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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 168 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 168, October 1993.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
In August 1991 a section of the ruling bureaucracy in Russia attempted to ban strikes and street demonstrations and to enforce this decision with tanks. They were beaten off by tens of thousands of people in bloody clashes on the barricades in Moscow. Another section of the leadership grouped around Boris Yeltsin did everything to hold the mass movement in check, but were unfortunately handed the laurels of victory.
The recent events in Moscow are very different. Just as in 1991, the ruling class is deeply divided over how to stop the slump and halt the break up of Russia and its former empire. Neither side is the slightest bit interested in democracy.
But today, unlike August 1991, it is not clear to most Russians where the immediate danger is coming from: Yeltsin or the parliament.
Yeltsin has used troops to smash democracy and strengthen Russian imperial interests within the former USSR. But his military operations in Moldova, Georgia and Tadjikistan have been carefully packaged: troops have gone in under the cover of ‘peacekeeping forces’, ostensibly to stop bloodshed and separate the warring sides.
In contrast, in August 1991 the memory was still fresh in people’s minds of Russian forces storming television stations in the Baltic States, thundering into Baku a year before, and killing women demonstrators with spades in Tblisi the year before that.
Yeltsin has time and again proved his willingness to scrap democracy when it suits him. He postponed elections indefinitely in November 1991 and set up anti-parliamentary organs to concentrate power in his own hands.
In March this year he disbanded parliament, introduced direct presidential rule and cancelled a proposed referendum on the extent of his own powers, only to back down quickly under pressure. His decision to disband parliament again in September was a coup against an organ elected during an upsurge of democratic struggle in spring 1990.
A referendum in April called for new elections to parliament. But Yeltsin has ignored this result and proposed an altogether new parliament (the Federal Assembly), the ‘upper house’ of which (the Council of the Federation) is like the British House of Lords and consists of his own handpicked people.
But despite the abundance of muck, very little of it has managed to stick. People have been so sickened by the daily television scenes of schoolboy antics in parliament that Yeltsin has got off relatively lightly. Yeltsin has used his vast control of the media to reinforce the myth that this was another struggle of gallant democracy against the evil Communists in parliament.
The parliamentary forces were certainly evil enough: Rutskoi’s defence minister Achalov, for example, organised Gorbachev’s invasions of Baku and Vilnius and was military adviser to the leaders of the 1991 coup. His deputy, general Makashov, is a leading fascist.
Only days before the coup, Khasbulatov, the speaker of parliament (and also Yeltsin’s closest collaborator from 1990–91) made his first address to a large redbrown gathering, which also points to a growing willingness within ruling circles to flirt with the extreme right.
Parliament’s economic policies are pro-market and indistinguishable from Yeltsin’s. For example, Dyen (The Day), the leading red-brown paper which backed parliament during the coup, carries articles praising Stalin alongside full page ads for racy private banks and stock exchanges.
Just like the parliament, the Yeltsin camp is made up of ex-Communist Party bosses, Yeltsin himself being the prime example. For months now he has been busy horsetrading with his opponents.
His accommodation to the extreme right is reflected in the fact that two leading fascists back his plans for constitutional reform. Only days before his coup, Yeltsin appointed Golushko, an experienced KGB hardliner, to head the security forces.
These factors explain why Yeltsin still has an edge over his opponents, but also why the population was largely indifferent to the September events.
A poll during the coup showed that only 30 percent of Muscovites were prepared to go to a meeting or demonstration in support of Yeltsin – this figure is probably even lower outside the capital. A Moscow evening paper ran the headline: ‘The powers that be are fighting while the people dig potatoes’ – a reference to the fact that many people now have to eke out their diet on allotments and are disillusioned with politics.
But if there was so little to choose between the two sides, why was there a coup?
Russia is in the throes of deep social crisis which could yet reach the scale of Germany in the 1930s. The ruling class is in such a panic that it clutches at ‘solutions’, programmes or individuals that cannot possibly do the job.
The coup is the result of such over heated infighting and came as no surprise. If neither side had made a quick breakthrough the result could have been civil war, similar to that which has gripped several former USSR republics in recent years. In Russia civil war at present would be a shoot out between professional troops, unlikely to involve significant numbers of the population. Few are ready to die for Rutskoi, Khasbulatov or Yeltsin.
Yeltsin’s fragile victory has won him another small breathing space. But the factors behind the Moscow drama have not gone away, and the relative calm could shatter at any minute.
The economy is on the verge of another downward plunge, and Yeltsin long ago realised that it would be disastrous to let the market rip. As the Washington Post noted after the coup, ‘The new government cannot take such a step without condemning millions to unemployment. In some cases, entire cities built around one huge factory would die.’
Yeltsin has his hands on the wheel, but the ship is rudderless.
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