ANALYSIS: Russia's elections and Ukraine (03/03/96)

ANALYSIS: Russia's elections and Ukraine

by Volodymyr Zviglyanich

PART I

The results of recent parliamentary elections in Russia have confirmed the data of sociological polls that almost unanimously predicted the success of the Communists and their leader, Gennady Zyuganov.

During parliamentary elections in 1993, sociologists had mistakenly given the victory to Yegor Gaidar's Russia's Choice party, failing to predict the success of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal-Democratic Party. In 1995 Mr. Zhirinovsky finished second, Viktor Chernomyrdin and his party Our Home is Russia came in third, while Grigory Yavlinsky's Yabloko concluded the list of those political forces that won representation in the Duma. Mr. Gaidar and other democratic parties failed to be represented in the Parliament.

If one considers the Communists and Mr. Zhirinovsky's men as the radical opponents to the government's course and Mr. Yavlinsky's party as a moderate opponent, then together they would control some 250 of 450 seats in the Duma, leaving Mr. Chernomyrdin with only 54 seats. Mr. Zyuganov will control nearly 160 seats. In this situation the government can only hope that the Communists and Liberal-Democrats will fail to establish a coalition and that Yabloko in extreme cases will support the prime minister. Only with such a disposition of political forces in the Parliament will the government policy have some chances for success. However, it looks like Russia faces the stage of "correction" of reforms that has occurred in Ukraine.

Why did it happen?

Boris Yeltsin himself laid the groundwork for these conditions. In 1993, after the forceful dissolution of the Russian Parliament, he decreed that the new Parliament would exist for only two years. At that time he feared the forthcoming Parliament would not be much better than its predecessor.

However, the Duma headed by the loyal moderate Ivan Rybkin was not a threat to Mr. Yeltsin. Neither was the Council of the Federation, the upper house of the Parliament of Mr. Yeltsin's zealous devotee, Vladimir Shumeiko. Both chambers perfectly matched the game plan elaborated by Mr. Yeltsin's team: to imitate democracy, while leaving real power to a single leader.

When Mr. Yeltsin understood this, he organized several attempts to prepare public opinion for the possible cancellation of elections. Public reaction was negative. Two days prior to the elections, in his televised address to the nation, Mr. Yeltsin desperately urged the Russian people not to vote for the Communists, calling their potential victory a prologue to civil war. Therefore, the results of the elections on December 17 reflected the failure of Mr. Yeltsin's dialogue with the nation.

The reason for these results is Mr. Yeltsin's craving for power and his mistrust of the representative branch of power. Mr. Yeltsin also expected that economic reforms would bring some prosperity to the masses, thus undermining the social base of the "red-brown" electorate.

However, the Russian president failed to conduct sweeping land reform, which would turn the land into a commodity. In the Russian mentality, land still represents a value rather than an economic category.

During Mr. Yeltsin's rule, more than 50 million, or one-third of the population, has lived below the poverty level, established to be earnings of somewhere between $20 and $30 monthly. Life expectancy in the 1990s has dropped from 65-70 years (as during the Brezhnev era) to 58.8 years, putting Russia on a par with such states as Ethiopia, Mozambique and Yemen.

Several foreign advisers, such as Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard University and Anders Aslund from Sweden, helped Mr. Yeltsin reach this stage. Acting with the best intentions, they forgot that mathematical calculations of macroeconomic miracles do not take into account the quirks of the Russian soul and the width of the Russian plains.

Economic radicalism had succeeded in smaller countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where the degree of corruption among state bureaucrats and the people's alienation from the government did not reach Russia's level. The "shock therapy" program as applied in Russia practically guaranteed the results of the December 17 vote. Therefore, the Communists did not spend a penny on TV commercials.

The crash program weakened the rational components of the public mentality and decreased the influence on the masses of such "rational" politicians as Mr. Gaidar and his "young Turks." Their place now has been taken (like it was in Bolshevik Russia in 1917 and in Nazi Germany) by "instinctive" politicians like Messrs. Zyganov, Zhirinovsky and Aleksandr Lebed, who appeal to the will, passions, and mob instincts of survival rather than to reason and law.

There are several myths about the "new communists":

First, the modern communists are social-democrats if not of the German and the Swedish type, then at least like those in the Eastern European countries where the left forces came to power earlier.
Second, the process of economic reform in Russia runs so deeply (especially in the banking sphere) that to reverse it is virtually impossible without bloodshed, which the communists will not dare to start.
Third, as stated by Alexander Tsipko, former adviser to Mykhail Gorbachev, it is not the Communists who came to power in Russia. Rather, these are gosudarstvenniki (statists), pragmatic leaders, who understand the moral values of their people. These values have been damaged by Mr. Yeltsin, who destroyed the Slavic core of the Soviet Union. Mr. Tsipko holds that Mr. Zyuganov "has discovered the transition from Marxism-Leninism...to the ordinary Russian; it is a path towards a patriotic ideology, not of an imperial power, but of a great power."

First of all, one should stress that the Communists in Russia are not European-style liberal left politicians who respect individual values, law and the Constitution. During his first press conference after the elections, Mr. Zyuganov expressed his dissatisfaction with the existing constitution in Russia. The difference between the Communists in Eastern Europe and those who came to power in Russia is almost the same as that between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. What the Bolsheviks did with the Mensheviks, and then with the people, is known. The Communist Party could get rid of this reputation if it officially denounced Bolshevism as both theory and practice. So far they have not done this, and Lenin remains an icon for them.

Second, to change the course of economic reform in Russia is not as difficult as imagined. After four years of reforms a middle class of proprietors possessing the means to protect their property has not emerged. Instead, there are several hundreds of the "new Russians" whose names are regularly published in the newspaper Kommersant. What is needed is several edicts and show trials of "blood-suckers," and public support for such actions is guaranteed.

Third, the Russian version of communism and morals are two antipodes. Communist ideology deems moral that which corresponds to today's party prescriptions. Therefore, the re-nationalization of property on which Russia's "new Communists" insist will be declared "moral." In this regard they are real pragmatists - but this is pragmatism of exclusive, monologue-oriented type that rejects pluralism, tolerance and dialogue. Such pragmatism paves the way to some form of dictatorship of this or that fashion. Stressing the patriotism of a great power, rather than an imperial power, is a verbal disguise of the traditional zeal for hegemony usually associated with this ideology.

Dr. Volodymyr Zviglyanich is adjunct professor of East European area studies at George Washington University.

CONCLUSION

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