Excerpt February 24, 2000 Novaya Gazeta, No. 7 Boris Kagarlitsky Why Oligarchs Will Not Rise In Defense of Democracy [translation for personal use only]
The Enemy Image
For ten years now, liberal intellectuals have been frightening the public and each other by the prospect of a communist restoration. As a matter of fact, most of our cultural and journalistic elite existed in quite reasonable conditions under the communists. True, they encountered obstacles in their work, but in reality already for a long time there was no totalitarianism to speak of. There is no place for a perestroika under totalitarianism. It was just that the nightingales of perestroika, who later went on to glorify the liberal reforms, needed an enemy image. Communists were the most suitable candidates for such a role - since no one was able to forget about Stalinist purges.
The enemy image turned out to be so scary that the intellectuals gradually began to take it seriously and got scared themselves. This was a time when one could forgive everything to the powers-that-be for the sake of struggle against the frightening specter of the "totalitarian revenge". In 1993, those same individuals who now exclaim "Democracy in danger" welcomed the violation of the Constitution and the shelling of the parliament. Those voices that now warn us against the imposition of censorship, recently encouraged the prohibition of the "red" periodicals.
It is true that the real danger always comes from somewhere else rather than from where it is expected to come. But this is only a part of the problem. The chief misfortune is that the advent of authoritarianism in post-Soviet Russia was prepared and endorsed right by those people who still label themselves as "democrats". Now they complain about the forced unanimity in the media. But wasn't the "democratic" press equally unanimous in the early 1990s, when one could not say a word of critique against Yeltsin and the reformers without being stigmatized as "an enemy of democracy"? At that time, TV indoctrinated us with propaganda cliches, raising the specter of a "red-brown" scare.
Of course, in 1991-93 there was communist press as well, but it did not reach anyone beyond communists themselves. The Supreme Soviet needed its own outlet to inform society about the existence of non-communist political forces that did not aspire to a reversal to the past but were still at odds with government policies. Today, it is a matter of fact that virtually all warnings issued in 1992-93 by economists close to the Supreme Soviet turned out to be right. The development of the country went along the path of an oligarchic, periphery-type capitalism, led to de-industrialization and to the aggravation of societal contradictions. In 1993, this was no less obvious than today. If the critics of reforms would have been able to reach wider audience, many things would have been different now. But in 1992-93 deputies of the parliament were not given this chance - instead, they were tagged with the enemy image.
In 1993, the authorities dared for the first time to trespass the law and to spill blood. All this was met with applause by liberal public opinion. Who if not the liberals were arguing that the Constitution can be violated for the sake of political efficiency, who was justifying the violent dispersal of citizens in front of the Ostankino TV center, who was so exuberant at the look of the White House in flames?
After the shelling of the parliament, liberal intelligentsia enthusiastically endorsed the authoritarian Constitution of 1993, which was by every standards a step back from the 1991-92 legislation. Not only did the Yeltsin-era Basic Law make the government and the president unaccountable to other institutions, it also subordinated the Constitutional Court to them, which put an end to the independence of the judiciary. Meanwhile, the parliament was reduced to the political scenery, with a cartoon opposition.
The first Chechnya war was a logical extension of the shelling of the White House. Indeed, if you can shoot at the parliament in Moscow, why on earth you shouldn't be able to bomb Dudayev's palace in Grozny? Why can't you kill civilians in Chechnya if it was acceptable to do in the nation's capital? In what regard are the Chechen guerillas superior to the"red militants" that were the object of such a scare in 1993?
Our human right activists themselves encouraged the authorities to violate laws and to crack down on dissent. And it never came to their minds that the "reds", being in minority, are entitled to all the same human rights as everybody else. <...> Even if nostalgic communists are not on the side of democracy, they remain citizens of the country and they must be protected by law. Liberal intelligentsia, having got rid of Soviet censorship, wanted to ignore the voices of all those who suffered under the new post-Soviet system. As a result, it accepted responsibility for all the new misdeeds.
In 1996, hysterical propaganda resumed. <...> Unlike in 1993, attempts to scare people with the prospect of Zyuganov's rule could not be accounted for by the novelty of the situation and by misunderstanding. By that time, leaders of the resurrected communist party were completely integrated into the Yeltsin regime and given access to the same sources of profit and perks as everybody else. In 1996, the fear was not about the return of the communists - it was the fear of unpredictability, that always goes along with democracy. It was the idea of letting the people make their own choice that was dreadful. Of course, the vote had to take place, but choices were to be made elsewhere and by other constituencies. Thus, the 1996 elections in fact provided no alternative - especially if one takes into account hints that in case of an unacceptable outcome a civil war might begin. In the light of all this, were the 1996 elections any better than the present ones? In a sense, they were worse - due to the assistance from liberal intelligentsia to the authorities on a mass scale. In the words of one editor in chief, in 1996 "we locked our conscience into a coffer for the election period." It turns out that they lost the key from the coffer. <...>