Paul Goble
Staunton, January 24 – The failure in the 1990s to exclude from government service “all the Soviet and party bureaucracy” – in a process called lustration – allowed “the direct heirs of the Soviet nomenklatura [to] seize power and resources” and contributed to “the failure of the democratic project in Russia,” according to a leading Moscow scholar.
In an article in “Gazeta” on Friday, Yuly Nisnevich, a professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, argues that “if 20 years ago, lustration had been carried out [by the first post-Soviet government], today [Russians] would not be living in a corrupt, authoritarian state” (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2011/01/21_a_3499354.shtml).
The “revolutionary aspirations and hopes” of that time that “the new state would become democratic and contemporary and that people in it would live a worthy and well-off existence have not been achieved.” Instead, Nisnevich continues, the state is “corrupt through and through” and the power of the “authoritarian kleptocratic regime” is collapsing.
As a result, “a social-political cataclysm” is approaching, he says, and that is likely to lead “with a high degree of probability” to a subsequent collapse of the country. Given that likelihood, Nisnevich argues, it is imperative to understand what went wrong in the 1990s so that Russia can avoid repeating it in the future.
(Nisnevich notes that his “Gazeta” article is only a summary of two earlier studies he has prepared, a 2007 book entitled “An Audit of the Political System of Post-Communist Russia,” and a 2010 volume called “A Vertical to Nowhere. Essays on the Political History of Russia, 1991-2008.)
According to the Moscow scholar, “one of the most serious strategic miscalculations of the political forces which came to power in the new Russia was the massive use in all structures and at all levels of the newly established system of state administration of former bureaucr4ats of the Soviet party-state apparatus.”
While there may have been some “tactical” justifications for this, the use of such people quickly undermined the new democracy because such people worked for their own interests rather than those of the people. What was needed in fact, Nisnevich says, was “not so much the de-partyization of the state apparatus” as “its de-sovietization.”
That did not happen. Instead, the new regime focused on economic reforms first and foremost and failed to think about how these holdovers would behave when given the chance. The result is the corrupt authoritarian regime of today, and “a way out of this dead end” is possible only with thorough-going democratic institutions.
The deformation of the democratic system and the spread of “the bacillus of political corruption” began with the actions of the state after the adoption of the 1993 Constitution, including the defense of the president above all and the Chechen tragedy which began at the end of 1994.
. Seeking to protect the power of the presidency above all, Yeltsin’s entourage “began to position and support this institution as an independent and immediate subject of Russian power” rather than as the expression and servant of the will of the people, Nisnevich says. And that trend only became worse during the electoral cycles of 1995-1996.
But the crowning moment of this trend was selection of Vladimir Putin and his entourage in 1999 and 2000. His and their “striving to preserve in power even ‘in the name of the public good’ at any price and by any means” led to the invocation of the Jesuitical and Bolshevik principle of “the end justifies the means” and the suppression of political competition.
The same thing happened in the judicial system, Nisnevich continues, and like the executive and legislation branches, it too has been corrupted and put at the service of those in power rather than the law and the people who must again become the source of legitimacy and decision.
And overcoming this will require in the first instance “the restoration of information competition, the reduction to a minimum of the number of government and power affiliated media outlets at all levels [and] the creation of public television and radio,” something that will be no easy task in the current environment.
Nisnevich’s argument, if one may put it in lapidary terms, is that the short-term advantages of avoiding lustration and the confusion that process might have caused are seriously outweighed by the difficulties the Russian Federation has experienced since then because lustration was not carried out.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Russia a Land of Many ‘Little Khodorkovskys,’ Zlobin Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, January 24 – Many both inside Russia and abroad have focused on the injustice that the Russian state continues to visit on former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky. That is a good thing, one Moscow commentator says, but it should not distract attention from the reality that Russia today is “a country of ‘little Khodorkhovskys’” whose rights are also being violated.
In a comment on his blog later picked up by Ekho Moskvy, Nikolay Zlobin argues that “a legal or illegal state is created not by judicial cases of the size of YUKOS but by an enormous number of petty daily matters, which make up our lives” (n-zlobin.livejournal.com/50242.html and echo.msk.ru/blog/nzlobin/743637-echo/).
As he points out, “the YUKOS case has become a litmus test according justly or not people in the world today judge about the absence of the holy law of property in Russia, about the dependence of its judicial system and about the growing difference between the good intentions and real steps of President Dmitry Medvedev.”
But as those who live “inside the country” know, the YUKOS case is hardly the only one that matters. “Russians ona daily basis encounter judicial arbitrariness and incompetence officials, selective application of laws, and the corruption of government organs.” And consequently, justice for Khodorkovsky alone won’t necessarily solve the problems they face.
Indeed, “that Russia is not a legal state, its citizens have found out not from Judge Danilkin [who presided over the latest round of the travails of Khodorkovsky], any decision of which was, is and always will be extremely far from their daily life but from their own daily life itself.”
Much more important for these people than any sentence in the YUKOS case as regards the formation of a legal state “are numerous daily events,” such as the travails of Dr. Ivan Khrenov who told Vladimir Putin that “the local powers that be had deceived him during his visit to local medical institutions by creating medical Potemkin villages.”
And even the fact that the Ivanovo governor intervened in Khrenov’s behalf, while welcome in one regard, is troubling in another, Zlobin argues, because it is yet another indication that normal procedures cannot be followed and the judicial system cannot be trusted to function in a legal way.
Instead, that case shows how little progress Russian officials have made from the days of obkom secretaries of the Communist Party. “What a legal state this is!” Zlobin exclaims. And in some ways the current situation is even worse because it is more hypocritical and cynical than its predecessor.
And what is even more disturbing, Khrenov’s case is “only one example of the hundreds which arise every day in Russia.” The case of journalist Oleg Kashin is another. After he was beaten, President Medvedev promised to “tear off the head of those who did this.” That may sound good to some, but is there really a provision in Russian law allowing that?
Perhaps, Zlobin says, Medvedev has recently read “Alice in Wonderland” and decided to behave like the queen described therein. Again, some may find his feelings positive, but “with criminals who beat a journalists one must act according to the law and only according to the law” whatever one’s emotions.
Russians need to be sure that their president will oversee the implementation of the laws rather than allow himself such outbursts. Such words when uttered by the powers that be spread throughout society and poison it, Zlobin notes, saying that he recently heard a seven-year-old use the same expression Medvedev had.
That boy was only playing a video game, Zlobin continues, and “he, unlike the president, did not guess about the existence of some kind of ‘legal field.’”
Some may say that these are only “details,” but the Moscow commentator continues, everyone needs to understand that “the second YUKOS case became possible only in an atmosphere of such ‘details,’ and not the other way around. In a country of ‘little Khodorkovskys.’” And only by recognizing and fighting that can the situation improve.
Staunton, January 24 – Many both inside Russia and abroad have focused on the injustice that the Russian state continues to visit on former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky. That is a good thing, one Moscow commentator says, but it should not distract attention from the reality that Russia today is “a country of ‘little Khodorkhovskys’” whose rights are also being violated.
In a comment on his blog later picked up by Ekho Moskvy, Nikolay Zlobin argues that “a legal or illegal state is created not by judicial cases of the size of YUKOS but by an enormous number of petty daily matters, which make up our lives” (n-zlobin.livejournal.com/50242.html and echo.msk.ru/blog/nzlobin/743637-echo/).
As he points out, “the YUKOS case has become a litmus test according justly or not people in the world today judge about the absence of the holy law of property in Russia, about the dependence of its judicial system and about the growing difference between the good intentions and real steps of President Dmitry Medvedev.”
But as those who live “inside the country” know, the YUKOS case is hardly the only one that matters. “Russians ona daily basis encounter judicial arbitrariness and incompetence officials, selective application of laws, and the corruption of government organs.” And consequently, justice for Khodorkovsky alone won’t necessarily solve the problems they face.
Indeed, “that Russia is not a legal state, its citizens have found out not from Judge Danilkin [who presided over the latest round of the travails of Khodorkovsky], any decision of which was, is and always will be extremely far from their daily life but from their own daily life itself.”
Much more important for these people than any sentence in the YUKOS case as regards the formation of a legal state “are numerous daily events,” such as the travails of Dr. Ivan Khrenov who told Vladimir Putin that “the local powers that be had deceived him during his visit to local medical institutions by creating medical Potemkin villages.”
And even the fact that the Ivanovo governor intervened in Khrenov’s behalf, while welcome in one regard, is troubling in another, Zlobin argues, because it is yet another indication that normal procedures cannot be followed and the judicial system cannot be trusted to function in a legal way.
Instead, that case shows how little progress Russian officials have made from the days of obkom secretaries of the Communist Party. “What a legal state this is!” Zlobin exclaims. And in some ways the current situation is even worse because it is more hypocritical and cynical than its predecessor.
And what is even more disturbing, Khrenov’s case is “only one example of the hundreds which arise every day in Russia.” The case of journalist Oleg Kashin is another. After he was beaten, President Medvedev promised to “tear off the head of those who did this.” That may sound good to some, but is there really a provision in Russian law allowing that?
Perhaps, Zlobin says, Medvedev has recently read “Alice in Wonderland” and decided to behave like the queen described therein. Again, some may find his feelings positive, but “with criminals who beat a journalists one must act according to the law and only according to the law” whatever one’s emotions.
Russians need to be sure that their president will oversee the implementation of the laws rather than allow himself such outbursts. Such words when uttered by the powers that be spread throughout society and poison it, Zlobin notes, saying that he recently heard a seven-year-old use the same expression Medvedev had.
That boy was only playing a video game, Zlobin continues, and “he, unlike the president, did not guess about the existence of some kind of ‘legal field.’”
Some may say that these are only “details,” but the Moscow commentator continues, everyone needs to understand that “the second YUKOS case became possible only in an atmosphere of such ‘details,’ and not the other way around. In a country of ‘little Khodorkovskys.’” And only by recognizing and fighting that can the situation improve.
Window on Eurasia: Russia is ‘an Anti-Russian Phenomenon’ and Can’t Be ‘for the Russians,’ Russian Nationalist Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, January 24 – Russia is “objectively an anti-Russian historical phenomonenon and therefore it cannot be ‘for the Russians’ by its very nature,” according to one commentator. Instead, Russian nationalists “must radically change” their conception of Russia and finally understand that “in the historical genesis of Russia there was nothing nationally Russian.”
In an essay on the National Democratic Alliance portal, Aleksey Shiropayev argues that those who are advancing the slogan “Russia for the Russians” not only do not understand the nature of their country’s history but are “driving the Russian question into a deadend, making it in essence impossible to solve” (www.nazdem.com/texts/213).
Those who invoke this slogan start out from the assumption, he says, that Russia was at some point “a Russian national state.” But that assumption is “false,” Shiropayev says. “Russia was NEVER a national state neither before nor after 1917.” Indeed, the last Russian national state was Novgorod which was “destroyed by Moscow at the end of the 15th century.”
It was in fact this action that marked the beginning of Russia, which acted “as the heir and direct continuation of the Horde as an international imperial formation,” something that was further strengthened by the adoption of the Byzantine principles which held that “Russia was created not for the Russians but by means of Russians.”
A reduced status for Russians, Shiropayev continues, “is the centuries-long basic paradigm of Russian statehood,” one in which as the monarchists have pointed out, the other indigenous peoples not only had equal rights with the Russians but often “enjoyed definite privileges.”
Indeed, “the symbol of the status of Russians in Russia,” he points out, “was highlighted by the scandal at the opening of the First State Duma in April 1906 when in the address to His Imperial Highness the deputies excluded the term ‘Russian people’ ‘in order not to offend other nationalities.’”
Moreover, after the Bolshevik revolution, “Lenin did not think up anything new in principle but only followed the Horde-Byzantine paradigm of the Russian Empire when in 1922 he formulated the basic principle of the USSR,” one in which the dominant nation would have a more restricted status than the minority ones.
In 1923, Bolshevik ideologist Nikolay Bukharin put it bluntly: “Russians,” he said,” must put themselves in an UNEQUAL position, lower than the others,” thus pushing the Soviet state in the direction of “the nationality policy of the tsars,” albeit in “a more open and thoroughgoing fashion.”
Predominantly ethnic Russian regions were looted to pay for the development of the Caucasus and Central Asia and Third World countries abroad in Soviet times. “Today,” Shiropayev says, these regions are being looted in the same way to pay for “the restoration” of Chechnya and South Ossetia, the Winter Olympics in Sochi “and so on and so forth.”
Shiropayev says that he is not making this argument in order to set Russians against other people. Rather, he wants Russians to understand their true situation and to oppose their interests to the state which calls itself Russia in its current form. That is because “the Russian people above all” has been its “victim.”
Most of the time, Russians have found themselves in “an historical trap,” one in which “Russia successfully presents itself as the land of the Russians although in fact it is a place of their confinement, a type of zone.” But once Russians understand the true state of affairs, they find themselves in a position much like that of other peoples.
“It is time for Russian nationalism to radically change its conception of Russia and to understand that in the historical genesis of Russia, there is nothing nationally Russian” at all. Instead, “Russian began with the destruction of the genuinely Russian cultural-state and social foundations in the Novgorod democracy.”
“The hatred of Moscow to Novgorod the Great was a retranslation of the Horde’s hatred for Russia as such. The anti-Russian character of historical Russian statehood was set by the role which Moscow fulfilled while being an ulus of the Horde, the role of a pro-Tatar occupation nomenklatura on the Russian land.”
And that relationship, one between “conqueror and conquered,” has been maintained in Russia” and will be until Russians recognize that it is not they but this arrangement that is the main “state forming factor” in their country and that “Russia for the Russians” under these circumstances at least is a contradiction in terms.”
Unfortunately, too many Russians do not understand this, and consequently, they help promote a situation “in which the traitor and sadist Aleksandr Nevsky is ‘a hero,’ and the despotism taken from the Horde ‘tsars’ and decorated by Byzantism is supposedly the Russian form of administration from times immemorial.”
Efforts by the current Moscow rulers to form a non-ethnic Russian nation are a direct continuation of this and have an equally “anti-Russian direction.” They are directed “against the Russians,” against their self-consciousness, but for “imperialism,” one in which Tatars, Kalmyks and Yakuts have rights but Russians are reduced in a melting pot to something else.
This too, Shiropayev says, is nothing new. “If in the USSR, there was the Soviet people, then the Russians were precisely the ones into whose consciousness was able to introduce to the greatest extent the categories of imperial patriotism,” something useful to the regime but fatal to the nation.
There are, the nationalist commentator suggests, three ways to approach the resolution of the Russian question. The first is the imperial one, offered most recently by Putin and Medvedev. It offers a program of the “maximum deprivation of the face of Russians on a national level and discrimination,” even while it seeks support by calling them “state-forming” and “leading.”
The second approach is encapsulated in the slogan “Russia for the Russians.” That slogan might seem to be antithetical to the first, but in fact it works to the benefit of the powers that be because “it orients Russian nationalism into a dead end” because it can’t be realized, because it offends other nations, and because it undermines a liberal Russian project.
The third approach is the national democratic one, formulated by the National Democratic Alliance, Shiropayev continues. It seeks to transform Russia from “a so-called asymmetrical federal” into a genuine one of “equal subjects – national republics, including Russian ones.”
This is not a new idea, Shiropayev concedes. Boris Yeltsin pushed for “seven Russian republics in February 1990, but “those who were interested int eh preservation of the imperial structure opposed the further development and realization of this exceptionally positive idea.” But now it is time to take it up again.
“The genuine development and flourishing of all the people sof Russia can be guaranteed only by the transformation of the Russian Federation” less the North Caucasus which must go its own way “into a full-fledged federation with immeasurably smaller role for the center than now and consisting of equal national republics, including ethnic Russian ones.”
If that happens, Shiropayev argues, then Russian nationalism, often a misnomer for the support of an autocratic state rather than for the interests of the Russian people, can finally become what it should always be: “an anti-imperial and legal-liberal force” that will benefit Russians and others as well.
Staunton, January 24 – Russia is “objectively an anti-Russian historical phenomonenon and therefore it cannot be ‘for the Russians’ by its very nature,” according to one commentator. Instead, Russian nationalists “must radically change” their conception of Russia and finally understand that “in the historical genesis of Russia there was nothing nationally Russian.”
In an essay on the National Democratic Alliance portal, Aleksey Shiropayev argues that those who are advancing the slogan “Russia for the Russians” not only do not understand the nature of their country’s history but are “driving the Russian question into a deadend, making it in essence impossible to solve” (www.nazdem.com/texts/213).
Those who invoke this slogan start out from the assumption, he says, that Russia was at some point “a Russian national state.” But that assumption is “false,” Shiropayev says. “Russia was NEVER a national state neither before nor after 1917.” Indeed, the last Russian national state was Novgorod which was “destroyed by Moscow at the end of the 15th century.”
It was in fact this action that marked the beginning of Russia, which acted “as the heir and direct continuation of the Horde as an international imperial formation,” something that was further strengthened by the adoption of the Byzantine principles which held that “Russia was created not for the Russians but by means of Russians.”
A reduced status for Russians, Shiropayev continues, “is the centuries-long basic paradigm of Russian statehood,” one in which as the monarchists have pointed out, the other indigenous peoples not only had equal rights with the Russians but often “enjoyed definite privileges.”
Indeed, “the symbol of the status of Russians in Russia,” he points out, “was highlighted by the scandal at the opening of the First State Duma in April 1906 when in the address to His Imperial Highness the deputies excluded the term ‘Russian people’ ‘in order not to offend other nationalities.’”
Moreover, after the Bolshevik revolution, “Lenin did not think up anything new in principle but only followed the Horde-Byzantine paradigm of the Russian Empire when in 1922 he formulated the basic principle of the USSR,” one in which the dominant nation would have a more restricted status than the minority ones.
In 1923, Bolshevik ideologist Nikolay Bukharin put it bluntly: “Russians,” he said,” must put themselves in an UNEQUAL position, lower than the others,” thus pushing the Soviet state in the direction of “the nationality policy of the tsars,” albeit in “a more open and thoroughgoing fashion.”
Predominantly ethnic Russian regions were looted to pay for the development of the Caucasus and Central Asia and Third World countries abroad in Soviet times. “Today,” Shiropayev says, these regions are being looted in the same way to pay for “the restoration” of Chechnya and South Ossetia, the Winter Olympics in Sochi “and so on and so forth.”
Shiropayev says that he is not making this argument in order to set Russians against other people. Rather, he wants Russians to understand their true situation and to oppose their interests to the state which calls itself Russia in its current form. That is because “the Russian people above all” has been its “victim.”
Most of the time, Russians have found themselves in “an historical trap,” one in which “Russia successfully presents itself as the land of the Russians although in fact it is a place of their confinement, a type of zone.” But once Russians understand the true state of affairs, they find themselves in a position much like that of other peoples.
“It is time for Russian nationalism to radically change its conception of Russia and to understand that in the historical genesis of Russia, there is nothing nationally Russian” at all. Instead, “Russian began with the destruction of the genuinely Russian cultural-state and social foundations in the Novgorod democracy.”
“The hatred of Moscow to Novgorod the Great was a retranslation of the Horde’s hatred for Russia as such. The anti-Russian character of historical Russian statehood was set by the role which Moscow fulfilled while being an ulus of the Horde, the role of a pro-Tatar occupation nomenklatura on the Russian land.”
And that relationship, one between “conqueror and conquered,” has been maintained in Russia” and will be until Russians recognize that it is not they but this arrangement that is the main “state forming factor” in their country and that “Russia for the Russians” under these circumstances at least is a contradiction in terms.”
Unfortunately, too many Russians do not understand this, and consequently, they help promote a situation “in which the traitor and sadist Aleksandr Nevsky is ‘a hero,’ and the despotism taken from the Horde ‘tsars’ and decorated by Byzantism is supposedly the Russian form of administration from times immemorial.”
Efforts by the current Moscow rulers to form a non-ethnic Russian nation are a direct continuation of this and have an equally “anti-Russian direction.” They are directed “against the Russians,” against their self-consciousness, but for “imperialism,” one in which Tatars, Kalmyks and Yakuts have rights but Russians are reduced in a melting pot to something else.
This too, Shiropayev says, is nothing new. “If in the USSR, there was the Soviet people, then the Russians were precisely the ones into whose consciousness was able to introduce to the greatest extent the categories of imperial patriotism,” something useful to the regime but fatal to the nation.
There are, the nationalist commentator suggests, three ways to approach the resolution of the Russian question. The first is the imperial one, offered most recently by Putin and Medvedev. It offers a program of the “maximum deprivation of the face of Russians on a national level and discrimination,” even while it seeks support by calling them “state-forming” and “leading.”
The second approach is encapsulated in the slogan “Russia for the Russians.” That slogan might seem to be antithetical to the first, but in fact it works to the benefit of the powers that be because “it orients Russian nationalism into a dead end” because it can’t be realized, because it offends other nations, and because it undermines a liberal Russian project.
The third approach is the national democratic one, formulated by the National Democratic Alliance, Shiropayev continues. It seeks to transform Russia from “a so-called asymmetrical federal” into a genuine one of “equal subjects – national republics, including Russian ones.”
This is not a new idea, Shiropayev concedes. Boris Yeltsin pushed for “seven Russian republics in February 1990, but “those who were interested int eh preservation of the imperial structure opposed the further development and realization of this exceptionally positive idea.” But now it is time to take it up again.
“The genuine development and flourishing of all the people sof Russia can be guaranteed only by the transformation of the Russian Federation” less the North Caucasus which must go its own way “into a full-fledged federation with immeasurably smaller role for the center than now and consisting of equal national republics, including ethnic Russian ones.”
If that happens, Shiropayev argues, then Russian nationalism, often a misnomer for the support of an autocratic state rather than for the interests of the Russian people, can finally become what it should always be: “an anti-imperial and legal-liberal force” that will benefit Russians and others as well.
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