Debating Democracy in Russia

...Nevertheless, I argued, when the people not so long ago were presented with clear choices at the polls, a healthy majority cast their ballots for Yeltsin, the candidate backed by those with the most impeccably democratic credentials...

...I could not, of course, deny the reality of the dangers they cited...

...So complete is the country's economic disarray that even though convertible currency is desperately wanted, money is difficult to exchange...

...It is not merely that people are queuing up at largely empty stores, or that there are pitiful beggars everywhere, or that apparently abandoned construction sites litter Moscow...

...Now "Iron Feliks" is lying in a little green garden outside of a Moscow exhibition hall together with other recently removed members of the Communist pantheon: You can see Mikhail I. Kalinin, Yakov M. Sverdlov and even Stalin prostrate, and it is a wonderful sight...

...The intelligentsia has a long tradition of fear of the common people...

...Shifting my questions to the present and future did not elicit more upbeat or diverse responses...

...On a recent evening, an admittedly fancy dinner for three with caviar, but without wine, cost 800 rubles—twice the monthly average earning of a Soviet worker...

...Here one can eat reasonably well in fairly pleasant surroundings—a vivid contrast to the tourist hotels, with their predictable menus, uniform dishes and surly waiters...

...A friend described going to the White House that rainy Monday morning, August 19...

...Shortages of everything including building materials may have got ten worse than they already were, and naked poverty may be more openly visible, but these phenomena are hardly new...

...In many respects it certainly was a wondrous time to be in Moscow...

...The newly independent republics are busily forming "national guards" that have no obvious function other than fighting one another...

...Granted, not all Russians are democrats...

...many believe it was only a strong government that protected them from the wrath of the dark masses...

...That ugly opinions can be heard is an inevitable aspect of democracy, not necessarily the harbinger of something dreadful...

...Then there are stalls that offer foreign beer for 25 rubles a can, miserable looking used clothes, lipstick and cheap perfumes...

...even an untrained foreign traveler couldn't help noticing them immediately...

...Gorbachev initiated reforms, they got out of hand, andtheold regime simply unraveled...

...Leaving aside the farmers' markets that have existed for decades and now play a greater role in feeding those able to pay their exorbitant prices, probably the brightest additions to the drab Moscow scene are the cooperative restaurants...

...That what took place last month in the Soviet Union was a revolution is hardly in doubt...

...Meanwhile, she said, on this most fashionable street in Moscow well-dressed women patiently stood in lines outside several recently opened French perfumeries...

...Their willingness to confront problems represents a jarring contrast to the traditional Soviet press, which considered only good news fit to print...

...Did you think that after the collapse of Communism Russia would be like Denmark...

...for them life went on undisturbed...

...When Stalin drew up boundaries for the constituent republics he consciously left large minorities in each...

...Throughout the city y ou see tables set up where individuals are selling more or less the same books: detective novels— Agatha Christie is still a great favorite— works on yoga and astrology, sex manuals, Dale Carnegie self-improvement programs, and a few computer handbooks...

...On the walls of Moscow there are anti-Semitic manifestoes calling both Yeltsin and Mikhail S. Gorbachev agents of a Zionist conspiracy...

...There is a large spectrum of newspapers ranging from the odious Pul's Tushina, an anti-Semitic rag, to the intelligent and measured Nezavismaya gazeta...

...Not surprisingly, the private trade mushrooming today on Moscow's streets is hardly regarded as providing the necessary foundation...

...Given the absence of any frameGwork for a functioning capitalist system, the lack of personnel who understand its fundamentals, and the present level of shortages, many are asking how privatization can proceed...

...Some 8 per cent of the voters did vote for an unattractive and dangerous extreme Russian nationalist, yet a far larger percentage of the French electorate voted for ultra-Rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen...

...First of all, it has been a revolution in installments...

...Hesays that while hedoesn't mind a meatless diet, he regrets not being able to feed his beloved golden retrievers any longer...

...If anything, the masses have exhibited a great deal of political maturity in recent years...

...The ex-Communists claim the country's current problems are proof that it needs an autocratic government...

...Figuratively speaking, y ou could still hear the echoes of gunfire in the air...

...If you have a yen for a pizza and go into the Pizza Hut, the smallest pie plus a little bowl of salad will set you back $ 10...

...In these circumstances people have the feeling that no one has any practical idea of how to begin economic restructuring, how to move from stalls at the metro or tables on the street to creating private computer firms...

...From my experience at places that accept both rubles and dollars, it appears the Russians are confused about the relationship between the two...

...They believed the old order could be restored, and had grave doubts that the people would come to the defense of their elected leaders...

...Finally, it is very easy to get used to good things...

...Nor is everyone happy that the Communist era has ended...

...No doubt standing in front of Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters, and watching the statue of Cheka founder Feliks Dzhezhinsky come down was exhilarating...

...Ironically, these papers actually often contribute to the gloom...

...Others spoke of the warm camaraderie at the barricades—the shared sandwiches, the people who brought tea, the sleepless nights, the understandable trepidation...

...Indeed, signs of economic chaos abound...

...Russian citizens, naturally, are not faced with such pleasant choices...

...On the contrary, those who went to the barricades and those who did not considered the odds heavily stacked in favor of the self-proclaimed State Committee for the State of Emergency of the Soviet Union...

...I doubt that I made an impression...

...Without such optimism it would be very difficult to make the sacrifices a revolution inevitably demands...

...Moreover, my friends rightly observed, this was not a revolution made by a disgruntled populace...

...In the farmers' markets it is available, but prohibitively expensive...

...But beneath the thin layer of happy excitement inspired by the failure of the reactionaries I found a universal, almost palpable gloom...

...Why are the beneficiaries of the great and profound August '91 revolution so pessimistic...

...as has so frequently been the case in Russian history, it came from the top...

...But few come to enjoy the fallen figures...

...But people saw that their lives were not improving and the hopes gradually dissipated...

...We should be delighted...

...Even the hardliners who carried out the August 19-21 putsch avoided any mention of Lenin or Socialism...

...Not one of its institutions survived, and the ideology responsible for them has been so thoroughly discredited that virtually no defenders can be found...

...In the Trade Center that Armand Hammer built a bill for four hot dogs, three cups of coffee, two beers, and two fruit juices came to $50...

...events could easily have developed differently...

...If you want to stay at a decent hotel—say, the Savoy— it will cost you $350 a night...

...Intellectuals and taxi drivers, exCommunists and democrats, professors and would-be entrepreneurs express the same worries: that the fracturing Soviet Union will experience starvation, riots, and bitter and bloody nationalist struggles...

...Besides foreigners, however, only a relative handful of local citizens can afford the private restaurants...

...An acquaintance of mine, a professor, earns 500 rubles a month, roughly the same sum he earned three years ago...

...It seems to me, I said, that the Russian people have changed vastly during the decades of Communist rule: The country has become urbanized, the population is reasonably well educated and eager for political liberties...

...Of the hotels in Moscow, only the biggest one, the Rossya has an exchange office—and its service is limited to hotel guests because it cannot get enough rubles...

...Again and again the tense moments of confrontation were replayed on television...

...To be sure, there is disagreement in apportioning blame...

...Never in Russia's long history have the chances for the growth of a democratic polity been better...

...Small groups of people gathered in front of the "White House," the Russian Republic's Parliament building, to study the myriad photographs posted, perhaps trying to find themselves in one of them...

...Many continue to complain about the small size of the crowd that rallied around Russian Republic President Boris N. Yeltsin, and to point out how unrepresentative the defenders of democracy were: Only the better educated and the middle-aged chose to play an active role...

...Historical events often produce paradoxical scenes...

...He hoped to thus prevent the emergence of centers of nationalist resistance...

...A rotten system, based on severe oppression and brazen lies, unexpectedly disappeared...

...A ridiculously high of ficial exchange rate of 32 rubles per dollar adds a bizarre touch to the situation for the outsider...

...They are skeptical about the very viability of a democratic regime in the Soviet Union, and deeply concerned about the danger of a civil war...

...He simply cannot afford to pay what amounts to half a week's salary for a kilo of meat...

...DEBATING DEMOCRACY IN RUSSIA BY PETER KENEZ Revolutionaries are usually optimists: They believe that once they succeed in getting rid of the wicked old regime, a better future will dawn for all...

...Moscow, I am told, is full of abandoned dogs...

...This seemed to me a period that would be long remembered, that would be described decades later to children and grandchildren: The glorious aftermath of August 1991...

...At a "cooperative" (read private) restaurant I was handed a check after a meal and told I could pay either $10 or l00 rubles ($3...

...As she walked along the lower part of Tverskoy Boulevard, the former Gorky Street, a disquieting column of tanks rumbled by...

...When friends got together at the proverbial Russian kitchen table, the conversation invariably turned to those traumatic three days that shook apart the USSR...

...In periods of extreme inflation prices do not all rise at the same ratio and this has produced curious disparities...

...Although I talked with a broad range of individuals, it soon became clear that an unhappy consensus exists...

...On the other hand, most of us had taken for granted that the Communist regime would end in a terrible bloodbath—and, at least so far, that has not happened...

...I asked everyone I encountered the same question: What did you expect when the putsch started...

...I understand my friends' pessimism, but I think they are all wrong...

...The drives for independence have stirred up ethnic tensions, threatening the same sort of bloodshed and destruction that has engulfed Yugoslavia...

...I debated with my friends...

...Fresh flowers adorned the pathetically makeshift surrounding barricades, which were standing there undisturbed and interfering with the traffic...

...The bank at the Finnish-Soviet border told me it had run out of rubles altogether...

...The workers and the young by and large stayed away, either out of fear or a lack of concern...

...Food is cheap in the State stores, but usually unavailable...

...I asked them over and over again: What did you expect...

...All the present problems were fully predictable...

...Others hawk a variety of newly established newspapers, and charge more than the price printed on the mastheads...

...Today there is no reason to be afraidofthepolice,nooneis nervous about meeting foreigners, and the Soviet Union has a rambunctious free press that discusses serious issues seriously...

...Surely the defeated regime can never be resurrected, and the path toward a more promising future leads through this uncertain present...

...Rather, I questioned their low opinion of their fellow citizens...

...In particular, I chided my friends for not taking satisfaction in what has been accomplished...

...I arrived in the Soviet Union for a three-week stay on September 1, just 11 days after the collapse of the coup...

...The anti-Communists counter, correctly in my view, that the decades of mindless tyranny account for the country's sad shape...

...Petersburg there were demonstrations against changing the name of the city, and in Moscow Communists surrounded the Lenin Historical Museum to prevent the Russian Republic from taking over...

...Such prices may make Moscow seem like a tourist's paradise, but the picture changes radically where payment in foreign currency is required...

...Yet what troubles my acquaintances most of all is not the breakdown of the economy...

...The extraordinarily quick and complete rout of the putsch organizers, I was cautioned, should not obscure the fact that the outcome of the struggle was far from preordained...

...Yet what strikes a frequent visitor is the pessimism about the prospects for democracy...

...No one, it turned out, had anticipated the swift victory of the democratic forces...

...There were high hopes at the outset, four or five years ago, when one wonderful change occurred after another...

...You can ride on the metro for half a penny, buy a theater ticket for five cents, taxi across town—if the driver is willing to accept your rubles—for 50 cents, and buy a kilo of meat at a farmer's market for $2...

...Flower vendors will sell you a small bouquet for 20 rubles...

...In St...

...What is new is an insane pricing system that is a consequence of the ruble's sharp decline in value...