1 | THE END OF THE SOVIET ERA
According to a saying attributed to Voltaire, history is only the patter of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below. The question why nations fail and decline has been frequently discussed in recent years, the question why they recover-sometimes for a short period only, sometimes for longer periods-less often. It took Germany a mere fifteen years after the defeat in World War I to regain its military and political power. It took Russia two decades for its comeback after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
But does it make sense to compare twenty-first-century Russia with other great powers and empires? The emergence of the Soviet Union was sui generis, based on an ideology, the desire to build a society wholly different from all others in history, and it was to be the beginning of a new era, a just and progressive society. It was to be a new beginning in the annals of humankind. As "The Internationale," which was to be the anthem of the country up to World War II, put it:
Du passé faisons table rase
And further on:
Le monde va changer de base
The revolution and the regime to which it gave birth attracted much opposition and hostility in the early days. But after the end of the civil war, there was an enormous amount of enthusiasm, especially among the younger generation. This was the heroic age, and as Anatoly D'Aktil put it:
We are always right in our daring
There are no obstacles for us on land or on sea
We fear no ice, no cloud
We achieve in a year the work of a century
Happiness we take as of right
We carry the banner of our country
Through the whole world and all ages.
Of that heroic age there remained "the march of the enthusiasts," the name of a subway and a metro station on the Kalinin line on the Moscow metro. The author of the poem is now remembered mainly as the translator into Russian of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He also wrote the "Budyonny March," celebrating the famous commander of the civil war.
But at the time, enthusiasm was in the air. It was the age of Kak Zakalyalas Stal (How the Steel Was Forged), by Nikolai Ostrovsky, describing the superhuman efforts of young workers to build and work new factories. Ostrovsky was a desperately ill young man (he died at thirty-five in 1936), and his novel sold or was distributed in millions of copies and became the socialist realist bestseller par excellence. It was made into a movie three times and became a television series as late as the 1970s, even though by that time young people no longer felt much empathy for the Pavel Korchagins, the heroes of a past age. Another idol was Magnitogorsk, one of the new centers of the iron and steel industry in the Urals and the regions beyond. Many of the best young people, many of the idealists, volunteered to move to these places. They became the mecca of that period. It was the age of "Shiroka Strana Moya Rodnaya," a song that became something like the second national anthem and the signature tune of Moscow radio. It announced that the Soviet Union was not only a country of many mountains and rivers but also the country gdye tak volno dyshit chelovyek-where a man could breathe more freely than anywhere else.
Magnitogorsk played a role of importance in World War II. Today, it is reported to be one of the most polluted places on earth; only 27 percent of the children born there are healthy. Magnitogorsk became a "closed city" to foreigners, opened again only in the age of glasnost. It now has four hundred thousand inhabitants, but many would like to escape from it.
Although 1935 was a good year, it was followed by the Moscow trials and the age of the great fear and tribulations of the war and eventually the great victory. At the end of the war, there was much hope that from now on everything would be better. Enthusiasm had largely vanished, but there still was a great deal of hope.
The earlier internationalism had disappeared. "The Internationale" was replaced by a new national anthem, a patriotic song praising great Russia and its foremost role. The war years saw the emergence of a "Russian party," of which we shall have much more to say. However, the feeling was that the worst was over. Joseph Stalin died, and there were no mass arrests and executions. Supplies of elementary goods slowly improved. A Russian was the first human being to fly into space. Living conditions improved to a certain degree. The Soviet Union had its nuclear arsenal soon after the Americans.
But progress in the Soviet Union was slow, much slower than in the West. True, the devastation in the occupied Soviet territories had been more extensive than the damage that had been caused by the war in the West. This above all was adduced as the reason for the slow Russian recovery. It was a convincing argument for a decade, perhaps even two, but it no longer seemed persuasive after that. By the 1970s, serious doubts arose about the efficacy of the system-something obviously was wrong with it, but what?
The Soviet Union had become a superpower with very strong military forces, and this caused much pride. But maintaining a strong military force was very expensive, and as the economy progressed only slowly and eventually stagnated, it became more and more difficult to keep pace with America and the West. Many Western experts overrated the extent of the Soviet performance, whereas the average Soviet citizen was more aware of the true state of affairs. But they too could not travel abroad at the time and were not fully aware of the true state of affairs. Only the upper reaches of society knew about the true situation, partly because they had been abroad and were able to compare or because they had access to restricted information. From the 1960s onward, there had been manifestations of dissent, but their outreach was limited. The KGB had society very much under control.
But when it came to a test such as in Afghanistan, the showing was not very impressive. In the non-Russian republics, a nationalist mood prevailed. The general malaise of that period was described openly in the novels of right-wing writers, the nationalist pochvenniki. By the late Brezhnev period (1981-82), complaints about the situation were made at the highest level-the food shortages were a matter of crucial political and economic importance. There was open criticism, but it was not followed by actions and reforms.
Perhaps most important was the failure to improve the quality of life. Air and water were polluted; the soil was poisoned; the Russian forest, traditionally the pride of the country, was partly disappearing in European Russia. There were some staunch fighters for improving the environment, but their activities clashed with those of the local and central authorities who had to fulfill the plan, and the environment fighters usually failed to have any impact. Alcoholism, always a plague in Russian history, became worse. On payday in the villages and cities, no work was done because everyone was too drunk to make their way to their places of work; the scenes were indescribable. The crime rate was rising, petty and not-so-petty theft was increasing all the time. Much of this was out in the open-described, for instance, in the novels of Valentin Rasputin, perhaps the most gifted of the nationalist writers, a Siberian by origin who spent most of his life in this part of Russia.
It was clear by that time to any unprejudiced observer that the regime had lost its dynamism, that the age of enthusiasm was long over. While interest in Marxism could still be found in American universities, it became difficult to find any of this in the Soviet Union. Some Western observers found certain redeeming factors in the Soviet system: It was, after all, a welfare state of sorts: People were paid pensions and had no fear of unemployment. This was true, but it was welfare on a very low level. Russia was and remained a poor country, and as the years passed, four decades after the end of World War II, blaming the war for most of the misfortunes became impossible.
At the same time, the old idea of catching up with and even overtaking America and becoming the most powerful force on earth persisted. The Cold War meant high and ever-growing military spending. But America was so much richer, and it should have been clear to the Soviet leadership that they could not win this arms race, which might instead ruin their economy. But it was not recognized, and this too contributed to the breakdown.
If there was little opposition inside the country against military spending, this is a reflection that it would have been considered unpatriotic, if not a matter of treason. Furthermore, the facts concerning military spending were known only to a very few. But there was vocal criticism of the allocation of funds to friendly countries abroad. Weapons worth millions of dollars had been delivered to Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, but not a dollar had ever been paid back. Money and resources that were badly needed at home had been diverted to Cuba and various Asian and African countries. This resentment manifested itself in a growing xenophobia when officials and tourists visited the Soviet Union from African and Asian countries. Relations with China had improved somewhat since the days of open hostility, and there was an alliance with the European satellites, but twice since the war, the Soviet Union had to intervene militarily in Eastern Europe, in Hungary (1956) and in Czechoslovakia (1968). Romania had openly defied Moscow, and with the possible exception of East Germany, there was no trust with regard to the others.
It was widely believed at the time that the Soviet Union was overstretched. This was true, and perhaps some of the Soviet leaders were even aware of it. But if so, they did not know how to terminate the Cold War. Some of them may have believed that it was all the fault of the West. After all, even some of the American experts argued that but for Truman, there might not have been the Cold War. Some Soviet leaders may have believed that the conflict with the West was needed for a domestic reason: How else to justify the many restrictions at home, the whole dictatorial system?
One of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was the weakness and inefficiency of the top leadership. Leonid Brezhnev was seventy-five years of age when he died in 1982, and a new general secretary of the party had to be elected. Yuri Andropov had not been in good health for years, but his style of leadership was in some respects better than that of his predecessor (he almost always consulted his Politburo colleagues before making important decisions). He was not eager to make changes; the period since the 1970s became known as the zastoi-stagnation. The system did work, after all, even if it did not work well, and opposition was negligible, with the security services in full control. By the time Brezhnev died, the party leadership consisted of elderly people out of touch with the problems of the common people. A novel published in the early days of glasnost described the plight of a very high official, a minister or party leader, whose car and driver had not turned up to take the VIP home after a meeting. He tried to make his way using public transport but had the greatest difficulties because he had no idea how to do so.
Yuri Andropov, who had been head of the KGB for a number of years, followed Brezhnev. He had the reputation of being an intelligent leader who was disgusted with the state of the country, above all with the ever-growing corruption, and was eager to carry out reforms. During his stay in office, some eighteen ministers and senior party secretaries were dismissed. But there was no liberalization, stricter repression at home, and no change in foreign policy. Andropov was very sick, unable to attend Politburo meetings. When he felt his end was near, he suggested Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest member of the leading body, to preside over its sessions and eventually take over. But the majority ignored his suggestion and chose Konstantin Chernenko, who was generally considered an inoffensive character on reasonably good terms with his colleagues. If Andropov had been in office for eighteen months, Chernenko stayed for a mere thirteen months, an old man also, unable to attend many of the meetings of the Politburo. He gave the eulogy at the funeral of his predecessor, but was so weak that he could barely finish it. Since the occasion was shown on television, millions of Soviet citizens watched it, and the impression they gained was devastating. It only added to the prevailing depression and pessimism: a country faced with serious problems in many fields but lacking a reasonably effective leadership. It was after the death of Chernenko that Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.
The Soviet Union was certainly in bad shape at the time, worse than assumed by most people in the West. But was the ultimate breakdown inevitable? Perhaps, but not from an economic perspective. True, even wheat had to be imported at the time, something unheard-of in a country that had once been among the leading wheat exporters. But no one was starving, and if there was widespread dissatisfaction, it had not reached the boiling point. The propaganda machine was telling people that the situation in the West was even worse, and the KGB was effectively suppressing any opposition. If there was dissatisfaction, there was even greater apathy, no burning desire to engage in political activity to bring about political change.
To engage in a brief exercise of counterfactual history: The Putin regime owes its survival and success to one factor and one factor only-the export of oil and gas, which accounts for about half of the Russian budget. Up to 2013, when it was overtaken by the United States, Russia was the biggest global producer of oil and gas. If the price of a barrel of crude oil was $14 in 1988 and $11 in 1998, it was $94 in 2013 and is about $52 now.
If on March 11, 1985, someone other than Gorbachev had been made general secretary of the Communist Party-say, another member of the Politburo (for argument's sake, let him be named Ivan Ivanov)-and if ten or fifteen years later Ivanov had been succeeded by, say, Sergeev-neither one a liberal reformer but both leaders in the Brezhnev tradition, muddling through the 1990s-they would have benefited from the oil and gas windfall that subsequently occurred, without any particular modernizing effort. The Supreme Soviet would still exist, as would the Communist Party with its political monopoly. The party leadership would be praised for the country's increase in wealth and for its wisdom, energy, farsightedness, and astuteness in making the country richer. Some minor political and ideological reforms might have taken place, but no radical changes. True, the character of such an economic system and such a country would hardly conform to the original Communist vision of a developed industrial (or postindustrial) Marxist-Leninist economy and society. It would more resemble a colonial country, with its economy based on the export of raw materials. But it might not be so difficult to overlook all this. The doctrinal inconsistencies would not greatly matter-what would matter would be the existence of a balanced budget and a higher standard of living. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union would still have a political monopoly, there would have been no secession from the Soviet Union, and the regime would still be authoritarian. It is possible-indeed, quite likely-that precisely because of a rise in the standard of living, new tensions would not have developed, and the continued existence of a command economy would not have been questioned.
Such a development in Russia during the last two decades is by no means unthinkable. The election of a leader who genuinely believed that the system could be reformed was an accident.
Perestroika
Soviet politics in the early 1980s seemed to be frozen, at a standstill. Only after the death of Chernenko did it suddenly gather speed. This came as a surprise to people inside the Soviet Union and observers abroad, who had not expected any important changes in Soviet policy. The events that followed, beginning with the election of Gorbachev as general secretary of the party, have been heavily documented; virtually all those involved have written their memoirs. It is therefore not necessary to go over the ground in any detail.
Very little was known abroad at the time about Gorbachev, and virtually nothing about his personal views (if any) on domestic and foreign affairs. But the same was true with regard to the other members of the Politburo, with the possible exception of Andrei Gromyko, who as foreign minister had been frequently abroad. He had never been a man of many words, and it was considered elementary wisdom at the time, even among the top leadership, to keep one's personal views to oneself, especially if these happened to deviate from the prevailing consensus that had been prescribed by the head of the group. Truer opinions were voiced, if at all, in a small circle of the closest friends and even there only with due caution. Even the leadership had to pretend to be in full agreement or at least to keep silent unless the issues at stake were of minor importance.
Mikhail Gorbachev was born in a small village not far from Stavropol in the Northern Caucasus. It should be noted that while earlier generations of Communist leaders had usually been townpeople whose parents had often belonged to the middle class or intelligentsia, those of Gorbachev's generation who played leading roles in the dramatic events of the 1980s and 1990s more often than not came from peasant families. It is also interesting that even though these families lived far from the centers of political power, they did not escape the consequences of the 1930s. Many were victims of "repression," the term that came to be used in the post-Stalin period. Gorbachev's grandfather was arrested, as was Yeltsin's father (his family had five horses and four cows, which made them kulaks, rich peasants, which at the time was the "wrong" class); few families survived these years entirely unharmed.
Gorbachev was born in 1931 and received his primary education locally. He seems to have been an exceptionally bright young man, for the party became interested in him early on, and it was decided to send him to Moscow State University to study law. This was the country's leading university, and to be sent there and accepted was exceptional. His rise in the party hierarchy was swift. At thirty-five, he was first secretary of the Stavropol town section, and a few years later he became head of the Stavropol district organization. His reputation spread, and in 1971 he was appointed a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. This meant frequent visits to Moscow, where the powerful Yuri Andropov became interested in the capable young man. Various offers of employment followed-the KGB was interested in him, but so was the supreme planning institution, and some of his protectors wanted him to be minister of agriculture. But Gorbachev accepted none of these offers and in 1980 became a member of the Politburo, the most important political institution in the country. He seems to have behaved modestly and inconspicuously, as befitting a newcomer, made a few friends and no enemies.
During his years in Stavropol, Gorbachev became well informed about the local situation, but only in Moscow did he gain a true, wider picture of the state of affairs in the Soviet Union. As a result, he became very critical of current policies or rather the absence of action to improve the situation. He gathered around him a number of like-minded people, hoping, perhaps, to have the necessary support for the day when he would be in a position to influence policy.
We know about one of these meetings, which is of particular interest because it concerns a man considered the ideological father of perestroika, Alexander Yakovlev. Eight years older than Gorbachev, he too was a bright country boy who had risen to the party leadership. Severely injured during the war in August 1942, he was mustered out of the army and sent to study-eventually becoming a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Like Gorbachev, he went to Moscow to work in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, mainly in the ideological field. He was among those who suggested that sociology should be taught in Russian universities, which was not the case at the time. However, being less cautious than Gorbachev, he ran into trouble. In August 1972, he published an article in the Literaturnaya Gazeta in which he sharply denounced the chauvinist and anti-Semitic trend that he encountered in the country. By that time, these tendencies were already deeply rooted and had powerful supporters in the party leadership. These people demanded that he should not be permitted to engage in ideological work in a leading position. As a result, he was sent as ambassador to Canada, where he spent the next ten years and gained a good knowledge of Western political and economic institutions. In 1983, Gorbachev visited Canada, and the two of them met. It took a little mutual exploration, but eventually the two discovered that their views were close and they could talk openly. Both, independently from each other, reached the conclusion that the Soviet Union needed radical change. But Yakovlev's critique was far more radical by that time; unlike Gorbachev, he was far more progressed and practical in his thoughts on how to bring about change.
They became friends, and after his return to Moscow, Gorbachev insisted on Yakovlev's return to the Soviet capital and the Central Committee. The position he was offered and accepted was as head of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. It was not exactly the most important power base, and Yakovlev's position at that time toward the official party ideology was negative. The attitude of other Soviet leaders was not one of great enthusiasm either-they simply ignored it. It would be difficult to find in their speeches a positive reference to Marxism-Leninism; they simply did not mention it. But Yakovlev went considerably further, and his attitude was one of total antagonism, even of hatred. He regarded Marxism-Leninism as a religion of hatred that had nothing to do with science.
How could a person with such convictions survive in the Politburo? Yakovlev later related that in the early days of perestroika, he could not yet speak the whole truth; one had to pretend and to lie. The others simply did not care one way or another. The policy of the party leadership was rooted not in deep ideological conviction, but in the interests of the nomenklatura: They were fools and cynics. He referred to the Soviet regime only as totalitarian-something that would have landed him in certain Western universities in deep trouble. He and some of his closest friends submitted to Gorbachev detailed plans on how to bring about real change. But Gorbachev, even though admitting that only a small revolution inside the party would bring about true change, argued that it was too early to do so.
Yakovlev left the Communist Party in 1991 and together with Eduard Shevardnadze, the foreign minister at the time, founded a social democratic party in competition with the Bolsheviks. The party existed for a few years but was not successful. The entrenched Communist Party apparatus was still quite strong, and while they did not worry greatly about the fate of Marxism-Leninism, they were rightly concerned about their position in society and their power. Furthermore, Yakovlev's energetic stand against chauvinism did not add to his popularity. After 1993 (he died in 2005), he did not play any significant political role but engaged in academic pursuits. He made many enemies and was attacked not just as an enemy of the party and the country, but even alleged to be a spy. However, his war record made him almost invulnerable. Among the party leaders of the time, he was virtually the only one who had not only fought for his country, but almost paid for it with his life. At his funeral, not one of the leaders of contemporary Russia showed up, which was not surprising. He had been sharply critical of the retreat from democracy under Boris Yeltsin and especially under Vladimir Putin.
* * *
THERE are differing versions of the beginning of perestroika and glasnost. According to one, Yuri Andropov had been persuaded of the need for immediate economic reform. But Andropov had virtually ceased to function by that time, and the next initiative came only after Gorbachev had taken over-the first law in May 1985 was a decree about the ways and means of overcoming alcoholism.
Not much activity was witnessed during 1986, partly because of excessive caution, but also because the plans to carry out perestroika were not ready. But in the meantime, the economic situation had deteriorated, mainly as a result of the decline in the price of oil, and immediate change became imperative. At the same time, domestic political conflicts (such as the clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan) aggravated the situation. Through a series of laws beginning in the summer of 1987, the leadership began to dismantle the Soviet economic system.
Even earlier on, many opponents of reform had been removed from the Politburo and other leading party organs. It soon appeared, however, that it was much easier to push through the glasnost reforms than economic and social perestroika. Glasnost simply meant to limit the freedom of action of censorship-to give permission to publish Dr. Zhivago and other works that had been censored or banned and to stop jamming the broadcasts of foreign radio stations in Russian.
The policy of glasnost also found its opponents, such as a college teacher named Nina Andreeva, who in a full page article entitled "I Cannot Give Up Basic Principles" in the daily Sovetskaya Rossiya, defended the old system. But on the whole, glasnost had overwhelming support-from the left and liberal forces because it gave them much greater freedom to broadcast their ideas, and from the right-wing-nationalist camp for the same reasons.
But it soon appeared that perestroika meant not only greater freedom to publish novels but also action-in the economy, in domestic political life, in foreign policy-an end to the Cold War. It was difficult to think of a single field not affected by perestroika: It included relations with the satellites-the Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Past experience had shown that the hold of the Communist governments was not secure, and it was doubtful that these regimes would survive without heavy support from Moscow (and if they did survive, there was always the danger that they would be untrustworthy). Was the old policy to be followed, meaning that in an emergency military intervention could be taken for granted? Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders felt disinclined. Last, there was the nationalist ferment inside the Soviet Union. Despite all efforts over many decades, nationalist passions in the non-Russian republics had not been stamped out; on the contrary, with the strengthening of great Russian nationalism since the 1930s, nationalism in the non-Russian republics had received fresh impetus. This had happened in the past, and it began to happen again in the late 1980s, first and most sharply between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
If Andropov had thought it might be possible to carry out far-reaching economic reform while leaving the political system and other issues untouched, such assumptions were never put to a test. Gorbachev seems to have shared some of these illusions, but it did not take long to realize that such optimism was not warranted. These years, between 1986 and 1990, were years of optimism despite the dismal economic situation, not because great changes for the better had already occurred, but because there was at long last the promise of improvement, indications that there was a willingness to take action.
It soon appeared that of all the problems confronting the new rulers, the economy was the most difficult and complicated. The transition to a planned economy in the 1920s had not been easy, but it had not been entirely unprecedented; many countries had been compelled to adopt measures in this direction during the war. But a retreat from a planned economy toward a market economy was unprecedented at that time. It happened in China and Vietnam, but only in later years. Moreover, the situation in these countries was not really comparable to that in Russia, since per capita income in China and Vietnam was much lower given that the majority of the population was employed in agriculture.
True, Gorbachev and most of his advisers were not thinking in such radical terms. But gradually they understood that half measures would not save the country. They had inherited a situation that was untenable in the long run. In addition, they faced a sudden deterioration affecting Soviet industry and, to an even greater extent, agriculture. The flight from the countryside continued and even increased. The export of Soviet oil had not yet gained the magnitude of its later years, but it was of critical economic importance. And it so happened that income from the export of oil fell by 30 percent in 1985-86. This had an immediate effect on the country's budget and the availability of foreign currency, which in turn caused painful domestic shortages with respect to the commodities of mass consumption and imports needed for the functioning of Soviet industry and agriculture. The Soviet foreign debt had grown to $56 billion (as a Soviet minister later ruefully admitted, "We were in debt to about every country in the world").
But hardly anyone was thinking of privatization; Gorbachev seems to have believed in models of worker cooperatives, ideas that had been entertained for a while in Yugoslavia after Josip Broz Tito had left the Soviet camp. Thus the years 1986-89 witnessed a great many conferences inside the leadership of the Communist Party that passed many resolutions; the political monopoly of the Communist Party had not yet been broken, but there was no action. A powerful anti-Gorbachev faction emerged, demanding the preservation of the status quo, which eventually led to an anti-Gorbachev coup in August 1991, an event that led within a few months to his downfall (he resigned from his post as president of the Soviet Union in late December 1991) and the rise of Yeltsin-but it also led to the collapse of the old Communist Party.
If the Gorbachev years did not bring great economic reforms despite the acknowledgment that these were urgently necessary, they did bring "new thinking" (the official term used at the time in the conduct of foreign policy).
Only three years earlier, Gorbachev had been generally considered the most popular Soviet leader. What had caused the quick downturn? The disastrous economic situation played a key role, but probably even more important was the impression that there was no strong hand in the Kremlin. The country was unraveling by the time of the August 1991 coup, but all involved-politicians, the army top brass, and even the head of the KGB-lacked the experience to bring about decisive political change. Yeltsin had been Gorbachev's rival for years, but it was precisely at the time of the coup that his finest hour came, when from the top of a tank he addressed the crowd in defense of democracy and the reform party.
If the Gorbachev years did not bring the decisive far-reaching economic reforms that many said were urgently necessary, there certainly was a great deal of "new thinking" on foreign policy. It did not happen immediately after Gorbachev's election; he needed two years for the preparations-to familiarize himself with the most important issues and to gain support in the Politburo. Andrei Gromyko, still considered the great foreign policy expert, had the support of the old-timers, and they were against it. It is doubtful whether they could even have imagined any other policy they would not consider heresy. Gorbachev understood that a new foreign minister had to come from the party or government work, as remote as possible from Gromyko and his Foreign Ministry. Hence his choice of Eduard Shevardnadze, an intelligent man but with no experience in the fields of foreign policy and diplomacy.
Gorbachev built up a new team that shared the consensus that an understanding with the West had to be based on a halt to rearmament. Such a policy was most likely to gain support among the party leadership, because even these leaders understood that the burden of the defense budget had become too heavy. Precise figures of the size of the defense budget in that period are not available to this day. At the time, it was believed that defense constituted 8-15 percent of the general budget, but it is certain that it was higher, possibly even much higher than the official figures.
Perhaps the most important issue on the road to reducing Cold War tensions was Afghanistan. Soviet armed forces had been in that country since December 1979 and the war had not been going well. Furthermore, it had aggravated relations with China, which demanded a withdrawal of Russian forces as a precondition to a normalization of relations between the two countries. However, Brezhnev and his immediate successors could not bring themselves to adopt decisive measures. They could have opted for a Soviet withdrawal of troops, but this would have been interpreted (and rightly so) as a Soviet defeat. Or they could have bolstered the Russian forces in Afghanistan, but this would have increased tensions.
So the Afghan war continued during the 1980s like a wound that did not heal. (In a speech at a party conference in early 1986, Gorbachev called the war a "bleeding wound.") It is not known when exactly Gorbachev made the decision to withdraw, but by 1987 it became clear that the Soviets would leave the country. The only opposition came from the army leadership, but since the performance of the army in Afghanistan had not been impressive, they were not in a strong position to press their case. Shevardnadze suggested the maintenance of a small Soviet contingent in the country for an indefinite period, but Gorbachev overruled him. Soviet withdrawal began on May 15, 1988, and the last Soviet soldiers left the country on February 15, 1989, ahead of schedule. So ended a tragedy of errors that cost the lives of many soldiers and even more civilians. If Brezhnev's original decision had been a costly mistake, the American expectation that a victory over the Islamists was possible had also been a profound mistake, as it emerged a number of years after.
Important as it was, the ending of the Afghan war was not sufficient to bring about a radical change in relations with the West-an end, or at least a reduction, of tensions in the Cold War. Gorbachev's first contact with Western leaders had been in France and the United Kingdom in 1985; he had made a positive impression on François Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher. Both recommended to the White House that Gorbachev's "new thinking" aimed at an end to the Cold War should be taken seriously. But he had not yet talked to President Ronald Reagan, the senior partner, except briefly and inconclusively in Geneva, also in 1985.
Reagan was the sworn enemy of communism and the Soviet Union; he had talked about the "evil empire" in a famous speech to an Evangelical meeting in 1983. Under him, relations between Washington and Moscow had sunk to an unprecedented low-would it be possible to reach agreement with him?
Alexander Yakovlev and his team had outlined the basic ideas of the new thinking in foreign policy, but how were ideas to be translated into a policy? The first major step in that direction was the Reykjavík meeting in 1986. This took place a few months after the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, which from the Soviet point of view was another unmitigated disaster. But it could well be that as horrible as the consequences were, they had a positive effect on Russian thinking and perhaps also on American foreign policy makers. For, as no other event had done, Chernobyl added greatly to the feeling of urgency that steps had to be taken toward nuclear disarmament.
The Reykjavík meeting dealt mainly with "technical issues," such as whether land-based intercontinental missiles should be given priority or a cessation of nuclear tests and other points in the SDI (the American Strategic Defense Initiative) and the Soviet plans for reducing nuclear arms. There was a great deal of haggling, and in the opinion of Andrei Grachev, one of Gromyko's chief advisers and spokesmen, the conference was a failure.
Seen in retrospect, however, the conference was probably a necessary step toward the far-reaching changes that took place in 1989. At least both sides gained the impression that serious progress seemed possible, that both sides were eager to reach agreement. Relations had been frozen for so many years, it was unlikely that a thaw would suddenly take place and all major problems solved in one fell swoop.
Reykjavík was followed by Reagan's visit to Moscow in May 1988, when he declared in a speech in Red Square that he no longer regarded the Soviet Union as an evil empire. The breakthrough in relations with the West came as the result of yet another summit in December 1989, this time with George H. W. Bush on the Soviet warship Maxim Gorky near Malta. This led to a whole series of meetings relating mainly to arms control. In a joint communiqué, Gorbachev and Bush announced that the two superpowers no longer considered themselves enemies.
Western leaders (especially the Americans) had taken a long time to accept that the changes in the Kremlin were genuine and constituted a profound historical turning point in world politics. This is understandable in retrospect. For decades, there had been too many disappointments and setbacks, and Western leaders were afraid of yet another betrayal. For this reason, while there was the desire not to miss a historical opportunity, there was the wish to see first whether Gorbachev would deliver on his promises before making far-reaching concessions.
But after decades of freeze, events went into a faster gear and Western leaders were a little slow to react. In a well-known speech in Berlin, Reagan asked Gorbachev to go further and to open the gates. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved, suddenly the gates were open and the wall disappeared, but Western reaction was slow. For in view of the disastrous and constantly deteriorating economic situation in the Soviet Union, there was the danger that Gorbachev's days as leader were numbered, and no one could be sure that his successor would be equally ready to continue his policy. Gorbachev needed help, such as loans to confront the immediate domestic emergency, but no such help was forthcoming. Gorbachev felt frustrated and even betrayed. He complained to his advisers that when it had been a matter of going to war following Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the White House had not found it difficult to find the billions to do so, but when facing a political emergency, they were either not able or not willing to make an effort.
Gorbachev did not understand that loans and other forms of help had to be confirmed by Congress or that the president did not have the power and resources to authorize such help on his own. Nor is it certain whether the White House would have been able to save Gorbachev (he resigned in December 1991). For by that time, the crisis was no longer primarily economic or financial in character; the whole Soviet system seemed to unravel, and there were doubts in Washington whether America could or should intervene to stop this process.
The anti-Gorbachev coup in August 1991 had failed, but his position had been greatly weakened. If the regime had somehow survived, it was primarily because of Yeltsin, who in the decisive hours had gathered support. Nominally, the Soviet Union now had two leaders. Gorbachev was still president of the Soviet Union, but Yeltsin had been elected president of Russia with 57 percent of the vote. In addition, Yeltsin now became prime minister. It seemed only natural that Gorbachev should resign as president of the Soviet Union, for the Soviet Union had virtually ceased to exist. It was replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States, which consisted of eleven of the former Soviet republics. The Baltic republics had decided to declare their independence the previous year, and others followed suit in August and September 1991.
In the meantime, prices rose all over the country despite constant promises by the government that this would not happen. (Prices were eventually liberalized in January 1992.) How to put an end to a chaotic situation? The output of the Soviet economy had fallen by 11 percent during 1991, the deficit in the country's budget had risen by about a quarter, and a financial reform (fifty- and one-hundred-ruble notes were replaced by vouchers) had not brought any relief. The mood in the country was in favor of a market economy and privatization, even though no one knew what these radical changes really would mean and what effect they would have in practice. Yeltsin had appointed a small group of economists to prepare for the transition to a market economy, and this economic system became law in June 1992.
Everything happened very quickly now. But had the crisis been inevitable? More than ten years after, in an interview with the Financial Times, Anatoly Chubais, one of the two main architects of privatization, said that it had been a race against time. The pressure had been enormous, Yeltsin happened to be ill, and had the radical requirements not been pushed through, the Communists would have won the elections of 1996. History would have taken a different course.
All this may be true, as it was certainly a volatile situation in Moscow. In October 1993, there was another attempt to overthrow the government, by that time headed by Yeltsin. A ten-hour gun battle took place over the possession of the Russian White House, the seat of the government, and many were killed and injured. Yeltsin acted decisively. Within hours, the leaders of the coup were arrested. The National Salvation Front, which had launched the coup, was banned along with the Communist Party. (The Communist Party had been declared illegal two years earlier, but the Supreme Court had found this action illegal and revoked it: A political party, it argued, should not be banned because of the actions of some of its members.)
The whole story of what happened during these days of "voucher privatization" has not yet been revealed. The original idea underlying privatization was to get the economy going again, to make it more productive. But it was also hoped to attract foreign investors; Russia was joining the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund during this period. It is not clear how the public reacted to these sweeping innovations. In April 1993, the government received a vote of confidence in a referendum, but it is doubtful that the majority of the population understood what was going on in the country. Ownership of 130,000 of the country's medium- and large-sized enterprises passed into the hands of a small number of people, and the age of the oligarchs dawned. An account by Yegor Gaidar, the other architect of privatization, about the general situation at the time is certainly similar to the story provided by Chubais.
Gaidar was in a position to know. He had been minister of the economy and finance and for a while acting prime minister of the Russian Federation, after Gorbachev. He knew that the government was weak and that weak governments could not take the strong measures needed. He knew all there was to know about the postsocialist crisis that (as he wrote) was the result of long-term problems. It was rooted in the socialist model of industrialization and the profound disorganization of state finances, as well as the sharp decline in fuel prices. Writing some ten years later, Gaidar recalled that he'd thought it would take between three and seven years after the collapse for a recovery to occur: "This was the transformation period: The most important task of government in postsocialist countries at the stage of recovery growth is to create the preconditions for a transition from recovery growth to investment growth, based on the growth of capital investments into the economy and the creation of new production capacities."
After Gorbachev
The years after Gorbachev's resignation saw a great deal of turbulence, frequent elections and changes of government, and the adoption of a new constitution. Yegor Gaidar was succeeded by Viktor Chernomyrdin. During this period, a not-so-minor war (in Chechnya) and above all the disintegration of the Soviet Union took place. If any stability was preserved, it was owing to the fact that Boris Yeltsin managed to get himself elected and reelected president of Russia and that he succeeded in limiting the powers of the Duma (as the parliament was now called).
Gorbachev originally brought Yeltsin into the Politburo as an ally, but the alliance did not last long; Yeltsin was not a team player. The issues at stake were not ideological. Yeltsin had learned early on to steer clear of ideology, he had learned that much from the history of his own family since his own father had been a victim of the purges. His reputation was that of a boss-but as his biographer, Tim Colton, put it-a boss with a difference.
Born in the Urals, he made his career in a village near Sverdlovsk, the unofficial capital of the Urals. He was a man of great contradictions-charming yet very quarrelsome, a heavy drinker, and a person of little education. We do not know whether he ever consulted a psychiatrist. If he did, he would probably have been diagnosed not just as a very impulsive person but manic-depressive. On at least one occasion, he tried to commit suicide (the so-called affair of the scissors), or at any rate to create the impression of having tried to commit suicide. He was very ambitious yet the only person ever known to have tried to resign from the Politburo (twice). In extreme situations, he showed great bravery; in others, he hesitated and even gave the impression of cowardice. He hated the Communist Party, even though he had made his career in it. He was in favor of a multiparty, democratic system, but in his political style, as a leader, he was anything but a democrat.
In background and character, there could not have been a greater difference between Yeltsin and the two men he had chosen to carry out the economic reforms that were long overdue. Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais were intellectuals and came from well-known nomenklatura families. Gaidar's father had been an army colonel and for many years was the defense correspondent of Pravda. Gaidar had studied economics and headed a little group of fellow specialists who had realized early on that the Soviet economic system was a failure and that only a transition to a market economy would save the country. Chubais's father was also a senior officer and later a philosophy lecturer at an army academy; his mother was a Jewish intellectual, but this was a period in which it was preferable to hide such blemishes.
Gaidar's career in government was relatively short. Yeltsin may have agreed in principle with the shock therapy advocated (and carried out) by Gaidar, but the transformation was painful, and he was unhappy with the immediate results. Gaidar had hoped to bring about financial stabilization, but in this he failed. He died relatively young, as much as he was attacked during his lifetime, he was praised after his death. According to the majority view, the only alternative to his policy would have been a civil war.
Chubais, on the other hand, managed to hang on for many years in senior government positions, but he was highly unpopular. After he left the government, he held several senior positions heading state corporations and private enterprises; he proved to be very successful attracting foreign capital for modernizing the Russian electricity sector.
Gaidar frequently expressed his conviction that there had been no alternative to the shock policy pursued by him and Chubais. The opinion was not, however, shared by all economists-even those of the liberal persuasion. Economists from the liberal Yabloko (Apple) party, for instance, believed that a more gradual transformation (the five hundred days project) might have caused less pain and would have had the same effect in the end.
While perestroika was essentially about the economy, political issues were preoccupying the leadership and the country at large-the transformation of the political system from a monolithic to a multiparty system, the disintegration of the old Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Soviet empire (above all in Eastern Europe), and the First Chechen War.
As supervision and control of the country from the center weakened, unrest spread in the outlying republics, first on a minor scale in Kazakhstan (December 1986) following the deposition of the first party secretary, an ethnic Kazakh, and his replacement by a Russian. This was succeeded on a wider scale by clashes (August 1987) between Azerbaijanis and Armenians. Local clashes mainly in the Karabakh region quickly turned into a wider confrontation as thousands, later on tens of thousands, of refugees from the disputed regions began to arrive in Azerbaijan and Armenia. Moscow hesitated to intervene militarily, and the proposals submitted by a research delegation from Moscow aimed at the improvement of living conditions did little to reduce a bitter national conflict. The clashes, pogroms, and deportations eventually turned into a civil war.
The Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict is mentioned here because it showed how Moscow gradually lost control. Next came the unrest in the Baltic countries, which was much less violent in character. Following the loosening or abolition of censorship, most of the action took place in the media. This led to a mobilization of the population. In all three Baltic republics, mass meetings took place in which hundreds of thousands participated, and "national fronts" came into being, all demanding independence. There were a few halfhearted attempts to suppress the separatist movements, but overall separation proceeded peacefully. The Lithuanian Supreme Soviet declared the independence of the country in March 1990, the Estonian a few weeks later, and Latvia voted in August in favor of independence. The Soviet government recognized their independence the following year. In March 1991, a referendum was taken on preserving the old Soviet Union. It may be interesting to recall that in elections that took place in December 1991, 90 percent of the votes in the Ukrainian referendum went for independence.
Yeltsin had announced earlier on that when the non-Russian republics made use of their right to leave the union, Russia could do so too. What might have induced him to make this declaration? Perhaps he thought that some republics would prefer to stick with the Russians. If so, it was a miscalculation. He also tried in a series of meetings to maintain a tie with the former Soviet republics by means of a looser federation, but it was not clear how this aim could be achieved. A treaty was eventually signed by all of them, with the exception of the Republic of Tatar and Chechnya. A collective security treaty was signed in May 1992, but Tajikistan and Georgia stayed out. Russia and Belarus signed an agreement on monetary union in January 1994, and a treaty about the fixing of borders was signed between Russia, China, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan in April 1994. More important was an agreement between Russia and Ukraine in May 1997 about the status of the Russian Black Sea Fleet-this concerned access to the Black Sea Fleet through Ukrainian territory.
The other treaties were of lesser importance, since the newly independent republics did not yet have military forces of their own. And the economic situation was very much in flux-the exchange rate of the ruble collapsed in October 1994. In these circumstances, what was the meaning of the existence of the Commonwealth of Independent States? Would Russia be able to impose its authority in the territories that remained after the secession of the republics? This seemed by no means certain. Chechnya expressed no desire to be part of the new entity and tried to break away; in December 1994, Russian troops moved into Chechnya.
The war that followed lasted until September 1996 and went badly from the Russian point of view. One observer wrote that it broke the back of the Yeltsin government; another called Chechnya the tombstone of Russian power. Seen in retrospect these were exaggerations, but it is easy to understand why such impressions were gained at the time. If the Russian army was unable to subdue the forces of the small Caucasian republic, it had certainly ceased to be a major power. The problems Russia faced in the region were not limited to Chechnya: There was unrest in Dagestan and elsewhere as well. Russian forces were ill prepared to fight a guerrilla war; they had been instructed for a long time to ready themselves for a world war.
If the First Chechen War ended in a stalemate, it was clear that the state of affairs created could not last, for the situation had not been stabilized-and stabilization had been the aim of the Russian move into Chechnya in 1994. While 70 percent of Russians called the First Chechen War a tragic event, 70 percent approved of the second war. For this reason, the Second Chechen War in 1999 (following an invasion of Dagestan by an "international unit" of Islamic militants) did not come as a great surprise. This time Russia was better prepared militarily as well as politically. The operation was envisaged not as a war, but as an antiterrorist operation, which lasted on and off until 2009. More important, perhaps, the international climate had changed. Whereas the First Chechen War had been universally condemned, the various Islamist terrorist activities in the 1990s in other parts of the world (particularly after the 9/11 attacks in the United States) created a climate of greater understanding for the Russian actions in the Caucasus. Furthermore, Russia in the Second Chechen War had a clear political aim-to defeat the separatist Aslan Maskhadov government and replace it with a pro-Moscow regime headed by Akhmad Kadyrov. In this, Russia succeeded; whether it would be a lasting success remained uncertain. The Islamization of Chechnya has continued, as have the lawlessness, border violations, raids, and other forms of violence, but on a lower level of intensity. It was a cruel war distinguished by massive hostage taking and the abductions of thousands who were never seen again. Quite often, it was impossible to say which side was the worst offender, and assigning guilt was not always possible. If it was clear who had taken more than a thousand people hostage (including 777 schoolchildren) in Beslan in North Ossetia, it was less obvious who was responsible for the 1999 bombing of residential buildings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk.
The situation in Chechnya stabilized, but this was not the case in neighboring Dagestan. Russia was not loved in the Northern Caucasus, but it was feared. Even its bitter enemies had understood that there was no chance of gaining independence in the foreseeable future. The Northern Caucasus remained a wound that would not heal, but neither was there a danger that it would spread.
The Chechen separatists were too weak to press their demands with any success unless there was a major increase in Muslim political power in other parts of Russia compelling the central government to make major concessions in the Caucasus. For the anti-Russian forces depended on massive help from Islamist movements and states, and such help on a major scale was unlikely to come anytime soon. As long as the center was strong, Russia had nothing to fear from Chechen separatism, but it was also clear that the regime it had imposed in Chechnya could not be trusted in a critical situation.
Four years after he had become president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin had to engage in yet another guerrilla war-against the Supreme Soviet, in which the position of his political rivals, mainly old Communists, was still fairly strong. He tried to fortify his position in various ways, including a new constitution. But his popularity waned mainly as the result of the painful economic reforms that had become necessary. The way the war in Chechnya went also did not add to his popularity. Nevertheless, he decided to present his candidacy for a second term in office in 1996, much against the advice of many of his advisers and supporters. According to the polls, support for him had fallen to 3 percent, but his fighting instincts told him that he still could win. The main opposition candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, was uninspiring, lacking Yeltsin's common touch and appeal. Yeltsin had considerable resources at his disposal. Many of those who had grown rich as the result of the privatization policy were supporting him, and even some professional American public relations advisers were employed. Furthermore, Yeltsin promised to withdraw some of the most unpopular measures that the governments appointed by him had adopted. Some concessions were made to elderly people and some to students. The International Monetary Fund gave Russia a loan of $10 billion, the second largest it had ever given. Yeltsin promised he would end the Chechen war. Gradually, he caught up with Zyuganov, who had been leading him for a long time; in the end, Yeltsin received 54 percent of the vote and Zyuganov 41 percent. It was a victory, but not a very convincing one.
How to explain that after all the misfortunes generated by communism, the political party continuing its tradition was doing so well? (Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin had left long ago.) One must look first at the many mistakes committed by the reformers-and the fact that there was really no reform party. People who had saved soon realized that they had been robbed of almost 99 percent of their savings; they had been given vouchers instead. No one knew what these vouchers were really worth, certainly not more than 15 percent of what had been taken from them. The opponents of reform were concentrated in the parliament. Yeltsin was ruling by emergency decrees, but the parliament curtailed and virtually took away his powers to issue such decrees. A new constitution, which had been favored by Yeltsin, did not help to break the stalemate that lasted for years. The liberal Yabloko party, headed by Grigory Yavlinsky, offered sporadic and halfhearted support for Yeltsin and the governments appointed by him. In its view, the Gaidar reforms were by no means a shock therapy, but rather superficial and sometimes contradictory. It was probably right in its assessment. But could a shock therapy as Yabloko envisaged it have been pushed through by a democratic government?
Yeltsin was at his best playing a double game in Russian relations with foreign countries. His rhetoric often fluctuated between open hostility when he was talking to a domestic public (blaming the West for most of the misfortunes affecting Russia) and a friendly and constructive tone when conversing with Western leaders such as Bill Clinton and Helmut Kohl, both of whom greatly liked him. Such double-dealing helped the Kremlin get financial support from the West, but not enough to have a decisive impact at home that would strengthen or at least stabilize Yeltsin's position. In the elections of 1995 to the sixth Duma-elections took place virtually every year at the time-the Communists emerged as the single strongest party, yet another warning sign. How to build and maintain a democratic system if the majority were opposed to it? The reformers won 109 seats, the anti reformers-Communists and "patriotic forces"-more than double that figure. (The difference between Communists and "patriots" had dwindled by that time). True, the Communists were generally for the old system whereas the Zhirinovsky party-the Liberal Democratic Party-was neither liberal nor democratic and agreed with the Communist attitude toward current problems.
Yeltsin managed a political comeback in the elections for the presidency the year after. The fact that Alexander Lebed (a general and his chief security adviser) had reached a peace agreement with the Chechens had certainly helped his election campaign. And 1997, the year after the beginning of his second term, was the best or at least the easiest during that difficult and painful period. Then, quite suddenly in March 1998, Yeltsin dismissed not just Viktor Chernomyrdin, but the whole cabinet, including Anatoly Chubais. The reason most often adduced was the ambition of the outgoing prime minister, who saw himself as Yeltsin's successor and acted accordingly. If so, the timing of the dismissal was less than brilliant, for it coincided with yet another economic crisis.
World demand for oil and gas had declined, and so had Russia's income from this source. The Russian market lost 60 percent of its value, and Yeltsin had to tell the Duma that the situation was alarming. True, things improved toward the end of the year, and 1998 witnessed a rise of 5 percent in the GNP. On the other hand, Yeltsin suffered another health crisis just at the time when stability at the top was needed more than ever. He had four heart attacks while in office, and in 1996, a bypass operation was carried out by Michael DeBakey, the Houston pioneer in this field; Russian doctors were doubting whether he would survive such a major medical procedure. He also had to undergo several other operations during these years, some carried out by Russian surgeons, others by foreign specialists who were flown into Moscow in great secrecy. He did survive the bypass without major complications, but he did not survive the political troubles of the late nineties and the attacks against him.
But commodity prices are notoriously fickle, and the recovery of early 1998 did not last. In August, the Financial Times published a letter by George Soros in which he recommended the devaluation of the ruble, as the Russian economy had reached the terminal phase of its meltdown. The advice was followed, the exchange rate was left to float, and the ruble lost half its value. The Duma voted to dismiss Yeltsin, but such resolutions were constitutionally not binding. Nor did an attempt to impeach the president have any success. However, by that time even Yeltsin's most faithful supporters among the oligarchs were afraid that the president would look for a third term (the second term was limited to four years). Such fears were unfounded, however, for popular support for the president had disappeared.
The International Monetary Fund was willing to bail out Russia yet another time, but it was also reaching the end of its patience-and resources. In this situation, in mid-1998 Yeltsin probably decided that he would have to resign and that another prime minister would be needed; for this, he chose a forty-six-year-old KGB operative named Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Putin was not well-known, not connected to any political party. Boris Berezovsky, Yeltsin's closest confidant among the oligarchs, had recommended him. While Yeltsin had not known him very well, Putin had apparently gained the president's support as a person on whose loyalty he could count. Putin had supported Anatoly Sobchak, his former boss and mayor of St. Petersburg, even after he ran into deep trouble and had to flee the country. It could well be that such a show of loyalty outweighed all other considerations in Yeltsin's eyes.
Yeltsin was hanging on to his job up to the last day of the year (and the millennium) when, several months short of the end of his second term, he announced his resignation. He expressed regret that he had not been able to make many of his dreams (and those of the Russian people) come true, and he recommended Putin to be his successor, for the time being as acting president.
It was the end of an era. For most Russians this was a ghastly time, and not just in terms of material deprivations. The crime rate was rising, as were corruption and many of the other negative trends that had been part of life in the Soviet Union. But Stalin and his successors could at least boast that the country had turned into a superpower, and this too was no longer true. Had perestroika really been necessary, and if so, could it not have been carried out in a less painful way? Why was the transition in China less painful and, as far as the economy was concerned, more efficient? The brief answer is that Russia was not China, it was not a multinational state, and by and large the Chinese perestroika had been limited to the economy, with no intention to introduce a multiparty system.
One of the aims of the architects of perestroika was to make the economy more effective: In most respects, this had been a failure. Another aim was to create a middle class, which would generate growth. A few people had become immensely rich during perestroika, and there was still much poverty; but if a middle class had come into being, it was certainly very different from the one in America or Europe. That there was a social stratum between the very rich and the very poor was beyond doubt-the number of Russians opting for foreign travel was just one indication out of many. In the Soviet days, such trips had been the privilege of a very few, not just for security reasons but because most could not afford it. Now masses of Russian tourists along with Chinese could be found not only in France and Italy, but at more distant and exotic places.
Russia had certainly become richer, but incomes of the many millions below the small group of oligarchs were still very low. Professionals in the private sector were often earning twice as much as those with equal ability and standing in the state sector. Such a situation was bound to invite corruption.
If there was a new middle class, how could it be defined? Did it consist of families with at least one car, computers, possibly a dacha (even if primitive)? There were indeed millions of such people in Moscow and St. Petersburg. (Income and the cost of living in the former was about 10-20 percent higher than in the latter.) Did a substantial middle class exist outside the biggest cities? The capital acted as a magnet, but life in provincial towns, such as described in Aleshkovsky's novel Stargorod was very different. As far as the countryside was concerned, the flight from the small villages continued; thousands of them ceased to exist. More than in any other country, everything was concentrated in the capital. Foreigners were not fully aware of this because most of them were concentrated in Moscow. It was a new edition of a Chekhovian situation as described in Three Sisters: The women had grown up in Moscow. Moscow stood for happiness. There was no life outside Moscow.
The political repercussions of these social trends were interesting and often contradictory. The intelligentsia was divided, many supported liberal causes, and the anti-Putin demonstrators of 2011-13 came mainly from the ranks of the intelligentsia and other middle-class sections, not from the poor and underprivileged. "Middle class" could not be defined by income only; education and other factors played a role. But there was at least equal support for the patriotic-conservative-reactionary camp from these circles. It was an unprecedented situation, sui generis, very Russian.
Copyright © 2015 by Walter Laqueur