Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993 TAG: 9309260047
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN COOPERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
Behind the humor lies widespread dismay about the progress the country has made toward democracy since the Soviet Union collapsed.
The question of whether Russia has made any real progress seemed inescapable when President Boris Yeltsin dissolved parliament last week and hard-line lawmakers tried to reenact his valiant stand against the Soviet coup of August 1991.
"We hope that what is happening now will bring us closer to democracy, but it would be silly to close our eyes to the fact that a dangerous precedent may be created: If you don't like parliament, shut it down," said Sergei Kovalyov, 63, a long-time human rights campaigner and Yeltsin supporter.
Kovalyov was among about 50 out of 242 lawmakers in the Supreme Soviet who welcomed Yeltsin's decree. He immediately left the parliament building. Still, he was disturbed by fellow reformers' readiness to use non-democratic means to achieve democratic ends.
"I'm afraid there is still no commitment to or understanding of democratic procedures in Russia," he said.
Some important things, of course, have changed. Russia has free elections and freer economic activity. It has much greater freedom of speech, press and religion - despite recent attempts by the parliament to reimpose indirect censorship and restrict the rights of foreign religious groups to proselytize.
But attempts to create an independent judiciary have disappointed. The 13-member Constitutional Court has given up any pretense of impartiality and its chairman, Valery Zorkin, has openly allied with Yeltsin's opponents. Parliament has stalled the introduction of jury trials in criminal cases.
Sergei Stankevich, a young Yeltsin political adviser, says the greatest success since 1991 has been "the absence of catastrophe.
"We should not expect immediate, grandiose results," he said. "The very fact that for two years we've had a democratic regime and we have not had any major social uprising, no wave of blood, no disaster - that's already a success."
Stankevich and many others around Yeltsin argue that for a decade or more, Russia will need a strong central leader to hold the country's far-flung regions together.
"Russia, by its very nature, involves compromises: between Muslim and Christian culture, between European and Asian history, between central authority and autonomous regions," Stankevich said.
"No parliament, alone, can balance those forces. We need a person who symbolizes the unity of the state, who can act as ultimate arbiter and peacemaker."
After 75 years of communism and centuries of czarism, Russians seem to have grown used to autocratic leaders. Yeltsin's critics say he fits the mold and still governs like a Communist Party boss - which he was for 30 years.
Rarely a week goes by without a presidential decree of some kind. Yeltsin's powerful but secretive Security Council has been compared to the former Communist Party Central Committee secretariat. Bureaucracy is as thick as ever, and both sides accuse each other of widespread corruption.
Alexander Rahr, a Russia analyst for the U.S. government-financed Radio Free Europe, says Yeltsin's opponents "do not play by democratic rules. All of them are thinking about how they can grab power."
Rahr also faults Yeltsin's camp for lack of commitment to distributing and balancing power.
"The basic character of a Western politician is to be prepared to listen to other views, to compromise. In Russia, it's different - they all tend to believe in one correct solution and they don't think that consensus will get them any further."
Dmitry Likhachev, Russia's most famous living historian, said the parliament was composed mainly of politicians "worried not about the good of the people, but about preserving their own salaries, apartments, privileges."
Yet he is optimistic.
"Democracy will not come quickly, but the people are acting well, the army has not gotten involved. Democracy will come to Russia," he said.
by CNB