alarus on "Russia: the opposition that melted away "

alarus — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:54:19 +0000

I am wondering why nobody ever mentions Yabloko led by Georgyi Yavlinksii? Whatever became of that group? I was always a strong follower and a big fan of his proposals that never came through but were alluring and inspiring to a big part part of Russian intellectuals. Gaidar was too far to the right in his approach, a suicidal policy in a post-communist society. Russians pride themselves in being liberals and libertarians (one may argue but it's a different story). Righ-wing ideas are doomed to succeed. Putin's government survives on selling expensive oil. People like the money. Just like Alaskans like $1,200 bucks energy credits Sarah Palin has given everyone. Heck, for a redneck it's a fortune. Look what a following she has there! Why wouldn't Putin? The premise for such popularity is essentially the same.

Russia: the opposition that melted, Dmitri Travin

Dmitri Travin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:42:10 +0000

Many different explanations are offered in Russia today for the weakness of the democratic movement and its inability to oppose the Kremlin in any way. The factors include the lack of firm democratic traditions in the country, the brainwashing of the population by a mass media controlled by government, and the fact that people associate the growth of their real incomes with the rule of Vladimir Putin.

In this context it is interesting to consider what has happened to the team of young reformers who transformed the planned Soviet economy into a market economy in 1992. Their careers over the last 16 years mirror the many ‘illnesses' of the Russian democratic movement.

The issue of a fundamentally new way of organising power arose after August 1991, when Boris Yeltsin emerged as victor from the attempt by a group of high-ranking Soviet leaders to isolate USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and bring about a coup. It was clear by that time that the Soviet Union had collapsed, although it continued to exist officially until December 1991. It was clear too that Yeltsin, as the head of the Russian Federation, was supposed to take the initiative to effect these reforms.

Differences in ‘the Gaidar group'

In creating a government, Yeltsin put his hopes in Yegor Gaidar, a 35-year-old economist, and grandson of the famous Soviet writer. Gaidar, in his turn, expected key government positions to go to members of the informal intellectual community which had existed in Moscow, Leningrad and Novosibirsk since about 1986.

At that time, this group of intellectuals was seen by many Russian citizens as a team of fellow-thinkers who believed in the principles of democracy and market economy. To some extent, this definition was accurate. They all spoke the language not of the old Soviet Union, but of the west, and they shared it, more or less, with economists from the USA and most European countries.

But there were important differences within the group. These led to fierce ideological and personality conflicts between its members, and later to its collapse. ‘For example, Gaidar and I had different opinions on many issues,' said Vitaly Naishul, a leading member, in an interview with this author. ‘Glazev had a completely different position. But within our group, we could always hold a serious conversation. We may not have agreed, but we did understand one another. Elsewhere in the scholarly community, there was no such understanding. We were like an island where you could move around quite easily. But talking with other groups was like moving to another island.'

In other words, Gaidar's circle belonged to the same ideology, as distinct from sharing an ideology. In many ways they looked at the world quite differently. Although they were all very different from Soviet intellectuals formed by the Stalinist years and the Khrushchev era, each had their own goals - in politics, scholarship, careers and business.

The first sign of the split appeared in autumn 1993. The person responsible was Sergei Glazev - a 32-year-old Moscow economist from academic circles who became the Deputy Minister of International Economic Relations in 1991, and by 1993 held a ministerial post. The reason for the conflict was the serious opposition between President Yeltsin and a large group of conservative Russian parliamentarians. When Yeltsin used military force in his battle against the conservatives, this un-democratic act by a democratic leader caused a break with a number of his supporters, including Glazev.

His defection was also prompted by another consideration. At the time the democrats had many outstanding intellectuals on their side. The opposition did not. Although they could claim large public support, they were short of high-calibre people at the top. It was widely assumed at the time that the opposition would take power at the next election. If they did, the popular rhetoric of communism and nationalism was not going to be enough to sustain them. They were going to need specialists.

In de-camping to the opposition, Glazev probably saw himself as one of the leaders of the country, perhaps even Prime Minister. While the intellectual democrats were fighting to get close to Yeltsin, in the other political camp, Glazev was more or less the only professional capable of running the state in the conditions of the market economy.

However, the opposition did not come to power, and Glazev's hopes were not fulfilled. This was probably why he was the only one of Gaidar's group to move to the communist or nationalist camp. Still, state service in a country which quickly lost its democratic orientation did not prove to be a very promising occupation.

Those who turned to business

In the circumstances, many of Gaidar's colleagues and friends moved into business. Andrei Nechaev, Alfred Kokh and Konstantin Kagalovsky were among them. Alexei Miller, who now runs the major state company Gazprom, could also be included in this group. Miller only held minor state positions in Petersburg in the early years of reform, and moved up the career ladder in the early 2000s thanks to his closeness to Vladimir Putin.

The most striking example of this career path was not Miller, but Pyotr Aven. Aven, who was 36 in 1991, became the minister responsible for external economic relations. A year later he resigned, leaving the post to Glazev. Aven is now the president of one of the largest Russian financial and industrial structures, Alfa Group, which has serious interests in the fuel and energy sphere, telecommunications and banking. This structure was never particularly close to the Kremlin, or enjoyed privileges provided by the state. But it also never fell into serious disfavour, unlike billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is currently serving a prison sentence in Siberia.

As far as we know, Aven never gave serious financial either to his group,to the democratic movement as a whole, or to specific political parties, although being closely involved with the reforms, he might have been expected to have had an interest in the direction they took. To this day, he keeps his distance from politics, though he makes the odd appearance on the society pages, which are of no interest to most of the reformers. Wealth and personal success appear to be what matter to Aven. His brief role in Russian political life was no more than an episode that determined the start of his career.

Sticking clear of politics

The reformers who moved to business are generally fairly critical of the anti-democratic trend in Russia. One of the authors of Russian privatisation in the mid-nineties, the former deputy prime minister Alfred Kokh, expressed himself very forcefully in an interview with this author about certain influential figures: ‘they think that they (ie the democrats - ed) robbed the state. That's the problem. They don't understand that reality is more complex than the mindset of a state secruity officer'. However the critical attitudes of these reformers-turned-businessmen do not generally translate into political activity, which they believe is pointless at the moment.

Until recently, Yegor Gaidar himself took an active part in politics. In the 1990s he said publicly on several occasions that he felt personal responsibility for everything that was going in the country. Gaidar was the leader of the party Democratic Choice of Russia, and at the beginning of the 2000s was one of the leaders of the Union of Right-wing Forces (SPS). But in recent years he has moved away from politics and concentrated on scholarly work. Today he runs the best economic research institute in Russia. Several years ago, when this author invited him to a discussion at his newspaper, Gaidar refused to answer any questions about politics, even about the position of the SPS, though he was prepared to offer skilful and detailed views on even the most controversial of economic problems.

Gaidar, like many of his former colleagues, appears to believe that democratic political activity in Russia today is not very promising. But he values the opportunity to provide qualified consultations to progressive people in Vladimir Putin's government, as in this way he can still contribute to the country's successful development. But if you want to work with government, you cannot afford to one cannot compromise yourself by making trenchant political statements. It is better to keep silent.

A similar career path has been followed by Mikhail Dmitriev, former deputy labour minister, and later deputy economy minister, the author of a programme of social reforms which were never carried out. Dmitriev now runs a respectable research centre and has no involvement with politics whatsoever.

Anatoly Chubais, formerly a deputy prime minister of the Russian government, and the main author of the policy of Russian privatisation, also holds a similar position. From the late 1990s until mid-2008, Chubais was head of an enormous state corporation which controls most of the country's electricity. He saw his main task as the privatisation and de-monopolisation of the energy sector, which is a logical continuation of his government activity of the 1990s.

However, Chubais was also one of the leaders of SPS. But after his party had experienced a number of setbacks, he was essentially forced out of politics. For he faced a difficult choice. He could join the radical political opposition to Putin and be dismissed from his corporate position. Or he could quietly complete his programme of reforms to the electricity sector and leave radicalism to those of his colleagues who had nothing to lose. Now that the reform has been completed, Chubais has left his corporate post. But he has not attempted to return to democratic politics, which he evidently regards as futile.

Quietly contributing

It is probably fair to say that most of Gaidar's circle have opted to carry out what progressive reforms they can, since Putin has put a stop to radical reforms. Three of them continue to work in the top echelons of power, and in many respects are responsible for Russia's macroeconomic policy today. They are finance minister Alexei Kudrin, the head of the Central Bank Sergei Ignatiev and his deputy Alexei Ulyukaev.

In the early stage of the reforms, Kudrin worked in Petersburg with Putin, and only began working in the federal bodies of power in 1996. His good personal relations with the former president, who is now the prime minister, help him to remain an influential figure, despite his open liberalism which is not particularly popular at present.

Ignatiev was Deputy Finance Minister in the early 1990s, while Ulyukaev was Gaidar's personal adviser at that time. Their present positions in power are in many ways determined by the support that Kudrin gives them. Like Ignatiev, Ulyukaev was also a deputy finance minister before he began working at the Central Bank.

Essentially, these three represent the second tier of reformers, as those from the first tier, like Gaidar, Chubais and Kokh, are extremely unpopular among the Russian public. Putin does not want to see them in government. But their views do not differ greatly from figures of the first tier. As long as they hold onto their jobs, Russia will not fall prey to macroeconomic populism.

One remaining radical critic

Putin's former economic advisor Andrei Illarionov, who also previously belonged to Gaidar's intellectual circle holds quite different views on the government. He has distanced himself from his former colleagues, and is a harsh critic of Chubais, whose reforms he considers to have been largely unsuccessful or openly harmful. He is probably only tolerant of Kudrin. Illarionov believes the present regime to be absolutely destructive, and sees no point in working with them, not even on specific issues.

Illarionov has moved as far away from Gaidar's circle as Glazev, but in a liberal rather than nationalist direction. He is a substantial figure in the radical democratic opposition. And although there is no shortage of intellectuals in this movement (former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, writer Eduard Limonov), Illarionov is perhaps the only one whom many Russian intellectuals take seriously, considering him to be neither a grand-stander, nor compromised by corruption. However, his political prospects are just as dubious as Glazev's, as the opposition in Russia has no chance of success in the foreseeable future.

Average rating

(8 votes)

open Democracy News Analysis - Russia: the opposition that melted, Dmitri Travin - Comments

alarus on "Russia: the opposition that melted away "

Russia: the opposition that melted, Dmitri Travin