What Went Wrong in Russia? Forcing the Pace of Democratization

The articles by Michael McFaul and by Dmitri Glinski and Peter Reddaway that appear in this issue reveal less about Russia than they do about the current state of the study of contemporary Russian politics in the United States. Both articles reflect the confusion of many American observers about what has happened in Russia since the collapse of the communist regime, and both attempt to explain to the general public outside Russia one of the gravest failures of Western—and above all, American—foreign policy in this century: the failure to support Russian political and economic reform.

The authors of the two articles present different and often conflicting explanations, and their arguments reflect the views of two well-known schools of Russia-watchers in the United States. The Glinski-Reddaway article is easier to discuss, as it is a polemic without any obvious pretense to scholarly objectivity that contains perceptive observations and interesting and well-founded conclusions, along with many highly contentious arguments, dubious analogies, and even obvious factual inaccuracies.

Leaving aside Glinski and Reddaway’s categorical and highly debatable opinions about Russian history, one can formulate the main argument of their article as follows: What happened in Russia was not reform, but a conspiracy on the part of the most effective and rapacious part of the Soviet ruling class (the nomenklatura), “with support from the IMF and other Western institutions,” to preserve its dominant position in the country. The democratic movement, representing the broader “middle class,” was thus isolated from real power, in part because of its own tactical mistakes.

I can agree with many of Glinski and Reddaway’s judgments about Russian reforms, the current Russian regime, and the results of its policies, although other points that they make are obviously far-fetched and unreasonable, such as the comparison of shock therapy with the Chinese moral-reeducation campaigns during the Cultural Revolution. Their account of how this regime and its policies emerged, however, is distorted by the clear influence of two political ideologies: Western-style democratic socialism and the current thinking of certain former Soviet dissidents. Although I agree that the current Russian political system cannot be called a democracy (I have described it elsewhere as “electoral clanism”¹), it did not emerge as the result of a nomenklatura conspiracy, as Glinski and Reddaway contend. On the contrary, if the Soviet ruling class had chosen to fight to maintain its power, it would have tried to stop the disintegration of the country, either by preventing any significant reform that could undermine the existing power structure (as Cuba and North Korea have done), or by introducing some reforms (especially in the economy) while at the same time trying to maintain its political power (as the Chinese and Vietnamese communists are trying to do). In contrast to these two approaches, “electoral clanism” emerges when the departure from autocracy becomes an uncontrolled process. The old system fatally weakens or collapses altogether, and the new government that emerges in its place is too weak to pursue a consistent policy.

Paradoxically, after the failure of the August 1991 putsch, the new democratically elected authorities of the Russian Federation had such unlimited support that they could easily have established firm control, not only over Russia’s regions but over the entire Soviet Union as well. It was their “democratic” convictions (“democratic” in this case meaning the system of beliefs that were considered to be democratic in Russia at the time) that prevented them from doing so.

An analysis of the composition of the Russian ruling elite clearly shows that, in 1992 at least, “democratic” activists not only controlled the most important federal institutions, but also held sway in the country’s three most populous cities (Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ekaterinburg). The “democrats” who held powerful positions included: Gennady Burbulis (de facto head of government in early 1992, and later state secretary, effectively controlling all major Kremlin appointments); Sergei Shakhrai (deputy premier), Mikhail Poltoranin (deputy premier); Sergei Stankevich (political advisor to the president); Galina Starovoitova (presidential advisor on ethnic policy); Gavriil Popov (mayor of Moscow); and Anatoly Sobchak (mayor...