Tagged "boris-kagarlitsky"

This brief writing belongs to the Introduction to Boris Kagarlitsky’s book “Restoration in Russia: Why Capitalism Failed”. The work is both a valuable reflection of, and look into, the tumultuous years following the dissolution of the USSR.

‘You can’t hammer in a bolt.’ This was among the slogans used by the pro-government political bloc Russia’s Choice in its campaign for the parliamentary elections of December 1993. Spokespeople for the bloc explained to voters: it’s pointless to dream of a just society, so you have to reconcile yourself to the new order. The slogan turned out to be unintentionally ironic. The attempts by Yelstin, Gaidar and the other Russian ‘reformers’ to construct liberal capitalism in a country where there is neither a normal bourgeoise, nor a market infrastructure, were a case of ‘hammering a bolt’.
History is being repeated as farce. This might not sound very original, but it is nevertheless true. The developments in Russia during the early 1990s have been frightening, but at the same time comic. Highly organized political groups engage in battles without rules in an unstable society where interests are ill defined. One can speak of class conflict only with reservations. The fights inside the government are reminiscent of a squabble in a sandpit.
Psychology plays as big a role here as economics. The instability of social structures, the destruction of former institutions and the crisis of traditions have all helped to make social psychology so important a factor. This applies equally to the country’s rulers, to the opposition and to the millions of citizens living in territories whose names and borders are uncertain, and which no one is yet in a position to rename. These are territories which, despite everything, are still known as the ‘former Soviet Union’.
The dizzying changes began with the elections of 1990. Prior to this everything had taken place within a more of less predictable scenario of ‘managed reform’. The Communist Party was gradually relaxing its control, while not allowing power to slip from its hands. Gorbachev, with full support from the West, was preparing to transform himself from general secretary of the party into president, with unlimited powers. Not the party forums where the necessity of reforms was proclaimed in the late 1980s, nor the conflict between Yeltsin and Gorbachev, nor the discussions in the all-union Congress of Peoples’ Deputies, nor even mass opposition demonstrations and miner’s strikes had as yet testified to the disintegration of the state. But it was already clear that the reformers were losing control of the situation. Their own decisions had called new social forces into being, and these forces were finding the context of the Soviet state constricting.
The 1990 elections became a turning-point. In all the republics indigenous authorities, independent of Moscow, made their appearance. The local bureaucracies, which until this time has been doomed to play a secondary role, gained in self-confidence. Regional and republican-level functionaries did not in most cases stand for election, did not campaign for electors’ votes, and did not debate with rival candidates at meetings, but nevertheless they were the main victors. The numerous popularly elected representatives were their hostages. In order to exercise real power in defiance of the wishes of the union centre, the deputies had to rest on the local apparatus. The ideologue of reform Gavriil Popov called this ’the bloc of democrats with the apparatus’. One way or another, the change took place; from being the leader of the reforms, controlling the situation in the country, Gorbachev was quickly transformed into a commander without an army. People who only recently had been his supporters now abandoned him, while his Western friends prepared to support Yeltsin as the ’new Russian leader’.
Repeating the experience of Gorbachev, Yeltsin had himself elected president of Russia. Lesser figures contended themselves with positions as mayors. Every boss at each particular level sought to grab as much power as possible from the centre. At the same time, these bosses were forced to struggle against rivals from below, also seeking their scrap of power. All of them, however, had one thing in common: despite talking about democracy and freedom, they had no intention of giving the majority of citizens any access whatever to the levels of authority.
In August 1991 all this came to and end. An attempt by the Union level Soviet bureaucrats to change the relationship of forces in their favour led to the creation of the State Committee on the Emergency Situation, whose demise was readily predictable. The members of the committee were declared to be ‘putschists’. By taking his distance from them, Gorbachev managed to keep his post for a few more months, but already in August he was a political corpse.
Now, finally, a degree of certainty appeared. People were in power who had made a simple, final choice in favour of the West. They chose freedom for themselves, and were ready to defend it against all encroachments. This meant that there were no longer willing to be restricted either by the framework of the law, or by generally recognized institutions. Still less were they prepared to take into account the wishes of the majority of the hungry and confused population.
The period which followed saw all institutional structures systematically destroyed. In December 1991, by agreement of the presidents of three republics, the Soviet Union was abolished at Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The Communist Party was abolished. Then it was resurrected, banned, again revived, once more banned and then once again legalized. But this was now a different organization, with different members and goals. The Komsomol vanished more or less of its own accord, with its activists calmly crossing over into commercial organizations. The armed forces began to be split up.
Now it was the turn of the soviets and of the enterprises of the state sector. The ‘property of all the people’ was turned into a boundless reservoir of funds for personal enrichment. The soviets, which has brought Yeltsin to power, were declared to be relics of totalitarianism. However, these structures were not simply elements of the state system. They were part of the accustomed way of life, not just deciding political and economic questions, but also dealing with a multitude of social and even cultural tasks. They dealt with these tasks after their own fashion — vulgarly and inefficiently. But now people discovered that no one was going to deal with these tasks at all.
Before long, many of the people who in the autumn of 1991 had welcomed the dismembering of the USSR wound up in opposition. Some were reacting to the growth of dissatisfaction among voters, others had experienced an awakening of conscience, and still others were distributed by the collapse of structures that were no longer those of the USSR, but Russian, and hence their own. Thus Vice-President Aleksandr Rutskoi and speaker of the Russian parliament Ruslan Khasbulatov were transformed from comrades-in-arms of Yeltsin in his mortal enemies.
The resistance from the soviets was not broken immediately. In December 1992 Yeltsin threatened to disband the Supreme Soviet, but did not carry out this threat. Then he tried to introduce ‘special rule’, but again retreated. The first test of strength became the referendum forced on the country by the authorities in April 1993. This was conducted in conditions that included harsh censorship of television broadcasts and a degree of manipulation of public opinion that was unprecedented even by Soviet standards. The referendum yielded ambiguous results; a third of the population did not vote, and the demand for early election of deputies failed to pass. But the regime was now able to refer to the trust expressed by the population in the president.
The voting in April was a prelude to the bloodshed in October. Throughout 1993 the authorities were preoccupied with only one question: how to rid themselves of the deputies, the laws and the Constitutional Court, all of which were restriction the regime in the exercise of its free initiative. In September the denouement began. First the militia beat people on the streets, and then tanks opened fire on the parliament building.
Securing the victory required free elections and a new constitution, guaranteeing the president and his team complete freedom from responsibility, and most important, enshrining the rights of the new property-owners.
On 12 December 1993 the elections went ahead, despite chaos in the Central Electoral Commission and constant breaches of deadlines and rules. The result, to use the language of advertising, was beyond all expectations. Half the population failed to vote, and of those who turned up at the polling stations, the overwhelming majority gave their votes to opponents of the regime.
The authorities had spared neither money nor energies in organizing a ’triumph of democracy’. Sociological research for the organizing a ’triumph of democracy’. Sociological research for the pro-government Russia’s Choice blog was paid for out of state funds. The voter lists in Moscow included dead people, and residents of long-vacant buildings. By a wondrous coincidence, large numbers of such ‘voters’ were recorded as living in a building once inhabited by Nikolay Gogol, author of the classic nineteenth-century novel Dead Souls. One of the heads of the district electoral commissions in Moscow hanged himself the night before voting, after writing in a last message to his relatives, ‘My dear ones, I have deceived people so grievously that there is no forgiveness for me.’
In St Petersburg, opposition activists who were gathering petition signatures on the streets were confronted by heavily built young men travelling about the city in second-hand Volvos. According to journalists, this squad chased petitioners out of metro stations, seized and tore up petition sheets, and handed out very professional beatings to the most obstinate signature-gatherers. People collecting signatures for pro-government candidates were for some reason not touched.
When ballot boxes were opened in Voronezh, south of Moscow, electoral officials discovered a third more ballot papers than had been handed out to voters. Soldiers were herded into the polling stations in whole units, without even being asked whether they wanted to vote. Scrutineers for opposition candidates were not allowed to be present when votes were counted. Hundreds of such cases were noted throughout the country, and were reported in the press and even on television. Only the foreign observers tried not to notice anything, and even refused to travel to places where breaches had been discovered.
In the Kremlin on the night of 12-13 December, a televised extravaganza had been organized to welcome in the new political epoch. Yeltsin and Gaidar were supposed to take part. The ‘independent’ television programme Itogi, which even on the censored airwaves of Russia was distinguished by its servility, had already announced the success of Russia’s Choice. Alas, the triumph did not come to pass. Around half the voters did not go to the polls. Russian Movement for Democratic Reforms, the grouping closest to Russia’s Choice, failed to attract the 5 per cent of votes needed for the majority of soldiers and junior officers voted for the opposition. This was also true of the units which had taken part in the storming of the parliament.
It is possible to fool people for a long time. It is possible to turn the whole country into a laboratory for fascinating experiments, and its residents into guinea-pigs. But sooner or later the truth emerges that the freedom of the authorities is not unlimited. At that point millions of people realize, on the basis of their own tormented experience, that the less freedom the authorities enjoy, the more there is for the citizens.