his criticism of Yeltsin, Gorbachev said that he maintained normal relations with the Russian leader, who continues to consult him.

Reflecting on relations with the United States, Gorbachev expressed dismay at a recent draft memorandum by the Pentagon claiming that the collapse of the Soviet Union had created a “single-superpower world.” “This smells of mothballs, like prehistoric thinking from the time of the Cold War,” he said, insisting that both superpowers had effectively lost the Cold War because of a ruinous arms race.

“We have already left the bipolar world, to say nothing of the unipolar world, and then somebody has this crazy idea that maybe they can lead the world again,” he said.