Showing papers in "Demokratizatsiya in 1999"

From Oligarchy to Oligarchy: The Structure of Russia's Ruling Elite

Abstract: Author's Note: This article is a revised and expanded version of a lecture delivered at the Kennan Institute, Washington, D.C., 14 December 1998. It was updated to include events through the first week of February 1999. Because of the rapid unfolding of the power struggle between President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Primakov at the time this article was submitted for publication, I decided that it was fruitless to try to update the text. Any text was likely to be out of date in some specifics by the time it appeared; for example, either Primakov or Yeltsin might no longer be in office. Nevertheless, I am confident that the outcome of the struggle will not change the basic argument about the structure of the Russian oligarchy, including the point that the relations among oligarchic groups will remain in flux until power is transferred to Yeltsin's successor. As has been true for centuries, Russia today is ruled by a small oligarchy.(1) This statement does not mean that Russia is dominated by that narrow group of well-connected businessmen often referred to as "the oligarchs" in both Russian and Western media. Those men, particularly media moguls Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, have done much to promote their own reputation for power and influence, largely through the media they control. In fact, their power has been much exaggerated, and the focus on them has diverted attention from the true composition and structure of Russia's oligarchy. It has even led some keen observers to doubt its existence.(2) But if "oligarchy" is understood in the classical sense as the rule by a small propertied class in their own parochial interests, then Russia is most definitely ruled by one.(3) The primary oligarchic structures are large political/economic coalitions built around control of key government positions, significant financial and industrial assets, mass media outlets and information-gathering agencies, and instruments of coercion (both state and private). Such structures dominate the political and economic landscape at the national and regional levels. Their rise and fall and the interaction among them drive politics. More than formal institutions such as the government and parliament, these coalitions set the political and economic agenda, limit the range of policy choices, and make the fundamental decisions even if the decisions themselves are presented as the outcome of deliberations and operations of the formal institutions. Contrary to prevailing opinion, the financial meltdown of August 1998 and the ensuing economic and political turmoil have not marked the demise of the oligarchy, although they continue to have far-reaching consequences for the fate of specific individuals, some of whom will lose power, never to regain it. Rather, the turmoil has broken the coalitions down into their constituent parts and created conditions for their restructuring and reordering, as well as for the emergence of entirely new coalitions. The fundamental condition that has historically given rise to and sustained the oligarchy--the close intertwining of power and property--remains unchanged. A brief review of recent Soviet/Russian history suggests that the nature of power is key in determining the structure and behavior of the oligarchy. The more unified power, the more structured and disciplined the oligarchy. The erosion and diffusion of power sharpen the competition among rival oligarchic groups, without necessarily broadening significantly the social stratum that engages in the struggle for power and property. The weakening of power also raises the risk that the competition among oligarchic groups will spin out of control and jeopardize regime stability. The Soviet Oligarchy After the death of Stalin, a classic oligarchy, or collective leadership as the Soviet leaders called it, emerged in the Soviet Union, structured in a rigid hierarchy around the leading organs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). …

Electoral Democracy or Electoral Clanism: Russian Democratization and Theories of Transition

Abstract: It seems clear that Russia's attempts at democratization and Westernization will not meet the expectations of Russia's democratic reformers. As happened in previous eras of Westernization, only some elements of Western liberal democracy have taken root in Russian soil, the most important of them being competitive elections. Other fundamental elements of liberalism have not only failed to flourish, but have degenerated since the late Soviet era. Compared with the late Gorbachev period of 1990-91, the mass media and courts in today's Russia are less independent, society's role is weaker, personal rights and freedoms are less secure, and even elections are less free and fair than they were in 1990. To understand this outcome of Russian democratization, the correlation between the electoral process and the development of liberalism should be examined. Elections and Liberal Democracy By the second half of the twentieth century, the belief that democracy is the ideal or at least the best possible organization of human society has become dominant among political scientists, and especially among the political elites of most countries of the world. There are virtually no discussions today of whether democracy is good or bad; opinions differ only on what kind of democracy is more democratic, or what kind of democracy is genuine. Some political scientists have pointed out that the desire of every leader and political movement in today's world to be seen as democratic led to such stretching of the term that it turned into "not so much a term of restricted and specific meaning as a vague endorsement of a popular idea."(1) But the meaning of "democracy" has not withered away completely. Authors of its numerous modern definitions can be divided into two major groups. Those who belong to the first, following Joseph Schumpeter, maintain that elections are the only practical criterion of democracy.(2) The other group believes that democracy cannot be defined by elections alone. It can in turn be divided into two subgroups. The first consists of those who include the fundamentals of political liberalism in their definition of democracy. They argue that a democratic society should be characterized not only by the freedom and fairness of elections but also by a broadly defined pluralism. Thus, they identify democracy with its liberal-democratic form.(3) Others add social and economic democracy, guarantees of social equality, or at least of some level of social justice.(4) Discussions about democracy are carried on almost exclusively among political theorists. In practical politics, however, Schumpeter's definition has prevailed. In today's world, governments and nongovernmental groups in the West, and their supporters from the opposition forces advocating democracy and liberalization in nondemocratic countries, call for immediate general elections according to the rules that exist in contemporary, developed liberal democracies. Regardless of whether it is Bosnia, Russia, Rwanda, China, or Nigeria, elections are promoted as the first and primary remedy for societal evils. In many cases, this approach has led to success, and using the criterion of elections alone, the number of democracies in the world is growing steadily. On these grounds, supporters of the electoral approach have begun to speak of the "third wave" of democratization, which even led to the emergence of such bizarre concepts as Francis Fukuyama's "end of history." At the same time, several theorists have observed that in many countries elections did not produce liberal democracy, with its widely accepted traits: a high level of freedom, the rule of law, secure rights and freedoms of individuals and minorities, and so forth.(5) In fact, in some cases they led to the reverse. Analysis of this phenomenon resulted in a new formulation that separated elections from liberalism and (when elections were still considered to be the essence of democracy) democracy from liberalism. …

Russian Regions as International Actors

Abstract: The international activities of subnational units in the Western countries are deeply rooted in their political cultures and institutional structures. For example, it is common for U.S. states to have their offices abroad or for regions of Canada, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium to have strong international contacts of their own. It is natural considering that most of the Western states were formed as "associative federations," that is to say, their federal structures were based on pre-existing autonomous political units. This is not the case with the Russian Federation, which is actually being formed on a dissociative basis, that is, a formerly unitary state is going through a painful process of decentralization and devolution of authorities. This distinction makes nascent patterns of international activity by Russian regions intriguing for scholars and deserving of deeper attention. Between Regionalism and Globalism: Theoretical Background The study of regions within the wider international ambit has political, economic, social, and cultural relevance. One can see what is local in the global, and what is global on the local level. It also sheds light on the domestic sources of foreign policy in Russia, as well as the evolution of federalism in this huge democratizing nation. In addition, in this article, I will offer some insights on the structure of Russian international relations. The contemporary world is characterized by paradoxical trends. Internationalization is in progress as national governments respond to an expanding range of international linkages, economic interdependence, and the demands of policy issues, which can no longer be managed within the framework of individual political systems. At the same time, there is a growing alertness on the part of subnational interests, both governmental and nongovernmental, to those pressures.(1) Underpinning those trends are two developments that both reflect and help to explain them: the expanding agenda of foreign policy and the diminishing distinctions between domestic and foreign policy. Traditional distinctions between "high" and "low" politics appear far removed from reality. When subnational units establish links with their foreign counterparts, they represent a true departure from the traditional concept in which the conduct of all international relations was the exclusive domain of the central government. The most important driving forces for economic regionalization come from markets, private trade and investment flows, and the policies of companies. Regionalization is therefore often conceptualized in terms of "complexes," "networks" "flows" or "mosaics." Yet patterns of regionalization do not necessarily coincide with the borders of states. Migration, markets, and social networks may lead to increased interaction and interconnectedness, tying together parts of existing states and creating new cross-border regions. The core of such "transnational regionalism" might be economic (as in the development of industrial corridors, or networks linking major industrial centers), or it can be built around a high level of human interpenetration.(2) At one level, therefore, the international economy is becoming increasingly integrated, even though many individual polities are becoming more and more fragmented. And that relates to another causal factor in foreign policy localization, namely, the frequent inability of modern governments to manage the political systems and satisfy the demands generated within them. State sovereignty is weakening. It cannot maintain its ordering of social life across the endless play of multiple forces of fragmentation and integration.(3) Desire by localities to become involved in ever-larger sectors of public policy reflects the fact that national governments often find it impossible to serve community interests from a single center of power. In countries where the national government is ineffective in dealing with the concerns of subnational communities, provincial or local governments have been asserting themselves. …

Discourse on NATO in Russia during the Kosovo War

Abstract: Tell me what you think about NATO and I'll tell you who you are. In contemporary Russia, views on NATO define one's political philosophy and one's view of Russia vis-a-vis the West generally. But these attitudes are inseparably intertwined with domestic Russian politics and the struggle for power. According to conventional wisdom today, Russia views NATO with hostility, irreparable damage having been done to the Russian perception by the 1999 expansion to include three new members; the modernization of American high-tech weaponry; and most important, the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia. No doubt these policies contributed to the strong anti-American feelings prevalent in Russia during the bombing campaign. Rather than focusing on what the West has done to alienate benevolent Russians, however, a more productive approach to explaining stormy Russia-NATO relations over the past year is to view them in the context of Russian domestic politics, on the assumption that whatever Russian actors did vis-a-vis the West and NATO during the period was a reflection of Russian domestic priorities. Indeed President Yeltsin has changed his tune on NATO at least three times in response to his political struggles during that turbulent year. From Partnership for Peace, he led Russia to a near-confrontation over "NATO aggression," and then again to business as usual at the G-8 summit. In this article, I attempt to untangle the web of contradictory policies and statements and place Russian policy toward NATO into the domestic context. August 1998: Falling Ruble, Falling Gods When the ruble collapsed in August 1998, with it collapsed the faith of the Russian general public in Western-style economic reform. This simple fact has not quite been appreciated in the United States. The August debacle wiped out the confidence among the emerging middle classes that life is getting better. It hurt most the very classes that had believed that pro-Western Russian reform would eventually lead Russia to prosperity and democracy. Among people in their thirties engaged in a variety of business ventures, the West, the U.S.A., NATO, and market economy were positive notions. They did not fear NATO, and they welcomed American ways and American investment. Clearly this constituency was not a majority in Russia. Yet it probably was a majority in the big cities. It was the up-and-coming political force that voted for Yeltsin in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. The ruble collapse discredited the government of Kirienko and with it the entire group of so-called young reformers--Gaidar, Nemtsov, and Chubais--whom Larry Summers had called the dream team of reformers.(1) In the run-up to the August disaster, liberal politicians such as Grigory Yavlinsky and his Yabloko party, the steadfast democratic critics of the Yeltsin regime, had been warning that true economic reforms had not been undertaken, that dependence on Western loans for balancing the budget would get the reformers into trouble, and that an oligarchy was being created. Most of these critical voices went unnoticed both in Russia and in the West. Western banks were enthusiastic about the Russian market. The Clinton administration was happy with Yeltsin and did not want to hear anything about corruption, theft, or embezzlement of state funds. In August 1998, the time had come to pay the piper. Reformers were discredited, along with the pro-Western course in the economy. Conditions were ripe for forces to emerge that had been known for a reserved, if not outright hostile, policy in regard to NATO. Yevgeny Primakov's appointment was a reflection of the new climate in the country. Primakov had a reputation as a tough foreign minister who stood up for Russia's perceived rights as a superpower. He had earned the applause of the Communists and nationalist-democrats such as the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, on numerous occasions. The appointment of Primakov was an admission by Yeltsin that the pro-Western course was discredited. …

Rigging the U.S.-Russian Relationship: Harvard, Chubais, and the Transidentity Game

Abstract: When the Soviet Union abruptly ceased to exist at the end of 1991, it seemed that the West, particularly the United States, finally had what it had always wanted: the chance to introduce quick, all-encompassing political and economic reforms that would remake Russia in the West's own image. It was a watershed event. After decades of separation and acrimony, forged by the political circumstances of the cold war and exacerbated by barriers of language, culture, information, and semi-closed borders, a golden opportunity for reconciliation had arrived: Friendly, cooperative relations could be built between East and West, and Western aid could help Russia construct a democratic, free-market state. The two sides set out to establish a new relationship, refocused on a positive path. The United States offered Russia assistance and diplomatic partnership, as part of the promise of a new relationship. Theoretically, aid from the United States to Russia was to help nurture the bilateral relationship. Aid was to serve as a bridge built by the representatives of each side with the donor and recipient representatives carrying out the agendas of their respective sides.(1) In practice, however, representation can be problematic. The individuals who are designated as emissaries, the constraints (or lack thereof) under which they operate and the relations and agendas that they work out among themselves can alter the stated purpose of the larger sides that the emissaries, in theory, represent. The way in which the United States and Russia intersected with each other through their respective representatives is such a case. The group on each side that was elevated to play the role of bridge builder--and the relationships among the bridge builders--would fundamentally affect aid outcomes and help shape economic and political results in ways that contradicted the announced goals of U.S. assistance: to foster economic development and democratization and to nurture relations with nations favorable and friendly to the United States. Transactorship In U.S. economic and aid relations with Russia, what I have termed the "transactorship" model of organizing relations between sides evolved: a small, collusive, informal group, made up of individuals ("transactors")(2) from both sides who supplant the official relations and each side's stated goals with the group's own agenda. Although the transactors may indeed share the stated goals of the sides, they have additional goals, the pursuit of which may, advertantly or inadvertantly, result in the subversion of the sides' goals. All the while the transactors uphold an appearance of operating on behalf of the side that brought them to the bridge. Those individuals, who through processes on their respective sides are empowered to officially represent their nation-state or demarcated group to the other side and to the wider world, become the vehicles through which relations between the two sides are organized. The transactors constitute a new structure--a kind of informal governance that supplants and/or parallels formal structures. In transactorship there may be a dominant side, which claims monetary and moral superiority under some universal system of justice, and which carries out a civilizing or social engineering mission. Central to the dominant side's confidence that it can surmount the other side's cultural, social, and political constraints is that it finds common ground with a small like-minded group on the other side. The dominant side sees that group as eminently suited both to help carry out the dominant side's mission of reshaping society and to represent the other side. The dominant side's choice of representatives is symbolic. The representatives of the two sides form a transactor group that becomes the dominant side's means to surmount any barriers between the two sides. In the U.S.-Russia case, the representatives from the United States were a group from the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID); from Russia they were a group of self-styled "reformers"--the so-called Chubais Clan. …

Russia's Many Foreign Policies

Abstract: What are Russian foreign policy objectives? It depends on whom you ask. In making assessments of Russia's behavior in the world, it is absolutely critical that we recognize that Russia today is not a totalitarian state ruled by a Communist Party with a single and clearly articulated foreign policy of expanding world socialism and destroying world capitalism and democracy. That state disappeared in 1991. Rather, Russia is a democratizing state--a weakly institutionalized democracy with several deficiencies, but a democratizing state nonetheless. Russia's foreign policy, in turn, is a product of domestic politics in a pluralistic system. In democracies, "states" do not have foreign policy objectives. Rather, individual political leaders, parties, and interest groups have foreign policy objectives. Under certain conditions, these various forces come together to support a united purpose in foreign affairs. At other times, these disparate groups can have conflicting views about foreign policy objectives. They can even support the same foreign policy objective for different reasons.(1) Russia today is no different. Although Russian leaders share in supporting a few common, general foreign policy objectives, they disagree on many others. They also disagree on the means that should be deployed to achieve the same foreign policy objective. The foreign policy that eventually results is a product of debate, political struggle, electoral politics, and' lobbying by key interest groups. Because Russia is undergoing revolutionary change internally, the foreign policy that results from Russian domestic politics can change quickly. This article makes the case for the centrality of domestic politics in the articulation and implementation of Russian foreign policy. The first section discusses briefly why realism--a theory that assumes a unitary actor--cannot account for Russia's behavior in the international system over the last decade and why the domestic level of analysis offers a better lens for explaining Russian foreign policy. The second section outlines the small set of foreign policy issues around which a consensus has emerged in Russia. The third section describes the major schools of thought in Russia about foreign policy. The fourth section then gives a brief historical overview of the evolution of Russian foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, demonstrating how the fates and fortunes of different political groups in Russia have brought changes in Russian foreign policy. The fifth section turns to the Kosovo crisis and shows how these different schools of thought have understood and influenced Russia's role in the conflict. The sixth section discusses how Russia's parliamentary election, scheduled for December 1999, and its presidential election, scheduled for June 2000, could change Russian foreign policy. The conclusion examines the implications of Russia's many foreign policies for U.S.-Russian relations. Supplementing Realism with Domestic Politics The mainstream of international relations theory has no place for domestic politics in explaining or predicting state behavior. Realism posits that state behavior can be explained by treating states as rational, unitary actors seeking to survive in an anarchic world.(2) To provide first for their own security, as well as pursue other objectives of national interest, states seek power.(3) As Hans Morganthau starkly stated, "International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim."(4) States can acquire power either by internal balancing--increasing internal power capabilities--or by external balancing--alliance building.(5) Variables that do not relate directly to power capabilities of states are not part of the framework of analysis for realist theorists. Ideologies, domestic politics, economic activity, or international institutions are understood as either epiphenomenal, reflections of power, or components of power. …

The Patriarch and the President: Religion and Political Choice in Russia

Abstract: In this article, we argue that the political attitudes and electoral behavior of Orthodox adherents in Russia today exemplify the traditional symphonic ideal of church-state relations. As supporters of President Yeltsin, Orthodox believers are carrying forward the idea of sobornost, whereby subjects, while devoted to the church, submit freely to just rulers. In addition, following the tradition of a Christian citizen, believers have the obligation and responsibility to go to the polls and participate in voting. To test our hypothesis that religion is an important factor that influences individual political behavior in Russia, we provide evidence of the effect through personal interviews. We evaluate the responses to our survey questions and identify the points of contact between religious identity and political behavior in the following focal areas: voter turnout, presidential vote choice, and institutional support/distrust. We are able to demonstrate that traditional religious identities, still strong after decades of suppression, are among the major determining factors in vote choice. We find that the religious faithful in Russia are dubious of government institutions, yet concurrently, the faithful support the president and participate in voting at higher rates than nonbelievers. Under the old theoretical paradigm, religion was to be weakened with modernization. A more recent thesis is that the modern world is witnessing the "deprivatization" of religion--meaning that religions are refusing to accept the marginal and privatized roles that theories of modernity and secularization had reserved for them. Thus, religions are (re)entering the public sphere not only to "defend their traditional tuff," but also to "participate in the very struggles to define ... private and public spheres."(1) The Russian Orthodox Church is one such religion that is re-entering the public sphere. The Orthodox Church is participating in the collective construction and affirmation of new institutional structures. As we shall show, Orthodoxy in Russia today is serving to legitimate the current regime, yet that support is reserved and skeptical. The relationship between religion and politics is, therefore, complex, as the church plays a dual role of legitimator and critic. Given the complexity of these roles, even conflicting roles, the untangling of these interactions will only be started here.(2) Theoretical Considerations If we see the 1990s as the historical epoch when Russian voters first received the democratic franchise (arguing that until recently their votes meant little), then it is our responsibility as scholars to identify the major societal cleavages of this era, as they will have a defining impact on the future alignments of parties and voters. According to the Lipset and Rokkan tradition, Russian politics is being built on the major lines of cleavage characteristic of that society today.(3) Because Russia is well along in the modernization process, one might think that the Lipset and Rokkan framework has less applicability for this new democracy, but the historical struggle for power between the church and advocates of a secular state has not yet been played out in Russia. To further specify the foundations of political behavior in post-Soviet societies, one question that must be addressed is whether religious influences can be separated from those of class or economic interest. If religious differences simply mask a clash of economic or class interest, we can think of "religion as surrogate." In Kenneth Wald's conceptualization of this idea, "religion is relevant to politics only as a surrogate for some other form of `real' social conflict. For example, the religion of a low status group may simply reflect the correlation between the pattern of religious affiliation and socio-economic status."(4) Another application of this idea would be that higher-status individuals are more likely to adopt regime-supportive interpretations of the shared symbols than are lower-status people. …

The Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Aleksii II and the Russian State: An Unholy Alliance?

Abstract: Like most present-day Russian institutions, the Russian Orthodox Church is in the process of defining a role for itself amidst the political, social, and economic turbulence of postcommunist Russia The Russian Orthodox Church is unique, however, because it enjoys an unrivaled degree of respect and legitimacy as the embodiment of Russia's spiritual past and is invested with a national historic tradition that carries great mythical power This respect and legitimacy have been supplied and acknowledged by the population at large and by the political elite, and have been reinforced by the collective memory of seventy years of systematic and often brutal repression suffered by the church at the hands of the Soviet state But to what ends is the church hierarchy, under the leadership of Patriarch Aleksii II, using the immense power that it wields in today's Russia? How, and to what ends are secular authorities taking advantage of that power? Anyone attempting an assessment of the church's present role will almost immediately have his or her attention drawn to the large number of press articles on the church's dealings with political powers The sheer amount of publicity and high-profile political activity surrounding Patriarch Aleksii in particular and the Russian Orthodox Church in general makes one wonder whether the church does indeed stand above the political fray, as its hierarchs claim, or whether it is in fact deeply enmeshed in that fray as merely another champion of its own vested interests As with many of the political movements formed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the glue that united Russian Orthodox Church officials into a consensus was their opposition to the communist regime(1) In the postcommunist era, however, the fragile alliance between the church's various factions broke down as criticism began to be openly leveled against the Moscow patriarchate from various sources within the church(2) With time, the schisms over a wide variety of issues have become deepen The most infamous attacks against Aleksii and his church have been launched by the so-called Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), which lays claim to the moral and spiritual authority that the traditional Russian Orthodox Church purportedly forfeited with its agreement to collaborate with the Soviet state, and more ominously, with the KGB itself These charges of collaboration were substantiated to some degree in 1991 by Father Gleb Yakunin, a dissident priest and a member of the Congress of People's Deputies, who gained access to KGB files proving Aleksii's cooperation (under the codename "Drozdov") The extent or relevance of Aleksii's collaboration with the KGB aside, the patriarch's opponents have cited other quite serious grievances(3) Yakunin himself has accused Aleksii's church of a long list of offenses, becoming more vocal after he was defrocked by the Holy Synod for his decision to run in the December 1993 Duma elections In an open letter of 4 January 1994, Yakunin charged that church leaders had violated the canon in defrocking him, that important persons in the church hierarchy had worked as KGB agents, that the church had a secret fund and extorted money from its parishes, and that pro-fascist forces were gaining strength within the church In addition to these accusations, Yakunin offered suggestions on how fundamental reforms could be carried out within the church and called on its leaders to repent(4) Yakunin can be identified as the leader of the "liberal-dissident" opposition to Aleksii's church He has come out consistently against amendments to the 1990 laws on the freedom of conscience and religion, amendments ardently championed by Aleksii, that would restrict the activities of foreign religious organizations on Russian soil(5) Yakunin has also pegged himself as a progressive by leveling criticism at the absence of deeply needed reforms (after seventy years of emasculation of church institutions) that Aleksii II ostensibly could have and should have initiated, yet did not …

Post-Soviet Youth: Engagement in Civil Society-Belarus and Beyond

Abstract: In much of the current literature on social and political transformation in Belarus, once the most prosperous republic of the former Soviet Union (FSU), the focus tends to be on the snail's pace of market reforms and development of civil society.(1) Social analysis of the role youth may play in this process of transformation seems to have been largely neglected. However, there is hardly a more crucial indicator of the future of a society than the patterns of behavior and orientations of its youth, whatever the political regime happens to be at the moment. In this article, I focus on the first post-Soviet generation of youth--those young people whose civil socialization began during Gorbachev's perestroika, who have never lived under any social conditions except those of the transition period and have not inherited the civil habits of the previous system. Belarus, located between Russia and Poland at the crossroads of Europe, is a strategically important country today and will remain one for many years to come. But what is in the cards for the future of the country is a question for the people of Belarus. There are also questions about the increasing social expectations of the younger generation and the country's decreasing ability to meet them. I also present specific characteristics of present-day Belarus society that make it different from Russia and that are likely to become predominant in the future. I then examine the rising expectations of the post-Soviet generation of youth and explain why Belarus society cannot meet them. Next, I show social conditions that make this generation feel dissatisfied and deprived in their native land. These challenges, important as they are for Belarus, are also important for other countries of the FSU. These countries, still in the process of transition to democracy and free markets, initially believed they could obtain positive results for their peoples rapidly. They dreamed that the free market would inevitably bring them prosperity and civil society. Now they have realized that the process of transition is not as easy and brief as was initially believed, that the final results might differ from initial expectations, and that even democracy can mean many different things to different people. For some, it is the ability to express their opinions freely and protest openly; for others, it is the opportunity to choose their rulers in free elections; and for yet others, it is the chance to live in a criminal society and economic anarchy. It appears that democratic models cannot be routinely transplanted from other countries: they need some local preconditions and can fail if they do not deliver the goods for the people. Taking into consideration the deep contradiction between the painful process of transition and the expected rosy results, it is easy to understand why the countries of the FSU (including Belarus) cannot meet the high expectations of youth and create appropriate conditions for the younger generation to play a dominant role in this process. If the rest of the population tries simply to survive the current deepening crisis, post-Soviet youth wants to enjoy being able to live in an advanced Western-type society now. Belarus Civil Society: Reality or Illusion? The civil societies in Russia and Belarus are currently developing in different ways, despite the fact that the countries have a common Soviet heritage and attempted to form a new union.(2) The differences between them are in some ways similar to the differences between the United States and Canada. Although to an untrained observer the North American neighbors are similar or nearly the same, the two differ significantly, particularly in their institutions and value systems.(3) It is surprising for many outside observers to realize that Belarus and Russia are also quite different. Paradoxically, even with the lack of openness of the political processes in Belarus, the young generation is oriented primarily toward civil society and democracy. …

Russian Constitutional Change: An Opportunity Missed

Abstract: The Russian constitution of 1993 created a hypertrophic presidency invested with enormous powers relative to parliament For a moment in time, Russia's crisis of 1998 seemed to present an unexpected opportunity for much needed constitutional change The political maneuvering in the wake of the August financial collapse, including the dismissal of Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko, appeared to have a "silver lining," to wit, the possibility of constitutional revision The ailing and politically weakened President Boris Yeltsin, anxious to reappoint previously dismissed Viktor Chernomyrdin as the new prime minister, offered an olive branch to the parliamentary opposition, including the prospect of amending the 1993 constitution in return for the State Duma's confirmation of his candidate The offer was to no avail as Chernomyrdin's candidacy failed twice A compromise candidate, Evgeny Primakov, then easily sailed through the rough waters of Russian legislative-executive relations and was appointed prime minister in September Although the urgent tasks on the political agenda in fall 1998 were the formation of a new government and fashioning an economic crisis plan, the possibility of constitutional change, while temporarily dormant, was not dead Primakov eventually formed his government, although a coherent program to deal with the economic crisis still eluded him at his dismissal in spring 1999 Meanwhile, the prospect of constitutionally revising the relations of power, like flotsam, keeps bobbing up and down in Russia's turbulent politics A Rigid Constitution In 1993, Yeltsin and his constitutional draftsmen deliberately designed Russia's post-Soviet constitution as a rigid document that would be difficult to amend or revise once ratified Just as generals tend to refight the last war, those charged with designing new constitutions tend to draft reactive documents The Russian drafters were no exception In modeling the constitutional amendment procedures after the American example, they were reacting to the heavily conflicted presidential-parliamentary relations of the First Post-Soviet Russian Republic, which had ended in violence in the early fall of 1993 The preceding, much-amended Russian Republic Constitution of 1978 had provided for a flexible and relatively easy amendment procedure In effect, parliament had the authority to freely amend the constitution and had been doing so extensively since perestroika of the late 1980s, as the Russian elite strove to bring its Brezhnev-era constitution into alignment with the reform tasks then at hand(1) With the end of the Soviet Union in late 1991, fissures and then fault lines began to open in the Russian political elite as President Yeltsin and the parliamentary majority entered into an increasingly bitter adversarial relationship over economic reform policy as well as the design of a new constitution The patchwork, much-revised, still extant Soviet Russian constitution became the battleground, with the parliament constantly threatening to curb the president by constitutionally reducing his powers When Yeltsin finally prevailed through a bold, extraconstitutional move and gained full control of the constitutional drafting process, he was clearly determined to secure political stability through a pro-presidential constitution coupled with a rigid amendment procedure Chapter 9 of the constitution, "Constitutional Amendments and Revisions," embodies a two-part procedure The distinction is between ordinary amendments and extraordinary revisions of the constitution Chapters 3 through 8, the operational sections of the charter, are amendable through ordinary procedure, which is described as an amendment passed by supermajorities of both houses of parliament, and then subject to ratification by the legislatures of two-thirds of the eighty-nine subjects of the federation (Art 136) The procedure for extraordinary revision of the fundamental law pertains to any changes proposed in the constitution's fundamental principles (Chap …

Russian Regions after the Crisis: Coping with Economic Troubles Governors Reap Political Rewards

Abstract: The severity of the Russian financial crisis of August 1998 came as a surprise to many foreign investors and Russia watchers. Its roots and inevitability, however, were detectable to anyone who cared to look beyond Moscow and observe closely the state of economic deterioration in Russian regions. An unreformed domestic industry, loss-making agricultural sector, and dysfunctional financial system were clear signs of what was to come. An ineffective tax system was not the only cause of the fiscal crisis that brought about the 17 August devaluation of the ruble, default on government short-term debt, and a moratorium on commercial foreign debt service. The crisis was the natural result of an unreformed and politically unstable economy that did not turn out taxable profits. The extent of Russia's irresponsible politics and deteriorating economic conditions was most apparent in the regions. The financial crisis of summer 1998 exposed and exacerbated social and economic problems that had been mounting since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Prices for imported goods increased, collapsing banks halted wage and pension payments, suppliers ran low on food and medicine, and inflation corroded people's real income. Each region reacted differently, but none was able to shield itself completely from the crisis. The economic turmoil and Moscow's weakness encouraged governors' ambitions. As regional leaders reached for more political power, however, they inevitably confronted their own economic dependency on the shrinking federal budget. Thus, the crisis abruptly upset the precarious balance of power that had been evolving from the tug-of-war between center and periphery. At the same time, no serious threats to the integrity of the federation materialized, separatism remaining an unsustainable policy for most regions, which still depend heavily on federal subsidies. Regions in Pre-Crisis Distress Since the beginning of market reforms in 1992, regional economies have been subjected to structural changes that ripped apart the old functional and trade ties supporting the Soviet economy. The abolition of central planning, the liberalization of prices, and privatization were expected to create market conditions that would spur entrepreneurial activity and transform backward production facilities into competitive and modern firms. That did not happen. A misconstrued mass privatization scheme, a debilitating tax system, and delayed institutional and financial sector reforms created perverse incentives for economic agents across the regions. Enterprise and farm managers as well as private entrepreneurs were forced to or chose to focus on short-term gain and survival, instead of corporate restructuring, investment in production, and growth. The government and the banking sector did little to help industrial reorganization. Taxes were kept high to provide subsidies to politically important, but unprofitable factories. Most banks financed energy exports (and vice versa), instead of production and preferred to speculate in government securities rather than engage in corporate lending. As a result, industrial production fell 60 percent since 1992 (to put things in perspective, during the Great Depression output fell 35 percent in the United States). Regions dependent on heavy industries, such as Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Vologda, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Orenburg, Volgograd, Omsk, and Lipetsk, suffered the most. Small and medium enterprises were choked by heavy and arbitrarily assessed taxes and by an oppressive and frequently corrupt bureaucracy. The fate of the agricultural sector was even more distressing. Delay in land reforms, lack of financing for agricultural equipment and fertilizers, and depressed producers' prices (often manipulated by corrupt rings of middlemen) caused a 50 percent drop in agricultural produce. According to Agriculture and Foodstuffs Minister Viktor Semenov, the utilized arable land in the country declined by a quarter since early 1990s, the number of cattle was halved, mineral fertilizer use dropped to 15 percent of its former level, and the fleet of agricultural machinery decreased between 45 and 55 percent. …

Changing Russia's Electoral System: Assessing Alternative Forms of Representation and Elections

Abstract: Considerable controversy surrounds Russia's current arrangements for electing deputies to its lower parliamentary chamber, the State Duma. The method, which provides for electing: one half of 450 seats by party list proportional representation (PR) and the other half in single-mandate constituencies, is similar to that by which Germany elects its Bundestag. However, the two systems are different in several important respects. First, parties in Germany necessarily campaign on regional (Lander) lists, whereas those in Russia need only submit a single national list. Thus, unlike Germany's decentralized party system, Russian parties are largely creatures of Moscow's political establishment, with tenuous ties to regional and local party organizations. Second, whereas Germany links single-mandate and PR elections by making provision for an overall proportionality of representation, the allocation of PR seats in Russia is divorced from the results of the single-mandate contests. A party wins seats under PR in Russia only if its vote exceeds 5 percent, regardless of the outcomes in the single-mandate contests, thereby increasing the separation between these two halves of the Duma. Third, parliamentary elections in Russia occur in the context of a presidency whose constitutional powers overshadow parliament's. Moreover, because Russia's parliamentary elections occur a mere six months prior to its presidential contest, those elections assume much of the flavor of a primary in which presidential aspirants seek to establish themselves at the head of some party list while positioning themselves for the forthcoming contest. These features of Russia's electoral system and its deviations from the German model doubtlessly contributed to the confusing array of parties (forty-three) that confronted voters in 1995, and to the fact that the total vote share of the four parties that passed the 5 percent threshold to secure PR seats barely reached 50 percent (and did not reach 50 percent if one counts invalid and blank ballots). However, even though we can debate the motives of those who designed Russia's electoral system, we can be fairly certain that such structural issues are not the primary concern either of the advocates of different electoral arrangements today(1) or of those who would oppose any change. More important is that the present system seems to have benefited the ultranationalist Zhirinovsky in 1993 and Yeltsin's opponents, most notably the Communist Party, in 1995. Of course, even if existing procedures survive to the next scheduled round of elections in December 1999, someone, sometime later, will have an incentive to seek change. Manipulating electoral systems under the guise of reform to the advantage of those in power is a time-honored democratic tradition. The questions we address here, then, are, What are the most feasible alternatives to current arrangements, and what are the likely consequences of any specific change? What increased or decreased share of seats are communists, nationalists, and liberals likely to experience if Russia were, for example, to elect all of its Duma deputies using single-mandate constituencies, national PR, or some variant of regional PR? As to the alternatives, the world offers a vast menu of possibilities. We examine only the simplest--several variants of plurality rule and alternative forms of proportional representation.(2) Although imagining alternatives is easy, identifying a methodology for assessing their impact is more difficult. First, we must decide if we are interested in long- or short-term consequences. Long-term consequences, of course, are important because they include the coherence of Russia's party system, which in turn critically influences the functioning of its federal system,(3) not to mention the general performance and stability of its democratic institutions.(4) To concern ourselves with those consequences seems premature, however. Although we might like to suggest electoral systems better suited to Russia's long-term needs, in Russia, decisions in politics, like decisions in economics, are likely to be made on the basis of two- or three-month planning horizons. …

Pluralism in the Komi Republic? Overcoming Executive Resistance

Abstract: Political development in Russia's regions has often resembled the creation of political fiefdoms more than the flowering of democracy in a new age. Among the developments has been a centralization by regional elites at the expense of other political contenders.(1) To varying degrees, certain key political leaders across the country represent a continuation of the Soviet-period nomenklatura system of elite privilege and position and its extension into postcommunist Russia in new forms.(2) The process of regional elite dominance has included attempts to limit the activity of groups and individuals that might impinge on political control; that is, there have been clear attempts by authorities to constrain the evolution of an independent civil society.(3) There has also been a concerted effort among regional elites to resist the directives of central authorities.(4) These conditions are present in the regional fiefdoms that have emerged in post-Soviet Russia's tumultuous political reform and are the targets of federal policy and local political opposition. Among the regions fitting that broad pattern of political development is the Komi Republic, located in the far north of Russia, bordering the western Ural Mountains. Rather than being a font for democratic development, Komi models the difficulties of achieving political reform in a postcommunist society. The Politics of Pluralism This article emerges from thoughts concerning the development of pluralism in Russia. If one simply conceives of pluralism as the division of power across society through the presence of autonomous entities,(5) it is reasonably accurate to argue that at the national level Russia has achieved at least a semi-pluralistic political system, with numerous "national" parties and the clear influence of business interests. Although other groups--including unions and the church--carry varying, and lesser, degrees of influence in national politics, one can say that national-level Russia has moved significantly beyond nascent pluralism. This is especially the case when considering the resistance of regional entities--in particular, regional political forces--to central directives and attempts to influence central political decisionmaking. The regions carry significant influence on the center, as exemplified by the power-sharing treaties between the Kremlin and various regional governments emerging since Tatarstan began the process in 1994. While developments in Russian federalism exhibit pluralistic development from the significantly more unitary Soviet system, developments within the regions have shown much greater resistance to politically liberalizing trends.(6) Playing on the Kremlin's inability to enforce acquiescence, many regional political leaders have been relatively successful in constructing hierarchical political structures that limit the access and influence of interests not affiliated with the dominant political leader(s). Although many regions have introduced reforms, federal authorities have sought to divide interests within regions, thereby diminishing the influence of the individuals at the very top of the regional hierarchy. At the center of this policy is the August 1995 federal law directing the establishment of local self-governments throughout the eighty-nine regional entities of Russia,(7) which was resisted by many regions from the start.(8) The difficulties of establishing local self-governments have been twofold: getting regional elites to open political processes by relinquishing a degree of control; and determining whether sufficiently strong independent local interests exist, or can be developed, to take advantage of such an opportunity. Nevertheless, by summer 1998 many of the regions have at least to some degree complied with the federal legislation. The Komi Republic is one of the more intransigent of the regions, having consistently resisted Kremlin efforts to break the lock of republic head Yuri Spiridonov and his political and economic allies. …

Russia's 1997 Law Renews Religious Persecution

Abstract: In October 1990, both the USSR under President Mikhail Gorbachev and the RSFSR under Boris Yeltsin (at the time, chairman of the Russian parliament or Supreme Soviet) adopted new laws on freedom of conscience and religious organizations.(1) These laws revoked the draconian 1975 "Brezhnev" legislation on religion, which had incorporated much of the 1929 "Stalin" law, whose implicit purpose had been to eradicate all religious "survivals" from Soviet territory.(2) While the two 1990 laws--adopted about a year before the final collapse of the USSR--contained flaws, they generally embraced an American-style approach to church-state relations. In the aftermath of the adoption of the two laws, something roughly approximating freedom of religion as we understand it in the United States came into existence in the Russian Republic, which had become an independent state in December 1991. Parishes of several Orthodox ecclesiastical jurisdictions in direct competition with the official Russian Orthodox Church (or "Moscow Patriarchate") were legally established, and Roman Catholics and numerous Protestant groups were able legally to expand their activities. Even religious organizations representing what Russian political leaders today refer to as "totalitarian sects"--Mormons, Hare Krishna, the Unification Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, Baha'i, and so forth--were able to develop their activity relatively unhindered. According to a useful handbook (spravochnik), issued by the Russian Council of Federation in early 1996, the Moscow Patriarchate was able to expand the number of its officially registered parishes in Russia from 3,451 in 1990 to 7,195 as of January 1996 (that is, the number of its registered parishes more than doubled in six years.).(3) But the Moscow Patriarchate's Orthodox religious competitors were also able to broaden their activities. Thus the Free Orthodox Church under Archbishop Valentin of Suzdal' claimed ninety-eight registered parishes as of January 1996, while the "catacomb" True Orthodox Church had twenty-six (plus a number of unregistered parishes). The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad under Metropolitan Vitaly of New York had succeeded in opening five dioceses in Russia (although none of its parishes had apparently gained official registration), and even the Ukrainian Orthodox Church/Kievan Patriarchate, a body execrated by the Moscow Patriarchate, possessed seven registered parishes in Russia. In backing new legislation on religion, the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate above all wanted to rid itself of such pesky Orthodox competitors. In addition, the official Russian Orthodox Church found itself in competition, as of early 1996, with 183 registered Roman Catholic parishes, 677 Evangelical Christian Baptist ones (with many more Baptist parishes being unregistered), 248 Evangelical Christian parishes, and 141 Lutheran ones. Islam, not surprisingly, boasted the second-largest number of registered religious communities--2,494 in early 1996, up from 870 in 1990--while Buddhism had 124, and Judaism, 80. There also existed, as of early 1996, 129 registered Jehovah's Witnesses parishes, 112 registered Hare Krishna communities, and 20 registered Baha'i groups. As can be seen, the 1990 Russian law on religion had fostered religious diversity in the country. The Moscow Patriarchate leadership, under Patriarch Aleksii II (a high-ranking church official since the Khrushchev years), strongly resented the religious competitors, a number of which they saw as "foreign" bodies attempting to make inroads on their traditional religious "turf." Although the official Russian Orthodox Church evidently had difficulty tolerating an Islamic presence in areas of the country where Muslims had traditionally predominated, and while it was also prepared to countenance the presence of Buddhists and Jews--but again, only in those regions where they had previously existed--it was manifestly not prepared to acquiesce to the expansion of efforts by other religious bodies. …

The Communist Parties of Russia and Ukraine on the Eve of the 1999 Elections

Abstract: Similarities, Contrasts, and Interactions For both the Russian Federation and Ukraine the year 1999 will be critical, with the Ukrainian presidential contest forthcoming in October, the Russian State Duma elections scheduled for December, and even the duration of Boris Yeltsin's presidential term in doubt. In both these linchpin Slavic states, the mainstream post-Soviet communist parties command the largest representation in parliament and stand poised to challenge the current political establishment. In Russia, the powerful Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) is itself challenged on its left by the more radical and ideologically orthodox Russian Communist Workers' Party. Similarly, in Ukraine, the post-Soviet successor Marxist groups include not only the', large Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) but also the influential Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) and the small, dogmatic Progressive Socialist Party. This study focuses on the CPRF and the CPU, particularly the contrasts between them. At the outset it should be emphasized that in both Russia and Ukraine the difficulties of the transition from a command to a market economy--the halving of industrial output, sharply curtailed social safety nets, pockets of desperate impoverishment, and widespread socio-psychological disorientation--have had a notable impact on the thinking of the post-Soviet communists. From their perspective, many of the ideological tenets associated with Marx's analysis of capitalism, for example, concentrations of great wealth atop steep income differentials, democracy as a facade for rule by capitalist oligarchs) have been corroborated by the bitter realities of the new order. Much like their distant Bolshevik predecessors or the nonruling communists of Depression-wracked Europe and early postwar France and Italy, the present-day communists in Russia and Ukraine are for the most part true believers. While most of them concede that there were problems with the former Soviet system, they blame the fall of communism not on defects inherent in socialism but on foreign subversion, aided by self-serving opportunists who rose within the CPSU nomenklatura during the Brezhnev era. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation After the official bans on the CPSU and the Russian Communist Party, prompted by the failed August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, a half-dozen or so successor left-wing organizations were founded in the Russian Federation during late 1991 and 1992. Often led by activists from the much factionalized CPSU of the 1989-91 period, these new formations spanned the political spectrum from the far left to the center left. The largest among them were the radical Russian Communist Workers' Party (RCWP) of the "two Viktors," Tyulkin and Anpilov, and the reformist Socialist Labor Party of Lyudmila S. Vartazarova and Roy Medvedev (the Soviet-era dissident historian). The Russian Constitutional Court's late 1992 lifting of the ban on the grassroots "primary party organizations of the former communist parties paved the way for the mid-February 1993 "revival-unification congress" of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). The CPRF, in turn, quickly absorbed most of the members of the Socialist Labor Party and entered into a tense, polemical rivalry with the extremist RCWP, leaving the rest of the successor communist groups to dwindle in significance and membership.(1) The activist core of the CPRF has been from the start an eclectic group. As I will elaborate below, by mid-1998 its cohesion was seriously undermined by multiple fissures and public polemics. Party documents describe the CPRF as the successor to both the CPSU and the latter's upstart antireformist offshoot, the Russian Communist Party (founded in mid-1990). However, many of the more hardline elements of the short-lived Russian Communist Party declined to join the CPRF. The latter's leader, Gennady A. Zyuganov, espouses a kind of ethnocentric Russian nationalism that is sharply at odds with traditional Marxism-Leninism as well as with the official Soviet doctrine of proletarian internationalism. …

George Kennan and the Challenge of Siberia

Abstract: The small boy pressed his nose against the window. He could hardly pass up the chance to see the doctor treat his playmate, whose arm had been mangled in the cogwheels of a mill. Through the pane, the boy spied the surgeon unsheathe a saw and carefully draw its razor-sharp teeth across the injured arm below the elbow. With horror, many years later, the boy at the window would describe the amputation: The surgeon accidentally let slip the end of one of the severed arteries and a jet of warm blood spurted from the stump of the upper arm to the inside of the window pane against which my face was pressed. The effect upon me was a sensation that I never felt before in all my boyish life--a sensation of deadly nausea, faintness and overwhelming fear.(1) The peeping boy of 1855 would grow up to be the adventurous traveler George Kennan, a cousin twice removed of the twentieth-century George F. Kennan, American ambassador to Stalin's Russia. Years after the operation, the nineteenth-century Kennan would succeed in amputating his own insecurities to brave the wilds of Siberia, to expose the horrors of the Russian penal system, and to become America's first great authority on Russia. George Kennan, the elder, first intrigued me when I worked in Moscow as a journalist during the cold war over a hundred years later. I was drawn into the search for Kennan's traces when I began researching the life of my own great-great-grandfather, a Russian exiled to Siberia for conspiring to overthrow the czar in 1825. Siberia seemed to bring Kennan and me together. Kennan went to Siberia seeking "perilous adventure"; my Russian ancestor went there in shackles, and I journeyed across that land in search of their histories. There was another thing that joined me to Kennan. Both of us were thrown bodily out of Russia. Kennan was expelled in 1901 as an unreliable foreigner. I was deported in 1986 on false charges of espionage. What I learned from this was that we are all links in a chain. Our actions today are determined to some extent by the actions of our predecessors. Soviet police methods grew directly out of the practices of the Russian police a century earlier. And we can expect today's Russian bureaucracy to reflect the methods of the Soviet era. Kennan's long fascination with Russia began in 1865. Having sailed from New York and trekked across the Isthmus of Panama, Kennan set sail from San Francisco on 3 July aboard the brig Olga for Russia's Pacific coast. He had been hired, along with others, to survey a telegraph cable route from the United States, across Alaska and the Bering Straits, through northern Siberia, to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and on to Paris and London. The line, the Western Union company believed, would eliminate the need for a cable that engineers were having difficulty laying across the Atlantic. Kennan was an excellent choice for this work. Born on 16 February 1845 in Norwalk, Ohio, the son of a lawyer, he had become infatuated with the fast-developing telegraph business. (The father of the telegraph, Samuel F. B. Morse, was in fact a distant relative who opened the new communications era with the famous message, transmitted from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore on 24 May 1844: "What hath God wrought?") In 1851, the six-year-old Kennan punched out his first telegraph message in Morse code. A decade later, he dropped out of high school to become a military telegrapher during the Civil War. And when the war ended, he was sailing across the Pacific. On 19 August 1865, the Olga dropped anchor at Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, and Kennan's love affair with Russia began. During the next two and a half years, Kennan and his companions roamed from the mouth of the Anandyr River, on the northerly coast of the Bering Straits, surveying routes for the projected land line. Life was, indeed, perilous. They traveled by dog sled, slept in the open in temperatures down to 50 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), and more than once were threatened with death by blizzards and hunger. …

The Russian Military Faces "Creeping Disintegration"

Abstract: There were virtually no units which were combat ready in 1997. --Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev Although often ignored by observers and pundits, the Russian military plays one of the most important roles of any institution in that society. The reason is that the armed forces are always the last bastion against anarchy and chaos in any political system. And Russia now is on the verge of collapse and anarchy. In taking a closer look at the Russian military and the role it plays in the Russian political system, I divide my observations into three categories. First is the question of the armed forces themselves. It is impossible to discuss the role of the military without understanding how serious the situation is in Moscow's armed forces. As those who have spent time working in the military or analyzing military issues know, reversing conditions like those that now characterize the Russian armed forces is not easy. It will take considerable time. The lead time on many weapons systems exceeds five years from planning to production. A second issue is the question of whether there is a serious danger that the Russian military will become involved in politics. Finally, there is the question of what the West can do and should be doing at this point vis-a-vis the Russian military. The Situation Facing the Russian Military Despite Defense Minister Marshal Igor Sergeyev's comment on 19 July 1999, to the effect that Russia's armed forces are "combat ready, controllable and capable of ensuring the military security of the country," the fact is that their situation is nothing short of disastrous.(1) Equipment is outdated, officers and men are dispirited, thousands of the "best and brightest" are leaving, the budget is in shambles, generals have been politicized in a way unknown in the past, and talk of reform is a farce. The armed forces' ability to operate in an effective manner is open to serious question. Indeed, the situation appears to be so bad that, with the exception of some of its airborne troops, conventional troops are in disarray. Furthermore, Moscow's ability to ensure that troops obey orders in a crisis (especially in an internal confrontation) is doubtful. Even more serious is the Kremlin's feeling that, given the problems its conventional forces face, there is no alternative but to rely more and more on nuclear forces. However, its nuclear forces are in such bad condition that it is questionable whether they would operate if Moscow decided to use them. Everywhere one looks, the Russian military is beset with problems. The key issue facing the army for the past ten years has been money.(2) Its budget has been cut each year since 1993. This would not be so bad if the military actually received the money it was promised. More often than not, it has had to try and run on empty promises. For example, in 1993, the shortfall was 1 billion rubles; in 1994, it was 12.2 billion; in 1995, it was 6 billion; and in 1997, 34.4 billion. As of January 1999, of the 804 billion rubles appropriated for the armed forces only 44 billion had been received.(3) While it is still impossible to say for certain how much the military will receive in 1999, it is worth noting that if it is allocated 2.17 percent (or 110 billion rubles) of the federal budget as some think will be the case, that will be only slightly more than the cost of two U.S. Stealth bombers.(4) The military has been arguing for a budget of at least 3.5 percent, but even if they were to get a budget that large, there is no certainty that they would receive the full amount. To make matters worse, the Kremlin's decision to send 3,600 soldiers to Kosovo will strain the military budget even further, making it necessary to come up with an additional $50 million just to cover costs for this year. The constant budget shortfalls have had a cataclysmic impact on the military as a whole. Because of cutbacks in weapons purchases (for example, only two combat aircraft were purchased in 1995, compared with 585 in 1991), by 1998 only 30 percent of all weapons in the Russian inventory were modern; in NATO countries the number stood at 60 to 80 percent. …

From Decline to Disintegration: The Russian Military Meets the Millennium

Abstract: History shows us that when empires collapse, regimes change, and states form, the armed forces inevitably play a crucial role in determining the outcome. In Russia, this historical lesson seems to have been turned on its head: Observers have been astonished by the passivity of the Russian military. It has not actively resisted the breakup of the Soviet Union, nor has it been at center stage trying to affect the democratization process. Perhaps even more surprising, it has failed to resist its loss in status both domestically and abroad and has allowed its material interests and organizational integrity to be severely compromised through extensive budget cuts. The evidence suggests that soldiers seem resigned to the armed forces' progressive fragmentation and disintegration. These observations have given rise to a degree of complacency. Many analysts of Russian politics have concluded that a disintegrating Russian army cannot pose an immediate political threat to the current political regime or be an important player in the international arena. As a consequence, most policymakers here and in Russia have felt justified in putting Russian military reform on the back burner while they attend to more pressing issues such as managing the economy. While it is unlikely that the Russian military will launch a coup in the next decade or purposely attack a NATO member, there are significant changes in the nature and functioning of the Russian armed forces that merit attention. To cope with the deterioration of their organization, the new economic hardships in which they find themselves, and pressures from domestic political actors who have encouraged increased military involvement in politics, Russian soldiers are taking independent actions and forging new political and economic alliances that undermine the ability of federal/state officials to implement both domestic and foreign policy. These changes are significant because not only do they have the potential to affect the future of stability and democracy in Russia, but they can undermine the Russian government's ability to follow through on its commitment to international security agreements. Some of the new trends in Russian civil-military relations appear in recent interactions in four spheres: electoral politics, center-periphery relations, the official and non-official economy, and foreign policy. The Russian Military and Elections There has been increasing involvement of military officers in partisan politics. There is, of course, a Soviet precedent for this behavior. Under communism, soldiers were encouraged to be members of the Communist Party, and they always showed up at political rallies in their uniforms. When the Russian army was being formed, there was discussion about whether restrictions should be placed on military involvement in electoral politics. Some legal measures were taken to limit military involvement, but they were never enforced. In the 1993 parliamentary elections, the Ministry of Defense did not actively encourage soldiers to run for office. It did, however, invite political parties to publish their positions in the Defense Ministry's official newspaper, Krasnaia Zvezda. Only four of thirty party lists did not have military officers on them. In the end, eleven military officers were elected to the Duma, nine from single-mandate districts and two from party lists. From studies of voting patterns at polling locations on military bases, some analysts concluded that the majority of the military vote had gone to protest movements such as Zhironovsky's Liberal Democratic Party. Some put the estimate as high as 70 percent, others as low as 33 percent. The assessments of the Ministry of Defense were more ambiguous because although some officials denied a high level of support for protest candidates, saying that the data sample represented only 1 percent of the entire military vote, others claimed that the vote was an indication of military support for new politicians who had more "patriotically oriented" policies. …

Leadership in Modern Russian Society A Regional Survey

Abstract: The problem of political leadership is central to the formation and development of the government and society in present-day Russia. Attempts to remove the problem of leadership from the list of most urgent problems of political analysis, and to place it instead within the context of an abstract collective will that forms politics and practice, will not lead to any meaningful results. Leadership remains a fundamental influence on the development of political and social organisms. Freed from the restrictions of totalitarianism, modern Russian society is experiencing its own form of renaissance, producing the most varied types and models of leadership, and becoming the subject of detailed analyses in the scientific literature.(1) This condition appears most clearly at the regional level, where known models of leadership are enriched by the specific, local, politico-cultural environment and by the characteristics of everyday life in a Russian province. The historical events of this decade have impelled our return to regional leadership. What are the most characteristic traits of modern Russia's regional leadership? The American psychologists D. Katz and R. Kahn understand leadership to be "an influential element which is separate from the mechanical fulfilling of the organization's routine duties."(2) It is said that the strivings of Russian provincial leaders for status exceed their official authority and prerogatives. In emphasizing this charismatic tendency of modern regional leadership, we do not claim that it is a leftover element of the former political regime, when the first secretary of the obkom party held practically all of the power of the region entrusted to him. The tendency has been noted by several authors as universal. For example, J. Blondel has remarked, "The tie between leadership as a style of behavior and leadership as a top position gives birth to many problems. First of all, tree leadership must be separate from the pure, formal activities of duty, because although these two understandings partially overlap, they do not coincide completely. Some leaders do not have high positions," while others, who do occupy extremely responsible posts, cannot truly even be called leaders. But it is difficult to explain exactly what true leadership is, because a formal position and actual authority often--almost always--influence each other. Someone wants to become a leader to reach a certain position.(3) In my opinion, this tendency has a deeper foundation in the historical experience of Russia's political traditions. For this reason, diagnosing the potential of a leader does not depend only on what position he will have. It is necessary to consider not only his possibilities in a given office, but also the possibilities of his future public political activities and his potential to gain leadership status through regional elections. A division of leadership into formal and informal types appears at the regional level to a greater degree than at the federal level; formal leadership is shaped by official authorities and status, and informal by common recognition. Sometimes a leader continues to exert considerable influence on the political processes in his region even after he is dismissed from his position. R. Tucker is correct in believing that "leadership is about giving political direction, which in the end is targeted on political action."(4) Considering this, we turn our attention to the example of the director of the Sverdlovsky region, E. Russell. President Yeltsin removed him from his post in 1994, but his authority was fully restored in the direct election for governor. Russell advocated a Ural republic to oppose what he considered the federal center's excessive control of the region. Despite disapproval of Russell's political efforts by the federal authorities, he received recognition and respect from the region's inhabitants. There are people who have serious influence in the formation of regional leadership through their personal achievements, their past fame, or as a result of being in the epicenter of public attention for a long period of time. …

A Tribute to Galina Starovoitova

Abstract: So much can be said about Galina Starovoitova. She was one of my best friends, someone I knew personally for more than four years. As a consulting editor of Demokratizatsiya, she was also a colleague. After her election to the Duma, she once apologized--with her usual modesty--for being less involved with the journal. I laughed, "Galina, you are the most involved--after all, you keep alive the subject we study!" This issue of Demokratizatsiya and the next one are dedicated to her, although all issues of the journal attest to her legacy. In this brief farewell to Galina, I want to convey just one of the qualities that made her a towering figure in this century as well as great human being: her selfless readiness to fight for victims and to crusade against their tormentors. Among those victims were Armenians, Jews, other small and displaced nationalities, Moscow teenagers, Gorbachev after he lost power, and the victims of the KGB. For that quality, her passionate belief, she died. Much about the world's reaction to her death is unfair. Why was there no public grief as at the death of Princess Diana of Great Britain? Galina did far more for humanity. Biographies or documentaries about Stalin, Hitler, or Mao never fail to attract wide attention. But the names of those who bravely destroyed the legacies of dictators are not household words. Power never corrupted Galina or estranged her from her former friends, despite her dizzying successes in 1989-91. Starovoitova's relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev illustrates her principles and her compassion. Gorbachev was increasingly under fire after mid-1989 for his timidity in implementing reforms. He perceived the democratic movement of which Starovoitova became a leader as antagonistic and excessively belligerent because it prodded him. After Andrei Sakharov's death in December 1989, Galina, Father Gleb Yakunin, and Lev Ponomarev became co-chairs of the Democratic Russia Movement, which included among others Boris Yeltsin, Gavriil Popov, and Sergei Stankevich. Starovoitova's democrats (although playing Luther to Gorbachev's Pope) never lost all hope that Gorbachev would break with the nomenklatura and the party and implement more aggressive reforms. Gorbachev was unwilling, or unable, to do so. In the end, the warnings of the democrats proved correct: Gorbachev was betrayed by those he had trusted the most. Starovoitova recalled visiting Gorbachev for a long talk in December 1991, just a few days before his presidency fell, along with the red flag over the Kremlin. Few people went to see him in those days; his former admirers were flocking to the victorious Boris Yeltsin. Siae told him, "You should have sided with us democrats when you had the chance, everything would be different today." She added, "So where are your beloved Lukyanov, Pugo, Yanaev?" (By then they were in prison.) She recalled that Gorbachev lowered his head and nodded in approval. Galina never lost respect nor admiration for Gorbachev. She was one of the few Russians I know that willingly gave him credit for his historic role. She challenged him when he was in power but never kicked him when he was down. On the contrary, she recently lobbied for him to become foreign minister. Starovoitova also had a high opinion of the Gorbachev reformers, especially Alexander Yakovlev, Eduard Shevardnadze, and Vadim Bakatin, whom she once called "a highly principled man." She often used the example of Yakovlev to argue against more stringent alternatives to her proposed law to ban collaborators with the communist regime and the KGB from serving in Russia's new institutions. She said the law should not ban those who had served the Communist Party but played positive roles in the democratic reforms. Starovoitova was a crusader against corruption, warning early on that fellow Soviet deputies were voting for Gorbachev's less-enlightened proposals so they might receive perks. …

The Noncommunist Left, Social Constituencies, and Political Strategies in Russia

Abstract: Defining and identifying the noncommunist Left in Russia is in many ways an exercise in frustration. Whereas the organizations of the noncommunist Left in Russia are somewhat more permanent than that analogy suggests, the suggestion that we are dealing with tenuous political formations, with few exceptions, very much to the point. There are many such organizations in Russia; some are relatively stable and have a history, many are not; and all of them are relatively small and have problematic constituencies. There are three central questions to address if we are to understand the potential political import of these groups for Russia's political future. First, what are the organizations and parties of the noncommunist Left that have any stature and political salience? Second, what are their actual or potential social constituencies? Third, what are the political strategies of the noncommunist Left, and why does it seem to have such a problem in carving out a political space in contemporary Russia? Before discussing the specific questions raised above, it is important to situate the noncommunist Left in Russia, and indeed the entire Russian political spectrum, on the conceptual map of political ideologies used in Western social science. Left--historically centered around socialist and communist movements--puts a high value on democracy in the economic as well as in the political realm, on economic egalitarianism, and traditionally views an expansive role for the state and organized social interests in the operation of society as necessary and positive. The Right tends to limit democracy to the political realm, values private property and the right to individual control over it as both natural and a defense against majoritarian tyranny, and traditionally sees the state as a necessary evil that should have as limited a role in society as possible. While the use of these terms might have been of limited utility during the Soviet period, in the context of postcommunist Russia they are useful as a basis for comparing Russia's political formations with those of other states. The most useful comparison is with the states of Europe, the region to which most in the West and Russia argue that Russia belongs. In brief, my contention is that the Russian political spectrum is generally more Left than are those of Western countries. While not disregarding either groups that adhere to Stalinism (which I deem to be emphatically not a leftist ideology) or those that espouse fascism, the legacies of Soviet socialism and the effects of Yeltsin's neoliberalism have combined to "red-shift" the Russian political spectrum. I This implies, for example, that the noncommunist Left in Russia is more left than the noncommunist Left in the West, and that even the center-right and Right in Russia are less attached to hard-line neoliberalism than are conservatives in Europe and the United States. This feature of the postcommunist Russian political spectrum has important connotations for policy issues and constituency questions, and for Western understanding of Russia's political realities and the political implications of particular policies that Western states might adopt toward Russia. It is in this context that the main organizations and parties that make up the noncommunist Left need to be analyzed. The noncommunist Left can be divided roughly into four groups: social-democrats, socialists, laborists, and left-liberals. There are also some hybrid organizations that deserve consideration. While there are programmatic differences among the parties and organizations within each of these groups, all share certain general characteristics that apply to most political formations in contemporary Russia. First, they tend to be highly personalistic. This is the result of policy choices made by the ruling elite since 1992. The exclusion of social groups from participation in the articulation of economic and political reform under Yeltsin undercut the ability of these groups to present their views, organize, and attract followers. …

An Illinois Yankee in Tsar Yeltsin's Court: Justice in Russia

Abstract: Can the law enforcement system function effectively in Russia, especially when dealing with someone with good connections? Many people, including the majority of Russians, do not think it can. One of the major reasons is that during the Communist period the right official could make a simple phone call and determine the outcome of any investigation or trial. Unfortunately, decisions can still be made "in the corridor" if one knows the right people or can pay a sufficient bribe. Because a former Russian employee had embezzled a substantial amount from the Russian branch of my firm, between the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1998 I learned first hand about some of the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian legal system. Background In 1990, I was invited to observe the first competitive local elections under communism in Vladimir, some 120 miles northeast of Moscow, Sister City of Bloomington and Normal, Illinois. By that time the transformation of Soviet society was so profound that it appeared irreversible. I wanted to become directly involved in this unprecedented political, economic, and social transformation. Early in 1991, I decided to organize the construction of a model American home in Vladimir. The idea came from one of my university colleagues, Rick Whitacre, who had recently returned from a trip to Vladimir. He commented that building a model home might make a positive contribution to the transition. Illinois State University industrial technology professor Ed Francis agreed to handle the technical side of the project, and we began the search for donated building materials and volunteer workers. Even though more than fifty North American companies participated, not all the materials and furnishings were provided free of charge; plus there was the cost of shipping everything to Russia and all the expenses on the Russian side. Thanks to financial support from my father, Russell Pope, all these expenses were covered. The "first American Home in Russia" was dedicated on 4 July 1992. It had been built in six weeks. When one Russian was told construction would begin the middle of May and the new home would be dedicated on America's Independence Day, he wanted to know, "July 4 of what year?" Russians had become used to construction projects taking decades to complete--if they were finished at all. The rapid construction of the Amerikanskii dom, as the Russians called it, was a pleasant surprise to the community, as was the superior quality of the materials and workmanship. Tatyana Veksler helped with logistics in Vladimir. I had met her in fall 1991 and was impressed by her intelligence and her ability to get things done. However, in fall 1995 I decided not to renew her contract as the firm's executive director for operations in Russia. This was not an easy decision. She had played a significant role in building the American Home and in getting the operation started. In addition, thanks in part to the fact that her deceased father had been an influential local official during the Communist period, she had some very useful contacts. However, it had become increasingly difficult to work with her because of her repeated failure to send me regular reports, especially financial reports, and her growing tendency to ignore my questions and my specific requests and instructions. I finally decided to sever the relationship--regardless of the difficulties this might cause. Discovering a Crime My decision caught Veksler by surprise. After her departure from the firm, an audit discovered false subcontracts that she had left behind in her office and had not been able to retrieve. She had used these to withdraw from the bank a substantial sum earned by our new remodeling business--136 million (old) rubles, or more than $33,000 at the prevailing exchange rate. Veksler had converted the transferred funds to cash, which she subsequently claimed she had used entirely for the benefit of the firm. …