A state of emergency is not the way to stability
In the days immediately after the blood-soaked showdown, Russia was aghast and seemed traumatized by what had happened. It was important to deny the president any sense of the euphoria of victory. To consider what had happened a ‘victory over a communist-fascist rebellion’ was a dangerous delusion, a mere propaganda myth. Certainly, some pernicious individuals had been involved in the events, including extremist groups of provocateurs. There had, however, also been people sincerely protesting against the violation of the rights and powers of parliament and demanding a return to the rule of law. And how many entirely innocent people were victims! After the shelling of parliament, the government instigated mass beatings of citizens in the approaches to the White House. Even technical college students who had rushed to the Krasnaya Presnya area out of youthful curiosity were attacked, some of them fatally. The mother of one of these murdered lads, deprived of her sole source of income, came to ask our Foundation for support. We helped as best we could.
I was astonished and disturbed by a letter signed by well-known writers supporting the bombardment of parliament. The title of their letter, published in Izvestiya, read: ‘Writers call on the government to take decisive action.’ It went on: ‘Enough of talking! It is time to learn how to act. These thick misfits respect only power.’ How could Academician Dmitry Likhachev sign such a letter? Why had this crude, vulgar phi-lippic been signed by Bella Akhmadulina, Viktor Astafiev and other major writers? These questions gave me no rest. Many of these people are no longer with us, but those who still are can hardly be proud of what they did.
Not all our cultural figureheads adopted such a shameful position, of course. Andrey Sinyavsky, Vladimir Maximov and Petr Yegides published an impassioned article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta in which they condemned the slaughter in the centre of Moscow. Perhaps the best response to those demanding the ‘vipers’ should be crushed was the poem by Andrey Voznesensky:
Introducing the saga of the ‘state of emergency’, Yeltsin promised it would lead to stability, pave the way for democracy and facilitate the progress of reform. It very soon became clear that it was having precisely the opposite effect. I wrote an article about this at the request of Italy’s La Stampa:
It is time for us to ask whether the outcome of the events of 21 September to 4 October is really paving the way to stability.
The evidence, mounting day by day, can only make us think it is not, although I do not believe that all possibility of bringing stability to Russia is gone. The shelling of parliament by tanks, the hundreds killed and wounded, and the way the authorities are behaving under the state of emergency have done irreparable damage to democracy and the cause of reform in Russia.
The lack of a legal opposition will greatly increase the likelihood of errors in the drafting and passing of laws in the implementation of reform. That is extremely dangerous in a critical transitional period and risks further failures, leading to outbursts of mass unrest and a repetition of the kind of events we have already experienced.
I will not put forward other arguments and doubts, but think what has been said is already enough to discourage illusions that Russia has now embarked on the road to peace, stability and normality, or that continuing with the policies so shockingly translated into action on 21 September to 4 October, and subsequently, can save democracy and reform in Russia.
One result of those events was the dropping of criminal proceedings against the organizers of the August 1991 coup. The next State Duma, elected in December 1993, voted to scrap the investigation into the massive loss of life in October, simultaneously announcing a political and economic amnesty which extended to the members of the State Emergency Committee. It was a deal of mutual absolution of responsibility of those who shelled the parliament, those who provoked widespread disorder and those guilty of the coup d’état in August 1991. There was a certain logic to this: one lot of coup conspirators (of 1993) amnestied another lot (from 1991). It was all done, as it soon became fashionable to say in semi-criminal jargon, ‘with a nod and a wink’.
On 12 December, elections were held for seats in the State Duma, the Russian parliament having had its historical name returned to it. The president and his supporters were confident that the vote would bring the pro-government Russia’s Choice Party to power, the first of a succession of pro-government ‘parties’. They were in for a rude awakening. The October bloodbath in Moscow sharply reduced the numbers supporting the president and increased the protest vote. The Russian people returned a shock verdict on those who had perpetrated shock therapy on them and the shock of October. They voted in unprecedented numbers for Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ‘Liberal Democratic’ Party with its extremist slogans. The LDP was well ahead of Russia’s Choice and all the other parties.
The overnight telethon organized at the Ostankino Television Centre on 12 December, which was supposed to celebrate the expected victory of the radical democrats, was taken off air shortly after 3:00 am, ostensibly for ‘technical reasons’. The real reason was the patently obvious and humiliating defeat suffered by Russia’s Choice, which did not bear out the expectations of jubilation of the show’s organizers. In my article, ‘The election results: what now?’, I gave my reading of the situation:
The inevitable, predictable and widely predicted has happened. Most of those who turned out to vote or refused to do so registered their protest against the policies currently being imposed on them, which have pushed one-third of the population below the poverty line, and another third close to it. Industrial production continues to fall. The country’s major factories are at a standstill. We are facing devastating mass unemployment. Not one of the promises to halt inflation, stabilize the economy and restore public order has been honoured. The process of reform has been derailed. The economy is drifting rudderless.
It was not media failures during the electoral campaign, not even the wrangling among those who claim to be democrats that have caused the rout of Russia’s Choice, but the policies for which that party’s leading figures are answerable. Disillusionment with those policies and protest against them explain Zhirinovsky’s success. It would be absurd to believe that those who voted for him are eager to march off to reincorporate Poland and Finland in Russia, or favour turning Ukraine and the Caucasus into Russian provinces, or would give their blessing as their sons set off on a campaign of territorial conquest to give Russia access to ‘warm seas’. The majority of those who gave Zhirinovsky their vote hardly suppose he can make Russia flourish with a wave of his magic wand. So there is no cause to panic, scaring ourselves and the West with talk of a fascist threat supposedly hanging over Russia. That threat will, however, grow if there is no change of government policy. And that is the crux of the matter: where do we go from here?
The constitution has scraped through. It has been accepted by barely one-third of Russia’s citizens, but it has been adopted. If the parties in the new parliament fail to show proper responsibility for the country, if they do not have the intelligence and common sense to turn it into a constructive, active, genuinely independent and competent legislature, the constitution will be exploited to strengthen an already authoritarian regime. It is no longer only journalists who are warning of this.