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Pushing Ahead, Holding Back
| Article
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11818 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1994 |
3,368 Words |
| Author
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Carl Linden and Vladimir Zvyglianich
Carl Linden is professor of political science and
international affairs at the Institute for European, Russian
and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. Vladimir
Zvyglianich is adjunct professor of political science and area
studies at the institute. |
In the bloody clash of early October between Yeltsin and the Rutskoi-Khasbulatov parliamentary faction of Red-Browns, the struggle over reborn Russia's identity hung in the balance for a brief but precarious moment. If the Bolshevik-style coup attempt had succeeded, then Russia's turn to dictatorship, civil war, and war in the "near-abroad" of the former USSR aimed at a restoration of the empire would have been in the cards.
Instead, Boris Yeltsin delivered a counterblow that flattened his challengers. In a historic reversal of the Bolshevik scenario of 1917 he showed, once more, that he was not a Kerensky unable to curb the destroyers of Russia's new-won freedom.
With this second reactionary coup put down even more quickly than its predecessor in August 1991, Yeltsin has cleared a path, however narrow and precipitous, enabling him to press ahead with what might be called his second revolution. He ended the destabilizing executive-legislative dual-power hobbling of his drive for democratic and market reforms.
A similar situation of dual power had earlier been a key factor in bringing down the Gorbachev regime. Yeltsin is now attempting a real perestroika, not Gorbachevian but revolutionary in its essence--a bold attempt at founding a new polity for Russia through a new constitution and representative institutions given popular legitimacy through national elections. The revolutionary character of his drive for a refounding of Russia was underscored by his issuance of a land decree to privatize agriculture and reverse Bolshevik collectivization of the countryside.
Though the October outcome gave Yeltsin the moment and momentum to carry this design forward, the passage to a workable representative civil constitution remains troublesome and threatened by reefs and countercurrents. Not only is this made manifest by the October upheaval, but the difficulty is illuminated by a comparison of the progress of democratic reform so far in the two principal nations of the former USSR, Russia itself and its new neighboring nation and longtime former province, Ukraine.
What happens in the two countries, which constitute roughly two-thirds of the population of the former USSR, will largely determine what happens in the remaining countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Russia and Ukraine
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