Yeltsin rolls the dice - Russian President Boris Yeltsin's political challenges - Cover Story

National Review, April 12, 1993 by James Sherr

Once again, Russia is defying the Russia-watchers. It also may be defying reason. Reason would have dictated that the latest showdown between president and Parliament produce not presidential rule or the president's impeachment, but nothing at all. This seemed a likely, if dismaying, outcome because the correlation of forces between Russia's institutions--and, even more importantly, within them--makes the costs of the action Yeltsin took on March 20 not only uncertain, but incalculable. To be sure, the costs of stalemate have been intolerable. But in Russia the intolerable is often preferable to the unthinkable. By declaring "special rule," can Yeltsin turn the tables?

He certainly has been given every incentive to do so. The eighth (extraordinary) Congress of People's Deputies which met March 10-13 far surpassed the seventh in the indignities it inflicted upon him. Its chairman, Ruslan Khasbulatov, denounced as the "devil's work" the very accord that he had wrung from a humiliated Yeltsin at last December's Congress. What is more, in the weeks and days prior to the current Congress, Yeltsin retreated even further, intensifying his "dialogue" with the "centrist" Civic Union, redrafting his proposals for resolving the "constitutional crisis" and, finally, accepting a Congress agenda which, with good reason, he had initially opposed.

Khasbulatov's temerity is the very clue which reveals the enormousness of the gamble Yeltsin has taken. Whilst crass and swaggering, Khasbulatov is no blunderbuss. Like an earlier "dark horse" in Russian politics, Josef Stalin, he is expert at manipulating parliamentary procedure, assiduous in building support, and shrewd in judging power relationships. Yeltsin is now defying these power relationships and, through that defiance, altering them. The question is not simply whether he can survive, but whether he can alter them sufficiently to turn himself into an effective reformist leader.

Parliament's Premise

Until March 20, Russia's so-called "centrists" were confident that they could divert reform into its antithesis, "stabilization." That confidence rested on a conviction that radical, free-market reform stood no chance of success in Russian conditions. From this premise, all their calculations have sprung.

Dispiriting as the premise might be, it has always possessed its own self-fulfilling logic. Success of reform did not depend upon Yeltsin in the past, and it will not do so in the future. Instead, it depends upon the existence of a political elite with the will and capacity to implement reformist policies. Today, there is no such elite, only what Yeltsin's opponents term a "coterie of advisors." This coterie is certainly supported by much of the country's creative intelligentsia, by a growing number of entrepreneurs, and by an unknown, but not minuscule, number of ordinary people. Yet these supporters do not begin to dominate Russia's political and economic structures.

This should not be surprising. For all its failings, the old regime was remarkably successful in depriving its opponents of the competence and experience required to manage an economy (not to speak of an army or a security service). Moreover, thanks to the swift and relatively painless collapse of the Soviet regime, most of the old Soviet elite survived intact. Thus, in most "echelons of administration," not only is there no sizable force to fill the vacuum, there is no vacuum to fill. In Yeltsin's own words, "We managed to prevent Russia from moving toward revolution" in 1991. His political weakness has stemmed from this very accomplishment. The pain Russia avoided in 1991 is the pain it suffers now.

In this skewed and schizophrenic situation, neither pre-revolutionary nor post-, the comparison made between "dogmatic, intolerant" shock-therapists and "fanatical, impatient" Bolsheviks has resonance. And the claim that Parliament represents "the political forces in society" is not only plausible; it is a literal, if perverse, truth. For Yeltsin has had no mass movement, no representative institution, and no "power ministry" he could rely upon. And the people who elected Yeltsin will not be a mass movement (let alone a "political force") until they acquire representation and a medium of expression. To be sure, these people may be no more disposed to shock therapy than Russia's Parliament. But there is ample evidence of their willingness to support "firm government," and conclusive evidence that they revile the Congress and the Supreme Soviet. The vote which Yeltsin now decrees for April 25 might give them that medium of expression.

"Might" is still the operative word, however. Whilst Yeltsin can issue decrees, he cannot hold a referendum. Referendums, like the more straightforward "vote" now proposed, must be organized by local authorities. Yet Congress's moratorium on referendums, adopted by 580 votes to 221, was initially proposed by 72 local-authority heads. Those authorities can be counted upon to place every obstacle in Yeltsin's path unless he convinces them that he has already won before the vote takes place.