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Democracy, Russian
style
By Yevgeny Bendersky
Russian-style democracy is by no means
unique in the pantheon of countries that have made
a democratic transition, or have attempted to do
so, since the early 1990s and the end of the Cold
War. What made Russia so unique from the start is
the solidification of the presidential form of
democracy, where all power and major
decision-making is concentrated in the strong
executive branch that eclipses in importance other
branches of government, be they parliament or the
judicial system.
Russian President
Vladimir Putin's consolidation of power can be
viewed as either a necessary series of steps to
strengthen the internal mechanisms of government
following a series of deadly terrorist attacks on
Russian soil, or as the executive usurpation of
powers and rights that belong to others in a truly
democratic establishment. While criticism of the
Russian leader has been mounting over the past
several months, he can retort President George W
Bush's comments on Russia with a historical
overview of how democracy - in whatever way it now
manifests itself in the Russian Federation - has
been growing over the past 15 years.
Russia - and most of Soviet society - was
woefully unprepared for the democratic changes
that were slowly imposed from the top by the
weakening Soviet leadership in the late 1980s.
While the population desired much-needed reforms
that would revitalize social and economic
development in a country that had been stagnating
for over a decade, no major social education took
place to prepare the population for the
eventualities of democracy and the consequences of
societal changes that would inevitably take place.
As a result, the government swiftly began
to lose its authority in large parts of the
country, ceding its former powers to the
rapidly-developing local authorities that sought
to "even the score" for past decades of abuse by
the communist state. The result was the rise of
ethnic strife in the Caucasus, Central Asia and
the Baltics. While many of the grievances on
behalf of some local populations were legitimate,
the Soviet government, fearing a general
countrywide uprising against its rule, responded
with force. That further galvanized local forces
bent on maintaining their policies, resulting in
massive outbreaks of ethnic conflict in the
Caucasus and in other parts of the country.
The Soviet economy, unable to meet the
demands of both the government and its people for
nearly two decades, began to disintegrate, opening
the way for organized crime to materialize as a
legitimate, parallel institution. And while many
truly democratic, liberal forces, backed by large
strata of the population, gained significant
advantages in Soviet society during the last three
years of the USSR from 1988 to 1991, their future
outlook of the country as a liberal market economy
clashed with the extreme difficulties of
accomplishing such goals on the ground, where the
state-supported planned economy was convulsing in
inadequate attempts at readjustment.
Many
other significant developments took place that
served to either promote the cause of democracy in
the USSR or contributed to the growing chaos in
the country, but the Soviet state was in a
low-level condition of disintegration halfway
through 1991. Then, the first backlash against
what was viewed in the West as growing democracy
took place. In August 1991, a group of high-level
government officials attempted to seize power from
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, placing him
under house arrest and seeking to impose emergency
rule on the country. While their attempts were
half-hearted and, evidently, poorly planned, their
newly governing body addressed the country,
seeking to gather support from the embattled,
confused, upset or angry population.
Western countries, and other democracies
around the world, decried the event as an attempt
to turn back the clock on the inevitable
democratic changes sweeping the globe. President
George Bush Senior viewed the spread of democracy
in the Soviet Union in a similarly crucial tone as
his son now views the establishment of democracy
in Iraq and the Middle East. The new Soviet
leadership, which governed for less then 10 days,
gave the following as its reasons to slow down
"democratic" and "market" changes that were then
taking place in the country: deteriorating living
conditions, disrespect of the fellow human being,
the seizure of power by the "demagogues" disguised
as the "new democrats", growing crime and
corruption in the country, and the coming
disintegration of Soviet society as a whole with
undetermined consequences for many millions of
people. In their eyes, it was necessary to reverse
many of the poorly applied changes and policies in
order to save the state from collapse. The Western
states promptly condemned the coup, and president
Boris Yeltsin emerged as the new leader capable of
leading Russia in the new democratic future.
Unfortunately, almost all the predictions
of the August "putchist" politicians and generals
did come true following the collapse of the USSR
in December 1991 - the state did fall apart, civil
wars took place, tens of thousands were killed in
the resulting ethnic and intra-state clashes, the
economy tumbled, living standards fell
disastrously, crime rose to levels previously
unheard of - all the while as new democratic,
liberal forces were supposedly leading the state.
While the resulting chaos in the Russian
Federation cannot be considered as the fault of
democracy - since there were so many other complex
reasons involved - they were viewed negatively by
many as a direct result of the imposition of
democracy on what remained of the Soviet Union.
By 1993, the Russian president and his
government were on opposing sides in the debate on
the now unpopular liberal reforms. In September
1993, Yeltsin dissolved the Russian parliament.
Parliament refused to obey, deemed Yeltsin's
presidency unconstitutional and appointed vice
president Alexander Rutskoy as acting president.
On October 2 and 3, 1993, massive street
uprisings against Yeltsin erupted in Moscow, as
the parliament members, under leadership of
Rutskoy, barricaded themselves in parliament
building. By October 8, after vicious fighting,
the army, Interior Ministry troops and KGB forces
seized parliament building by force, killing and
wounding hundreds. This second backlash against
Russian democracy resulted in strengthened
executive rule, which continues to this day.
The West acquiesced to Yeltsin's rule,
which began to morph from populist-democratic to
stronger executive with major authoritarian
trends. The 1993 parliament revolt was against the
poorly-planned - and as it turned out - poorly
executed liberal economic reforms. Like their
predecessors in 1991, the rebellious
parliamentarians wanted to slow down the pace of
reform to prevent further disintegration of
Russian society and the economy.
From 1993,
as the West supported Yeltsin and his democratic
and market reforms, Russian executive power grew,
overtaking and diminishing other powers in the
state. Putin ascended to the presidential post on
the already established principles of powerful
executive rule that would preclude any open
revolts against the government with the purpose of
slowing down or reversing democratic and liberal
economic reforms put in practice since 1991.
Putin, with his strong executive rule, now
represents the perfect "bulwark" against such
opposition. The Western fear of anti-democratic
forces in Russia eventually gave rise to the man
Bush now criticizes as not "democratic enough".
Backlashes to Western
democracy
While Russia now occupies one of
the central positions in Bush's European agenda,
there have been other, no less powerful,
backlashes against Westernization and
democratization in other societies. In these
societies, just like in Russia, the US and its
allies supported the imposition of policies that
seemed to further greater openness and
liberalization that was deemed as a necessary
prelude to full-fledged Western democracy.
Throughout the 1970s, the Iranian Shah
sought to impose Western liberal values by force,
going so far as to have his security services
forcefully remove religious headscarves from
women's heads in public, proclaiming that such a
policy was necessary to preserve the secular
nature of the state. This often over-the-top
imposition of certain secular Western values
clashed with religious principles in Iranian
conservative society. The overthrow of the Shah's
regime in 1979 and the imposition of theocratic
rule in the country were no doubt accelerated by
this push toward Westernization and
democratization of society. Such sets of policies
that supported any forces that sought to impose
US-friendly principles resulted in the emergence
of a strong authoritarian government firmly in
control of the Iranian legislature, the army and
the courts.
Today's Iraqi rebellion
against US forces and their Iraqi and
international allies is in itself a powerful
backlash against Western-imposed democracy on a
society that has never known democratic values the
way America understands them. Many elements of
what is generally perceived as democracy are
present on the clan and tribal levels in Iraqi
society, where certain decisions are taken by
consensus after all sides to a dispute or a
problem are presented.
However, democracy
on a national level where more than half of the
population represents one religious affiliation
that has major grievances against another segment
of the population can be effectively translated as
the "tyranny of the majority", and the latest
election confirmed that Muslim Shi'ites are now
overwhelmingly powerful in the new democratic
government. This fear of the tyranny of the
majority is one of the reasons behind the
disintegration of British India, since British
Indian Muslims feared that they would be a
permanent minority in the new democratic Indian
state. While many of British India's Muslims
eventually ended up in Muslim-majority Pakistan,
Iraq's Sunni Arabs do not have the ability to
secede from the new Iraq.
While the
insurgency is no doubt stoked by certain
international terrorist participation, the Sunni
Arabs' fight is against the new democratic Iraq
and their future in it as the minority with a
checkered past. It is possible for such
anti-democratic forces to be brought into the
"democratic" fold, as the US did with Muqtada
al-Sadr and his Shi'ite militia. There are
currently rumors of talks between US forces and
Sunni Arab rebels that could potentially culminate
in the cessation of hostilities and the
reintroduction of Sunni Arabs into the new
government. However, the nearly two-year old
military opposition to the democratic principles
that are now taking hold precluded the US from
much-needed reconstruction of the country and its
eventual military withdrawal. Moreover, there are
indications that such imposition of democracy
created mass support for anti-Western and anti-US
forces in the Middle East with yet uncertain, but
worrisome, implications for the future.
Nor does the US, itself the "beacon of
democracy", necessarily disagree with certain
backlashes against democracy in other countries.
The 1992 elections in Algeria would have brought
to power a party with strong Islamic affiliation.
In the end, the Algerian military decreed the
election invalid and prevented the winning party
from assuming control in parliament and the
government. The result was a civil war that took
the lives of tens of thousands of people. The US
and the West did not object to the forceful
subversion of purely democratic principles since
the winning party was believed to have values
contrary to open Western-style secular society.
The Algerian civil war was a major destabilizing
factor in Northern Africa for nearly a decade.
In present-day Pakistan, a key US ally in
the "war on terrorism", the democratically elected
civilian government was overthrown in 1999 in a
bloodless coup by General Pervez Musharraf, the
present head of state. Just like in Algeria, the
military's seizure of power did not clash with US
interests in the region, but contributed to a
series of international incidents with India which
pushed the two states to the brink of nuclear war.
The current severe instability in Jammu and
Kashmir, under influence of both India and
Musharraf's Pakistan, has the further potential to
push the two states into a war.
Does every
backlash against Western democratic values
eventually lead to war or the potential for civil
instability? Turkmenistan seems to disprove that
assertion - it is a society where a strong
executive decreed that society was not ready for
democratic reforms and imposed a Stalin-like
personality cult in place of free elections and
public debate. Today, protest against the
government is virtually unthinkable. Belorussia is
another post-soviet country where powerful
presidential authority keeps in check the entire
society, and where an all-powerful security
apparatus enjoys Soviet-style discretion.
Conclusion
Peaceful massive
protests can bring authoritarian states to heel,
as Georgia did in 2003, followed by Ukraine a year
later. However, there is a potential that
anti-democratic forces in other parts of the world
may ignite civil unrest that can easily grow into
a civil war. In 1997, the Iranian population
elected a parliament where a majority of ministers
ran on a more liberal platform that called for
greater openness of their strict society.
Parliament entered a bitter political struggle
with the ruling clerics, a fight which they would
eventually lose. Several years after the 1997
elections, mass student protests took place on the
campuses of major Iranian universities, with
students calling for liberalization and an Iran
that was more open to the world. These protests
were brutally crushed by the police. The US did
not act in both cases, issuing only cautious
statements that it supported the will of the
Iranian people.
Some African states are
perilously close to civil wars as a result of
anti-democratic executive behavior, as the current
events in Togo unfold. There are countries around
the world where the imposition of Western-style
democracy may either precipitate unwelcome
consequences for the societies in question, or
result in the growth of powerful authoritarian
executive governments as "keepers of the
democratic order". While Bush's policy of
spreading and aiding the development of democracy
abroad certainly carries long-term benefits to the
US and the West as a whole, it is important to
remember that not all societies where democracy is
imposed or influenced by the US are countries
where peace, stability and respect for human
rights necessarily prevail.
Careful
attention must be paid to each country in
question, taking stock of its historical, social
and cultural developments. Democracy, as the world
is finding out after the end of the Cold War, can
come in many shapes and sizes. Supporting the
right course of development, tailoring US policies
to each particular country will be the best course
of action for the present and future American
administrations that seek to promote democracy and
the rule of law abroad.
Published with
permission of the Power and Interest News
Report, an analysis-based
publication that seeks to provide insight into
various conflicts, regions and points of interest
around the globe. All comments should be directed
to content@pinr.com |
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