#5486
[Second Issue of the Day]
#9
Current History
October 2001
The Dilemmas of Russia's Anti-Revolutionary Revolution
By STEPHEN E. HANSON
STEPHEN E. HANSON is an associate professor in the department of political
science and the director of the Russian, East European, and Central Asian
studies program of the Jackson School of International Studies at the
University of Washington. He is the author of Time and Revolution: Marxism
and the Design of Soviet Institutions (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1997), which received the 1998 Wayne S. Vucinich book award
from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and a
co-author (with Richard Anderson, Jr., M. Steven Fish, and Philip Roeder)
of Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2001).
The last decade," President Vladimir Putin noted this April, "has
been a
turbulent and, one can say without any exaggeration, a revolutionary one
for Russia." Putin is on strong historical ground when he calls Russia's
transformation since the collapse of communism "revolutionary."
Indeed, the
scope of political, economic, and cultural change in Russia since the
Soviet era can easily be compared to the acknowledged "great
revolutions"
of the past, such as the French, Bolshevik, and Chinese Revolutions. Until
the late Gorbachev era, the Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship, a
military superpower, the center of the world's last multinational empire,
and an alternative (if declining) model of economic development for
countries throughout the developing world.
Today Russia is a weak and unconsolidated capitalist democracy unsure of
its place in the global order. Moreover, the past decade has been one of
nearly uninterrupted crisis for Russian society, including radical changes
in state boundaries in 1991, a near civil war between the president and the
parliament in 1993, a prolonged and bloody conflict in Chechnya beginning
in 1994, and a devastating financial crisis in 1998. President Putin's
current popularity (recent polls show that between 60 and 70 percent of the
Russian population approve of his leadership) is inexplicable without
considering the unprecedented turbulence of the past decade, and the
widespread popular hope that Putin can maintain Russia's current atmosphere
of relative stability and political calm.
Strangely, few Western specialists on Russian affairs have consistently
framed their analyses of the country in terms of theories of revolution.1
Instead, the dominant viewpoint during the Yeltsin era was that Russia was
in the midst of a "transition to democracy and market society"-the
metaphor
of transition implying both a preordained outcome and a relatively smooth
path between the Soviet past and the liberal capitalist future. Arguably,
had Western observers understood the truly revolutionary nature of
communism's collapse and its aftermath, the crisis-ridden and often violent
nature of Russian politics in the post-Soviet era would have come as far
less of a shock. Why did we make the mistake of thinking that Russian
"reform" could unfold through ordinary, not extraordinary, means?
A key factor distinguishes Russia's postcommunist revolution from all
previous great revolutions while simultaneously obscuring its revolutionary
nature: namely, this is the first revolution in history consciously
directed against an officially "revolutionary" regime. The Soviet
leadership, after all, never disavowed its official claims to be leading
society in a "revolution"-however hollow those claims appeared to most
Soviet citizens in the regime's latter years. Not only Lenin and Stalin,
but also Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and even Gorbachev legitimated their
policies through constant references to the Soviet Union's revolutionary
essence. Gorbachev, in particular, never tired of insisting that his plan
for perestroika (restructuring) constituted a new revolution directly
linked to the original Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Moreover, both the
political system ruled by the Communist Party and the economic system
directed by the state's central planners were officially designed to
produce "revolutionary" results, even if in practice the party and
state
bureaucracies were rife with corruption and administrative incompetence.
By the end of the communist era, nearly everyone living in the Soviet bloc
was sick to death of mandatory revolutionary rhetoric. Communist ideology
had been entirely discredited by public disclosure of the horrific crimes
of the Stalinist regime, the obvious hypocrisy of those officials charged
with ensuring public conformity to "Marxism-Leninism," and the
increasingly
pathetic performance of Soviet institutions. As Gorbachev's own
"revolution" began to undermine the coherence of the Soviet regime
itself,
an unprecedented phenomenon arose: the emergence of a genuinely
revolutionary anticommunist movement that nevertheless could not explicitly
call itself "revolutionary" without alienating most of the population.
The
dilemmas of "anti-revolutionary revolution" have bedeviled post-Soviet
Russia since.
YELTSIN: THE ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTIONARY
Boris Yeltsin was the quintessential anti-revolutionary revolutionary.
Instead of mobilizing his antiregime movement around ideas of class
struggle, visions of utopia, or fascistic nationalism, Yeltsin promised his
followers that a pragmatic program of "reforms" would allow Russia to
"return to Europe"-and to the "normal" way of life that
Western Europeans
appeared to enjoy. Indeed, the phrase "we just want to live a normal
life"
became the most widely repeated slogan of anticommunist activists not only
in Russia but throughout the former Leninist world. Even Yeltsin's calls
for the "rebirth of Russia" were phrased in a decidedly
anti-revolutionary
manner. In contrast to the xenophobic nationalism of postcommunist leaders
such as Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia or Franjo Tudjman in Croatia,
Yeltsin's conception of Russianness was explicitly civic rather than
ethnic, and logically implied no future claims on the territory of other
Soviet republics. Yeltsin and his supporters thus managed to carry out one
of the most thorough-going revolutionary transformations in Russia's
history, casting aside territories that had been part of the Russian state
for centuries-while claiming simply to be political pragmatists working to
restore the "natural" state of affairs in Europe disrupted by
communist rule.
Once Yeltsin became the undisputed leader of Russia in January 1992,
however, his anti-revolutionary revolution faced an immediate paradox:
after more than seven decades of Leninist dictatorship, institutionalizing
a genuinely democratic and capitalist system in Russia would necessarily
require revolutionary upheaval in practically every sphere of social life.
Throughout the country, former communist apparatchiki remained in control
of the most important state bureaucracies and regional government
legislatures, and the nearly bankrupt economy was almost entirely dominated
by inefficient military industries and collective farms. On the political
level, the creation of a genuinely democratic regime appeared to require
the ratification of a new constitution, new presidential and parliamentary
elections, and a thorough reform of the laws governing relations between
Moscow and Russia's regions and ethnic republics. And the creation of
modern capitalism appeared to require what came to be known as "shock
therapy": the immediate freeing of prices, the transformation of the ruble
from an artificial, state-issued coupon into a reliable market currency,
and the wholesale breakup and privatization of state-owned enterprises. But
these kinds of changes would have amounted to precisely the kind of
disruptive revolutionary upheaval Yeltsin had pledged to avoid.
In short, an inevitable disconnect emerged between Yeltsin's aspirations
for a return to European normalcy and the reality of the costly and
turbulent social changes needed to attain the goal of liberal capitalism in
Russia. Faced with this dilemma, Yeltsin at first tried to compromise. He
did not initially hold new elections or replace the Brezhnev-era
constitution, but attempted to govern with the existing Russian Supreme
Soviet elected under Gorbachev. He did not fully implement the neoliberal
reforms proposed by his acting prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, but instead
allowed inefficient industries and farms to be bailed out through generous
and inflationary credits from the Central Bank. Meanwhile, he continued to
promise that the pain of Russia's "transition" would be over within
two
years or so, after which the country would rapidly return to prosperity
within the context of an integrated Europe.
But this timetable was wholly unrealistic, given the devastating legacy of
communism and the lack of established democratic and market institutions in
Russia. As the Russian economy continued its precipitous decline, Yeltsin's
popularity gradually diminished. By October 1993, when Yeltsin decided to
eliminate his rebellious parliamentary opposition by armed force, the idea
that the increasingly out-of-touch president (or his new constitution)
could guarantee stability or prosperity appeared far-fetched indeed; by
December 1994, when Yeltsin ordered the disastrous invasion of secessionist
Chechnya, this claim appeared utterly preposterous. Ordinary Russians
continued to express a widespread desire for a "return to normal
life"; for
younger Russians, this now meant a respite from the perpetual crises and
catastrophes of the Yeltsin era, while for many older Russians it meant a
restoration of Brezhnev-era stable employment and low-priced consumer goods.
In other great revolutions, ineffectual leadership and institutional
instability of this sort has often led to the collapse of the state and the
emergence of new radical ideologies-an outcome that, in nuclear Russia,
would have had unimaginable consequences. Remarkably, the paradoxes of the
anti-revolutionary revolution undermined the aspirations of Yeltsin's
political opposition as well. Realizing that almost all Russians continued
to detest revolutionary rhetoric, figures such as the ultranationalist
Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the communist Gennadi Zyuganov-whose avowedly
antiliberal parties gained between them a plurality of votes in the 1993,
1995, and even the 1999 parliamentary elections-themselves avoided calling
explicitly for a new "revolution" against the Yeltsin regime.
Zhirinovsky's
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia claimed to stand for a "centrist"
defense of private property that rejected both right-wing fascism and
left-wing communism; although Zhirinovsky consistently depicted his
long-run goal as the establishment of a new Russian empire stretching south
to the Indian Ocean, in the short run he generally sided with the Yeltsin
administration against the Communist Party. Meanwhile Zyuganov, while
loudly decrying the depredations of what he called Yeltsin's "anti-people
regime," also explicitly distanced himself from calls for revolutionary
violence. Indeed, he criticized the early Bolshevik leaders for their
radicalism in attacking traditional Russian institutions such as the
Orthodox Church, and claimed that his party would take power in an
evolutionary process leading to the natural restoration of Russia's
great-power position in Eurasia. Consistent with such statements, both
Zhirinovsky and Zyuganov acted throughout the 1990s within the legal
framework of Yeltsin's constitution, and more radical communists and
fascist nationalists remained marginal figures with only fringe support.
Zyuganov's electoral defeat by a nearly incapacitated Yeltsin in 1996 only
confirmed that Russian society had decisively rejected revolutionary
ideology in any form.
Despite his reelection in 1996, Yeltsin now began to realize that the
absence of an explicit new ideology legitimating his regime also posed
serious dilemmas. With no clear vision of the future for the Russian state,
and with Russian society in a state of seemingly perpetual crisis,
entrepreneurs and politicians alike understandably oriented their decision
making toward the very short run. In the economic sphere, short-term profit
maximization led to well-known pathologies such as low levels of direct
investment, ubiquitous asset stripping, and capital flight totaling tens of
billions of dollars per year. In the political sphere, short time horizons
led to constant changes in legal rules, efforts by elected officials to
please powerful patrons rather than serve the long-term needs of
constituents, chaos in center-regional relations, and endemic state
corruption. Ironically, the effort to "return to normal life" through
the
disavowal of revolutionary ideology generated a vicious cycle of perpetual
uncertainty and instability. Yeltsin announced a public search for a new
"national idea" for Russia that might solve this problem, but his
capricious leadership-exemplified by his rapid-fire dismissal of four
consecutive prime ministers between March 1998 and August 1999-only
exacerbated it.
PUTIN'S "PRAGMATIC PATRIOTISM"
By August 1999, when Vladimir Putin was unexpectedly promoted from the
directorship of the former KGB to be Yeltsin's final prime minister-and
eventually declared to be the president's successor as well-Russian society
was exhausted, with the dream of a return to normal life seemingly as
distant as ever. By the end of September, a series of mysterious apartment
bombings in Moscow and other cities that killed over 300 Russian citizens
and the outbreak of a second full-scale war in Chechnya had generated a
general sense of panic and despair. In this context, Putin's stern promises
to "rub out" Chechen "bandits" even in their
"outhouses"-the actual Russian
word used by Putin was somewhat cruder than this-and to stand up for
Russia's interests on the international stage had a powerful psychological
appeal for most ordinary citizens. The hastily constructed "Unity"
party,
which proudly declared that it had no ideology except to support the Putin
government, attained a remarkable 23 percent of the vote in the 1999 Duma
elections. After Yeltsin's sudden resignation on New Year's Eve, Putin went
on to trounce Zyuganov in the March 2000 presidential campaign.
But even though the vigorous Putin now appears to be the antithesis of the
declining Boris Yeltsin, it is striking to note the similarities between
his message and Yeltsin's original slogans of 1990-1991. Like Yeltsin,
Putin disavows revolutionary ideology and promises to enforce a "pragmatic
patriotism"-exemplified by the restoration of the old Soviet national
anthem with new, nonideological lyrics-that will somehow naturally restore
stability and peace. Like Yeltsin, Putin proclaims the need to establish
democracy and capitalism to realize Russia's ultimate "return to
Europe"
while denying that the institutionalization of market economics will have
any negative consequences for the majority of the Russian population. Like
Yeltsin, too, Putin relies on a combination of liberal advisers associated
with the original Gaidar team and trusted members of the security services
to staff his administration. Finally-despite the public humiliation and
foreign exile of two of Russia's most vocal "oligarchs," Boris
Berezovsky
and Vladimir Gusinsky-Putin, like Yeltsin, has quietly facilitated the
concentration of valuable Russian assets in the hands of other
well-connected, if more discreet, businessmen. Will Putin nevertheless
succeed where Yeltsin failed?
The situation facing Putin as he struggles to stabilize the Russian
Federation is far more auspicious than the one inherited by Yeltsin in
1991. First and foremost, the Russian economy, which officially shrank by
nearly half during the past decade, is now growing at a relatively healthy
pace: GDP growth was around 4 percent in 1999, 8 percent in 2000, and is
estimated to be between 5 and 6 percent in 2001. Although much of Russia's
initial economic turnaround can be traced to current high world prices for
oil and gas and the temporary effects of the 1998 ruble devaluation in
spurring demand for domestic production, the endemic uncertainty of the
Yeltsin era at last appears to be giving way to cautious optimism about
Russia's future, leading domestic and foreign businesses to consider making
serious long-term investments in the Russian economy. Moreover, the Russian
budget is now balanced, payments to foreign creditors have resumed, the
need for loans from the International Monetary Fund has receded, and, most
important for ordinary Russians, wage arrears and barter payments have been
substantially reduced.
Politically, too, Putin seems to be in an enviable position. The
quasi-revolutionary nationalist and communist oppositions are even weaker
than they were under Yeltsin; Zyuganov's Communists are still the
best-organized political party in Russia, but they have been largely
marginalized in the Unity-dominated Duma. Putin's crackdown on the
opposition media owned by Gusinsky and Berezovsky is essentially complete,
and as a result he is almost never directly criticized in newspapers,
television outlets, or magazines read by average Russian citizens. Finally,
still in his forties and in excellent health, Putin is capable in principle
of ruling Russia for a long time to come.
Yet as Putin is well aware, Russia's anti-revolutionary revolution-judged
in terms of the eventual goal of achieving a "return to Europe" and
"normal" liberal capitalism-remains far from complete. Although
Soviet-era
political and economic institutions have been irreversibly destroyed,
Russia's new democratic and market institutions are frail, corrupt, and
ineffective. And although the cold war between the Soviet Union and the
United States is over, the Russian Federation remains a weak country
excluded from the most important international institutions-NATO, the
European Union, and the World Trade Organization-regulating contemporary
global security. To alter this state of affairs in the near future would
still require revolutionary changes in how the Russian state and society
are organized, potentially endangering the stability and social calm that
form the basis of Putin's current popularity.
Economically, Putin and his advisers realize that for Russia to compete
effectively in the global context, far-reaching reforms of the labor
market, land ownership, and the financial sector must be enacted. Thus,
Putin's new labor code abolishes Soviet-era restrictions on the hiring and
firing of workers, and his advisers' proposed reforms of "communal
services" would eliminate the remnants of the old Soviet system of social
security, in which housing, utilities, and other social services were
provided essentially free of charge by state-run enterprises. Putin's new
legislation on land reform standardizes the rules for buying and selling
commercial land-although agricultural land is still excluded-so that
investors can avoid lengthy and costly ownership disputes. Proposed changes
in the financial sphere would reform the parlous Russian banking system so
that loans are made to support strategic investors, not to shore up
inefficient enterprises run by favored clients or to placate powerful
political bosses. Reforms of the tax system and of foreign trade
regulations, meanwhile, are already well under way.
Western business interests enthusiastically support these reforms. Yet they
could be extremely unpopular among ordinary Russians. The housing
reforms-however objectively necessary-could, if fully implemented,
quadruple the amount paid by typical families for rent, heat, and
electricity, pushing countless marginal households below the poverty line.
The new labor code will give employers unprecedented power over the working
conditions of their employees, with enormous potential to generate
workplace abuses. The land code faces overwhelming opposition from the more
than 20 million Russians still living on unreformed Soviet-style collective
farms; the steadfast opposition of their representatives in the Communist
and Agrarian parties played a critical role in keeping agricultural land
out of the final draft. Financial reform also faces political and social
obstacles, since a modern, regulated capitalist banking system could not be
so easily manipulated to provide funds for unprofitable, yet locally
important, industries and farms.2 Even the heralded introduction of a flat
13 percent income tax in 2000 actually raised the 12 percent tax rate that
had previously applied to poorer Russians.
Putin and his advisers fully understand the magnitude of the social
challenges to their proposed policies. After a decade of economic disaster
under Yeltsin, most Russians are unlikely to accept without question the
need for further personal dislocation in the name of "market reforms,"
and
if such reforms are pursued seriously, the president's broad popularity is
sure to diminish. Partly for this reason, Putin spent his first two years
in office focusing on political reforms that would strengthen the Russian
state. Reform of Russia's upper house of parliament to replace Russian
governors and legislative executives with political appointees, along with
the naming of seven new "supergovernors" to oversee policy in Russia's
89
regions and ethnic republics, has put pressure on local political strongmen
to conform more closely to the Kremlin's line. A new law on political
parties will eliminate smaller party organizations, possibly leaving only
Unity, Zyuganov's Communists, and the pro-administration Union of Right
Forces in the Duma after the 2003 parliamentary elections. Proposed changes
in the judicial sphere would give judges badly needed pay raises, but would
also strengthen Kremlin control over judicial appointments. Finally, the
promotion of a number of Putin's former associates in the Federal Security
Service (the successor to the KGB) to important state positions sends a
clear signal about the limits of Putin's liberalism.
Although these political changes are designed to solidify Putin's control
over the Russian state, they could inadvertently challenge Russia's current
stability. Taken as a whole, Putin's political reforms threaten to
eliminate legal channels of opposition to Kremlin policy entirely, pushing
dissenting politicians and social activists alike into an antiregime
position. In this respect, the increasing problems faced both by foreign
and domestic nongovernmental organizations in dealing with the local
security services, along with public trials of several leading Russian
environmentalists and scholars for "treason," are certainly disturbing
signs. Thus far Putin has managed to remain within the legal limits of the
1993 Yeltsin constitution, but if mounting social opposition to his
policies were to threaten his hold on power, his fidelity to this document,
and to the imperfect but real democratic framework it has established,
would be sorely tested.
These potential challenges to Putin's authority are likely to reveal the
essential emptiness of "pragmatic patriotism" as a legitimating
ideology.
Under current circumstances, of course, "patriotic" support of Putin
is
fully compatible with "pragmatic" self-interest, and this explains why
almost every major business leader, regional governor, and political party
leader now vocally supports the new president. Were Putin's broader
popularity to evaporate, however, the same political pragmatism would again
lead the oligarchs to support rival political pretenders in dirty media
campaigns, the governors to assert regional independence from Kremlin
control, and members of "centrist" political parties to scramble in
search
of the next "party of power." It is unlikely that Putin would find
many
convinced "patriots" willing to sacrifice their own self-interest to
support him against challenges of this kind. Given unfavorable political
and economic circumstances, Russia could in the longer run find itself once
again in a revolutionary situation.
Notes
1 One of the few exceptions is Michael
McFaul, who has repeatedly argued for
the revolutionary nature of Russia's postcommunist transformation. See
McFaul, Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to
Putin (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001). See also Vladimir Mau
and Irina Starodubrovskaya, The Challenge of Revolution: Contemporary
Russia in Historical Perspective (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press,
2001) and Robert V. Daniels, "The Anti-Communist Revolutions in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe, 1989 to 1991," in David Parker, ed., Revolutions
and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West, 1560-1991 (New York:
Routledge, 2000).
2 Russia's opaque and often corrupt
banking practices have barely changed.
For an excellent account of failed post-Soviet efforts at banking reform,
see Juliet Johnson, A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian
Banking System (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000).
Implications for United States Policy Toward Russia
THREE MAJOR IMPLICATIONS for United States policy flow directly from the
analysis of Russia as caught in the midst of an "anti-revolutionary
revolution." First, the United States must recognize that the process of
democratization and marketization in the former Soviet Union-like all great
revolutions-is going to take decades, not years or months. Impatient calls
for immediate reform in Russia, as in the 1990s, will only heighten the
sense of disappointment for both sides when policy implementation fails to
match initial hopes. Western impatience with Russia's progress is also
sometimes expressed in exasperated complaints about the supposed
antidemocratic and anti-capitalist nature of Russian culture and Orthodox
"civilization"; this intellectual approach-which would-be Russian
autocrats
find very much to their taste-is equally unhelpful for United
States-Russian relations. By contrast, an honest public appraisal of the
enormous difficulties Russia still faces, combined with consistent support
for the long-term process of Russian integration into the global liberal
capitalist system, would be a far more effective rhetorical stance.
Second, if Russia's hopes to "return to Europe" are to be
sustained,
American and European leaders must think more strategically about precisely
how Russia can be integrated into Western political, economic, and military
institutions. Policies such as the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states
or the building of a ballistic missile defense would be far more palatable
to Russian political elites if they were accompanied by simultaneous
efforts to bring Russia into the World Trade Organization, to strengthen
Russian ties to the European Union, and to further scientific and military
cooperation with Russia. Calls to "quarantine" Russia only strengthen
those
forces within the country that call for an open break with the West.
Finally, the United States should never hesitate to criticize Vladimir
Putin for violations of democratic procedures and individual rights.
Pinning all hopes for Russian reform on a single individual continues to be
a mistake, as it was in the Yeltsin era. The idea that dictatorship might
somehow solve Russia's political and economic problems is an especially
dangerous myth. After all, freedom of information, freedom of assembly, and
freedom of speech are as vital to the functioning of the market as they are
to democratic politics. All of the world's richest and most powerful
countries today are strong democracies, and the goal of "normal"
European
life would be impossible for a Russia under dictatorial rule. Indeed, given
Russia's weak postrevolutionary regime, an attempt to establish
dictatorship in Russia might well lead to open conflict among competing
power structures in the country-including the military, the security
services, the regional governors, and the remaining oligarchs-with
unpredictable consequences for regional and global stability. As the war in
Chechnya tragically continues to demonstrate, the use of force to
"strengthen the state" not only leads to the needless destruction of
human
lives, but can also undermine the very institutions it is designed to
preserve.
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