From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 3/27/2006 9:21 AM
ILL, GREAT, UNLUCKY
By Ilya Milstein
Today’s Russia is living inside Yeltsin’s hallucination
 
Early in January, he appeared, unexpected to everybody, in Astana at the inauguration of President Nazarbayev. As he put it, he had been missing Nursultan Abishevich and “dreamed of talking my full with my old comrade-in-arms and friend.” It is not known if they succeeded in this but some newspeople remarked that Yeltsin could have explained to his old Kazakh friend the best way to abandon the presidency. However, it would have been tactless to tell such a story on the day Nazarbayev was celebrating one more inauguration.   

Yeltsin is almost never seen on TV these days. He rarely makes statements. Causes are known: age, illness, and pride. To leave is to leave. There is nothing to talk about.

So those infrequent public statements are all the more memorable.

For example, in September 2004, after Beslan, when his successor made use of the overall shock to secure a grip on one more bit of power and announce the abolition of gubernatorial elections. Russia’s first president addressed the second president through the Moscow News paper. At the time, the newspaper was still the property of Khodorkovsky, a fact that in itself added special weight to Yeltsin’s words.

The voice of History was not loud nor long. The hardest days, said Yeltsin. No words. The guilt and grief of us all. A chance to communicate my personal thoughts to Vladimir Vladimirovich. There followed a brief rendering of Putin’s own words, well known to everybody: We are a different country. We cannot afford to be lax, irresponsible and careless. Only in the very end, in the last paragraph, Yeltsin expressed two or three meaningful political points. And what points! In the imperative. “We shall not permit ourselves to give up the letter and, most importantly, the spirit of the Constitution that the nation adopted by a general referendum in 1993… Throttling freedoms means a victory for the terrorists… Stand shoulder to shoulder with all the civilized nations of the world.”

These remarks contain the basic idea of Yeltsin’s rather taciturn monologue, which the newspaper described as an interview. Boris Nikolayevich disagreed with Putin. Yeltsin was against the unconstitutional moves of Russia’s second president, against strangling freedom as basic policy. Against the anti-Western hysteria that took off in Russia’ political Olympus after Beslan. This was said clearly, definitely, and sternly.

No response followed. It seemed that, aside from the newspaper article, Yeltsin had no opportunity to express his thoughts to his successor. It was clear that Yeltsin’s advice and warnings would never be heeded by Putin. Rather a counter-effect would take place: his touchy successor would have a firmer belief that he was right and continue freezing Russia. As long as he lives, Boris Nikolayevich is doomed to watch a slow and steady destruction of his political achievements. He has to suffer it all in silence, with only an occasional and brief response. But if asked again about the year 1999, he will say again, as he has many times, “I do not regret selecting” Vladimir Vladimirovich. Indeed, what is there to regret. It’s too late.

Today the political weight of these two politicians is inversely proportional to their physical weights. Yeltsin is in oblivion. Putin did not lose his popularity after Beslan. The story is typically Russian: he who “came to give us freedom” is forgotten, if not cursed, while a petty tyrant is flapping his wings like a mechanical toy.

History is a different matter. It is ever fair posthumously. The very first president of Russia will be a victor forever, whatever mess may be made by the second president. Because the meaning of history is movement toward freedom, and in this Boris Nikolayevich has no equal. He is aware of this, so he is silent, dropping rare words when the pressure is too great, and then slipping again into muteness, inaction, and history. After Beslan, he was a loser again. But tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or some other day, he is bound to win. That is why even his silence – as long as his nerves, temperament, backstage arrangements and historic role permit – is eloquent.

Chechnya and other troubles

Boris Yeltsin turned 75 on February 1. It is a good round figure, a serious age. However, another date is politically more important for us. Slightly more than six years ago, he parted with his office and the Russian people. He resorted to his constitutional right to retire. The parting was unfortunate.

Maybe an inauspicious day was chosen, or the style was wrong, or maybe it could not have been otherwise. Or a still simpler explanation: the dear Russians and their president had plagued each other so much and waited for that day so long… In short, they parted hastily, at the doors, and hurried to the New Year’s table.

Yeltsin left inconspicuously.

He delivered a good speech. He looked dignified, he repented, he was sincere and tragic. It made little impression: the concerns were different. The uncertainty was confusing, irritating, and frightening. The second Chechen war was already in full swing, and the fear of being blown up in one’s own home was still great. Therefore, it was difficult to attune one’s thoughts to the solemnity of the occasion. To spot tears in the eyes of the unfortunate. To discern the quiet voice of history in a farewell text penned by speechwriters. To ponder on Russia and its fate, with or without Yeltsin.

What kind of Russia is that? It is a very good and permanently unlucky country. Permanent bad luck multiplied by harsh experience is characteristic of this nation and its society. As one looks back in time and ponders the post-perestroika past with elegiac composure, one comes to an unexpected conclusion: all in all, everything was done correctly. Not all, of course, but a lot. The way the nation embarked on in its attempt to climb out of the quagmire of socialism and exhausting perestroika was right. Conscientious analysis destroys any criticism from the left, right and aside that presumes that progress should have been slower, quicker or sideward. That criticism is idle talk and cheap intriguing.

There was no guilty party. There was nothing to do. Just bad luck.

The entire post-perestroika career of the first Russian president was a series of local victories that led to a full-scale defeat, tactical successes terminating in strategic loss.

That was the course of Yeltsin’s every clash with political rivals, the opposition and his enemies from the very first day.

The victory over Gorbachev required Yeltsin to dismantle the Soviet Union, reduced Russia to the rank of a second-rate power with a single stroke. To this day, the Kremlin is unable to recognize or accept this simple truth. The demise of the empire was not regrettable, goodbye and good riddance. But it seems that Yeltsin believed that when he dismissed the president of the USSR he took his place. Painful attacks against Friend Bill and humiliating negotiations with the IMF, the rattling of nuclear arms, nostalgia for credits – the psychology of pauperism and aggression developed under Gorbachev and grew after Yeltsin became king of the Kremlin, and the text of his farewell speech was polished up by Gorbachev’s aides… Also programmed in by December 1991 was the tragicomedy of the CIS, that rather strange organization of states that do not need each other and even fight with each other, as well as Moscow’s clumsy attempts at calling different independent leaders on the carpet. And Chechnya.

The first Chechnya war was worse than a mistake of Yeltsin. It was a crime, though a crime committed in circumstances that substantially extenuate his guilt. Maybe they even vindicate the president.

First, responsibility for the bloodshed in Ichkeria is almost equally shared by the Chechen authorities headed by late Dudayev. In fact, they placed their people in the way of Russian bullets and bombs. They may not have thought of sparing their own lives, but they should have thought of others.

Second, the Commander-in-Chief’s responsibility is shared equally with his generals. They shared a common fate, they were unlucky too, but they did their job honorably. They put 100,000 people to death and wrote off the armor they had sold in Germany as a Chechen loss. In a future trial for crimes against humanity, should it take place, their place will be in the dock, in the front row.

Third, there will be places for Yeltsin’s intelligent-looking men who created the legal basis for the Chechnya slaughter. For, indeed, the Constitution of Russia did not have a clear stipulation of the right of nations to secession, but, strictly speaking, mass assassinations were not mentioned in it at all. Here a lot of questions may arise in connection with his behind-the-scenes strategists. They were probably with the generals in pushing artless Boris to a blitzkrieg, to a small victorious war. They will be more answerable than some defense minister Grachev.

Fourth… Here comes a delicate matter. After the Russian troops’ parade on leaving Germany, the West took to talking indistinctly about the president’s “intellectual fatigue.” There, if you remember, intoxicated Boris Nikolayevich tried to lead an orchestra and to sing. Soon the word “intellect” disappeared completely from those applied to Yeltsin. One cannot get overfatigued that much.

What happened to Yeltsin is still a mystery. Age? Alcohol? The age mixed with alcohol? It should be stated outright that Yeltsin the politician, the father of Russian democracy, never pretended to be an intellectual giant, but that is not what we liked him for… From then on, until his retirement, something was wrong with him, something incomprehensible appeared in his speeches, behavior, gestures… It was painful to see.

Grief and puzzlement came to those who looked at Yeltsin’s malady without political gloating and mean voyeurism and remembered him sound of body and soul. Hearts ached as soon as the president appeared in public. What new folly was to come, what nonsense, what pas would he dance, what would he sing?… A grave, almost psychiatric disease was a factor in the bad luck and a greatest trial for Yeltsin, his unfortunate family and Russia. It was here probably fate’s cruelest blow.

Capitalism      from the Bolsheviks’ books

Nor did Yeltsin bring luck to his compatriots in the noble business of building capitalism in the post-communist country. It is senseless to look for culprits in this, too. A happy society, in which one man is a wolf to another man, was set up according to the best standards of the West and in the shortest possible time. Privatization on the double, freedom of speech, under-the-counter commerce, large-scale robbery of the working people, oligarchs: all this made a sudden appearance. They took it from the books of Freedman, Hayek, Weber, shabby Bolshevik books… I chanced to read that ex-party regional secretary Boris Yeltsin could not build any other kind of capitalism but the one that was studied in Lenin’s university of the millions. But those are all absurd jokes. He might have done it in the Czech Republic. But it had to be done in Russia.
The trouble was that a completely corrupt state had to be reformed, one rotten to the core, a state of brainy grafters and thieves. There were almost no other kinds up there, with exception of Gaidar and some members of his government, and there could not be. In the mid 1990s, Russians sadly watched the fast degeneration of the few democrats who had reached administrative positions. There were thieves in the Kremlin and in the regions, in short in almost every managerial position. That was the capitalism Yeltsin built. There is no sense in blaming him for it. Nothing different happens under any president, in any other system. Suffice it to recall Brezhnev’s or to look at Putin’s administration. The thieves cannot be blamed, either. What else do they know how to do?

Add to this omnipresent crime, the mobsters that had crept out from every crack under Gorbachev. They were not an achievement of Yeltsin, either. It was the heritage of the past, when half a nation was jailed, young men were building up muscle in militarized sports clubs and the most advanced ones helping the KGB to beat up on dissidents. That stratum of civilized collaborators learned democracy and freedom too. Mobsters, we learned, were inevitable. They were offered jointly with the uncensored press and liberal reforms. Their assigned part was to fill abstract democracy with a concrete context. They did it. They were not to blame, either.

This obvious Russian defect brought an additional shade of resentment into its relations with the West, where capitalism had been built long before and according to the rules. Yeltsin and his compatriots were developing a complex. How is it that things happen with them as they should but we are so different? We were living on credits, and every billion we got was a victory. In October 1993, we fought for the country, for Yeltsin, for Camdessus’ credits; in 1996, we voted against that awful Zyuganov. Russia’s best diplomats, journalists and political scientists warned the trustful West against stinginess, scared it with the “red menace,” communist revenge and fascist dictatorship. The credits received were plundered immediately, lost in Chechnya, and the West believed unwillingly, and consequently the Kremlin rotated the premiers. As soon as Yeltsin sacked prime minister Primakov, who scared the world with his Cheka past and an all-Russian Cheka future, the West gave the Russians money once again. That was a victory, and a new war was started. When the payoff dates coincided with the coming of Putin though, a miracle happened: oil and gas prices took a steep rise. But this appears to be an even bigger problem for Russia. The country’s temporary independence from the West made it possible for the new government to tighten the screws inside the country, just as during the years of stagnation, when easy money turned the heads of the Kremlin masters. We all know what the outcome of that was.

A victim of hallucinations

The last phase of Yeltsin’s political career, the selection of his successor, brought together all the ills of his era: the president’s disease, the default of 1998, failure of the economic reform, domination of the oligarchs, cooling relations with the West… Yeltsin quite rightly realized that, given the shape the unlucky country was in, it had to be passed into strong and reliable hands. Considerations less prosaic than his personal security and that of his family were troubling him. Painfully he thought of who was to continue his work and who would be luckier. Nemtsov seemed too curly-headed, Stepashin was too soft, and Chubais was not electable.

After hesitation, and having touched various chessmen, he opted for Putin. It was a logical choice and a calculated finale: bad luck had to be pursued to the very end. Since there had not been much luck with democracy and reforms, the successor had to play the part of Chekist who came to believe in democracy. He had to be the complete opposite of Yeltsin: young, sober, healthy, cynical and secretive, and capable of making use of the meanest feelings of his compatriots: fear, bitterness, vengefulness, etc. He would need the same range of brutal characteristics to destroy political opponents. It is no longer a secret that all the dirty pre-election technologies used against his rivals in 2000, were done in Putin’s name and for Putin’s glory. As were the mysterious explosions that provoked the second Chechen war. And the war itself.

In 1996, Yeltsin had to “lose” to become a president, to promise to make peace with the Chechens in Khasavyurt and to do so after the election victory. Putin, to win in 2000, had tirelessly “to wipe out in the john” a whole people. Such was the difference in what the victory was worth to Yeltsin and Putin. And the worth of Yeltsin and of Putin, of the state of the society then and now. See the difference.

It is really sad to think that the successor to those glorious deeds was selected by Yeltsin in illness. A person who did not apprehend realities with complete clarity. Whatever is going on now is to a degree the fruit of his political and personal illusions.

Today Russia lives inside his hallucinations.

Anyhow, Yeltsin’s last move was traditionally his last victory. A brilliant tactical victory over the opposition. A powerful stroke that threw the Kremlin’s numerous foes into confusion.

The election of June 2000 with communists and other rivals of Yeltsin’s successor, took place in March. Putin won it because his opposition no longer had time, strength, means or political will. Having announced his retirement, Yeltsin rolled out a red carpet to the throne to his successor. Again things went the way he wanted. He won again. As always, the society will have to deal with the consequences of his victory for many years to come.

An alliance of State Security and capital was developing before everyone’s eyes and even at that early phase it had little promise of solution to the country’s internal problems or better relations with the world. The Yeltsin era continued, but with the new president’s greater “toughness,” new favorites, new lobbyists, new elites, and old rushes between democracy and a police state. The era of Russia’s first president went on without him but with a cautious look back at him. This will pass with time, the new leader will gradually rid himself of the most odious Yeltsinite figures in his retinue and the most obnoxious oligarchs, whose TV channels helped shape the country’s civic society somehow, of civic society itself and of the feeling of gratitude to the man who brought him to the throne.

That will be Yeltsin’s last loss, the last occasion for his misfortune to laugh. And we will recall him, the luckless, awkward and ungainly czar from Russian folktales, and will suddenly realize that there has never been anyone on Russia’s throne better than that unlucky fellow, and there never will be.
http://www.newtimes.ru/eng/detail.asp?art_id=1588