MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Former Soviet leader Mikhail  Gorbachev has appealed to the Kremlin to make Russia more   democratic, saying President Dmitry Medvedev’s push to modernise  the country would not succeed otherwise.

Gorbachev, the author of the bold reforms which triggered  the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, told Reuters in an  interview that Russia now needed a fresh wave of “glasnost”  (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring).

“Modernisation can be carried out but only if the people,  the entire population, are included in the whole process,”  Gorbachev told Reuters in a 90-minute conversation in the  offices of his foundation in Moscow.

“We need democracy, we need improvement of the electoral  system and so on. Without that, it will not succeed,” he said.

Gorbachev’s call comes as a growing number of voices within  the Russian elite are calling for political reform to accompany  efforts to modernise and diversify the oil-dependent economy.

Now 79, the former Soviet leader has grown more portly and  speaks softly and more slowly, the trademark birth mark on his  head a little faded.