Scattered Opposition

Cathy Young from the March 1993 issue

For Russia's reformers, December was the cruelest month. At the Congress of People's Deputies, Boris Yeltsin capitulated to reactionary former Communists, first by firing several outspoken reformers in his administration, then by dumping his acting prime minister, Yegor Gaidar. As they saw their people and policies jettisoned by the president they had supported, democratic legislators talked of "betrayal" and "catastrophe ."

"This is a monstrous defeat," Gleb Yakunin, a priest and former dissident who had been one of the strongest Yeltsin loyalists, told the Associated Press. "With such a president we cannot go into battle." Apart from the tactical loss, there was the humiliating demonstration of how little influence reformers had on the president.

According to one source within Democratic Russia, the coalition of reform parties that helped bring Yeltsin to power, some deputies came up to Yeltsin after his speech nominating career Soviet apparatchik Viktor Chernomyrdin for prime minister and said, "Boris Nikolayevich, don't you realize that Democratic Russia will go into opposition?"–to which Yeltsin is said to have replied, "They can go fuck themselves."

"We'll have to say good-bye to the president, because he's made such fools of us," Vasily Selyunin, a reform-oriented economist, said in a telephone interview four days later. "Before the Congress, we had a conference [of reformers], and [Yeltsin] spoke to us and said that he was joining our ranks. But he had no such intention. He just wanted to gain leverage by having us on his side....From now on, the democratic forces, if they still mean anything, will have to work without the president, and even against the president if we have to. He's no longer our president."

Within days, however, most of Democratic Russia seemed ready to forgive Yeltsin. When 881 DemRussia delegates gathered at Moscow City Hall for the movement's third annual convention on December 19 and 2O, criticism of Yeltsin was muted. Despite a few speeches decrying the president's actions, most delegates seemed eager to believe that the appointment of Chernomyrdin was only a necessary maneuver to fend off the reactionaries.

One resolution urged Yeltsin to "use all his powers to continue with reform and retain key figures from the Gaidar cabinet." It went on to say, "If fears about the abandonment of reform policies prove correct in the nearest future, Democratic Russia will declare its readiness to go into opposition not only to the government but to the President."

By New Year's Day, it looked as though Yeltsin would in fact continue his reforms and preserve most of the Gaidar cabinet; in late December, he even appointed Boris Fyodorov, co-author in 1990 of a radical 500-day plan to bring the Soviet Union to the free market, to take charge of "economic reform strategy." This softened the blow, but DemRussia was still on the outside looking in, more an interest group than a ruling party. December's events demonstrated the precarious position of Russia's reformers and the formidable political obstacles confronting them.

Key Players on the Russian Political Scene

~ Yuri Ahnasiev, historian; elected to the Soviet parliament in 1989, became one of the five co-chairs of the radical Interregional Deputies Group; identified with the "left" opposition to Boris Yeltsin.

~ Leonid Batkin, historian, political commentator; from November 1991 to March 1992, member of the leadership council of Democratic Russia, a pro-reform coalition formed in 1991 as a united opposition to the Soviet Communist Party.

~ Vladimir Boxer, democratic activist, official at Moscow City Hall; chief coordinator of Democratic Russia.

~ Pyotr Filippov, member of the "center-left" Republican Party of Russia, member of the Russian parliament and head of its subcommittee on privatization.

~ Yegor Gaidar, economist, Boris Yeltsin's acting prime minister and head of state from November 1991 to December 1992.

~ llere Kriger, member of the leadership council of Democratic Russia, co-chair of the Citizens' Committee to Support Reform.

~ Boris Pinsker, economist; head of Catalaxia Books, a free-market publishing house, and the Property and Law Foundation; married to Larissa Piyasheva.