Volume 7 Number 3

Summer 1998

Why Yeltsin is popular and the reformers are not

The End of Postcommunism: Perspectives on Russian Reformers
Vladimir Pastukhov

Political life in contemporary Russia exhibits many contradictions. Its myriad trends are submerged in a choppy sea of mutually contradictory facts. His Highness Fate—as always—is having a ball. Conclusions and forecasts appear increasingly subjective and arbitrary, while envisioned futures seem to have lost their footing in reality.

Nevertheless, the search for some sort of deep logic underlying the chaotic appearances is not an altogether hopeless task. Though basic patterns have ceased to be obvious and tangible, they do not completely defy detection. Various superficially insignificant facts provide valuable clues to the fundamental processes underway. By focusing on such odd details, interwoven with the everyday chaos of Russian life, and by studying their interconnections, we may be led—just possibly—to the very core of political reality in Russia today.

The monarchical syndrome
One of the strangest features of Russia’s recent political history is the recent outburst of monarchism among certain members of the new democratic elite. For eighty years, Russians have lived without a czar, and, until recently, this seemed perfectly natural to both reformers and society at large. For most people, the presence of a Communist Party boss, and later a democratically elected, decree-issuing president, successfully compensated for the lack of a czar. But now, suddenly, everything has changed.

Democratically oriented citizens have begun openly to espouse the virtues of monarchy. Moreover, the voices in support of monarchy grow louder and more insistent as one approaches the Kremlin. This is doubly paradoxical. First, the strongest monarchical leanings in Russia are detectable not among marginal groups (where one might expect to find them) but among people in the top echelons of the current, ruling democratic elite. Second, the idea of monarchy—not especially original in and of itself—did not surface at the beginning of reforms, when the “democratic” government had only begun to get a foothold, but later on, when its situation appeared to be reasonably well consolidated.

The sheer oddity of the recent outbreak of these monarchical sentiments provides a suitable starting point for excavating the buried logic of Russia’s current social scene. Monarchical ideology in Russia is manifested in a variety of ways, but the monarchism in question here has quite specific characteristics. First, it is embraced by people of a liberal-democratic persuasion (in the Western, not in Zhirinovsky’s, sense). Second, the mass media, which is closely allied with the government and the ruling elites, actively propagates this ideology. Third, the stream of monarchism I have in mind exhibits an oddly sterile character. Its supporters draw no practical political consequences whatsoever from their declared creed. Their form of monarchism has nothing to do, therefore, with the conventional czarist nostalgia of traditional marginal movements. It is something altogether new.

One may suppose that this form of Russian monarchism, given its recent vintage, must somehow reflect ongoing changes in the political status of the democratic elite and their relation with the ruling authorities. A closer analysis of this political moment, therefore, should provide the first access road to the path leading from an observable anomaly to the underlying structure of contemporary Russia’s political life.

Authority and movement
It is not difficult to notice that the relationship between Russia’s democratic elite, represented by people called “reformers,” and the government, personified by Boris Yeltsin, has fundamentally changed. Earlier, the entire fluctuating history of interaction between these two groups could be summed up in simple terms: Yeltsin used the reformers to fortify his political position. Now everything is precisely the other way round: the reformers are using Yeltsin to strengthen themselves. This reversal deeply affects the political character of our time, creating a fundamentally new situation.

The originality of the situation today does not stem from a deterioration in the president’s health, about which much too much has been written. The new situation is the result, rather, of the drawn-out political evolution of the two groups involved. It results from changes among both the reformers and the wielders of power. To understand their parallel evolution, we must ask first how these two groups conceive of themselves.

Their shared self-understandings are based on a set of idealizations. On the one hand, as they see it, there is Authority (vlast), with Boris Yeltsin as its current embodiment. And on the other, there is the Movement (dvizhenie), a many-sided group consisting of people called “reformers” or “democrats.” Mass consciousness interprets the relationship between Yeltsin and the reformers as the relationship between state authority and society. For most Russians, furthermore, the reformers represent society in a form that is articulate and can be visualized, listened to, and argued with. In reality, the relationship between Yeltsin and the reformers does not coincide with the relation between state authority and society at large.

For one thing, the political import of Yeltsin himself is significantly broader and more heavily freighted than his official status as the first elected president of Russia suggests. Yeltsin is not merely the head of state who currently rules the country. For mass consciousness, instead, he is a symbol of “power” itself. He is seen as the current embodiment of an ahistorical Authority that exists outside of concrete or historical time. Yeltsin incarnates the continuity of state authority then, and, in the eyes of a large part of the population, he is the carrier of legitimacy as such. Although he portrays himself as an antiauthority figure, most Russians perceive Yeltsin as the current legatee of an age-old tradition of Authority.

The “democratic movement,” on the other hand, has very shallow social roots. It still has an extremely tenuous relationship with the population at large. It is betwixt and between. The reformers separated themselves from the old ruling authorities at the moment of crisis, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Although the reform movement is a product of the old state authority, it became, under the pressure of events, an independent actor and force within Russian politics. Though reformism issued from the power structures and has existed independently of them for some time now, it has recently been struggling to return to power.

Today, in fact, the fundamental relationship between Yeltsin and the reform movement has become one of competition. Contemporary Russia is the scene of a power struggle. It is a battlefield where two great powers face off: the power of ancient tradition and the power of modern potentiality.

Authority and society
For our purposes here, Boris Yeltsin is of interest not as an individual personality but rather as a political symbol. His subjective traits, which may provoke affection or aversion, can be safely set aside to facilitate a different kind of analysis. Regardless of his previous status, Yeltsin is now seen by most Russians as the embodiment of political legitimacy itself. He appeared on the historical stage with all the attributes of Authority as such. He is authority’s personification, regardless of whether one considers authority good or bad. He is the symbol not of concrete authority but of abstract Authority.

Such authority is a value in and of itself—the opposite of anarchy, disorder, discord, and chaos. Throughout their country’s history, Russians have nursed a chronic fear of changes in leadership. They are inclined to view the end of a particular authority apocalyptically, as the end of Authority itself. For this reason, authority in Russia—both the concrete power of state officials and the very idea of political authority—is maintained by a strong inertia, and only time and strenuous efforts can topple it. Mass consciousness now attaches the value of abstract Authority to the concrete figure of Boris Yeltsin. Russians’ traditional attitude toward Authority expresses itself in a positive opinion of Yeltsin, regardless of the specific policies he pursues and any negative or positive evaluation of these policies.

In short, Yeltsin has managed to channel the population’s emotional-moral deference toward Au-thority onto himself. This may be his most extraordinary achievement. The widespread perception of Yeltsin as the carrier of legitimate authority, fixed in place by inertia, is a cornerstone of the political order in contemporary Russia. The notion that people support Yeltsin because of his policies is therefore grossly mistaken; they support him regardless of which policies he adopts, and often in spite of them. This allegiance is rooted more at the subconscious than the conscious level. Alexander Lebed’s assertion at a recent press conference that order is being maintained through the “asinine patience” of the Russian people demonstrates a misunderstanding—or, at best, a superficial understanding—of the nature of authority in Russia, and the way it is maintained.

Movement and society
Russian reformism (reformatorstvo) has a complex history. Like earlier movements for change, the latest one began as a outgrowth of the state authority. While traditional Soviet authority was stagnating and growing unstable in the late 1980s, the “democratic” reform movement formed a pseudosociety, consisting of elements that gradually broke ranks with officialdom. A pseudosociety of this sort naturally constitutes a world unto itself. The pseudosociety of the democratic reformers, however, was an exceptionally articulate one, which seemed to speak for the whole to which it claimed to belong but from which it nevertheless kept aloof. Faced with the wholesale collapse of the Soviet system, the self-proclaimed “democratic” elements united in the reform movement, where the rest of society was present, as it were, metonymically and virtually. The reform movement thus achieved a relative independence not only from political authority, which it had all but abandoned, but also from society, with which it had not yet made serious contact. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, the reform movement came to inhabit a limbo, a no-man’s-land, afloat somewhere between state and society—apart and detached.

This free-floating reform movement was born under the pressure of the same circumstances that imposed massive changes on state authority. Because the reform movement was associated with these events, it quickly became a symbol of change, not of any specific changes, but of social change as such—of Movement per se. Indeed, the reform movement quickly transformed itself into a real “third power,” a force to be reckoned with.

The post-Soviet reform movement belongs neither to officialdom nor to society. While emanating from state authority, reformism does not resemble the public power, for it ceased to reflect that which it transcended. The reform movement looks like a societal force, but in reality, it is not connected to, or rooted in, Russian society. It exists apart from both mass society and the state authority that governs and organizes this society. From the standpoint of state authority, the reform movement appears to be a virtual society. From the vantage point of mass society, contrariwise, the reform movement appears to be a virtual authority.

When the existing state authority grows weaker, it increasingly leans upon external powers for support. In postcommunist Russia, the virtual society embodied in the democratic reform movement has provided this external strut. At the same time, society at large looks upon the reform movement as an alternative authority. The democratic reformers foist their will upon society, sometimes accomplishing what officialdom cannot.

The Russian triangle
Research into the connections between these three basic elements of Russia’s political scene helps us describe contemporary social realities in a kind of shorthand. What makes Russian political life today unique is that it cannot be adequately grasped by means of a binary state/society scheme. Instead, social events in Russia unfold in a three-dimensional space, fixed by the axes of state authority, society at large, and the reform movement.

In this three-dimensional system, state authority is a symbol of order in general. Society, for its part, because it is oriented entirely toward state authority, plays a passive, rather than active, role. Society acts as ballast, ensuring the stability of the social system. Together, state authority and society constitute a static subsystem that curbs dangerous political fluctuations.

The reform movement, with its complex nature, upsets this balance. On the one hand, reformism constitutes a virtual society. Its quasi-societal character is nicely reflected in the term often used to describe it—the “public.” On the other hand, the reform movement acts as a competing center of political authority. In critical periods, the sway of this special “public” over society turns out to be greater than the influence of the official government itself. The emergence of the reform movement as an independent political force, therefore, precipitates a crisis of dual authority (dvoevlastie). In the new system, there exist two constitutive, presiding forces, each trying to master society, but without establishing a predictable or orderly relation to one another. Unlike the official state authorities, the reform movement in Russia today is dynamic not static. It is the “free agent” in the mix, inciting the system to innovate, reinvent itself, change and develop.

The current version of this Russian triangle may be compared to its principal historical predecessor. The frequent analogies between the reformers at the twentieth century’s end and the revolutionaries at the century’s beginning are not accidental. The two movements for change share a common nature.

The crisis of dual authority that arose after the February Revolution was a normal culmination of competitive relations between a movement for change and state authority. Relations between state officials and society at large had reached a dead end and were stymieing social development. State authority had become ossified in its pose as the ultimate guardian of stability and order. Society accepted the state authority’s restricted and restricting role and adopted a passive, temporizing position. As a result, officialdom and the general population became closed to each other. All societal processes slowed down, and social tensions began to grow. Under these difficult conditions, a third force—independent from both state authority and mass society—emerged, assuming the guise of a movement for change. It began to rock the boat, unsettling both society and state authority.

Students of contemporary Russia should carefully examine the 1917 crisis of dual authority and the way it was resolved. The fundamental pattern was this: a movement for change appeared at a certain historic juncture and, after completing its mission, dissolved back into state authority and society at large. This course of events is almost predictable. After a movement for change appears, it passes through several stages of internal evolution. In disappearing, it also goes through several stages. As it declines, the movement for change exhibits features that can be deemed consistent only with difficulty. Here, in any case, is a tentative and idealized list of the phases that a Russian movement for change typically undergoes: concentration, radicalization, crystallization, and absorption (merging either into state authority or society).

Concentration
From its very beginning, a movement for change portrays itself as a generator of social innovation. It absorbs energy built up by society and translates this energy into a stream of initiatives. Gradually the movement for change begins to resemble a gigantic social funnel or whirlpool that sucks in all active elements from its surroundings. But the more energy that is concentrated within the movement for change, the less energy remains in society. Even if they were not aligned with the movement at first, energetic and enterprising people get caught in the movement. In jumping aboard, they lose their connection to both state authority and society at large. The immediate result of this process is that the movement for change comes to symbolize social dynamism. State authority and society, which remain closed off to each other, become symbols of immobility and stagnation.

Radicalization
Since the movement for change—be it revolutionary or reformist—is independent of both state authority and society, it evolves as an isolated system, barricaded from its surroundings. Influenced more by its own preoccupations than by external factors, the movement for change develops according to an internal logic. Practically all political groups associated with the movement for change are compelled to adapt themselves to this logic. Continuous radicalization is characteristic of the movement’s development. (Compare the trajectory of the French Revolution.) Given the inability of external forces to act as a brake on the movement, conditions favor the party within the movement for change that most consistently and wholly reflects the general direction of social evolution, that is, the most radical party. If the movement for change were more deeply rooted in society, where the processes of renewal are always far from complete, the balances of forces inside the movement would be different. The search for compromises would then dominate. The insulation of reformism from society spells radicalism or a contempt for compromise.

Crystallization
The ordinary participants in a movement for change cleave into two groupings, such as “new economic Russians” and “new political Russians.” These two groups stand out from the rest in terms of their radical economic and political behavior. A qualitative leap occurs when these elements unite. This is what happened when an agreement was struck in Davos, in 1995, between the financial and political groups that helped Yeltsin win the June 1996 elections. Such an alliance of differently situated radical forces has an enormous cumulative effect. Russia’s new financial-political consortium is capable of sponsoring an almost unlimited expansion in the economic and in the social-political spheres.

This expansion takes place in economic, political, and informational fields. In the economics, the consortium of economic and political radicals has strengthened the new elite’s control of the basic financial institutions and natural resources. In the political field, it is establishing greater control of the state. In the informational field, it is carrying out a massive purchase of the most influential, central television and radio channels, newspapers, and magazines. The formation of this vast financial-political consortium on the basis of the reform movement therefore signals a turning point in the history of Russian reformism. An analogous turning point was Vladimir Lenin’s formation of a “party of a new type,” on the crest of the revolutionary-democratic wave at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Absorption
When the “hard core” of the reform movement engrosses many of society’s key resources in its own hands, state and society begin to reabsorb the reform movement. Indeed, the reform movement, in an act of self-destruction, orchestrates it own absorption into state and society. Reformism’s act of expansion brings it to the point of absorption. This is a necessary aspect of its own evolutionary development. This constitutes its final historical act.

Two versions of one ending
Today, the correlation of forces within the Russian state-society-movement triangle resembles the correlation of forces in the triangle that prevailed on the eve of 1917. In both cases, the movement for change, having arrived on the scene, grew stronger, was qualitatively transformed, and then merged into the other two forces.

There are several differences between 1917 and 1998, however. In 1917, the movement for change emerged from the bowels of society. In the final phase of its development, it commingled again with society. Subsequently, the movement for change deprived society of its independence and subordinated it entirely to Bolshevik influence. The united force of the movement for change and society then fell upon the state, and the takeover necessarily acquired a revolutionary character. A revolution destroyed the old authority in its entirety. As a result, the “triangle” composed of state, society, and the revolutionary movement was replaced by a new, synthetic force that absorbed the old society and portrayed itself (to itself) as a total, all-encompassing structure of authority.

Today, a movement for change has once again merged with state authority, and the financial-political structures (“the consortium”) that appeared within the reform movement is now germinating within the state. The united force of state authority and the reform movement’s hard core has relentlessly attacked the old society and attempted to destroy all of its traditional relations. In sum, the “triangle” is once again replaced by a synthetic force, but, this time, the force does not have a totalizing character. The vestiges of a shattered and demoralized society continue to exist.

In the first case, the process of unification proceeded via a merger with society and a destruction of state authority. In the second case, the process of unification proceeds via a merger with state authority and the destruction of traditional social relations. This contrast suggests the relative character of the opposition between “revolution” and “reform” in Russia. In both revolution and reform, a “movement” acts as a motor. These formations differ from each other not in their intensity (not in their humanity, duration, or similar characteristics) but in the direction and consistency of the movement’s actions. A revolutionary movement unites with society and destroys the old state authority. Alternatively, a reform movement inaugurates reform when it merges with state authority and destroys the old society.

The Bolshevik movement completely dominated Russian society, tying up its rebellious will with iron ideological cords. It condemned the czar’s state authority to destruction. Revolutionary action gave this revolutionary-movement-cum-society a governmental form. A synthesis of state and society emerged, and Bolshevism then dissolved as a revolutionary movement.

At the end of the century, the reform movement, having adopted its reformist strategy in 1993, gathered around itself the fragments of the state apparat. This amalgam of the reform movement and state power foretold the sudden demise of the old society. An irrestible force soon fell upon Russian society. The new reform-movement-cum-state, like an iron fist, shattered the inherited stereotypes and old ways of life. It destroyed the existing connections within society, and, in only a few years, millions of people were shaken loose from their accustomed social niches and reflexes. The old society dissolved into an uncountable multitude of “free radicals.”

The millions of people who were dislodged, electron-like, from their usual orbits superficially seem to be the same people they were before. But, in reality, their ways of thinking have undergone a colossal change. This change in consciousness presages a continued social evolution in the future. Under present circumstances, state authority resembles a boat floating on an oil slick that has yet to ignite. Although state authority used a furious pressure to unmake the old society, societal fragments persist by sheer inertia and retain their passive orientation toward officialdom. Yeltsin feeds this inertia, which continues to have a conservative influence on the individual thinking (or subconscious) of most people.

If the Bolsheviks achieved their goal without wavering—and seized the commanding heights—today’s reformers awaken doubts about their ability to assume full power. The difference stems from the distinct social-political conditions associated with the revolutionary movement’s evolution at the beginning of the twentieth century and the reform movement’s evolution at century’s end. And this difference brings us full circle, back to our inquiry into the anomaly of “democratic monarchism.”

Monarchism, one might say, is the highest and ultimate stage in the development of democracy. The leaders of today’s reform movement face an intractable problem. For reformism entertains contradictory goals. On the one hand, it aims to seize power and begin ruling on its own. On the other hand, the leaders of the reform movement instinctively recognize that, if they assume power, the many “free radicals,” swirling up from the fragments of the old society, will direct their harsh demands and complaints onto the reformers. (The Bolsheviks did not face this problem.) As long as the political energy of these frustrated forces is domesticated by the charisma of Boris Yeltsin, society will remain passive and inert. But when Yeltsin is replaced, Russian society’s afflictions may assume new, threatening shapes. For this very reason, the “young reformers” contemplate the possibility of acceding to power with trepidation. On the one hand, desire for power is inherent in the reform movement and is, therefore, irresistible. On the other hand, the awakening masses strike fear into the reformers’ hearts. The reformers want to change the political situation, therefore, while, simultaneously, retaining the status quo. The duality of their situation discloses the hidden reason for the democrats’ otherwise unintelligible monarchical leanings. What better emblem of the wished-for synthesis of constancy and change (or, more dramatically, of the compatibility of the status quo with an ongoing process of re-reform, whereby the latest batch of reformers are repeatedly booted out) than a timeless king presiding harmoniously over a still-evolving body politic? To be sure, this monarchism-for-modern-democrats is not really a goal or a political plan. It is rather the sublimation of an unspoken fear about the way long-suffering Russian society will rise up in anger after Yeltsin’s political career comes to an end.

The reformers “need” a monarch, that is, they need an adequate replacement for Yeltsin, who is currently the legitimate incarnation of traditional Russian Authority. What some reformers want from the czar of their imagination, then, is to prolong society’s inertia and quiescence, which is so favorable for their freedom of action. For this reason, “monarchism” becomes paradoxically fashionable in a modern democratic setting. It is the highest and ultimate stage in the development of Russian reformism and, at the same time, a presage of its end. The reform movement will soon cease to exist as a unique phenomenon located between state and society. But the last act of the drama of reformism will affect not only the fate of the reformers themselves. It is the end of the entire historic epoch that the reform movement dominated and shaped.

The end of postcommunism
Everything has not only a beginning but also an end, postcommunism included. Today we can appreciate more clearly than ever the contours of this most recent period in Russian history. Characteristic of the first postcommunist years has been the existence of a reform movement that has acted as an independent force shaping the development of both society and state. Postcommunism exhibits a modern-day crisis of dual authority. The appearance of the reform movement—promoting democracy and markets, individual rights, and openness to the world—initiated the postcommunist stage of evolution. The absorption of the reform movement by society and state authority closes this stage of Russian history. The highly visible reform movement is the moving force in this modern epoch. In disappearing, it brings the epoch to a close. Earlier this century, Bolshevism, in seizing power, ended a crisis of dual authority. Bolshevism then colonized society and melted into state authority, beginning thereby the epoch of communism. Perestroika, which gave birth to reformism, was the beginning of a new era. The final absorption of reformism into state authority will also mark an era’s demise.

The final absorption will occur with Yeltsin’s retirement from politics. The figure of Yeltsin will appear in the history books not as a symbol of the beginning of the epoch of postcommunism, therefore, but as a symbol of its end. The end of his political career will usher in a new style of political relations, markedly different from those that prevailed during the initial “postcommunist” years. The reform movement will disappear from Russian political life. Politics will begin to develop along more-traditional lines, understandable on the basis of the state/society scheme. Of course, society will remain unstructured or weakly organized for a long time to come. The government will dominate, with varying degrees of incompetence, an essentially uncoordinated society. Perhaps we should begin to call this new period “post-postcommunism.” The qualitative difference between Yeltsin’s Russia and post-Yeltsin Russia will be so great that, today, the difference cannot be easily imagined.

In comparison to the coming social transition, the question of which individual leader will succeed Yeltsin is of little significance. Which group will end up at the next government’s helm in the first days of the new period—the most radical group, that is, the reformers, or one of the less consequential and more moderate groups? Though this choice may prove quite important over the course of one generation, it is immaterial in the long run. The nature of the next leadership cadre will determine the acuteness of political tension and the smoothness of political processes, but it will not affect their content and strategic direction. The latter have deeper and more objective causes than the differences between Chubais, Luzhkov, Chernomyrdin, and Lebed.

One may play guessing games about which of the reformers’ heroes or enemies will predominate in the next stage. But in Russia, experience shows, the weightier and more radical forces have typically had greater chances for success. History will fill in the details, blotting out the temporary influence of personalities. The objective meaning of the impending shift of historical epochs goes far beyond the boundaries of the struggle between Chubais and his rivals. The revolution of 1917, in which a personality became the maker of history, put Russia onto the path of Sovietism. In 1998, postcommunism marks not only the transition from one historic stage to another. It is a watershed in Russian history. Together with postcommunism, an entire era of this particular civilizational form is coming to a close. Perhaps post-Yeltsin Russia will eventually sit at a common hearth with the West. Perhaps the inertial drag of the “neolithic peasantry” will be rinsed away. And perhaps subsequent historic development will be shaped by the logic of modern individualism, unencumbered by archaic legacies and influences.

 

Vladimir Pastukhov is a senior scholar at the Institute of Comparative Politics and a senior scholar at the Institute of Latin America, both of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, and a legal adviser to the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

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