INSIDE PUTIN'S RUSSIA
By Andrew Jack. Oxford Univ. 362 pp. $30
RUSSIAN CROSSROADS: Toward the New Millennium
Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko and Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier this year
(Reuters)
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By Yevgeny Primakov. Yale Univ. 337 pp. $35
Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" was easily one of the most uplifting events of 2004. Corrupt officials tried to steal the presidential election and make Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the next president, but Ukrainian society fought back to demand that the actual winner, opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, be allowed to take power. In a country not known for successful revolutionary uprisings, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians wearing defiant orange massed in major cities, endured the bitter cold for two weeks and demanded that the regime recognize the actual result of the vote. After a tense standoff, it did. Yushchenko easily won a new round of elections ordered by the Supreme Court. Like all post-revolutionary leaders, of course, President Yushchenko will never meet the inflated expectations of his backers. Nonetheless, the breakthrough in Ukraine is likely to keep this new country permanently on a democratic path, however bumpy.
Ukraine today, Russia tomorrow? At a minimum, the sea of orange from downtown Kiev should lay to rest those tired stereotypes of Slavs as apolitical, uninterested people who yearn for autocratic rulers. Ukrainians have no significant experience with democratic rule, but they nonetheless managed to overcome their historical legacy and demand a more democratic way to rule and be ruled. Shouldn't Russians be able to do the same?
After reading Andrew Jack's Inside Putin's Russia and Yevgeny Primakov's Russian Crossroads, the answer is, "Not anytime soon." In very different ways, both books highlight the reasons that a Russian democratic renaissance is unlikely.
Probably unintentionally, Primakov's book shows one major shackle: the Soviet communist and imperial legacy that, in a sense, he personifies. Primakov was a successful member of the Soviet Union's elite who made the transition to Russia's post-Soviet elite. His quasi-memoir goes to great lengths to portray him as a skeptic or even a dissident within the Soviet system, but he was a system man nonetheless, serving as a correspondent for the Communist Party's mouthpiece, Pravda, then as head of one of the most prestigious Soviet think tanks and finally as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In countries upended by revolutions, elites from the ancien régime like Primakov only rarely survive (either figuratively or literally). Yet in post-Soviet Russia, Primakov held on, serving as head of the international intelligence service, foreign minister and prime minister. Nearly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Primakov was the most popular politician in Russia.
His enduring impact on post-Soviet politics highlights the continuity between the Soviet Union and today's Russia. Russians in 1990-91, like Ukrainians today, did mobilize often and massively to demand a less corrupt, more democratic government. Push finally came to shove in August 1991, when Russians again rallied to thwart a coup attempt by die-hard Soviet opponents of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. The coup collapsed, followed shortly by the Soviet Union itself. Yet, as Primakov's career acutely demonstrates, not everything changed after August 1991. Instead, Soviet political and economic elites adapted to some degree but also brought with them old Soviet customs and ways of thinking, some of them antithetical to democracy. For instance, both Primakov and Jack emphasize the ways in which privatization dominated by Soviet-era elites undermined Russia's nascent democratic culture and weak democratic institutions. Just as in Soviet times, those connected to the state (not self-made entrepreneurs) were winning, while the narod -- the people -- were being left out.
Even more revealing proof of the weight of the Soviet heritage can be found in Primakov's own attitudes about politics, revealed in Russian Crossroads. For instance, in retelling the 2000-01 drama of Russian President Vladimir Putin's assault against the country's only major independent television network, NTV, Primakov argues defensively that "freedom of the press was never under attack in Russia." "It is clear," he adds, that now that NTV's programs are produced by management closely tied to Putin, they contain "even more direct and indirect criticism of the Russian leadership now than they did" under the old, independent owner. It's hard to build democracy with leaders who hold such views. And in Russia today, most state officials, including Putin himself, embrace Primakov's interpretation.
His views on the world are similarly widely embraced among Russian elites. In most of his book's foreign policy discussions, be it Operation Desert Storm or the war in Kosovo, Primakov is firmly in the anti-American camp. It's a dispiriting reminder of why the integration of a democratic Russia into the Western community of states is still a futuristic and perhaps fanciful project.
To be fair, the Soviet legacy, as represented by Primakov, has not been entirely bad for Russia's political development. Primakov stood resolutely against the August 1991 coup attempt and played a truly heroic role in pulling the country back from the abyss as Russia's new prime minister in the wake of its August 1998 financial meltdown. At least as important as his liberal market reforms was Primakov's decision not try to seize power as prime minister by taking advantage of a politically damaged and physically frail President Boris Yeltsin. Instead, he abided by the political rules of the game and stepped down without a fight when Yeltsin fired him after only nine months in office. Primakov's actions, like most actions taken by the leftist opposition throughout the 1990s, were democratic and deserved to be recognized as such.
The Soviet legacy can be invoked as only a partial explanation for why Russia's democracy has faltered. After all, Ukraine also inherited the same Soviet institutions and practices that Russia did. Leadership matters, too, and that brings us to Vladimir Putin.
In very different ways, both Primakov and Jack want to remind readers that Yeltsin did not construct a liberal democracy that Putin then destroyed. While Primakov expresses surprising respect for Yeltsin personally, the former prime minister lambastes the system that Yeltsin allowed to take root during his final years in office. According to Primakov, the "Family" -- a tightly knit, ruthless and corrupt group ensconced in the Kremlin, headed by Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko; his chief of staff; and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky -- actually ran Russia when he was prime minister.