INSIGHT INTO THE NEWS: Ten years after the demise of the USSR: A report card on the new independent states (PART I) (08/20/00)

INSIGHT INTO THE NEWS

by David Marples

Ten years after the demise of the USSR: A report card on the new independent states

PART I

Upon beginning this paper, titled "Ten Years after the Demise of the USSR: Toward Democracy or Oriental Despotism? A Report Card on the Newly Independent States," the first question was how to divide the 12 republics of the former Soviet Union and the Baltic states. By what criteria should they be judged? It seemed to me that there might be several areas for comparison, though ultimately I narrowed it down to just four. These are as follows:

Economic reform: The Soviet economic system, the so-called administrative-command system, utilized the centralized Soviet structure and combined the various assets and natural resources of the various republics. Ambitious land improvement and irrigation schemes were deployed to try to improve agricultural output; grandiose industrial objects required input from various republics, often based on programs that would have been inexpedient from a republican perspective. All the republics have faced a common task of implementing a new economic policy and plan, based on privatization, a mixed system, or state control from the new center. Not all the republics are economic reformers, but they are being judged here on precisely this process, the premise being that the centralized system of running the economy contained inherent inefficiencies and drawbacks.
Democratization: To what degree have the republics made a transition from autocracy to democracies? Are their legislatures effective? How fair are the courts and are the judges appointed independently? Is there freedom of expression, freedom of the media? To what extent has corruption pervaded the system? Are there instances of quasi- or actual dictatorships, whereby the national leader has sought self-empowerment at the expense of the constitution or Parliament?
Nation-building: This may seem an obvious criterion, but not all the Soviet republics formed natural nations. Not all of them have demonstrated that they are willing to start the arduous process of creating or building a national state. Some contained small or large enclaves that wished to break away from the larger portion or titular nation. Ultimately, however, a viable state has to be a national state, united by a common territory and usually (though not always) a national language and culture. The new independent states (NIS) fall into two continents, Europe and Asia. Only the United Nations covers all these states, but there have been options open to the different regions. There were four nuclear states where the USSR held atomic weapons - three of which chose freely to give up those weapons. The European republics have sought to join the Council of Europe, and, with more difficulties, the European Union. The Caucasian states have focused more on the Black Sea region, etc. I have regarded the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a stopgap rather than a serious attempt at integration. Manifestly it is falling apart, thus I have judged the NIS by the degree to which they have sought to put together viable alternatives or sought to join structures that may undermine or even end the CIS altogether. It is unfair to judge Russia in this way since for Russia the CIS makes more sense.
Human rights: This seems to me a critical issue given the deceptively peaceful nature of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is in my view quite distinct from democratization, since states that are blatantly undemocratic in structure can still respect human rights. Some potentially divisive issues remained after the dissolution of the USSR. An obvious example is the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-populated enclave in Azerbaijan. Human rights encompass tolerance of minorities and of religious groups, and the freedom to demonstrate without arrest or detention.

For scholars studying the former Soviet Union, the big problem since 1991 has been how to switch from a pattern that allowed one to concentrate on Moscow-based diktat to certain republics. What was possible 10 years ago is no longer possible today because of the overflow of information: the media, the Internet, free and non-free republican press. No one can possibly cover all the states and all events (and likely no one would want to). I know, for example, scholars whose sole focus today is the republic of Kyrgysztan, even though they were trained as Soviet specialists.

On the other hand, I have long felt that it is a mistake not to compare the progress of the 15 republics. They began more or less on even ground and it seems more realistic to compare them with each other rather than with Western countries or even the states of East-Central Europe. No one should work in a vacuum, and concentration solely on one republic can often provide a very misleading impression.

Economic reform

One has to make several distinctions among the various processes of economic reform. The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were already enjoying a higher living standard than the rest of the Soviet Union at the time of independence. They benefited from a high level of foreign investment and have moved quickly to remove any vestiges of the Soviet regime.

By 1999 65 percent of Estonia's trade was with members of the EU, predominantly with Sweden and Finland, and privatization was well under way by 1994. Latvia had more mixed fortunes. By 1994 it enjoyed the lowest rate of inflation among all the former Soviet republics, but in 1996 many of its banks went bankrupt because of bad loans. By 1998 the country once again had a balanced budget and the economic picture had improved dramatically. Lithuania's progress was also relatively slow until the defeat of the pro-Communist Democratic Labor Party in 1997 and the victory of the more pro-market Homeland Union. All three states can be categorized as "advanced reformers."

A second group of medium-level reformers comprises Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova. These are countries that have clearly made some positive steps but subsequently have run into problems.

In Russia's case the turning point was the financial crisis of August 1998, an event that affected most of its neighbors. Kazakstan from the outset maintained a distance from Russia and modeled its reform on a combination of programs undertaken in China and South Korea. In 1993 it joined the International Monetary Fund, but the situation degenerated in the late 1990s thanks to a political crisis (discussed later) and the personal ambitions of the president. For foreign investors, Kazakstan is a less attractive prospect today than it was five years ago. The small republic of Kyrgyzstan made some positive steps - particularly the establishment of a stable currency by 1996 - but official endorsement of land privatization came only last year and only amid widespread protests in the southern part of the country. Moldova's progress was restricted by explosive questions regarding the status of the Transdniester region, independence and language questions that plagued the republic into the mid-1990s.

A third group, which can be termed the "slow reformers" brings together republics with diverse political structures: Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Of the four, Ukraine clearly had the best opportunity to embark upon radical economic reforms in 1992 but became embroiled instead in territorial and constitutional disputes with Russia and its autonomous republic of Crimea, respectively. Both Ukraine and Belarus suffered a dramatic fall in GDP in the early post-Soviet years as traditional industries contracted or became obsolete. Foreign investment declined as businesses became discouraged by a plethora of laws and high taxes. Resource-rich Turkmenistan also began positively with progressive laws for privatization of land already on paper by the summer of 1992, but in practice little was done. Economic reform remains the major priority of President Saparmyat Niyazov but the prime goal of a pipeline for the export of oil and gas to the countries of Western Europe has yet to be fulfilled. Uzbekistan, the former cotton capital of the USSR, has a system of partial privatization but the population subsists on an agricultural economy with a powerful state sector.

The final group in the economic reform process is made up of republics that have been severely hampered by civil conflict that has prevented significant progress being made: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan. To paraphrase the former Prime minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher: "It is hard to do business in a war zone."

Of the four countries beset by conflict - it has virtually ended in three of them - Georgia and Armenia seem to be in the best position and have the most will to embark on most radical economic changes, many of which found their way into law in the early 1990s. However, Georgia is also the republic in which new civil clashes threaten to break out regularly, particularly on the border with Abkhazia. Armenia, on the other hand, introduced a radical economic reform program in the early 1990s and by 1993 most retail trade had been privatized.

Democratization

There are several characteristics that are similar in the democratization process in all the NIS other than the three Baltic states. These are a gradual or sudden enhancement of the authority of the presidency with a concomitant weakening of the legislature and, in most cases though far from all, the judicial system. The difference lies in the degree of presidential control. All the current presidents have some linkage to the old Soviet system, though many of the present group held positions of secondary rank in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and most do not formally declare themselves to be Communists today.

In general, the Central Asian republics and Kazakstan are the least democratic of all the former Soviet states. The Baltic states have parliamentary systems and form coalition governments. Their presidents are less powerful - closer to the model of Germany than the United States.

Uzbekistan is arguably the most unreformed of all the republics. The head of state, President Islam Karimov, was elected by the Uzbek Supreme Soviet in March 1990 and extended his term in office by government-run referenda until the year 2003. Opposition parties are virtually non-existent and the president appoints all the representatives of the judicial system.

Close to Mr. Karimov in terms of length of time in office is President Niyazov of Turkmenistan, who is also chairman of the Council of Ministers, and began his term in October 1990. In 1994, Mr. Niyazov ran unopposed for a renewal of his presidency, receiving a reported 99.5 percent of the vote, but was gracious enough to decline a 1998 request to be "president for life" because it would be in contravention of the Turkmen Constitution. He has, however, adopted the title, "Father of all the Turkmens."

A solid third on this list of mini-dictators is Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakstan, a country the size of India, but with a sparse population of 15.6 million. Mr. Nazarbayev was also the first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakstan since June 1989. He subsequently ran unopposed for the presidency of the independent Kazak state in December 1991, increased his powers at the behest of Parliament (the Supreme Kenges) in December 1993, and naturally took the appropriate step of dissolving the Parliament and ruling by decree in March 1995. A referendum followed on extending the president's term of office until December 2000, which was approved by 91 percent of the doting faithful. Gaining faith in his own immortality, President Nazarbayev decided to build his own palace in the remote region of Akmola in 1995 (eventually renamed Astana), which today is the new capital of Kazakstan. A new presidential election was suddenly announced in January 1999, and the government promptly banned the candidacy of the leading oppositionist. Mr. Nazarbayev is officially in office until 2006 (the term has been extended from five to seven years), but unless he dies (in Astana this is considered no more than a remote possibility), there is little prospect of a change of leadership.

What happens when a dictator dies? In Azerbaijan, the likelihood is that power will remain in the family. Former Azeri KGB leader Heidar Aliyev has run the country since 1993, virtually without a Parliament, and he has nurtured his son as his successor - the health of the 76-year-old leader is beginning to fail. When he was re-elected in 1998, Aliyev and his government appointed the Central Election Commission, and used police and security forces to run the polling stations. His official tally of 72 percent of the votes is the only suggestion that President Aliyev lacks the universal adulation of his Central Asian counterparts, though the media have done their utmost to create a personality cult out of an aging ex-Soviet bureaucrat. These then are the extreme examples.

They are followed closely by Belarus' Alyaksandr Lukashenka, a 45-year-old former KGB border guard and state farm chairman, who studied well the tactics of Central Asian dictators and extended his own term of office via a doctored referendum of November 1996 and created a new rubber-stamp Parliament and judiciary. The difference is that Belarus is in the center of Europe rather than in Asia.

Tajikistan, while somewhat less extreme in terms of official propaganda, remains the least changed of all republics in that the Communists continue to rule virtually as in Soviet times, led since November 1992 by President Imomali Rakhmonov. In Kyrgyzstan, President Askar Akayev, in office since October 1990, appeared to be following the path of his Central Asian counterparts, albeit with a more human face, until the legislative assembly vetoed a proposal to hold a referendum in 1995 that would have extended his term of office until 2001. Four months later, however, Mr. Akayev was reconfirmed as president with almost 72 percent of the vote.

Moldova, Armenia and Ukraine can be described as authoritarian rather than dictatorial. In all three cases the initial post-Soviet leadership has been replaced: in Moldova, Petru Lucinschi defeated the first President, Mircea Snegur, in January 1997; in Armenia, Levon Ter Petrosian resigned in February 1999 and was replaced by Robert Kocharian; whereas in Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma narrowly defeated Leonid Kravchuk in July 1994 and was then re-elected late last year. In Moldova and Ukraine, at least until very recently, the parties of the left (Communists, Socialists, Agrarians) held the balance of power in the legislature, though a referendum of dubious legality in April 2000 in Ukraine addressed this problem by providing enhanced powers to the executive. Both Moldova and Ukraine have held elections decreed to be fundamentally fair by international observers.

In Armenia there clearly was official tampering with the results of the 1996 presidential election, but in 1998 there was a general consensus that the election of Mr. Kocharian reflected the wishes of the majority of voters. However, Armenian politics have been subject to violent and destructive interludes, culminating in the assassination of both the prime minister and the Parliament chairman last October. These events have served to negate democratic progress in Armenia.

Lastly, Russia and Georgia have maintained a certain stability in office: in Russia's case this occurred after President Boris Yeltsin's military assault on the Parliament building in October 1993, and in Georgia's case after Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister, took over from the ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia in early 1992. While recent elections have been fair, both countries have taken steps to end separatist movements by military force rather than negotiation, which significantly detracts from the democratization process as a whole.

Corruption has pervaded all the republics to a greater or lesser degree. The period of the legalization of the black market - what might be described as the heyday of economic liberalization plans - also saw the partial and even complete control over resources, exports of precious materials, management of private businesses and farms by groups formerly influential in the shadow economy.

In Georgia, President Shevardnadze has sometimes seemed helpless to control gang leaders; Russia allegedly went to war with the republic of Chechnya to eliminate Chechen terrorism in the capital city though Russia's "home grown mafia" is far more formidable; Ukraine has a former prime minister, Petro Lazarenko, currently a fugitive seeking political asylum in the United States rather than return to face charges of corruption while the Central Asian states have divided into various tribes struggling for power, though with the proviso that the head of the dominant tribe in most instances is the president himself.

David Marples is a professor of history at the University of Alberta. This paper was delivered as the keynote address at the banquet of the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Slavists, held at the University of Alberta on May 29. Slight changes have been made in the format for this version. (The author wishes to thank Stephanie Langton for her assistance in gathering materials.)

PART I

CONCLUSION

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