Kitabı oku: «Statecraft», sayfa 7

THE BURDEN OF HISTORY

The best analyses of the Soviet Union were by and large those of historians rather than Sovietologists, because the historians had the benefit of perspective, while the Sovietologists had to glean most of their material from the turgid and mendacious statements of one or other Soviet authority. With Russia’s recent return to an older shape and identity, history is even more important as a basis for our assessments.*

It has been well-said that ‘of all the burdens Russia has had to bear, heaviest and most relentless of all has been the weight of her past’.† Russia might have developed differently. The course of history is not inevitable. But it is unarguably irreversible. One would have to go far back through the centuries to find a glimmer of any indigenous Russian tradition that might have spawned liberalism of the kind that has flourished in the West. From the late Middle Ages the tsars ruled their vast expanding domains in a fashion which explains much about modern Russia.

First, they recognised no property rights except their own, because they treated all their realm as if they owned it, and they regarded all secular lords as their tenants in chief. With no private property – above all, no private land – there could be no law, other than the tsar’s autocratic decrees. With no law, there could be no flourishing middle class, because there was lacking the security required for the accumulation of wealth, for the continuation of commerce and for the development of enterprise. Russian towns remained accordingly few, backward and small.

Secondly, the tsars admitted no institutional or even theoretical checks upon their power. They did not need to seek the consent of their subjects in order to raise revenues. Late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian representative institutions thus had little resonance with most of the populace and were treated with scant respect by the tsar.

Thirdly, the tsars established an odd symbiotic relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church. On the one hand, the tsar exercised total control over it: the traditions of Orthodoxy – inherited from practice in Byzantium – were highly conducive to this, recognising no clear division between the ecclesiastical and political spheres. On the other hand, Russian Orthodoxy, claiming Moscow as ‘the third Rome’, deeply infused the whole Russian state with attitudes which were viscerally anti-Western.

These three elements combined uniquely with a fourth – the way in which Russia’s development as a state more or less coincided with its acquisition of an empire. Both were intricately connected for, to quote one leading authority, ‘since the seventeenth century, when Russia was already the world’s largest state, the immensity of their domain has served Russians as psychological compensation for their relative backwardness and poverty’.*

Westerners who visited tsarist Russia immediately knew that they had to deal with something utterly alien and un-European. More open-minded than those intellectuals who a century later made their pseudo-pilgrimages to the Soviet Union was the Marquis de Custine, who wrote his recollection of a visit to Russia in 1838. He went there as a sympathetic admirer of Russia; he returned an outraged critic:

The political state of Russia may be defined in one sentence: it is a country in which the government says what it pleases, because it alone has the right to speak. In Russia fear replaces, that is paralyses, thought … Nor in this country is historical truth any better respected than the sanctity of oaths … even the dead are exposed to the fantasies of him who rules the living.†

If this reads like a description of the Soviet communist dictatorship, that is more than coincidence; for it was grafted onto a Russian police-state tradition that was already well-established.

Custine’s picture of backwardness and repression is not, though, the whole story. The depredations which communism later made upon Russia – and even from its political coffin still makes – went far beyond anything devised by the tsars. Furthermore, economically at least, things had begun to change well before the Bolshevik Revolution. Russia’s belated but dynamic industrial revolution took off with a vengeance from the last decade of the nineteenth century. Indeed, as Norman Stone points out:

By [the eve of the First World War], Russia had become the fourth industrial power in the world, having overtaken France in indices of heavy industry – coal, iron, steel. Her population grew from just over sixty millions in the middle of the nineteenth century to a hundred millions in 1900 and almost 140 million by 1914; and that was counting only the European part, i.e. west of the Urals. Towns, which contained only ten million people in 1880, contained thirty million by 1914.*

Russia lacked the social and political institutions to cope with the strains of such rapid economic change. Moreover, the empire was about to enter a terrible war which exposed its weaknesses, and which led first to anarchy, then revolution, and finally to the imposition by the Bolsheviks of the most total dictatorship that the world has known.

THE LEGACY OF COMMUNISM

The system was as much the work of Lenin as of Marx. The wordy, flawed analyses of the German were applied with ruthless violence by the Russian, who already lived and breathed the repressive atmosphere of the tsars.

The Soviets took the traditional tsarist hostility towards alternative sources of authority, towards freedom of thought, towards private property and towards a rule of law much further. While the tsar had demanded that he be treated as God’s representative, the Party actually usurped the place of God Himself. Communism’s war against religion – even one so politically amenable as Russian Orthodoxy – was pursued with the same aim as that against the richer peasants and against all the habits and ties of private life: the state must seize, possess, and ultimately absorb all.

For seventy years this system was imposed on the Russian people. Of course, like all that is human, it had its less bad moments. In time, the frenzied campaign against religion abated, to be replaced under Stalin by an uneasy modus vivendi between Church and state, because the latter found the former’s influence useful. Similarly, after Stalin’s purges a certain stability descended on the Soviet system, which became more bureaucratic, stratified and corrupt – this was the period of the emergence of what Milovan Djilas called the ‘new class’.* The monster of communism mellowed a little as sclerosis set in. Under Khrushchev, the errors of Stalin were admitted. Under Gorbachev, the conduct of Lenin was eventually debatable. In the last few years of the Soviet Union the pressure for free speech and free elections grew and – to his credit – Mr Gorbachev responded.

There was also talk of economic reform. But it never came to anything. This was essentially because, for communists – from Lenin to Gorbachev – ‘reform’ simply meant making the Marxist-Leninist system more efficient, not adopting a different system. Perhaps the last moment at which such an approach could have yielded positive results was under the intelligent Yuri Andropov (1983–84), who at least understood the economic abyss before which the Soviet Union tottered. But he was too sick – and his successor Konstantin Chernenko (1984–85) was both too sick and too dull – to make any impact. By the time that Mikhail Gorbachev took over in 1985 any attempt to reform the system was bound to fail and likely to result sooner or later in its dissolution.

And this, of course, is what happened. Mr Gorbachev’s programmes of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) were intended to be complementary, but that is not how they worked out. Openness about the failures of the system and of the people, past and present, who were responsible, was immensely liberating for the Soviet citizenry who had for so long been denied the chance to debate the truth. But restructuring the ramshackle institutions of the state, let alone replacing the mediocrities who battened on them, was really out of the question. In any case, the basis of the Soviet Union was still the Communist Party (which also controlled the military-industrial complex and the security apparatus), and the Party would not meekly yield up the one thing it valued above all – power.

This fact also explains the personal tragedy of Mikhail Gorbachev, who was feted by the West – and justly so – but who was rejected and reviled by his own fellow-countrymen. For all his talk of the need for ‘new thinking’, in the end he just could not practise it. Faced in 1991 with a choice between continuing along the path of fundamental change on the one hand and a return to repressive communism on the other, he dithered. I do not believe, though this has sometimes been said, that he secretly supported those hard-line communists who temporarily seized power in July 1991. But he had himself appointed them to their positions. And even when he returned to Moscow he proclaimed himself a communist. So for all my admiration for his achievements, my sympathy for his predicament, indeed my liking for him as a man, I am sure that his replacement by Boris Yeltsin was right for Russia.

The deep hostility between these two men who between them have done more for their country’s freedom than any other Russians was doubtless partly to be explained simply by political rivalry. But it also, I am convinced, represented something deeper. Mr Yeltsin knew in his heart that the system in which he had risen and then fallen, only to rise again, was fundamentally wrong – and not just because it failed to give people a reasonable standard of living, but also because it was based upon a structure of lies and wickedness. This, I think, is why Mr Yeltsin looked so large as he stood on that tank in central Moscow when he led the heroic battle for Russian democracy. And it is why Mr Gorbachev looked so diminished as he returned three days later from his Black Sea coast retreat in the Crimea. Cameras often lie, but this time they told the truth: not just a tale of two Russians, but also a tale of two Russias.

The collapse of the August 1991 coup provided the opportunity for a triumphant Boris Yeltsin to order the banning of the Communist Party and to oversee the orderly dissolution of the Soviet Union. In recent years it has become the fashion to scorn Mr Yeltsin’s weaknesses, which were doubtless real enough. But they were more than matched by astonishing courage and large reserves of political wiliness. And had bravery and cunning not also been accompanied by a typically Russian ruthless streak he could never have scored victory after victory against the communists who wanted to drag Russia back to its Soviet past.

Boris Yeltsin’s shoulders were broad. But history’s burden was still too heavy for them. The habits, instincts and attitudes developed by Soviet communism made the transformation of Russia into a ‘normal’ country immensely difficult. This has been glaringly apparent in the growth of lawlessness.

Long before the end of the Soviet era, Russians had come to regard the state itself as their enemy. For those who chose to proclaim their individuality it was an oppressor. But for many more the state was essentially a thief.

There was, of course, no law in a Western sense in communist society. Indeed, though there were rules and regulations at every turn there was no concept of equity, according to which a single set of obligations based on what each was due as a human being was applied to all equally. As the writer and dissident Alexandr Zinoviev strikingly put it: ‘In Communist society a system of values prevails which is founded on the principle that there should be no general principles of evaluation.’*

In fact, the only dominant principle was that of predatory egotism. Such habits die hard, or not at all. It is important to stress that although the scale and violence of Russian crime have snowballed since the end of the USSR, its psychological and systemic roots were planted under communism. In the last years of Leonid Brezhnev’s presidency corruption in high places became notorious. But from the mid-1980s, crime became fully institutionalised, not least through the activities of the KGB which, according to a senior CIA source,

sold cheaply acquired Soviet commodities abroad at world prices, putting the proceeds into disguised foreign accounts and front companies … [Its] lines of business came to include money laundering, arms and drug trafficking and other plainly criminal activities.*

There was, understandably, little confidence that this disordered state of affairs would change under the new dispensation: most Russians had grown so accustomed to it that criminality appeared the ordinary way in which things were done. How could it be otherwise when so many of the same people who had held high positions under communism re-emerged under capitalism as the new masters?

Russia has accordingly become a notoriously criminal society. It is thought that between three thousand and four thousand criminal gangs operate there. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs says that organised crime controls 40 per cent of the turnover of goods and services; some estimates are higher. Half of Russia’s banks are thought to be controlled by criminal syndicates. Not surprisingly, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) considers Russia the most corrupt major economy in the world. Public opinion polls have suggested that Russians despair of honest effort as the means to advance. Instead, 88 per cent listed ‘connections’ and 76 per cent dishonesty as the best ways to get ahead.†

Estimates of the size of the black economy – always difficult to gauge – put it at between a quarter and a half of Russia’s national income. Much of this is, of course, a matter of unpaid or badly paid Russian workers trying to earn a decent income; much of the rest reflects the chaotic circumstances in which all enterprises have to operate. But it is still a recipe for extortion and gangsterism.

In such circumstances violence has become a tempting method of settling scores, instilling fear, and deterring both competition and criticism. Russia’s murder rate is now probably the highest in the world. Those who speak out against abuses in high places must expect to be targeted.

Such, for example, was the fate of that brave and principled lady, Galina Starovoitova. I first met her in London during the 1991 attempted coup, when she and I discussed how to help rally support for Boris Yeltsin. Mrs Starovoitova was a leading figure in the biggest political party at that time, ‘Democratic Russia’. She became a personal adviser to President Yeltsin on inter-ethnic issues – a position she relinquished because of her opposition to the Chechen War. She was later elected as a member of the Duma representing St Petersburg, where she denounced the anti-Semitism and corruption which had become unpleasant facets of the life of that great city. She also proposed a draft Law of Lustration intended to prevent high-level former Communist Party and KGB members from occupying high state positions. This, though, was rejected by the communist majority in the Duma.

Galina Starovoitova was murdered on the night of 20 November 1998 as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. It was a well-prepared assassination with what her family later told me had all the marks of the old KGB style. I was horrified by this and wrote to President Yeltsin. But her murderers have never been brought to trial. She is a martyr to the ideal of the Russia most Russians long to see. It is impossible to have much confidence in the Russian authorities’ promises to stamp out crime while her, probably well-connected, murderers remain at large.

ECONOMIC REFORM AND THE IMF

Lawlessness in all its forms has impinged on attempts to reform the Russian economy. And this should be remembered as a background to the agonised debates which have taken place since the crash of August 1998 on the theme of ‘Who lost Russia?’ In fact, the question is badly put for three rather obvious reasons: first, Russia is not necessarily lost; second, it was certainly not the West’s to lose; and third, the loss for which the International Monetary Fund (IMF), senior politicians and advisers should be required to answer is that of billions of dollars by Western taxpayers in futile bail-outs.

Elsewhere, I consider more fully what might constitute a proper role for the IMF.* But it is worth rehearsing the arguments for and against its deep and costly involvement in Russia. The main argument for relying on an international organisation rather than, say, the Group of Seven (G7) major economic powers to help Russia out of the mess it inherited from communism, was that the IMF allegedly had the expertise to undertake the task and the neutrality to avoid outraging Russian sensitivities about the country’s sovereignty.

In fact, things have not worked out that way. The IMF’s decisions were increasingly politically motivated, clearly intended to keep President Yeltsin in and the communists out of power; and it found itself increasingly pilloried by Russians as an agent of malign Western intervention. Of course, the prior question is: did such massive programmes of assistance make sense in the first place?

The argument against the provision of loans and other aid to insolvent sovereign borrowers is well-known: it mirrors in many respects the problem involved in lending to insolvent individuals. Quite apart from whether the money will be repaid – which may not be the first consideration – such action creates what is called ‘moral hazard’. This means that it is assumed by the recipient of the aid – or by others who benefit from it indirectly, or may wish to benefit in the future – that irresponsibility will not be penalised. And that, of course, increases the likelihood of its recurring.†

Taken to its extreme, this argument would suggest a policy of rigid international non-intervention in Russia’s economic affairs. It should be said at once that this argument has its merits. Insofar as the West’s billions of dollars have helped shore up a structurally unreformed economy and a corrupt plutocracy they have done harm not good. But the fact remains that Russia is too great a potential danger to her neighbours and the world to be allowed to fail entirely. In these circumstances, the needs of politics will always tend to override the requirements of economics. The practical challenge is to ensure that intervention is correctly timed, targeted, monitored – and known to be limited. Unfortunately, with Russia this has not been the case.

Looking back, there was only a very narrow window of opportunity for the West and the IMF to act decisively. The Soviet Union was in discussions with the IMF as early as 1988. Two years later the Fund produced its recommendations for fundamental economic reform. President Gorbachev was presented with a number of possible reform programmes, but he had little understanding of economics and his preoccupations were mainly with his own and the Soviet Union’s survival. From the beginning of 1991 the Soviet administration actually moved away from political and economic reform, a course which culminated in the August 1991 putsch.

Perhaps more could have been done in this initial period. I was very keen to see Mikhail Gorbachev rewarded and encouraged. That is why I wanted to see the Soviet Union/Russia associated with the G7 economic powers, in spite of its difficulties.* I was not keen to see open-ended credits supplied, which would just build up more debt. Instead, I believed that Sir Alan Walters (my old friend and economic adviser in government) had been right to argue for the setting up of a currency board to stabilise the rouble by backing it with dollars. I also thought that Western companies might be invited to use their expertise to reform a whole sector of the collapsing Soviet system – ideally, food distribution.

Conditions changed fundamentally for the better with the accession to power of Boris Yeltsin, who immediately declared his intention to liberalise the Russian economy and brought in committed expert reformers as ministers and advisers to help him do so. The following January, price controls were removed, internal trade was freed, the rouble was floated and measures were taken to slash the huge budget deficit. But the consequences for the Russian people of this necessary programme were severe. Once the first enthusiasm for change passed it was inevitable that political pressures on the President and his team would mount. The communist-dominated parliament became the centre of resistance.

This was the point at which the West should have been generous. But it was not. Western politicians and bankers seriously misread the situation, imagining that the small print of an economic programme was more important than the political reality. By the summer of 1992 President Yeltsin had felt compelled to drop the reformist Prime Minister, Yegor Gaidar, and instal the representative of the industrial cartels, Viktor Chernomyrdin, in his place. At the same time the former chief of the Soviet Central Bank was appointed to the post of chairman of the Russian Central Bank, where he immediately set the printing presses rolling. The IMF only now agreed its first big loan to Russia – seven months after the reform programme was launched, and after the true reformers had been ousted.

For a variety of reasons, that missed opportunity never recurred. Even during the periods when economic progress seemed to be made, the underlying conditions were actually deteriorating. Politics was largely at the root of this. The struggle between the President and the parliament was waged with increasing ferocity, largely over economic policy, with Mr Yeltsin’s opponents (who had control over the Central Bank) trying to secure as strong a dose of inflationary socialism as possible. Western hopes rose, after the defeat of the parliamentary rebellion in October 1993, that the President would now be able to impose a full-blooded reform programme. To some extent, this was what happened. But the success of the communists and nationalist extremists in the parliamentary elections of December demonstrated how deep was popular disillusionment with the course proposed by the IMF. During 1994 the Chernomyrdin government pursued a policy which pushed up spending, borrowing and inflation, resulting in a collapse of the rouble in October.

Both the IMF and the Russian government now made greater efforts to agree a detailed programme of economic reform sustained by IMF financial support. The largest loan yet given to Russia – $6.8 billion – was announced on 11 April 1995. This was more than a matter of economics: it represented an investment in President Yeltsin, who faced an election in April 1996.

Mr Yeltsin won, but at what turned out to be a huge cost to himself, to Russia and to the West. First of all, he destroyed his health and could never recover his former energy and authority. Second, in order to win he made a large number of promises for extra spending which could not be afforded. Third, he had to rely on the support of Russian plutocrats whose interests lay rather in securing control over cartels in a corporatist economy than in creating a properly functioning free-market system.

For these reasons, Mr Yeltsin’s second term was a serious economic disappointment. The appointment of Anatoly Chubais and Boris Nemtsov as First Deputy Prime Ministers seemed to signal an attack on the vested interests which stood in the way of change. But it was all too late. The rouble came under pressure as a result of fall-out from the East Asian financial crisis. In March 1998, in a move intended to signal a renewed drive for reform, Yeltsin appointed a new young Prime Minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, in place of Chernomyrdin. The concentration now was on measures to increase dwindling tax revenues and defend the rouble. The international market pressure on Russia continued to intensify and the IMF together with the World Bank and Japan provided $17.1 billion of new loans.

But the market would not be bucked. In August, after $4.8 billion of the loan had disappeared across the exchanges, the rouble was devalued and then floated. It lost over half its value against the dollar in just two weeks. The Russian stock market fell by 80 per cent. Some experts estimated the rate of capital flight as at least $17 billion per year.* Money poured out of Russia, doubtless much of it ours. Russians lost, perhaps permanently, faith in their own currency.

The political consequences were not slow in coming. Mr Yeltsin’s authority was fatally weakened. Prime Minister Kiriyenko was dismissed and, after a delay in which Chernomyrdin’s reappointment was rejected by the parliament, Yevgeny Primakov, backed by the Communists, took his place. He was joined by other throwbacks to the Soviet era.

The Primakov period, which lasted until his surprise dismissal in favour of Sergei Stepashin in May 1999 – and then Vladimir Putin in August – was a time of stagnation. Economic reform in any meaningful sense was suspended. In Russia it was a time for political manoeuvring. In the West it was time for recrimination.*