Russia Watch / From the Finland Station
Meyer, Herbert E.
From the Finland Station by Herbert E. Meyer T he Russian Revolution of 1991 is beginning to fail. Like an underpowered rocket, it has ceased rising toward the stability of orbit and instead has...
...Now busily helping "secure the peace" in Bosnia—by propping up the Serbs—he was among the Soviet Foreign Ministry's leading propagandists during the 1980s...
...The similarity among the successful revolutions is this: each of these countries is led by men who were anti-Communists when anti-Communism was not only unfashionable, but physically dangerous: Men like Poland's Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel risked their lives again and again in opposition...
...Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was the quintessential industrial apparatchik...
...In sum, the Russian Revolution has turned out to be less a revolution than a reform—like a fully realized implementation of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika...
...In the classic sense of the word, they are careerists...
...Simply put, these are men whose heads are screwed on tight...
...It isn't a coincidence that, while voters in the other countries choose more or less normal people to represent them, Russian voters turn 50 The American Spectator April/May 1994 to a man like Vladimir Zhirinovsky...
...II American Spectator Reprints Available Copies of James Ring Adams's two reports on the Whitewater scandal, John Cony's report on The MIA Cover-Up, Michael Fumento's report on Magic Johnson & AIDS...
...They proved themselves men of courage, character, and tenacity...
...Michael Ledeen's exposé of Lawrence Walsh...
...arguably they are not, and certainly Yeltsin's courage in August 1991 has secured his place in history...
...It is true that reformed Communists are less awful than unreformed Communists, but it is increasingly apparent that the difference is less than one might hope...
...However, despite everything the Soviet Union did to kill off the kinds of men and women morally and politically capable of leading Russia to a democratic stability, such people do still exist...
...0 r able to go...
...And SDI, which was a good idea in the 1980s, looks to be an even better idea now...
...It certainly includes the strengthening of NATO and its expansion to Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and whichever other central European countries wish to join and have something to contribute...
...The worst mistake we could make now would be to cling to the Yeltsin government simply because it is better than its predecessor...
...Y Clinton's Big Mo by Omel %neck, Mama r 1 The American Spectator April /May 1994 51...
...For it turns out that what Tolstoy wrote about families in Anna Karenina—that all happy ones are alike, but that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way—is also true of tevolutions...
...The problem is that these are not primarily men of principle, but compromisers, deal-cutters, and cynics...
...A second provision prohibits anyone who hasn't been a resident of Russia during the past ten years from seeking office...
...Daniel Wattenberg's profile of the real Hillary Clinton...
...The problem is not so much that these are thoroughly bad men...
...And as with all careerists, their primaryobjective is the protection of their own status...
...And where was Andrei Kozyrev, Russia's ohso-reasonable foreign minister, during the 1980s...
...Increasingly, it looks as though this is as far as Yeltsin & Co...
...These reports are ideal for distribution to your friends, business colleagues, teachers, and political representatives...
...are willing to go...
...The American Spectator, P.O...
...It is, but that isn't good enough...
...Like an underpowered rocket, it has ceased rising toward the stability of orbit and instead has begun its tumbling, catastrophic descent into history...
...Thus a continuation of the policies and approaches that helped bring down the Soviet regime—with some modifications, to be sure—is very much in order...
...Daniel Wattenberg's report on David Koresh or his report on Love and Hate in Arkansas...
...One: $5 Ten: $35 Fifty: $130 Five: $20 Twenty-five: $75 One hundred: $250 (Quantity discounts apply only to orders for the same report...
...it is sometimes called the Solzhenitsyn clause, since that great man is the only Russian over 65 with the stature to run and win...
...Climbing steadily up the Soviet Foreign Ministry's career ladder, shame= lessly promoting Soviet interests, and never once publicly opposing its vicious policies in Afghanistan or anywhere else...
...Terry Eastland's dissection of Rush Limbaugh's Revolution...
...The Incredible Shrinking AIDS Epidemic report...
...Of course...
...These include a strong military posture and the kind of diplomacy that used to be called, accurately and with pride, containment...
...It is designed, of course, to block from power all those who risked their lives to topple the Soviet Union and for their efforts got jailed, tortured, then kicked out...
...Box 549, Arlington, VA 22216-0549 Yes, please send me: - copies of James Ring Adams's "Beyond Whitewater" $ - copies of James Ring Adams's "The Whitewater Obstructionists" $ copies of John Cony's "The MIA Cover-Up" $ - copies of Michael Fumento's "This Magic Moment" $ - copies of Daniel Wattenberg's "Gunning for Koresh" $ copies of Daniel Wattenberg's "Lady Macbeth of Little Rock" $ - copies of Daniel Wattenberg's "Love and Hate in Arkansas" $ copies of Terry Eastland's "Rush Limbaugh: Talking Back" $ copies of Michael Ledeen's "Lawrence Walsh, Grand Inquisitor" $ copies of "The Incredible Shrinking AIDS Epidemic" $ - copies of Lisa Schiffren's "The Unauthorized Clinton Financial Audit" $ copies of David Brock's "Living With the Clintons" $ copies of David Brock's "The Real Anita Hill" $ Total enclosed $ Name...
...Send for your copies today...
...He is, alas, their kind of guy...
...His most recent book is Hard Thinking: The Fusion of Politics and Science...
...This may well have been worth a shot—no need here for a witch hunt over who "lost" Russia—but siding with the reform Communists turns out to have been a mistake and we need to retarget both our assistance and our allegiance...
...To understand why this revolution is failing one need only consider why some other revolutions in formerly Communist countries are succeeding...
...Likewise the yuppie diplomat Vitali Churkin, whose quick wit and unaccented English have made him a talk-show favorite...
...That is why Russia's highly touted new constitution includes two provisions that simply should not be there...
...Nonetheless, with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, it is apparent that while in most of the former Communist countries we have focused on helping the anti-Communists, in Russia we have focused on helping the reform Communists...
...By contrast, there are no anti-Communists in the Yeltsin government...
...this one is known as the Bukovsky clause, after the great dissident Vladimir Bukovsky...
...For among its other horrors, Communism turned out to be—in the purest and most hideous sense—an experiment in social (some would even say genetic) engineering...
...When the Communists set out to create Lenin's "New Soviet Man," they did so by shooting or otherwise destroying as many of the best, the brightest, and the most principled as they could get their hands on...
...In Russia this ghastly experiment lasted for more than two generations, versus one to one-and-a-half in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and elsewhere...
...This is not a problem that can be corrected easily or swiftly...
...Yeltsin himself was a high-ranking Communist official before his collisions with Politburo colleagues sent him into the political wilderness...
...Indeed, through policies such as its tightening clamps on the press and its new reluctance to grant travel visas to Westerners, the Yeltsin government is starting to look more and more like its predecessor...
...For Western policy makers, the strategic objective must be to help assure that, this time, the second revolution completes the first rather than reverses it entirely...
...The advent of the Yeltsin government is not the culmination of Russia's transition to democracy, but merely the potential beginning of it...
...and Lisa Schiffren's exposé of the Clintons' Tax Returns are available to TAS readers...
...Do they make mistakes and bad decisions...
...For despite our high hopes and the early promise of the present regime, Russia seems to be repeating its 1917 pattern of one incomplete revolution, to be followed inevitably by a second...
...Not one...
...Address: LCity: State: Zip Code: RP9405 AMERICAN SpECTATOR The Real Anita Hill by Pawl Brock AMERICAN ECTATOR...
...Prime Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence and vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council...
...The result is that Russians inhabit a society explicitly structured to function with the best people—and the noblest ideals—removed from it...
...David Brock's investigation of Anita Hill and his new "Living With the Clintons...
...The first prohibits anyone over the age of 65 from running for president...
...But they and their colleagues fundamentally know right from wrong, and they simply will not allow their countries to revert to pre-revolutionary policies...
Vol. 27 • April 1994 • No. 45
