RUSSIA'S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin - Review

Washington Monthly, Oct, 2001 by Markos T. Kounalakis

RUSSIA'S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin by Michael McFaul Cornell University Press, $35.00

MUTUALLY ASSURED HEADLINES was the operational doctrine of newspapers during the height of the outwardly cool, yet constantly simmering, conflict between Moscow and Washington that ended nearly a decade ago. Since that time, Russian news has slowly, yet steadily, migrated from Page 1 to the business sections of American dailies.

Chandra replaced Chechnya in the news hole as the Soviet superpower broke down from a threatening nuclear adversary to a diminished (though nuclear-armed) Russian state. The prevailing news trend gives the popular impression that Russia is on the irreversible--if somewhat rocky--road to a functioning market economy and electoral democracy.

Two new books chart that progress and fill in the missing context and color of the often ignored, but dramatic story born in revolution 10 summers ago. Russia's Unfinished Revolution by Michael McFaul and Casino Moscow by Matthew Brzezinski are unintentionally complementary volumes. McFaul gives an erudite and well-documented history of the last 15 years, from Gorbachev to Putin. Brzezinski's personal anecdotes and journalistic observations flesh out McFaul's solid outline. Most of us lack the power of President George W. Bush to divine instantly a Russian leader's soul and intentions, so a historical review of how Russia got to Putin is helpful in guessing its future moves. McFaul starts his story with Gorbachev, the once all-powerful, all-controlling Soviet leader who introduced perestroika and glasnost into a system where "simultaneous political and economic change had a logic of their own that eventually could not be controlled." The details of these developments do not get lost in McFaul's telling of the story, and his step-by-step analysis of political and electoral events reinforces their significance.

McFaul deftly takes us through the failed first republic that culminated in the shelling of the Russian White House and the establishment of a new political order in 1993--what he refers to as the second Russian republic. The result is a country where, despite the many imperfections of its electoral democracy, leaders are voted in and the law has a basis in the constitution.

The author, a political science professor at Stanford and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, came to study the Russian revolution somewhat by accident; he was focusing on revolutionary change in Africa and while researching such movements in Moscow, found that he was in the midst of something too big to ignore.

McFaul brings striking firsthand experience to bear: The access he managed to obtain, and the time he spent with the revolution's various political players, brings fresh material and keen insight to the story.

Brzezinski's book opens with an incident of startling violence: a break-in at the author's Kiev apartment during which he is beaten to a bloody pulp during a fruitless robbery attempt. Brzezinski, who was then a Wall Street Journal-stringerand later a staffer, uses his survivor's perspective to highlight the grim absurdity of the event that nearly left him dead.

Casino Moscow is a personal look at expatriates, economics, ethically challenged politicians and businessmen, and the place of the ex-Commie cowboy in the "Wild East" during the latter part of McFaul's second Russian republic. Brzezinski, a Canadian of Polish extraction (and nephew of Carter National Security Council chief Zbignew Brzezinski), seems to appreciate the eastern European absurdist tradition, which allows him to maintain an ironic distance between observation and emotion.

Or perhaps Brzezinski's perspective is less absurdis, than it is reflective of the humorous vein that foreign correspondents use to speak to each other about the daily routines and small ironies we're subjected to while reporting. We all have our favorite stories, and love to share details of the Aeroflot flight from hell or the meal that bites back. And we all love to characterize the dire situation in Russia by using the time-honored form of the revealing Russian anecdote: for the economy, the woman on the sidewalk with only one sock to sell, and for alcoholism, doing shots of NyQuil after the vodkas run out. But Brzezinski has done a remarkable job of collecting those anecdotes and creating a cohesive, enlightening collection of stories that adds individual, ephemeral, and entertaining detail to McFaul's grand historical sweep.

Brzezinski brings to life the characters of modern Russia's greed and adventure--larger than life figures like the cosmopolitan Chechen Umar Dzhabrailov, on whom the author Frederick Forsyth modeled the mafia-like character in his book Icon. "Umar," as the press referred to him, was the hotel-owning business partner of Paul Tatum, the American with whom Umar had a public disagreement and who later was assassinated in front of his landmark Radisson Slavyanskaya.