By ROBERT SERVICE
Oxford, England, 23 December 2011
TWENTY years ago, Mikhail S. Gorbachev
announced the end of a huge global experiment. After seven decades, the
Soviet Union would be dismantled, its 15 republics becoming independent
countries, and capitalism replacing the planned Soviet economy. Lenin’s
embalmed corpse was left undisturbed in the Red Square mausoleum in
Moscow, but the cause for which he led the October 1917 revolution no
longer held the affection of hundreds of millions of Russians and
millions more around the world.
For two decades since, the Russian people have largely endured in
silence the oppressive and corrupt system of power that ensued — until
blatant irregularities in parliamentary elections earlier this month
sent an estimated 50,000 people out in protest. These protesters have
planned what is expected to be the biggest demonstration since the fall
of Communism for Saturday in Moscow. Vladimir V. Putin, the once and future president, is at last facing trouble from the streets.
The terminal crisis of Communism, by contrast, was a quiet affair. The
end of the Soviet Union was revolutionary, but it did not involve a
crowd storming the walls of the Kremlin, an attack on the K.G.B.
headquarters or calling up the Moscow army garrisons. Indeed the final
days of the Communist era were remarkable for the low intensity of
political activity of any kind.
On national television, Mr. Gorbachev put on a brave face: “We’re now
living in a new world,” he said during a Dec. 25, 1991, broadcast of his
resignation speech. “An end has been put to the cold war and to the
arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the country.” But he
could not disguise his regret that the Soviet order was about to be
taken apart.
Mr. Gorbachev was paying the price for his failures. The economic laws
he introduced in 1988 had weakened the huge state sector without
allowing private enterprise to emerge. He had irritated the country’s
dominant institutions — the Communist Party, the K.G.B. and the military
— but had merely trimmed their capacity to retaliate. By widening
freedoms of expression, moreover, he inadvertently encouraged radicals
to denounce Communism, despite his reforms.
Mr. Gorbachev had complacently assumed that reform would release the
energies of “the Soviet people.” But the truth was that no such people
existed. The Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians pressed for independent
statehood and chose their own Baltic patriots to lead them. The
Georgians in 1990 elected a wild nationalist as president. Throughout
the western and southeastern borderlands of the Soviet Union, the
disintegration proceeded apace.
In August 1991, while Mr. Gorbachev vacationed in Crimea, his
subordinates acted to halt his reforms by staging a coup. But the
plotters overlooked the need to apprehend Boris N. Yeltsin,
an ex-Communist radical who had been elected president of the Russian
republic two months earlier. Mr. Yeltsin raced to the Russian White
House in central Moscow.
Standing atop a tank, he defiantly denounced
the plotters. The coup was aborted, and when Mr. Gorbachev returned from
house arrest, it was Mr. Yeltsin who appeared the hero. Yet Yeltsin
felt he couldn’t consolidate his personal supremacy unless he broke up
the Soviet Union and governed Russia
as a separate state. He and his supporters saw Russia as a slumbering
giant with a future of enormous potential if the encumbrance of the
other Soviet republics was removed. He saw Communism as a dead end and a
totalitarian nightmare. And unlike Mr. Gorbachev, he was willing to say
this openly and without equivocation.
His opportunity for action arose on Dec. 1, 1991, when Ukrainians voted
to break away from the Soviet Union. Without Ukraine, it was clear, the
Soviet Union would face further secessionist demands. Mr. Yeltsin met
quietly with the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus and came to an
agreement to declare the Soviet Union abolished.
Mr. Gorbachev had no choice but to agree, and the vengeful Mr. Yeltsin
unceremoniously bundled him out of the Kremlin. The Russian people, it
turned out, preferred to watch politicians on television rather than
become active participants in the country’s transformation. They had
long been cynical about Communist leaders, and the trauma of the arrests
and executions during Stalin’s Great Terror of the late 1930s had made
them wary about taking part in politics.
Although thousands of young Russians had joined Mr. Yeltsin in defying
the coup plotters in August 1991, civic activism declined as conditions
worsened. As state enterprises underwent privatization, workers feared
unemployment and resisted calls to go on strike. Russia’s manufacturing
sector collapsed; only the petrochemical, gold and timber sectors
successfully weathered the storms of capitalist development. A few
businessmen became super-rich by exploiting legal loopholes and often
using fraudulent and violent methods. Most citizens of post-Communist
Russia were too exhausted to do more than grumble.
Public protest against the Kremlin became more difficult under Mr.
Putin. Elected to the presidency in 2000, and now serving as prime
minister, he has used ballot-box fraud, disqualification of rival
political candidates and control of national television to stay in
power. Although he gained popularity for bringing stability, his own
administration is now attracting growing hostility.
Most Russians are sick of the corruption, misrule and poverty that
plague their country while the Kremlin elite feasts on the profits from
oil and gas exports — and who can blame them? At the turn of the
millennium, 40 percent of the Russian people were living below the
United Nations-defined poverty line. Rising oil prices have made
poverty decline to some extent, but Mr. Putin has made no effort
to eradicate it altogether.
The opposition, having suffered from years of harassment at Mr. Putin’s
hands, has not yet succeeded in taking advantage of today’s unstable
situation. But the recent outburst of public protest has flummoxed Mr.
Putin, as he finds that his authoritarian government lacks the pressure
valves that allow liberal democracies to anticipate and alleviate
expressions of discontent.
Mr. Putin can no longer take his supremacy for granted. It is not yet a
revolutionary situation. After all, Mr. Putin, like Mr. Yeltsin before
him, can count on the money and pork-barrel politics needed to win the
presidency next year; and he has no qualms about letting the security
agencies use force.
But Russians, having sleepwalked away from Communism, are awakening to
the idea that if they want democracy and social justice, they need to
engage in active struggle. Quiescent 20 years ago during Soviet
Communism’s final days, they may at last be about to stand up for their
rights.
2 comments:
From the article:
"But Russians, having sleepwalked away from Communism, are awakening to the idea that if they want democracy and social justice, they need to engage in active struggle. Quiescent 20 years ago during Soviet Communism’s final days, they may at last be about to stand up for their rights."
Now, let's make a few poignant edits:
But Americans, having sleepwalked away from (our quasi-socialistic form of) capitalism, are awakening to the idea that if they want democracy and social justice, they need to engage in active struggle. Quiescent 20 years ago during the Reagan Revolution, they may at last be about to stand up for their rights.
Funny how you could praise that, but not be sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street. Is Sophie's Choice to indulge in sophistry?
I guess you missed:
By ROBERT SERVICE
Oxford, England, 23 December 2011
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