Authors: Richard Nixon
The government of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin is not pursuing reforms as quickly as its most vocal critics in the West would like, but its efforts are not totally stalled. Privatization is being stepped up, as are efforts to cut spending and boost revenue. Those now guiding the reforms are more aware of the limitations imposed by Russia's sprawling, nascent democracy. Purists may see a larger state role in electrical power, transportation, and other key industries than they would wish. But rather than criticizing the Russian reforms for their shortcomings, international supporters of the historic transition to freedom in Russia should praise the government for accomplishing as much as it has. Muscovites love to argue about politics. Everyone from Duma deputies to hotel clerks has an idea of the road that Russia
should
follow. So do Western diplomats and journalists, who supply endless advice based on their intimate grasp of undergraduate microeconomics and their kindergarten grasp of Russian politics. Finding the one road that Russia
will
follow will take tough, principled, pragmatic political leadership. That leadership will be distinctly Russian and will therefore not correspond to Western ideals. As a result, it will be more likely to succeed.
The best news from Moscow in the spring of 1994 is that no politician with any chance of attaining the Presidency wants to go back down the communist road. As Russians know better than almost anyone else in the world, the road to communism and a command economy is a dead end. After seventy-five years of godless communism, communism is dead in Russia. God is alive.
It is time to emphasize more of the other positives. All of Russia's troops will have left Eastern Europe by the end of 1994. Russia signed a historic arms-reduction treaty with the United States to vastly reduce its nuclear arsenal. Yeltsin has drastically slashed the military budget. He has held the freest elections in Russian history. Russia is a very rich country, not a nuclear-armed Bangladesh. It is rich in natural resources. As Bruce Lincoln
has pointed out, Siberia has a sixth of the world's gold, a fifth of its platinum, a third of its iron, and a quarter of its timber. It is rich in human resources. Ninety percent of Russians are literate. Ninety-five percent of the workforce have the equivalent of a high school education. Russia has outstanding scientists and engineers. The first man in space was a Russian, not an American. Private enterprise is expanding far faster than anyone predicted, with over 30 percent of the Russian workforce now employed in the private sector. Over $1.6 billion in foreign capital has been invested in Russia since 1992.
The decline of the Russian economy began long before Yeltsin was elected President. The economy was terminally sick when Gorbachev came to power. He tried to treat a malignant growth with aspirin, beginning with political reforms rather than economic reformsâexactly the opposite of what the Chinese are doing and what the South Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chileans did.
The United States cannot afford to remain a bystander in the historic drama unfolding in the post-Soviet region. The great need is for a hardheaded evaluation of developments in the post-Soviet region and their relationship to crucial U.S. security and economic interests. The promotion of human rights and political freedom should be an important American objective. But the pursuit of freedom in the explosive Russian environment, with its unique traditions and circumstances, cannot be based on ideal Western notions that may have little to do with local circumstances.
We should not expect Russia to adopt American-style democracy. Serge Schmemann reported in
The New York Times
that the Russians are really looking for a third wayâa blend of the Soviet welfare state with the prosperity of capitalism and some “dollops” of Christianity. “Communism was a grand failure, but it is hard to overstate how deeply it inserted itself into the hearts and minds of the nation,” he wrote. “Russia is locked in a fateful race between the collapse of its inherited structure
and the growth of new ones; between nostalgia for the enforced security of its past and the promise of freedom only vaguely understood.”
Sergei Stankevich, a democratic member of the State Duma and a leading Russian political thinker, stresses that Russia was socially oriented long before communism and will therefore have a larger welfare system, closer to those of Germany and France, than the United States has. He pointed out that there are three models of capitalismâthe American, the European, and the Asian. Each works because it conforms to its society's principles and values. Russia will have to select elements from all models to get a successful, fully developed free market.
The United States has a vital interest in Russia's becoming a democratic nation, and not just because Americans are freedom-loving people. Although the historical record does not always support the conventional wisdom that democracies never fight one another, a democratic system of checks and balances makes it more difficult to launch aggressive wars. American public opinion would be better prepared to support an enduring strategic relationship between the United States and Russia if Russia was seen as a nation committed to freedom and human rights.
In advocating democracy in Russia, we must be realistic and patient. If we demand that the Russians become instant Jeffersonian democrats, we may end up with people in power who are not democrats at all. Russia has to find its own path to freedom. “A shock-therapy-style economic reform at home and a foreign policy that responds to all of Washington's preferences abroad,” Dimitri Simes has warned, “cannot in all probability be supported by a democratically elected Russian Parliament.”
The impressive showing by Zhirinovsky's party, as well as by the communists and their allies in the Agrarian Party, suggests widespread disaffection with the policies of the current Russian government. Forty-three percent of those who voted in the December 1993 parliamentary elections selected these parties, while only about 15 percent supported Russia's Choice, the
bloc most identified with radical economic reform. These results should not be overdramatized. For weeks after the Russian election last December, every bizarre utterance Zhirinovsky made was front-page news in the West, as though the 23 percent of the vote his party received represented a majority rather than a fringe. To put his showing in perspective, in 1968 in the United States, George Wallace received 14 percent of the presidential vote, and in 1992 Ross Perot received nearly 20 percent of the vote. And yet Wallace was never perceived to be anything more than a regional-protest candidate, and Perot's influence probably peaked in the election among Americans who refused to vote for Bill Clinton and yet wanted to vent their frustration about President Bush's handling of the economy.
Zhirinovsky's showing in Russia should be viewed in a similar context. Polls indicated that many voted for his party as a protest against Boris Yeltsin and the economy. To others, he represents Russia's lost empire, just as Wallace was to many southerners the pride of the Old South. When I saw him in 1994, he told me that his most effective issue has been his promise to crack down on the so-called Russian mafia. Zhirinovsky has even less chance to be elected President of Russia than Ross Perot has to be elected President of the United States. For us to rethink our entire Russia policy as a result of his party's limited success would be a major mistake. Centrist elements in Russian politics received a larger share of the vote in 1993 than Bill Clinton did in 1992. In view of the progress the Russian people have already made toward a free political system and a free economy, we should accentuate the positive rather than dwell obsessively on the negative in the unfolding Russian saga.
Still, the magnitude of the protest vote must be taken into account by Yeltsin if he is to succeed in governing democratically. And we should be sympathetic to his efforts to find the right balance between the requirements of economic reform and of politics. Confronted with fierce resistance from communist and nationalist reactionaries, the young and fragile Russian democracy
must be able to defend itself. Temporary detours from perfect constitutional norms may be necessary, and some emergency limits on political expression may be inevitable. The United States supported some temporary restrictions on political activities in post-Nazi Germany. It is shortsighted and hypocritical when liberal American commentators go ballistic every time the Yeltsin government, under extreme circumstances, makes even minimal departures from Western-style democratic procedures.
The military only reluctantly supported Yeltsin against the now-defunct Parliament. They did not want to become involved in politics or to spill Russian blood. Yeltsin is keenly aware that their loyalty cannot be taken for granted. As a result, he has gone a long way to cultivate the military. He doubled officers' pay in September 1993, promised more money for military housing, and also began to pay greater tribute to “patriotic” values. If Yeltsin gets involved in a confrontation with the new Parliament, his reliance on the military may become too great for comfort. Then the generals could become arbiters of power in Russia and demand a considerable price for their support.
Instead of developing a long-term policy with specific goals, the United States and the West have reacted crisis by crisis. Almost half a year elapsed after Yeltsin launched his economic reforms before the West announced a major aid program, and most of that aid has yet to be delivered. Ignoring the problems in Russia may have been convenient because of short-term domestic political considerations, but it was disastrous for our long-term security interests. President Clinton has justifiably been criticized for his administration's snafus in Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti. But he deserves credit from his critics as well as his supporters for recognizing the importance of the success of political and economic reform in Russia, for mobilizing Western support for economic aid, and for being the first major Western leader to speak up in support of Yeltsin during his conflict with the reactionary majority of the old Congress of People's Deputies.
Our aid should be targeted to Russia's emerging private business sector, not dying state-owned enterprises or government boondoggles. We should particularly channel more funds into loans to new small businesses, which will not only hire unemployed workers but also begin the essential accumulation of domestic capital. These principles too often have been honored only in the breach. Our efforts so far have been scattershot, uncoordinated, and ineffective. In 1994, not a single Russian leader had a positive word to say about the U.S. aid program. A recent Senate report said millions had been squandered. After World War II, the West created what became the Organization for Economic Development to oversee and coordinate the Marshall Plan. A similar organization should be created for Russia and the other former Soviet states. These mechanisms will assure the people of the West that their resources are not being wasted.
Aid from the United States and other Western governments has been supplemented by loans and grants from multilateral international organizations. Unfortunately, the International Monetary Fund has imposed draconian conditions on its loans. They are virtually impossible to meet. The approval in March 1994 of a $1.5 billion loan package was a classic example of too little, too late. Too often, IMF policies are based on normal conditions in a normal country. Russia's case must be considered on a separate basis because the penalties of economic failure there are infinitely higher than elsewhere. There has to be a unique Russian solution to the unique Russian problem. The IMF must act like an international lending organization, not an international loan shark. It must be more willing to loosen its conditionality to fit Russia's situation. If it does not do so, the United States should provide aid to Russia and other former Soviet states unilaterally rather than through international organizations, for which, as it is, we pick up over one third of the tab.
Encouraging Russia to implement economic reforms is one thing. Insisting on immediate adherence to the strict Western model is another matter altogether. Russia may have to pursue
less ambitious but more realistic reforms to develop its economy over the long run. We should not ask the Russians to destroy their economy in order to save it. Throughout history they have shown an extraordinary capacity for suffering. But even Russians cannot bear their hardships much longer, as the ultranationalists' and communists' strong showing in the recent elections warns us.
The administration is undoubtedly concerned that slowing down Russian reforms will only prolong Russia's agony. But ultimately the Russians themselves will determine the success or failure of their economic changes. The West may have better economists, but the Russians are better experts on the political situation in their own country and the best judges of how far and how fast reform can proceed without triggering a social explosion. The administration and the West in general would be wise to resist the temptation to try to save the Russians in spite of themselves.
We should also judge Russian reforms by their substantive content rather than according to the political interests of the Western favorites within the Russian government. The new corps of young, Westernized economists, with their good English and well-tailored suits, are easier for U.S. officials and international bankers to relate to than the more traditional industrial managers from the Russian provinces. But our experience in both postwar Germany and Japan indicates that the members of the old structures at least know how to make the trains run on time. Left to their own devices, they would take the train of reform in the wrong direction. Yet without them the train can easily be derailed and in the process discredit both the reforms and their Western supporters.
Russia's economy is straining under the burden of loans recklessly made to Gorbachev's communist regime by Western banks, governments, and international organizations. The entire $84 billion debt should be rescheduled over a period of at least fifteen years, as Yeltsin has requested. Most important, Russia
must not be forced to use aid to repay loans. Western banks that made the mistake of loaning billions to communist governments of the former Soviet Union should not be bailed out with Western aid to the democratic government of Russia. Without total debt rescheduling, no amount of aid will get Russia's economic development off the starting line.