Informative review by left wing British economist Robin Blackburn, of book
by right wing historian Robert Conquest, which summarises many of the
adverse developments in Russia. Service's right wing perspective makes
these reports even more credible.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,840118,00.html
"Robert Service reaches a damning verdict at odds with his earlier support
for Boris Yeltsin in his history of the catastrophe that engulfed Russia in
the 1990s"
Robin Blackburn Saturday November 16, 2002 The Guardian
Russia: Experiment with a People by Robert Service 414pp, Macmillan, £20
Robert Service has written an informative and necessary book on the
catastrophe that overtook Russia in the 1990s. It is a tribute to the
author that he reaches conclusions at odds with his own earlier support for
Boris Yeltsin, who ruled the country in these years.
The misery and loss of life endured by the long-suffering Russians in the
past decade has led 67% of them to see it as the worst decade they can
remember, according to a poll Service cites. The Brezhnev era was the only
period to be seen favourably by a majority (51%).
The devastating impact of the free market and privatisation helps to
explain this. Life expectancy for men dropped from 64 years in the
mid-1980s to 57 in the mid-1990s, and is now believed to be about 60 years.
Women live some 10 years longer but their life expectancy has also dropped
by four years. The collapse of welfare and healthcare, the failure to pay
wages and pensions for months at a time, spiralling gangsterism,
drunkenness and hopelessness have all contributed to population loss of
about 0.5% a year - even in a time of net immigration by refugees from
other former Soviet republics.
Population loss during Stalin's rule is often used to gauge its severity.
Between 1992 and 2000, Service tells us, "the Russian Federation underwent
a net loss of some 2.8 million inhabitants", and today deaths outnumber
births by "nearly one-and-a-half times". The wars in Chechnya have resulted
in "tens of thousands" of fatalities on both sides. While a small minority
grew wealthy, and a tiny number of "oligarchs" were allowed brazenly to
loot the country's prodigious natural resources, the mass of the population
was plunged into a poverty and distress not seen since the 1940s.
In the 1990s there was, of course, no Great Terror, no Great War, no mass
famine. But there was a social and economic breakdown sufficient to halt
natural population growth and send it into reverse. All this happened -
together with state-assisted robbery of national assets and the reduction
of Grozny to rubble - at the hands of a supposedly democratising regime,
enjoying the support of western governments.
Service has not the slightest nostalgia for communism or the Soviet order
but, as he tells the story, Mikhail Gorbachev - the last Soviet leader -
emerges as a genuine champion of democratisation, while Yeltsin and
Vladimir Putin have been the agents of a rapacious authoritarianism.
Before and during the attempted coup of August 1991, Yeltsin acted with
courage and earned the gratitude of Russians. But he used the initiative he
had seized to break up the Soviet Union in a way that diminished the new
democratic space, and promoted a kleptocracy drawn from the nomenklatura,
Mafiosi and capitalist "oligarchs".
Despite a worsening, though not yet catastrophic, economic situation,
Gorbachev's reforms in the late 1980s released the genie of civic
self-government throughout the union. A succession of strikes by miners had
obliged the Communist party formally to renounce its political monopoly.
Journalists and broadcasters were revelling in new-found freedoms. Millions
were following the debates of the new elected bodies on TV.
In a key chapter, "The New Russian State", Service describes how Gorbachev
proposed to Yeltsin in the aftermath of August 1991 that they should
consolidate the defeat of the coup by calling for new elections throughout
the union. Gorbachev said he would stand down and give Yeltsin a free run
at the presidency.
Instead, and behind the backs of the Russian and other former Soviet
peoples, Yeltsin made a deal with the existing leadership in Ukraine and
Byelorussia, later ratified by the rulers of the other republics, to wind
up the union at midnight on December 31 1991, together with its new
representative institutions, and to commend the fate of the various
republics to their existing power holders. Only in the Baltic republics was
this to mean a real gain for democracy.
Although Service stresses the backdoor manner in which this deal was
brokered between existing elites, he does not give much detail as to the
precise options and motivations of the military. In August 1991, key
commanders in the vicinity of Moscow sided with Yeltsin against the
plotters. But why did they later approve of winding up the union? Yeltsin
was more popular than Gorbachev, and had been elected Russian president in
June 1991. But he had no mandate to break it up the way he did. Apparently,
as far as key military figures like Pavel Grachev were concerned, democracy
had gone quite far enough and needed to be curbed. It seems likely the army
thought it would remain the arbiter throughout the former USSR, and would
face a more fragmented, and hence weaker, political authority.
Yeltsin remained as president of a newly independent Russia, with a
majority of its population soon regretting the disappearance of the union.
The constitutional order of the Russian federation was itself a hybrid
product of the Soviet era and the Gorbachev reforms, under the rules of
which both its president and parliament had been elected. Yeltsin soon came
into conflict with the majority of the Russian parliament, which he
proceeded to dissolve in 1993, ordering the army to fire on its building,
the White House, when the deputies refused to disperse.
Following the defeat of parliament, Yeltsin introduced a new constitution
greatly enlarging the powers of the president and constricting those of the
parliament. This was supposedly approved in a referendum by 55% of the 57%
who voted - only 32% of the electorate. Service points out: "[T]he counting
of the votes took place in secret and the announcement of the results was
quickly followed by the incineration of ballot papers." A presidential aide
later explained he had seen printed tallies altered by fountain pen.
Service gives a scathing description of how Yeltsin then did a deal with
the oligarchs to prevail in the 1996 presidential elections, securing large
loans, as well as media support, in return for handing over the title deeds
to valuable natural resources.
The "new order" of Yeltsin and Putin perpetuates some of the worst aspects
of the old Soviet regime in the post-Stalin era while failing to maintain,
let alone build on, its more positive side. Thus the Academy of Sciences,
and some universities and institutes, had developed a certain independence
and vitality in the late Soviet period but, in common with many areas of
cultural life, this was to be blighted by the complete collapse of public
funding. Of course the Soviet regime had to go, but the dogma of the free
market condemned the idea of any public agency that was not a commercial
corporation.
The want of legitimacy in Yeltsin's Russia reduced its economic viability,
hindering the collection of taxes. The looting of state property diminished
current revenue, while privatisation closed off future sources of income.
In turn this meant that there was no cash for education, culture and public
services once it dawned that the market revolution had gone too far.
The disastrous impact of western institutions and western advice, impelling
Russia down the path of shock therapy, privatisation and economic collapse,
has been documented by Stephen Cohen and Peter Reddaway. The strength of
Service's book is that he traces the events and forces inside Russia that
were conducive to this disaster.
Service is not happy with the conclusions to which his study leads him. He
strains to find qualifications and redeeming features in Yeltsin's record
but the qualifiers are lame and the facts spill out. "In most regions of
Russia there was no use of armed forces," he says, but elsewhere we read
that the "bloodbath in Chechnya... infected every aspect of political,
administrative, military, economic and social affairs".
Writing contemporary history is difficult - sources are thinner,
perspective difficult and there is no established narrative to use or
contest. Service has braved these difficulties and produced a work that is
thoughtful and pioneering. It illuminates almost every aspect of life in
the new Russia with unexpected detail.
· Robin Blackburn teaches at the University of Essex. His most recent book
is Banking on Death or Investing in Life: The History and Future of
Pensions (Verso)
