A Tzar is born
FOLLOWING his coup d'etat on 21 September, Russian President Boris
Yeltsin has promised fresh elections, to a so-called "State Duma", on 12
December. But electoral boundaries have yet to be drawn. Approved party lists and rules on acceptable media coverage have not been published. As our Moscow correspondent explains, the elections look set
International Viewpoint #250 November 1993
21 September Coup d'etat: Yeltsin outlaws the democratically elected Parliament and suspends the Constitutional POUL FUNDER LARSEN — Moscow, 19 October 1993 Court. After a week of pro-Parliament demonstrations Yeltsin escalates the conflict by blocking off Parliament and establishing a de facto state of emergency in the region around the parliament building, the White House. 2 October The anger of the protesters explodes in street fighting and the erection of barricades on the Moscow Ring Road. The following day the conservative organisation, Working Russia, leads the way through the cordons of militia and troops to the White House. 3 October Alexander Rutskoi and the leadership of the Supreme Soviet organise impromptu militias — a rag-tag "army" of Afghan veterans, extreme nationalists, and hard-line Stalinists - to attack the office of the Moscow Mayor and the television centre at Ostankino. Some three hours after the attack had been fought off, three prominent members of the Party of Labour were among a group arrested, either by the "official" militia or the police. Held for twenty-four hours or more, the detainees were subjected to horrific acts of violence. Following the release of most of the detainees, it is feared that one of them may have died having failed to contact relatives or friends. 4 October Yeltsin launches a full-scale attack on the White House, taking a terrible toll in deaths. The ensuing closure of the opposition press, subsequent arrests, and the banning of practically all opposition parties indicates the trajectory of the former "democrats" under loud applause from the West. * to be a farce.
ELTSIN'S coup d'etat, which began on 21 September with the outlawing of Parliament, reached its logical conclusion on 4 October in the military assault on the White House and the subsequent ban on virtually all political opposition. Nominally this leaves Yeltsin in the position of a sovereign with absolute power, since he can now in principle decide any matter in the State by decree — a situation which is not likely to change qualitively after the December elections to what will become a weak Parliament without much legitimacy.
The Yeltsinites have already for some time been trying to gloss over their Stalinist path with attributes of pre-revolutionary Russia; thus the lower chamber of Yeltsin's quasi-parliament is called the "State Duma". But no amount of glitter or decoration can hide the fact that Yeltsin is no Mikhail Romanov, and that his "dynasty" is not likely to last for long at the head of a State ridden by political turmoil and economic chaos.! Indeed, the major guarantor for Yeltsin's survival now, as the dramatic October-days showed, is the repressive apparatus. That is, so long as the armed forces, the police, and the Ministry of State Security continue to stick to the line expressed recently by defence minister Pavel Grachev: "Boris Yeltsin is at the moment and for a minimum of five years the only man whom the country believes and who most of the people believe can lead the country out of
Contrary to the myth created by the liberal mass media there was initially no principled contradiction between Yeltsin and the Russian Supreme Soviet, elected in March 1990 and basically reflecting the relationship of forces inside the nomenClatura at that time. To some extent it was the Supreme Soviet itself that "created"
Yeltsin as the unchallenged political leader of Russia, by electing him its speaker and later granting him extraordinary executive powers. The quite heterogeneous, bureaucratic interests in the majority of the Supreme Soviet only began putting up serious resistance after Yeltsin's offensive of the Winter 1991/92 — where Russia unilaterally took over most Soviet institutions and went for harsh price liberalisation thereby paving the way for the demise of the Soviet Union and IMF-styled "shock therapy" in Russia.
This battle became a very protracted one erupting in major confrontations in April 1992 (where the government threatened to resign), December 1992 (where Gaidar fell), and March-April 1993 (where Yeltsin carried out the "general repetition" for his coup). But between these "explosions" many temporary deals were struck, attempts at general compromises were made, and numerous regroupments between the two camps took place (with Rutskoi as a prominent case in point) underlining the non-atagonistic character of the conflicts.
### Decomposition
But while the ruptures at the top proceeded partially according to their own scenario the global crisis of Russian society accelerated the decomposition of the State apparatus. In turn the confrontation at the head of the State sharpened, as particularly the Yeltsin camp got more and more desperate faced with the disastrous performance of the economy and its own failed attempts to draft a new "presidential" constitution. This led to the dramatic escalation of the conflict in late September-October.
1. Mikhail Romanov (ruling from 1613-33) was the first Tzar of the Romanov dynasty ruling Russia until March 1917.
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October days RUSSIA
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DOSSIER
International Viewpoint #250 November 1993
The political limitations of the parliamentary leadership were apparent throughout the siege that ensued: thousands — at times tens of thousands - of people gathered outside the White House, but the leaders did not make serious efforts to broaden the mobilisation. No systematic work was carried out to win support in the factories — and consequently no one heeded the abstract calls for "political strikes". This, partly self-imposed, isolation was a major reason why extremist groups of nationalist, and even fascist, orientation could win such influence among the defenders of the White House, with terrible consequences. The exact chronology and immediate causes of the bloody events of 3-4 October is a disputed question and not likely to be sorted out soon (as the aborted August putsch of 1991 still remains riddled with questions more than two years after its defeat). But the political outcome of the situation after groups of defenders of the White House, possibly falling victim to a provocation set-up by the Yeltsin camp, launched their doomed attack on the Ostankino television centre, is quite clear: most of the opposition, which had accumulated some popular credibility during the two week siege, lost in the course of a few, disastrous hours most of its popular backing and left the door wide open for the Yeltsinite backlash.2
After the massacre at the White House (of which the number of casualties is still a closely guarded secret) Yeltsin went on to neutralise his remaining opponents — while security minister Nikolai Golushko "promised" to intensify the monitoring of all "subversives" under the slogan "law and order". The Moscow City Soviet has been dissolved and opposition parties have been banned many of which had no connection to the 3-4 October incidents. Thousands of people of Caucasian nationality have been deported from Moscow (while tens of thousands have reportedly fled) in a pogrom-like campaign. The latter was officially presented as a "clampdown on the mafia", but its arbitrariness and cruelty suggests that it was merely carried out to protect Russian Mafias, closely linked to the notoriously corrupt Moscow city administration, against possible "southern" competitors.
In this political climate, and given the bans and censorship, any talk of "fair" elections is obviously impossible. Since 21 September the law on elections has, for example, been changed four times after negotiations between Yeltsin's adminis-
In some ways it is tempting to draw parallels between the current situation and that of autumn 1991: The Yeltsinites have re-established a hegemony in the political sphere (only this time it is based more on coercion than on popular support) and they are using this to implement their economic and geo-political solutions — in 1991 at the level of the Union, now at the level of Russia. However after two years of economic "reform" and with a State apparatus in serious decay the Yeltsinite alliance has lost most of its initial momentum, and its popular base is eroding. In spite of several "stabilisation-programmes" inflation will reach thirteenhundred percent in 1993, and the real number of unemployed might reach the 5 million mark by the end of the year.3
When the latest round of of liberalisations, including the abolishment of bread subsidies hit a population, where some two-thirds are already living below the official poverty line, the Yeltsinites might face resistance even from among their key constituencies (for example, the more and more impoverished layers of white-collar
Vocabulary
The myth of liberal reform as the road to prosperity for broad layers of society is facing a final-breakdown, and even the ideologists of the Yeltsin camp are adjusting their vocabulary to catch up with the less rosy realties of "reform" gone sour and "democratic restructuring" turning into dictatorship. In an article with Izvestya, 15 October, Yeltsin's henchman Gennady Burbulis formulates the basis of liberal rule in the following way: "Today the structures of the executive are socially leaning on, and orientated towards, the quickly emerging class of people enriching themselves, even though these may not yet have acquired the spirit of civic society. (...) You can call these layers what ever you like, you can even - and not without justification - talk about the criminal elements they contain (...)" Indeed at the heart of the Yeltsinite alliance you find this convergence between on the one hand the layers of nouveau riche — elements, recruited from among the old nomenclatura, the intelligentsia, and criminal circles, having accumulated their wealth primarily through speculative trading transactions; and on the other the executive, which has on a large scale incorporated the structures and personnel of the old regime. In itself this does not provide a sufficient basis for an authoritarian regime (even if the subjective "will" has been there for a long time), so to accomplish his coup d'etat Yeltsin had to persuade other forces, notably the repressive apparatus, to join in. However, this alliance remains precarious, meaning that even if authoritarian rule will undoubtedly linger for a period its duration, and the degree of repression, is far from being a foregone conclusion.
The one clear winner is exactly the military and the other "power ministries", whose relations with Yeltsin are contradictory. Yeltsin has presided over cutbacks in military expenditure, and for the bulk of officers living standards have deteriorated over the last few years; but the military top brass has won considerable political influence and a new freedom to act on their own during Yeltsin's rule. This latter trend has shown itself in a series of conflicts within the CIS (for example, in the Trans-oniestr region in Moldova, in Abkhasia [in Georgia], and in Tadzjikistan), where Russian military interests have been active — up to the point of armed intervention - more than once in blatant contradiction to Kozyrev's official foreign policy rhetoric. At the same time the "power ministries" have not been immune to the general penetration of commercial structures through-out the State, the consequences of which is rampant corruption. Many prominent generals (including defence minister Grachev) have been accused of involvement in large-scale fraud and corruption; which might have provided another incentive to side with the current regime since they are unlikely to investigate such allegations.
So eventually the general staff as well as the police and the Ministry of Security (the former, but largely unreconstructed, KGB) went with Yeltsin — but it happened only after many hours of foot-dragging and indecision on the part of the "power ministries", indicating serious divisions inside their leaderships. Significantly, the first major policy decision taken by Yeltsin after the attack on the White House was to adopt a new, and more defensive, military doctrine, obviously to appease the defence estab. lishment. Only time will tell if these kind of concessions will suffice, or if the generals in a situation of continuing political instability and social unrest would decide to try and impose their solution to the profound crisis of the Russian State. After 4 October such a scenario has become a markedly more likely one
It has been one of the persistent features of Yeltsin's period in power - and a sign of the weak foundations of his rule
- that no "ruling party" has emerged, in
2. Even liberal publications, for example Moskovskie Novosti (17 October), have supported the hypothesis about a provocation set up by the pro-Yeltsin forces
3. According to "Novosti", Ostankino TV, 15 October.
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International Viewpoint #250 November 1993 spite of many proclamations to this effect. Indeed the "democrats" have been no less divided and factionalised than the "Communists". . And even though the coup might have encouraged a certain unity among the liberals, whose only truly common denominator remains Yeltsin, this is merely a temporary occurrence.
Contradictions between monetarists and industrialists inside the government persist on a series of vital issues - including the setting up of a new rouble zone (a project strongly opposed by the IMF), the question of state industry (still largely untouched by bankruptcies), and the forms and pace of privatisation.
In the run-up to the elections the different liberal elites are busy trying to place themselves in the most favourable position, also with an eye on the - possibly not very remote — "time after Yeltsin".
So far three major pro-capitalist blocs have emerged: "Russian Choice", led by Gaidar, organising the die-hard liberals; the "Party of Russian Unity", led by Sergei Shakhrai, drawing on pro-liberal regional elites and industrialists; and an unnamed bloc, led by the economist Grigory Yavlinsky, posing as a slightly more Keynesian alternative to the Yeltsinites.
During the week-long open confrontation between Yeltsin and Parliament the centrist alliance the "Civic Union", dominated by veteran nomenclaturist, Arkady Volsky, and his "Congress of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists", kept a remarkably low profile. This undoubtedly reflects a general slide towards more liberal positions on the part of managers as privatisation progresses; but also shows the Volskyites' interests in keeping good relations with both camps (although the Civic Union is formally in opposition it is also represented in the government!). Volsky clearly retains a favourable bargaining position due to his support in industry, and it is likely to fill at least part of the oppositional vacuum left open after the dissolution of Parliament. In the regions there is also a considerable potential for opposition even though Yeltsin has moved against some of the regional soviets and administrations opposed to him. The regional elites are interested in stability, but not in a too strong centre dic6 tating them its conditions. As the "reform" has proceeded differences among the regions have deepened, spurning regionalism and growing resistance against the decisions made at the centre. This was underlined by the April referendum, where a large part of the Russian regions were returning Yeltsin a vote of no confidence, and it might in the medium term become an insurmountable obstacle to any projects of a "strong federation".
### FNPR
During the siege of the White House the Russian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FNPR — the former "official" unions), came out in defence of the Parliament — a position which singled them out for attacks from the government. The Yeltsinites dictated the ouster of the FNPR's chair, Igor Klochkov, by threatening to strip the unions of their property and introduce a "moratorium on trade union activity". A step in this direction had already been taken by the transfer of the social security fund, formerly administered by the unions, to the jurisdiction of the government through a Yeltsin decree on 21 September.
While the FNPR has been able to take some progressive initiatives at the leadership level, it remains to a large extent a bureaucratised monolith unable to adopt to the changing social and political realities. In the upcoming struggles, when the Yeltsinites will press ahead with liberalisation to the detriment of working people, this could spell serious trouble for the FNPR which is already coming apart at the seams, as some branch unions, outside are moving to quit the federation. Meanwhile the so-called independent unions, outside the FNPR, have in general aligned themselves with the liberals, and do not represent any clear-cut alternative to the anti-working class reforms or to the inefficient old unions.
This state of affairs in the union movement - and the general absence of popular movements — obviously poses serious problems for the left. The Party of Labour, which draws support from parts of the FNPR, has not as yet been able to develop beyond being a propaganda group of leftwing intellectuals. The other, smaller anarchist and left-socialist groups are even worse off - fighting to keep their structures intact and their organisations alive.
The different post-CPSU formations are still far larger than the organisations of the far left, and are likely to gain broad electoral support at a later point, as has happened elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
However, this will not happen in the December elections, where most Communist organisations are either barred from participating or calling for a boycott. The question of a boycott or participation in the election divides many organisations, notably the large Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The Party's leadership wants to field candidates (on other party slates), while many regional organisations are calling for a boycott. Meanwhile the Socialist Workers' Party, of Lyodmilla Vartazarova and Roy Medvedev, is presenting a slate including candidates both from the trade unions and from other leftwing organisations (for example, the Party of Labour).
Undoubtedly, the elections will represent a major challenge for the left for the rest of the year (even if the emphasis is an active boycott) - as will the fight against repression and for democratic rights. The first major test of the opposition forces will be 7 November, the day of the October revolution, where demonstrations have been called. For the time being the opposition in general, and the left in particular, is facing an uphill struggle, but as winter sets in, with continuing economic downturn and no political stability in sight, the fortunes of the Yeltsin "Dynasty" could soon be flagging. *