Russia Watch: Democracy Can Wait
Bernstein, Jonas
"Russia Watch: Democracy Can Wait" by Jonas Bernstein Democracy Can Wait Boris Yeltsin's poll numbers have been going up lately—one recent survey commissioned by the Moscow Times...
...They have begun investing in domestic industry and want it protected from foreign competition...
...And while the signatories mentioned the danger of "ideological revenge" if the Communists won, it was not their central point...
...And there is little doubt that the Communists' policy toward Chechnya, despite their fake dovishness on the campaign trail, would differ little from Yeltsin's...
...the prospect of their goodies being nationalized if the Communists win, decided a display of neutrality would cover their backsides...
...thus whoever wins the inevitable run-off will do so only by a few points...
...Not only did Yeltsin and Zyuganov (and their respective teams) once serve the same master: since the beginning of the year, their approaches to policy have been converging...
...Though the poll looked only at the views of senior officers, the loyalty of the lower ranks is also a question mark...
...On the other hand, perhaps everybody involved—Zyuganov's national bolsheviks, Yeltsin's "party of power," and the new business elite—figures they will benefit most by cutting a deal now, before the elections...
...Some analysts, however, say there is more to the appeal than that...
...During the October 1993 parliamentary uprising, Grachev reportedly cobbled together a force from reliable infantry, armored, and spetsnaz units to suppress the rebels...
...Petersburg, and Ekaterinburg...
...The rest are unwilling to vote for either candidate...
...RUSSIA WATCH by Jonas Bernstein -V „. Rullitmund !'%///////' 0' //6 Democracy Can Wait Boris Yeltsin's poll numbers have been going up lately—one recent survey commissioned by the Moscow Times and CNN had him ahead of Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov—and the Russian stock market has responded by heading skyward...
...As Kommersant pointed out, the signatories to the appeal—who used the deflating ruble and low domestic natural resource prices to make their fortunes during the first years of economic reform—now face a different economic environment...
...Furthermore, the military is also split, and in a way highly unfavorable to Yeltsin...
...This issue of constructing society will not be solved by voting," he said...
...But the good tidings on Russia's Wall Street have been lost on some of the country's most powerful new entrepreneurs...
...As the business leaders wrote in their appeal, "Society is split...
...It is not hard to guess why...
...So the Kremlin may now be trying to incorporate Zyuganov and his "people's patriotic bloc" into such a scheme...
...Yeltsin has neither fired his insubordinate military chief nor even said a word on the subject...
...While the former party comrades in power may be capable of cutting a deal with the current party comrades in opposition, will the Yeltsin-hating, destitute pensioner or factory worker swallow joining hands with the Zyuganov-hating, nouveau riche banker for the sake of peace and national consensus...
...Yeltsin may need him again...
...And while Yeltsin's first reaction was to warn the businessmen that a Communist victory would mean their expropriation, several days later his aide Georgi Salarov called the appeal "a responsible civil act" and announced that Yeltsin will hold talks with the Communists...
...One possible scenario has Yeltsin remaining as president, with Zyuganov becoming prime minister...
...In any case, Zyuganov immediately expressed interest in meeting the appeal's signatories to discuss their ideas...
...indeed, the Communists will denounce a Yeltsin victory as electoral fraud, whatever the margin...
...Yet a YeltsinZyuganov deal also has a certain logic to it...
...This experiment in Latin American–style corporatism failed: one of the parties never got off the ground, while the other, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's Our Home Is Russia, got creamed by the Communists in December...
...This call for a compromise between Yeltsin and Zyuganov has left many observers scratching their heads...
...In the process, they find they have a lot in common...
...The Communist leader has promised there will be no nationalizations without just compensation and that "all forms of property" will be respected...
...The majority view is that the businessmen, fearing JONAS BERNSTEIN is a journalist in Moscow...
...A significant win by Yeltsin will be ascribed to cheating...
...Following the publication of the business leaders' appeal, one of its signatories—Boris Berezovsky, head of the huge LogoVAZ automotive-industrial concern and reportedly very close to Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin—dropped an interesting hint...
...A recent incident underscored Yeltsin's doubts about the armed forces' reliability...
...On April 27, all of Moscow's major newspapers published an appeal signed by thirteen business barons, each of whom heads a financial-industrial group—Russia's version of the Japanese kiretsu—warning that the June presidential vote could have apocalyptic consequences...
...The endgame could be an Allende-like scenario, in which the armed forces intervene on the not-unfounded pretext that the country is on the verge of a fratricidal civil war...
...While such a coalition may be hard to imagine, so, after all, was the Soviet-Nazi pact...
...For their part, Russia's robber barons, while clearly nervous about the talk of nationalization and reversing privatization, share both Zyuganov's and Yeltsin's interest in industrial policy...
...Thus Russia's current situation might be compared to one in which two competing mafia groups, realizing that they are evenly matched, suddenly decide to have a sit-down and talk things over...
...But many analysts believe both Zyuganov and Yeltsin have already attracted the bulk of their respective potential electorates, each marshaling about a third of Russia's voters...
...How could these two enemies possibly iron out their differences...
...That schism is not as deep as it was in 1917, true, and is instead more like Chile at the time of Salvador Allende's election...
...Simply that, after the June vote, "a minority, red or white, will receive a mandate to enforce rules categorically rejected by a huge part of society....The acrimony of the opposing political forces is so great, that either of them can rule only by embarking on the road toward civil war and the disintegration of Russia...
...Maybe Yeltsin and his cronies are ready to accept a Communist win and retire abroad...
...An internal Defense Ministry document leaked last March to Moskovskye Novosti had poll numbers showing 21.5 percent of the military's senior officers saying they "trusted" Zyuganov, 18.4 percent saying the same about ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and a mere 4.2 percent trusting Yeltsin...
...A growing number of press reports about Russia's enlisted men mention them begging for food and even starving to death...
...The Defense Ministry study predicted that if the political situation before the June vote becomes unstable and degenerates into disorder, part of the army will side with the opposition, particularly in pro-Communist regions— (Continued on page 72) Will Yeltsin and Zyuganov cut a deal to share power...
...As Russians themselves like to say, anything is possible here...
...The only fly in the ointment is the voters...
...Perhaps the idea of a YeltsinZyuganov compromise is, as one commentator put it, "nearly utopian...
...The appeal, some are saying, may have been a Kremlin trial balloon to test public reaction, and perhaps also a way to make a Yeltsin-Zyuganov compromise seem the result of spontaneous societal pressure...
...It will be solved either by a civil war or by a compromise between the competing politicians...
...What is worrying them...
...To avoid this, they wrote, the opposing sides must find "a political compromise...
...Given that Russia's political divide has a geographic component, pro-Communist regions may simply refuse to recognize a Yeltsin win or even declare themselves independent Soviet republics, leaving the Kremlin with new Chechnyas to deal with...
...Inflation is low, and raw materials are at world price levels...
...Yeltsin, on the other hand, has often cribbed from the script Zyuganov uses when preaching to the Communist faithful—he criticizes the economic reforms that have created a society in which ten percent live well while fifty percent live below minimum standards, promises to compensate savings lost to inflation since 1991, and even threatens, through his subordinates, to overturn the results of some of last year's controversial privatizations...
...Stay tuned...
...The power brokers are themselves probably debating how to get around this problem right now...
...They note that the Yeltsin government, in the runup to last December's parliamentary vote, tried to create two official parties as a way of co-opting the center-left and center-right and forcing the extremes off the playing field...
...Joanna Pleszczynska Registered Patent Agent PATENT PROSECUTION Infringement, Validity & Novelty Patent Searches phone/fax: (703) 978-7678 4216 Sherando Lane Annandale, VA 22003 72 The American Spectator • June 1996...
...On April 19, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev admitted to the State Duma that he had ignored his commander-in-chief's March 31 ceasefire order in Chechnya for six days...
...Perhaps the Communists are willing to lose and continue serving as the parliamentary "opposition," collecting their perks until their elderly supporters die off and their political role dwindles to nothing...
...The American Spectator • June 1996 55 Russia Watch (Continued from page 55) something that might happen after a Yeltsin win, as well...
...They would welcome a law and order regime...
...Perhaps one or both sides think they can win and hold power...
...If Zyuganov wins, on the other hand, any move toward wholesale nationalization or other steps to reverse the property redistribution of the last four years would be resisted by businessmen and local administrators in pro-Yeltsinregions, particularly in Moscow, St...
...And they also want personal protection: while many of the new tycoons themselves had shady beginnings, there is no doubt that they are tired of maintaining huge private security forces, wearing flak jackets around the clock, and even sleeping in a different location every night to avoid killers hired by competitors...
Vol. 29 • June 1996 • No. 6
