The New Russia
Hahn, Jeffrey W.
tional forum was almost necessarily a bad calculation. Even more important, the dramaturgy of the videotape presented the president as the only human face, alone and beleaguered, defending...
...Russia today is a multiparty system reflecting a true contestation of political ideas...
...The point of all this is not that everything in Russia is fine...
...The 40-percent vote for the Communist party standard-bearer, Gennadi Ziuganov, is probably as much as it will ever get...
...Jeffrey w. Hahn THE NEW RUSSIA A work in progress he problems in Russia which the media have focused on (mostly since the events of Augus0 are serious, especially in areas of finance...
...This may come as hard medicine for advocates of a pure free market, but I wouldn't be surprised if Primakov looks a lot better to them in six months to a year than he does now...
...I have traveled to Yaroslavl every year from 1990 to 1998, and in June 1998 Yaroslavl never looked lovelier or worked better, although my friends there tell me they, too, have been adversely affected by the recent events...
...What they want is more of a safety net, something akin to the democratic socialist variant one finds in Europe...
...Gay marriage lost on the ballot, even in Hawaii, and equal-rights ordinances protecting sexual orientation lost almost everywhere...
...Thirty percent of the population is reported to be living in povert y - r a t e s are higher in the countryside than in the cities-and the figure is growing...
...They ran, essentially, as the anti-Clinton party, with no other visible issues...
...In that much, they're right...
...Gross Domestic Product fell 10 percent in September following an 8 percent drop in August, and the grain harvest is about 50 percent below last year's...
...On the economic side, whatever problems there are, state ownership has been largely replaced by private ownership...
...Wilson Carey McWilliams teaches political science at Rutgers University and is a frequent contributor to Commonweal...
...to buy milk in zero-degree weather...
...Specifically, we need to see Russia as a work in progress, a society in transition...
...In the electorate's estimation, in other words, there won't be any bridges to the next century, particularly none that call for sacrifice...
...Occasionally too, Republicans didn't put enough distance between themselves and the Right: in California, it almost certainly hurt Matt Fong's promising and very moderate Senate campaign against Barbara Boxer to have contributed substantially to a virulently antigay, militantly rightist PAC...
...The city still felt the heavy hand of the local party nomeklatura and permission was required for everything...
...It's my guess that this strategy, when conceived, seemed terribly clever: it allowed Republicans to dodge any too-public emphasis on the agenda of social conservatives, concerns which put off many moderates and independents...
...The financial crisis had immediate political repercussions...
...There has been a good deal of journalistic hand wringing about a rising "red tide" in Russia's new government...
...If Primakov moves decisively, he may succeed in reestablishing a state system that can make laws and ensure compliance, minimal standards of state capacity...
...Some early indications are apparent...
...Not even the main supporters of the present-day Communist Party of the Russian Federation, namely the pensioners who make up the large majority of those you see on TV demonstrating against the government in Red Square, want to go back to Stalinism...
...since 1990 there have been two presidential elections, two for parliament, and local elections for legislatures and for governors...
...A democratically elected mayor presided competently over the city and met regularly with a democratically elected city council...
...The problem, obviously, is that it left the Republicans looking empty--and worse, unpredictable-especially since a great many voters, with admirable good sense, did not hold Democrats responsible for Clinton's personal conduct and did hold the G.O.P...
...In the first years, there was nothing in the stores...
...I see no return to the authoritarian party-state communism of the Soviet period (Leninism), because there is no real constituency for it...
...Jeffrey w. Hahn is a member of the political science department at Villanova University...
...Russia's inability to pay its debts (it owed 109 billion rubles in short-term notes and could repay only 37 billion rubles) resulted in effectual devaluation, inflation (consumer prices rose 38 percent in September), and shortages...
...One poll after another has shown that Russians want "a strong leader...
...Since 1990, I have been conducting field research in Yaroslavl, Russia, an ancient provincial capital located about two hundred miles northeast of Moscow on the Volga River...
...it obviously isn't...
...The crisis, I believe, is a temporary one reflecting the vulnerability of an emerging market and a transitional society in a period of global recession...
...How does he propose to do this...
...Today's Russia is characterized by the principle of judicial review and is guided by the principle, if not always practiced, of equality before the law...
...In Soviet Russia there was a rubber-stamp parliament that voted unanimously for everything put before it...
...The president loves to quote from the Book of Proverbs, "Where there is no vision, the people perish...
...Soviet Russia was an unfree society lacking basic civil rights...
...I drank beer with my friend, Sasha, in a brightly decorated outdoor caf6, and with other Russian friends at a lovely underground restaurant in the university...
...In any case, to calculate harshly, it is the older generation that supports Communist leaders...
...Commonweal | | November20, 1998...
...They think that Clinton is doing a "good job," but as a person, they regard him as flawed, contemptible, or both, and they also say that his leadership is wounded almost beyond healing...
...Stores were full...
...Soviet Russia had no free and fair elections...
...Yeltsin fired his government and engaged in prolonged political warfare with parliament before appointing a new administration...
...I disagree...
...At the same time, the Republicans' last-minute anti-Clinton blitz helped energize Clinton supporters who, even if they can't stand the president, like his enemies even less...
...To help do this, it may be Commonweal | 0 November 20, 1998 useful to compare Russia in 1998, politically and economically, with Russia before 1990, a scant eight years ago...
...How accurate is this picture...
...Americans expect, probably correctly, that, at least where public institutions are concerned, the country will be confronting the next century flatfooted, without the running start that might give democracy the chance to shape or govern the direction of things...
...Republicans still got a large majority of religious conservatives, of course, but the Democratic percentage among such voters went up sharply, and sometimes decisively...
...Moderate Republicans, beyond blaming their leaders, are already assigning responsibility to what they see as the party's too-close commitment to social conservatism...
...everywhere there was construction, and reconstruction...
...The leaders of the religious right argue that Republicans suffered, not because they were conservative, but because they had nothing to say beyond a few declamations about lower taxes, offering no moral or principled version of the public good...
...Not only has the new prime minister, Evegeni Primakov, made present and former Communists part of his government, but he has talked about the need for greater government regulation of the economy...
...Even more important, the dramaturgy of the videotape presented the president as the only human face, alone and beleaguered, defending himself against an intrusive, relentless, impersonal voice: it was a scene out of Kafka, making the president into a stand-in for Everyman facing power that is both invisible and malign, the dark nightmare of mass society...
...What of the future...
...today's parliament agrees unanimously on nothing, engaging in agenda setting, debate, and oversight...
...today's Russia acknowledges in law, and--to a much greater extent than before---in practice, freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, and of assembly, including demonstrations...
...If I were a Russian, I would want a strong leader in this environment, someone who, within the framework of a limited government, can get the job done...
...economic decisions are no longer made by the state planning agency, GOSPLKN, but (however imperfectly) by the marketplace...
...It is to be hoped that he, and both parties, can find more than rhetorical space for that teaching, here on the edge of the millennium...
...Second, having staked so much of the attack on the president's misdeeds, the Republicans did not do much of anything else...
...I got up to stand in a thirty-minute line at 6 A.M...
...We need to put these difficulties, serious as they are, in a larger context...
...Despite these worries, if he is able to restore the state's authority, Primakov may actually be what Russia needs right now...
...Reports in the media suggest that Russia is on the verge of collapse and that a return to Soviet communism is a cause for Western concern...
...I brought my food and supplies with me from Moscow, where there were foreign currency stores...
...Turnout among African-Americans was critical in many states, notably in Georgia where they are 24 percent of registered voters but this year made up 29 percent of the electorate...
...or in Maryland, where voters in Baltimore made an easy winner out of the otherwise embattled governor, Parris Glendening...
...in place of a fixed exchange rate, the ruble is convertible and remains so, despite the current crisis...
...And in Illinois, African-American turnout let Carol Mosely-Braun make a decent race...
...Many have interpreted this to mean that Russians want to return to an authoritarian system...
...And the Right can point to the victory of some of its champions, like the egregious Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho...
...Rather it is to remind us that Russia has come a very long way in a short period of time...
...Contrast this state of affairs with my last visit in June 1998...
...responsible for what they saw as the inaction or extremism of Congress...
...as a result of inevitable demographic change, their numbers will decline...
...Imported cars scattered people like chickens in the streets...
...All were competitive and largely free and fair...
...Soviet Russia was a oneparty system...
...Let me put all of this in a personal context...
...Transportation was on foot or on overflowing, crumbling buses...
...No restaurants, no retail sales, no beer...
...The 1996 presidential election can be seen as a referendum of sorts on a return to Soviet communism...
...Most Americans are at least mildly comfortable, but they aren't happy...
...I had breakfast at McDonalds...
...They include cracking down on tax cheats and collecting revenues, regulating banks, putting teeth into a Russian SEC and insuring transparency in the Russian stock market, ensuring law and order, temporarily monopolizing certain sectors of the economy such as alcohol production, making regional elites comply with federal law and the Constitution...
...This backfiring effect was particularly evident in relation to black voters, who tend to be protective about the president for all his vacillations, the strongest voice for racial equality to occupy the White House since L.B.J...
...Moreover, it was the wrong year to cold-shoulder the social conservatives, since Democrats, especially in the South, had been particularly active in recruiting candidates who champion a good many conservative values...
...He wants to restore Russian national interests to the forefront of foreign policy...
...But the religious right has an appropriate rejoinder...
...After all, conservatives had their successes in 1998: in Washington, one of the more liberal states, voters passed an initiative against affirmative action and defeated Grethe Cammermeyer, a highly visible, openly lesbian candidate for Congress...
Vol. 125 • November 1998 • No. 20
