Russia Turns the Corner

Stephen Sestanovich

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 1994

Summary:  Despite apparent anarchy, Russia is passing three important tests for establishing a democracy. The military is acquiescing in the new democratic order, the old managers of the economy are losing their political grip, and the new regime has come to embody patriotism and legitimacy in the mind of the populace. A fledgling Russian republic may succeed where the Weimar Republic failed.

Stephen Sestanovich is Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

The same choice is evident in other areas as well. With its heavy reliance on export earnings, Russia cannot easily continue subsidizing energy deliveries to other former Soviet states. Yet a sudden cutoff would subject its neighbors to worse economic trials, with uncertain political effects. The result, for now, is a compromise, but one tilted heavily in favor of Russia?s own interests: in the first nine months of 1993, oil deliveries to former Soviet states were down 41 percent.

Even security issues are seen in a double perspective. In thinking about the "near abroad," the high command clearly wants to be able to station forces on the territory of other Commonwealth states. Defending the old Soviet border (rather then fortifying the new Russian one) is a familiar and recognized military mission. However, getting involved in ethnic and communal conflicts is not. General Grachev himself has said that such peacekeeping missions rouse painful memories of Afghanistan. They are, besides, very expensive, and as Yeltsin said at a CIS summit meeting last spring, Russia cannot bear the cost by itself.

Ambivalent policies like these mark the start of a transformation in the politics of patriotism. The problems posed for democracy are real, but not so irreducibly emotional as they appeared in the initial aftermath of the Soviet Union?s collapse. At that time, it was impossible to discuss the "near abroad" coolly. There was no common ground between those who believed that preserving the empire was inconsistent with democracy and those who regarded it as a single indissoluble motherland.

Since then, the shock of the empire?s collapse has begun to wear off. The reasons for Russia to take an interest in the affairs of its neighbors have become clear to all, but so have the problems raised by such involvement. A new, more practical view of the "near abroad" is emerging, with fundamental implications. If democrats are free to fashion Russia?s postimperial role on the basis of costs and benefits, dispassionately weighed, they will have a far better chance of securing the legitimacy of their new regime.

WEIMAR RUSSIA?

To say that Russia is solving three problems crucial to the creation of a democratic system does not mean that they will stay solved. The failure of Weimar democracy is an important reminder that a new regime can collapse even after a period of seeming stability. In the middle 1920s, Germany experienced a solid half-decade of economic growth and political normalcy--the kind of record that, were Russia to repeat it in the 1990s, would lead most commentators to declare victory. It was only at the end of the 1920s, with the renewal of economic crisis, that it became clear how ill-prepared German democracy was for hard times.

If Russian democracy takes hold and survives until 2005, it will not have lasted any longer than the fragile Weimar Republic--famous as the "republic without republicans." The comparison suggests how foolish it would be to argue, at this early date, that Russia can no longer be knocked off its democratic course. Obviously it can be. The question is, how easily? Certainly much of the progress that has been made in the past year would be at risk without Yeltsin. Routine derailments of democracy are, unfortunately, not hard to imagine. In each of the three arenas we have examined, Russia?s leaders will face a similar temptation--to finesse their political problems by spending money they don?t really have. The generals want big budgets, the old industrial directors want cheap credits, the weak governments of the "near abroad" want cheap oil. In the short run, at least, inflation can be made to seem like a strategy for staving off threats to democracy. In the long run, it will deny Russia the stability it desperately needs. To stay on its feet, Russia needs something like the solid middle years of Weimar.

And yet stability is not by itself the secret of democratic success. Democracies do not succeed merely by hanging on. They have to build new institutions, remake old ones, contend with powerful opponents, answer challenges to their legitimacy. In this light, the recent past has brought both very bad and very good news. It has identified a new and quite frightening enemy of the regime. But it has also marked the waning of other challenges--force, money, patriotism--that not long ago seemed very serious. In the past year, the Yeltsin government has gone a long way toward claiming these resources of power as its own. The struggle is far from over. Yet for all the country?s troubles, the disorder of everyday life and the lack of constitutional traditions, it is getting easier to imagine Russian democracy?s success.

FOOTNOTES:

1 Krasnaya Zvezda, October 16, 1993, p. 1.