Scattered Opposition

Cathy Young from the March 1993 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

~ Larissa Piyesheva, economist known for her radical free-market views; from November 1991 to August 1992, adviser on privatization to Moscow City Hall.

~ Lev Ponomaryov, physicist, member of parliament and co-chairman of Democratic Russia.

~ Marina Salier, St. Petersburg democratic activist, head of the Free Democratic Party of Russia, member of the Russian parliament; founder of the radical Russian Constituent Union.

~ Vasily Selyunin, free-market economist and political commentator.

~ Arkady Volsky, head of the Communist Party's Central Committee section in charge of industry under Mikhail Gorbachev; later founded the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a lobby for government-owned large enterprises. A leader of the "centrist" Civic Union, which advocates slower reform.

~ The Rev. Gleb Yakunin, Russian Orthodox priest and former political prisoner; member of parliament and co-chairman of Democratic Russia; regarded as principally responsible, with Ponomaryov, for DemRussia's policy of supporting Yeltsin.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle is the Russian legislature, a remnant of late Communist rule. Reformers control no more than a quarter of the seats in the working legislature, the Supreme Soviet; another 20 percent or so tend to side with them, but only if certain compromises are made. The picture may be even worse in the full Congress, which meets to ratify major decisions and legislative changes. Elected for a four-year term in 1990, before the failed coup and subsequent collapse of the Communist Party, it is dominated by former Communists.

"It is as if the Tory membership of the House of Burgesses from 1765 were still running America in 1785," quips Lawrence Uzzell, an American working in Moscow for the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.

Much as Mikhail Gorbachev zigzagged between the reformers and the hardliners, Yeltsin is caught between the reformers identified with the Gaidar government and a modernized breed of ex-Soviet conservatives–the captains of state industry, represented by the well-organized Civic Union. This bloc of three "center-right" groups (whose unofficial leader is the savvy apparatchik Arkady Volsky, the chief of industry under Gorbachev) claims merely to champion a more gradual road to the market. Its principal demands, however, are for stronger government controls over the economy and for more subsidies to militarized Soviet-era industrial dinosaurs.

The new prime minister, Victor Chernomyrdin, who spent years as a top official in the Soviet oil industry, is generally regarded as a Civic Union man. One of Chernomyrdin's first acts as prime minister was to push through $480 million in new loans for state energy companies.

Such barriers to reform would challenge the most cunning political operatives. And Russia's democracy movement is marked more by good intentions and sound but abstract economic principles than by political savvy. As a political movement, Russia's reformers are in disarray–torn by personal and policy feuds and hampered by political naivete. Above all, they are unsure what to think of Yeltsin and his policies, whether to remain loyal to the man and his reforms, however partial those measures may be, or to break ranks in hopes of finding a better path to capitalism and democracy.

Without an alternative strategy, Democratic Russia's periodic threats to go into opposition have taken on the futile quality of a child's vow to hold his breath until he gets his way. Time after time, the coalition backs down and continues to support Yeltsin, each time losing a few more of its leaders to splinter groups–groups that in many cases claim only a dozen or so members. The staunchest Democratic Russia partisans concede that the number of its activists has dropped to about 40 percent of 1991 levels (more like 10 percent, critics say).

It was not always so. In 1990, activists from several radical groups forged Democratic Russia as a united front against the Communist Party. A year later, the coalition claimed a nationwide membership of 300,000, and in Moscow its rallies could draw half a million people. Instrumental to Yeltsin's election to the Russian presidency in 1991, DemRussia appeared on its way to becoming a ruling party when Communist power collapsed in the wake of the failed August coup.

But, recalls former DemRussia leader Leonid Batkin, "the Yeltsin government did nothing, even though at the time it was possible to do almost anything: dissolve the Congress, legalize private property, hold new elections." And Democratic Russia did little to pressure him. Once the post-coup opportunity passed, the coalition began to unravel, no longer held together by the glue of opposition to communism (sound familiar?). In October 1991, DemRussia lost its "right flank" when several parties that opposed the dissolution of the Soviet Union ended their membership in the coalition.

Radical democrats, irked by the lack of decisive steps to reform the economy and the power structure, also grew restive. The radicals, led by historian Yuri Afanasiev–one of the original leaders of the democratic movement–quit in March 1992, taking several small parties with them; Batkin, a Renaissance historian and political commentator, was among the evacuees. Four months later, Marina Salier, a member of DemRussia's 18-person leadership council, also quit to form an opposition group called the Russian Constituent Union.