My Russia: the Political Autobiography of Gennady Zyuganov

My Russia Photographssupplied by the authorfollow p. 6. My Russia The Political Autobiographyof Gennady Zyuganov

Editedby Vadim Medish

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published1997 by M.E. Sharpe

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Library of CongressCataIoging-in-PubJication Data

Ziuganov,G. A. (GennadiiAndreevich) My Russia:the political autobiographyof GennadyZyuganov / by GennadyA. Zyuganov: editedby Vadim Medish. p. cm. Articles andexcerpts from earlierbooks; also includesthe full text of his book, "Russiaand the contemporaryworld"-Editor's note. Includesindex. ISBN 1-56324-995-2(alk. paper) 1. Ziuganov,G. A. (GennadiiAndreevich) 2. Presidential candidates-Russia(Federation}-Biography. 3. Politicians-Russia (Federation)--Biography. 4. Russia(Federation)--Politics and government-1991-I. Ziuganov,G. A. (GennadiiAndreevich). Rossiiai sovrernennyimir. II. Title. DK51O.766.Z58A3 1997 947.086'092-

Editor'sNote vii A Letter from the Author xi Part 1. A Russian Communist: Who I Am and What I Believe 1 Part 2. The Drama of Power: From Perestroika to Catastrophe 23 Part3. Russia and the Contemporary World: Let Russia Be Russia 91 Part4. What Is To Be Done? The Communist Economic Program and Election Platform 139 Part5. A Battle Lost: Reflections on the 1996 Presidential Elections 169 Glossary 189 Chronology 193 Index 195 This page intentionally left blank Editor's Note

It hasbeen said that proponentsof capitalismtend to underestimatethe good in humannature while believersin socialism,on the other hand, overestimatethe samehuman quality. Does it follow that the former will enjoy lives full of pleasant surprises while the latter become embitteredby betrayalsand disappointments? GennadyAndreevich Zyuganov is a socialist, a communist,who, at age 52, has had his shareof disappointments.But, by all evidence,he has not been embitteredby this experience.Moreover, he has so far beenspared disillusionment in anotherarea of high risk--his idealiza- tion of the Russianpeople, Russian history, and just about everything elseRussian. Zyuganov'sability to combinesocialist ideas with Russiannationalism --the so-called"red-white" formula-deservesour attention,although it is by no meansunique or unprecedented.In fact, this formula, more by necessitythan by choice, was at the base of the Soviet system, enablingit to last as long as it did. Zyuganov'snew version of the old recipe tries to make virtue out of necessityand is, at leastfor the time being, more white and lessred. Zyuganov'spolitical autobiographytells the story of how he arrived at this position. As recountedhere, it consistsof five main parts. The first containsa brief autobiographicalsketch and some essays

vii viii EDITOR'S NOTE on selectedtopics that sum up Zyuganov'scredo. This selectionin- cludes an article that originally appearedin The New York Times and dealswith American-Russianrelations. The second part contains articles and excerpts, selectedby Zyuganov,from his book The Drama ofPower (1993). It will help the reader to understandhow he reacted to Mikhail Gorbachev'sperestroika, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Boris Yeltsin's initial reforms, and how his thinking on other subjectsevolved during those years. The third part presentsin full Zyuganov'smore recentbook, Russia and the ContemporaryWorld, publishedin Russiain 1995. This book is the expressionof Zyuganov'sthoughts and ideas during the years immediately prior to the presidential elections in Russia (June-July 1996), when he successfullybuilt his coalition of "National Patriotic Forces."Formed around Zyuganov's Communist Party of the Russian Federation(CPRF), this movementincludes more than 200 large and small political groups. Among the former are the Agrarian Party and groups led by Nikolai Ryzhkov, Alexander Rutskoi, Stanislav Gov- orukhin, and Viktor Anpilov, all of whom supportedZyuganov in the 1996presidential elections. Today Zyuganov is concurrentlychairman of both the Communist Party and the "National Patriotic" oppositionmovement. He is also the leaderof the large communistfaction in Russia'sparliament, the State Duma. The fourth part consistsof two importantpresidential election cam- paign documentswritten by Zyuganov-hiseconomic program and his election platform. The two statementspropose specific measuresto pull Russiaout of socioeconomiccrisis. The fifth part of the book covers Zyuganov'sreaction to the outcome of the presidentialelection. It is not a postmortem.Zyuganov's "snowball" theory, basedon the ever-growingnumbers of ballots cast for him over the past three years, lends credibility to his optimistic predictionsabout his political prospects.Not surprisingly, Zyuganov does not think much of anothertheory of Russia'spossible political future that-usingthe metaphorof a "drying-up well"-arguesthat projecteddemographic changes bode ill for the strength of the red- white voting bloc over the next few years. Which of the two scenariosRussia is more likely to follow is difficult to predict at this time. It is an equation with many unknowns. EDITOR'S NOTE ix

Prominent among them are the state of the economy and of Boris Yeltsin's health. We know that getting reelectedtook a great deal of effort on the part of the enfeebledYeltsin. One might wonderwhether any of Yeltsin's "democratic"heirs-apparent could match this perfor- mance.This book by Zyuganovoffers readersan opportunityto assess anotherof the playersin Russia'songoing political drama,one who is still undeniablya potentialsuccessor to the top position in the Kremlin.

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Is GennadyZyuganov a communist,a socialist, or a social democrat? Shouldhis own word on the subjectserve as a definitive answer?And how much does such a self-designationreally matter? After all, the systemthat existed in the Soviet Union was officially called "socialism" (not "communism"), and for the first twenty years of its existence, Lenin's party included the words "social-democratic"in its name.Zyuganov calls himselfa communist,but he also insists that he standsfor (1) religious freedom,(2) democraticpolitical pluralism, and (3) regulatedprivate property and business.A dozenyears ago, a So- viet citizen professingjust one of these beliefs would have been promptly expelledfrom the CommunistParty and could have faced a muchworse fate. It is also an openquestion whether Zyuganov wants to move Russia forward or backward.This book does shedsome light on the subject, but it is not necessarilya true compass.If Russia is to be moved forward, Zyuganov insists that this must be done strictly on Russian terms. He does not equatemodernization with Westernization,just as he rejects the notion that there was nothing positive in Russia'spast, both before and during the Soviet era. If Russiais to be moved backward, how far back would this movementgo? Zyuganov writes ap- provingly of severalphases of Soviet history, including the period of Lenin's New Economic Policy in the 1920s and the early years of Gorbachev'sperestroika. His role model as a leaderis Lenin. Zyuganov, of course, considersthe demise of the Soviet Union a major tragedy.He offers three theoriesof why it happened.The ''natural- death" scenario refers to the accumulatedfailures of an obsolete empire over several years. The "assisted-suicide"scenario puts the blame on the inept and vain leadersof the perestroikaera. And the "assassination-plot"scenario darkly hints at overseasconspirators x EDITOR'S NOTE helpedby inside "agentsof influence." Zyuganov'sinnate realismsup- ports the first two scenarios,but his flare for political dramaticsnudges him towardthe last one. In international relations, Zyuganov rejects America's claims to global hegemonyand its efforts to promote a "new world order." He wants Russia-orrather, a voluntarily reconstitutedversion of the Soviet Union-to act as the geopolitical centerin Eurasia,one of the componentsof a multipolar world. In a sense,he wants to restore"a Russiathat can say no."

* * *

Almost the entire text of Zyuganov'sself-described political autobiography, including his two books, is a compendiumof articles, inter- views, and speeches.At times this imparts to the text a journalistic flavor of quick reaction to unfolding events or snatchesfrom a dialogue. At the author'srequest, special care has beentaken to preserve in translationthe author'sown style of expressionand, more important, his way of thinking and reasoning. To the extent that this is deemednecessary, endnotes and brief editor'scomments are provided to clarify the historical background.The former are locatedat the end of each part, and the latter are enclosedin brackets in the text. A glossary of Russianterms and a brief chronology of events are also providedat the end of the book.

Vadim Medish ProfessorEmeritus AmericanUniversity Washington,DC A Letter from the Author

Dear AmericanReaders:

Russiaand America must know each other better. This, I believe, will guaranteethat the cold-war era can neverreturn. We are two great countries,two greatpeoples. We haveour own historical destinies,our own cultures, our own national values. We both have much to be proud of. So let us strengthenour dialoguethrough various channels-- culture, science,economics, and politics--not suppressingor opposing but rathercomplementing and enriching each other. Our paths of developmentmay differ. Historically, each of our countrieshas found its own solutions by taking into accountthe specific featuresof the nationalpsychology of its peopleand the peculiari- ties of its self-awarenessand culture. But that should not standin the way of our coming closertogether. During centuriesof their existence,the peoplesof Russiahave created their specialworld--the world of Russiancivilization. Since the long-ago times of paganism,we have been cultivating our land, har- vesting grain, planting gardens,building temples. The Russianfields

xi xii A LEDER FROM THE AUTHOR

have nourished our warriors, builders, artists, and cosmonauts.We have gatheredour peopleinto one nation, built our own statehood,and servedas a shield protectingEurope from the devastatinginvasions of barbarians.We developedour communalprinciples of life becausewe could not have survivedotherwise in the vast Eurasianexpanse and the severenorthern climate. Today, an Orthodox church and a spaceship are the symbolsof the Russiandream. You have gone your own way, relying on your own religions and your own national ideasand values. But we also have importantthings in common: the vast size and the multiethnic complexionof our countries.Russian talents have left their deep marks in your country. Among them were television inventor Vladimir Zworykin and helicopterdesigner Igor Sikorski. There were likewise Americans who came to Russia to help us in our difficult times, including the remarkableAmerican journalist John Reed, whose remains rest in the Kremlin wall. America admires Dostoevskyand Tolstoy, Stanislavskyand Chekhov, and my generationof Russian readersis in debt to Hemingway,Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Updike. At the thresholdof the third millennium, both of our countrieslook to the future. This is not the time for mutual chargesdirected against eachother for pasttransgressions, whether the annihilationof the Indi- ans and the slave trade or the destruction of the peasantryand the GULAG. We should be frank and fair with each other. It would be unjust to equatetoday's Americans with slavetraders and slaveowners solely becauseof their history. But it would be just as unforgivableto label contemporaryRussian communists as former prison guards.The history of any nation cannotbe purgedof even its most tragic pages. We must learn from history and use its experiencefor our advance- menttoward a betterfuture. Both America and Russiahave gone through unique historical experiences.Our countriesboth lived throughdestructive civil wars andyet managedto stay togetheras unified nationsand, in time, to becomethe world's two greatpowers. This distinction puts a specialresponsibility on us to act wisely and with restraint. There is nothing that really divides us----no disputedterritories or religious or ethnic conflicts. In historical terms,both of our nationsare young. Both are full of energy, strength, and vitality. Together, we have enormousscientific, technical,and cultural potential. We should not fight but cooperateand, at the sametime, peacefullycompete with A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR xiii eachother. As history teachesus, such competitionserves as a powerful stimulus for global development.It also assureshumankind ofhav- ing a continuedchoice of alternatives. The world doesnot needan "iron curtain," but this doesnot meanthat the whole world should be exactly the same. We believe that it was a serious mistake to try to impose the Soviet model of developmenton certaincountries of Europeand Asia. Every country shouldbe allowed to determineits own path of development,borrowing or rejecting the experienceof others. In the past, our two countriesborrowed and learned from eachother, and they shouldcontinue to do so in the future. But at the same time, let Russia be Russia and let America be America. Ours is a big and diverse world. We should not try to destroy and level this diversity; rather, we should ensure,through toler- ance and compromise,that diverse and unique civilizations coexist peacefullywith eachother. Today, Russia finds itself in a complex economic situation. Our country is going through a difficult phaseof history. We communists opposethe ruling regime in Russiabecause we disagreewith its course of socioeconomicreforms. The main reasonfor our disagreementis our belief that this courseof reforms either underplaysor completely ignoresRussia's national specific features,depending instead on West- ern models. We supportreforms, but we believe that to succeedthey mustbe basedon Russia'sown historical experienceand traditions. There are many things in America that I like. They range from American patriotismto American efficiency. I appreciateyour respect for your own unique history, your culture, and the importanceof self- reliance. And I ask you to be just as open-mindedin your opinions about my native country-Russia--bylearning more about it. I would like to help you. This book, which I offer to American readers,is a step in that direction. The book explains the current situation in Russia and our struggleto pull the country out of its crisis, revive its spirit, and heal its wounds. The book also talks about the new CommunistParty of the RussianFederation and abouthow this party, as part of a broadpopular opposition,is striving to expediteRussia's recovery.

GennadyZyuganov Moscow August 18, 1996 This page intentionally left blank My Russia This page intentionally left blank Part 1

A Russian Communist

Who I Am and What I Believe

This material was written and publishedbetween late 1993 and the presidentialelections of Jun~July 1996. Includedhere are two major components:Zyuganov's autobiographical sketch (J 996) and fifteen topical commentariescompiled from different publishedsources, including an op-ed articlefrom The New York Times. Together, these essayssummarize Zyuganov's "red-white" credo, which combinesso- cialist ideas and Russiannationalism. According to Zyuganov, Rus- sians have always associatedsocialism with traditional conceptsof communitythat are deeplyrooted in their uniquenational mentality.

-V.M. This page intentionally left blank About Myself I am Russianby blood and spirit and love my Native Land. I was born in 1944 in a place that has a specialmeaning for Russia. When a roostercrows in our village of Mymrino, he can be heardin three adjacentregions: our own Orel Region and the neighboringre- gions of Briansk and Kaluga. This juncture lies on the border of the steppeand the forest betweenthe Oka and Volga Rivers, which is the birthplaceof the Russiannation. I come from a family that has producedthree generationsof teachers. Although somefamily memberswere andothers were not communists, they all shared these two characteristics:working hard from morning until eveningand, almostwithout exception,fighting for their country. Many did not return from the last big war. My father, Andrei, lost his leg in the battle for Sevastopol. I had my first job while still in high school, and, after graduating with distinction, I worked for a year in my school as a teachingassis- tant. Then my village collective sentme to a teacher'scollege in Orel. I considerteaching to be a professionworthy of respectand esteem.In my family virtually everyoneteaches, either in school orat the college level. Together,we could educatea young personunder one roof, so to speak.Among us are mathematicians,physicists, literary scholars,and historians.By the way, my own first teacherwas my mother, Marfa, who taught elementaryschool for forty years. I rememberthat in my four years as her pupil I only once called her "mother" in class; she was strict anddemanding. During my sophomoreyear in college,I was draftedinto the army. I served in a radiation and biochemical reconnaissanceunit (in East Germany),which was not somethingto be envied. Of my three years of military service, one year was spent wearing a gas mask and a protective rubber suit; I burned three pairs of boots saturatedwith radiation. In 1966, while servingin the army, I joined the CommunistParty of the Soviet Union (CPSU), believing that the communistidea, which is over two thousandyears old, most profoundly expressespeople's needsand hopes.It is in accordwith the Russiantraditions of commu- nality and collectivism, which meet the fundamentalinterests of my country. Upon being dischargedfrom the military, I completedmy studiesin

3 4 A RUSSIAN COMMUNIST physics and mathematicsat Orel Teacher'sCollege, went on to do graduatework at the Academy of Social Sciencesin Moscow, and defendedmy dissertationin philosophy.This enabledme later to teach highermathematics and philosophy at the collegelevel. I havebeen married to my wife, Nadezhda,for over thirty years.We havetwo grown-upchildren-a son, Andrei, anda daughter,Tatiana- both of whom are married and are pursuingtheir professionalcareers. We havetwo grandsons,Leonid and Mikhail. At this time, threegener- ations of our family, including my widowed mother, our daughter,and her husband,share one apartmentin Moscow. As for my careerin the Party apparatus,I tried my hand at virtually every single rung of the CPSU Central Committeeon Old Squarein Moscow. As part of my duties there, I traveled extensivelyover the entire country, from its westernborders to Sakhalin Island and from the Baltic Seato Central Asia. During my last ten years at the Central Committee, as one of the handful of party officials assignedto the special"War ContingencyFile," I personallyinvestigated every social upheavalin the country, thus gaining first-hand experiencein dealing with emergingmajor problems. In my capacity as a deputy chief of the CPSU Ideological Depart- ment working on Russianproblems, I actively supportedthe idea of creating a separateRussian Communist Party as a party that would protectRussia's national state interests within the CPSU. This idea was opposedby Mikhail Gorbachevand his crew, who at that time, rather than debateour arguments,mounted a vicious propagandacampaign trying to discreditme and otherRussian communist leaders. I I have much to repent.First of all, I blamemyself for not finding the time and the opportunity to exposefully the mafia-like political structure of the CPSU, at the very top level of which I worked. I havemuch to repentbecause already in the late 1980smy colleaguesand I working on Central Asia had evidencethat a blood bath, which could have cost some 100,000lives, was in the making in Tajikistan.2 By the same token, my colleaguesand I who were involved with the Caucasus warnedthe Georgianleadership and othersthat if their uncheckedrush for sovereigntywere to spill over the borders, they would face the samesituation that had existedsome two hundredyears earlier, before the treaty that voluntarily joined the area with Russia.3 I also worked on the issueof rising crime in the country, unsuccessfullytrying to put it on the agendaof the Politburo. The top political leaderslikewise WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 5 preferrednot to deal with problemsin the Armed Forcesand with the situation in the Baltics. All warning signals, like mine, were swept underthe rug and ignored. As a communist who joined the Party for ideological reasons,I wholeheartedlywelcomed perestroika and did my best to expediteits advent.The Soviet model of socialismwas in urgentneed of a qualita- tive change.But during the past decadeour country has been twice deceivedand betrayed:first by Mikhail Gorbachevand his immediate cohorts, who, while promising neededreforms, destroyedthe Soviet Union and all its structures;and then by Boris Yeltsin, who finished the job under the cover of idle talk about "democracy"and a "market economy." It was againstthis tragic backgroundthat I becameone of the leaders of the opposition. Early in 1996, I acceptedthe nominationto run for the presidencyof Russiaas the candidateof the National Patriotic coalition, which includesthe CommunistParty of the RussianFedera- tion (CPRF). Unfortunately,I did not win, althoughapproximately 30 million people-morethan 40 percentof thosewho approximately vote~ast their ballots for me. At present, I serve concurrently as chairman of the Communist Party of the RussianFederation and of the National Patriotic Union "Russia,"which is the new nameof our united oppositionmovement. I am also the leaderof the CPRF faction in the StateDuma.

About Socialism The entire history of humankindin the twentiethcentury demonstrates that we shouldmove forward to socialism.And in doing so, we should not discard the positive experienceof the past but rather thoroughly analyzeit and adoptwhat was good in it. The goal of a society of social fairness emergedlong before Marx- ism, and the realizationof that ideal has enlistedfollowers of different ideologies,from Christian socialiststo anarchists.The socialism that was built in the USSRand a numberof other countrieswas, of course, far from perfect. But it exhibited some historic achievements.The socialistsystem enabled us to createa powerful statewith a developed national economy.We were the first to venture into the cosmos.Our culture reachedunprecedented heights. We were justly proud of our 6 A6 A RUSSIAN COMMUNIST achievementsin science,theater, film, education,music, ballet, literature, and the visual arts. Much was done to develop physical culture, sports,and folk arts. Every citizen of the USSRhad the right to work, free educationand medical care, and a securechildhood and old age. Appropriatebudgetary allocations subsidized housing and provided for the needsof children. Peoplewere sureof their tomorrow. A workable alternativeto capitalismwas createdin our own country and in other socialist countries.This was the concretehistorical justification of the socialistpath of development. Not even our ideological opponentscan understandwhy we our- selvesdestroyed that which in many ways was working so well. Today we are calling for a renovatedsocialism free of deformities and fatal errors and mindful of everythingmodem and progressivethat humankind has created.

Why Did Soviet Socialism Fail? I believe that our people have never rejected socialism. They were simply deceived by demagogueryand false promises. Remember Gorbachev'sand Yakovlev's vocabulary during the past ten years?4 They usedto say "More democracy--moresocialism," "For socialism with a human, democraticface," "Perestroikais continuing what was started by the Great October Revolution," "Reforms are taking Russia'ssocialism to the level of modem civilization," and so forth. Everything that was being done in the name of theseand similar slo- ganswas taken by the people at large to meannot the destructionbut the improvementof socialism.After all, theseslogans were proclaimed by personscommanding the respectof the Party and the nation. They were the highest-rankingleaders in the country, whose honesty was takenfor granted. A majority of the people,under the stressof events,mistook popu- list demagogueryfor the expressionof national consensus.By the mid-1980s, there was much disappointmentwith the slow economic developmentand the stiffening bureaucratizationof the Party and the state administration. Millions of citizens felt alienatedfrom state affairs becausethe Party monopolizedpower and minimizedthe role of the soviets[elected councils]. It is clear now that a decisiverole in the destructionof the country On active military duty in East Germany.

Zyuganov(left) with his graduatingclass. In younger days.

A visit to Red Square. From left: uncle, father, son Andrei, mother, Zyuganov (man at right unidentified). Dancingwith daughterTatiana.

At the summerhouse. Zyuganov helping his daughter and his mother at the kitchen table.

A picnic. With daughterTatiana, wife Nadezhda,and cat (Basil). The candidate. WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 7 was playedby a subjectivefactor-the weakness and incompetenceof the leadersthen in power. Thosepeople displayed personal cowardice, which later turnedthem into traitors and led to a degenerationof a part of the ruling elite. It is widely agreedthat the crisis, causedby a power struggleat the top, was cleverly used by foreign intelligence servicesand centersof ideologicalwarfare. Objective reasonscontributed to the defeatof socialism. Socialism had failed to realize its full potential in such important areasas labor productivity, the well-being of averageworkers, and the involvement of broadmasses of the peoplein the creativeprocess. Russia had been drawn into an exhaustingarms race, and, in trying to catchup econom- ically with the West, we fell into imitating Westernvalues and observ- ing Westernpriorities.

On Reforms The radical reformsstarted in January1992 5 havebrought catastrophic results. Today it is clear that the real goal of the "reformers" was the destructionof Russia'seconomy under the slogan "The state must be removedfrom managingthe national economy."The country has been deeply damagedby the principle that calls for maximum exports of raw materials and semifinished goods and encouragesunlimited imports of food andindustrial products. As a result of this grave distortion, gross domesticoutput has declined by 40 percent. The production base of the economy and the network of economicties have both beenundermined. Enterprises are forced to reducethe volume of productionradically becauseof declin- ing ordersand purchases, shrinking investments,unrealistic prices, and their diminishing ability to compete. The foundationof our agriculturehas beenvirtually destroyed.Ag- ricultural productionhas beendecreased by one-third. Our country has lost its food security and becomedependent on foreign imports: 54 percentof the food consumedin Russia(70 percentin its urban centers) comesfrom abroad. Forced privatization was conductedwithout regard for laws and elementaryfairness. As a consequence,the rights of the new owners havenot beenduly legalized.Nor havethese rights beenmorally justi- 8 A6 A RUSSIAN COMMUNIST fied in the eyes of society. A laceratingsocial division has split our people into the super-richand the very poor; the middle class, which usedto ensuresocial stability, hasdisappeared. Official documentsshow that 500 of Russia'slargest industrial enterprises,realistically valued at no less than 200 billion U.S. dollars, were privatizedand sold for about7.2 billion U.S. dollars by the end of the first stageof privatization.These bargains ended up in the handsof foreign companiesor their front structures[surrogates]. Reform is a natural condition of society. Every society carries out reforms continuously.At this time, in the processof reforming our politics, we should fmd a balanceamong the branchesof power and make sure that the governmentas a whole servesthe people. In the economic sphere,we must find the best, most appropriateproportions of state,collective-cooperative(share) ownership, and private forms of property. Reforms must ensurean opportunity to createfreely. Since truth is born out of disputes,reforms must securefreedom for political competition within the boundsof strict adherenceto the law and to the exclu- sion of attemptsto underminethe social, spiritual,and moral principles of our life. At the sametime, the basic values,obligatory for all, must be clearly defined.

On Democracy Today'sso-called democracy [in Russia] amountsto the right of citi- zensand partiesto saywhat they pleaseand the government'sright not to listen. But with real democracy,state bodies must be responsibleto the people. The presidentand the governmentare not responsiblebe- causenothing controls them, and the parliamentis neitherresponsible nor accountable----becauseit has no rights. We must amendthe Constitutionand move toward a political system in which the presidentis not a "tsar" or "father of the nation" but the highestofficial in the service of society, under the control of and accountableto the people'selected representatives. Today the presidentis not subjectto any control and not accountable to anybody. The tsars were at least afraid of God, but Yeltsin is not afraid evenof God. He plays the role of a judge, a prosecutor,and a benefactor.He appoints and fires anyonehe pleases,and he is not held liable for anything. WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 9

The governmentis not controlled by the legislature.Real power is concentratedin the handsof those aroundYeltsin. This is the "second government,"which issuesdecrees, writes directives,engages in political manupulations,and arbitrarily disbands,forbids, or usesforce. No minister shouldbe appointedwithout the approvalof the legislative branch. The parliamentand deputiesmust be held accountableto the electorate.All bodies,from the bottomto the top, must be regularly elected.Freedom plus justiceconstitutes humanism.

On a Free Market and Private Property We advocateeffective protectionof the economynow in existencein Russia.We are for an economyin which thereis a placefor a powerful state sector, collective property, and private property, including that which legally belongsto foreign investors. Private property is completely acceptablein faITl1ing, services, trade, small and medium-sizedproduction, and some other business undertakings. We shouldhave a positive attitudetoward entrepreneurship.But we shouldremember that only 5-7 percentof the populationis inclined to engagein their own business.The majority want to continueto work as office clerks, doctors and nurses,teachers, and policemen,just as before. It would not do to pushthem all out into the streetand force them to sell cigarettes. The term "market economy"has beenseriously compromised.We should insteadbe thinking about a mixed economydeveloped in ways that are mostacceptable to our people and protectedby just and rea- sonablelaws. We guaranteethe inviolability of work-earnedprivate propertycre- ated by honestpersonal labor or the labor of one'sfamily. We should use legal meansagainst the growth of any kind of monopoly or of otherways of exploiting andsubordinating citizens.

Church and Religion Russianculture in generaland the Orthodox Churchin particularare currently the targets of constant attacks by the opponentsof our statehood. lOA RUSSIAN COMMUNIST

Even Stalin, having understoodthe deep roots of our statehood, rehabilitatedthe church and once even raised a toast to it. But the ideological hostility to religion persisted. It is no accident that Khrushchev,the precursorof perestroika,struck a heavy blow against both folk peasantculture and the OrthodoxChurch. We deeply respectthe faith of our ancestors.In the new Program and Rules [the founding documentsof the Communist Party of the Russian Federation], we have deleted all antireligious notions and spelledout that religious convictionsare the private businessof every person. Our current rulers superficially honor the church and show them- selveson televisionstanding in churchesand holding candles.But take a look at their actual policy. So why did our current governmentnot confirm the bill limiting the activities of foreign religious sects?Why did they receive leaders of the Aum Shinrikyo sect and the Moon [Universal] Church? Why do they patronize Scientology?Who has allowed all kinds of foreign preachersto use our television?The Or- thodox Churchis underan intenseoffensive by theseforeign religions, which clearly enjoy the supportof the currentregime. It is very important that the religious cultures of the Russian and other peoplesof our country be able to reasserttheir legitimate rights. In this way, the historical truth and the historical memoryof the people are restored.Regardless of whetherthey adhereto religious or materi- alist convictions, most people now recognize the positive role of churches,monasteries, nunneries, and religious leadersin the development of culture and in the disseminationof literacy, enlightenment, music, andthe visual arts. I joined the CommunistParty while serving in the Soviet army as a young man. At a more matureage, I readthe Bible and the Koran and discoveredthat socialistethics and religious ethicshave many things in common. The Orthodox Church, by tradition, occupiesa specialplace in the history of Russia. More than once, our statehoodhas been reborn thanks to its support. The renovatedCommunist Party of Russia has rejectedatheism as a conditionof membership. A politician cannotunderstand Russia if he doesnot understandthe central role of religion in the processof developingand establishing our statehoodand culture. Such a politician would not be able to lead our country. By baptizing Russiaa millennium ago, the grand prince WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 11

St. Vladimir laid the foundation of our unity. Without this, Rus would not have overcomethe Tatar invasion or survived the Time of Trou- bles. During the GreatPatriotic War, the OrthodoxChurch called upon the people to defend our native land. All our chronicles, historical works, and spiritual music originatedin the monasteries.

On Culture If art calls for kindness,justice, freedom, and beauty as it lifts one's spirits-----this is the highest kind of politics. And for our people the questionof freedomand justice is eternal.Art servesthese goals. But freedom without justice equalssocial Darwinism, when predatorsde- vour all others, just as justice without freedom can lead to a brutal leveling in which different talents are forced to fit a single mold. Artists must be free, but they also must be patriotic. I do not believe that an artist can remain outsidepolitics when Russiais on the edgeof an abyss. Literature in Russiahas never beenapolitical. If a writer gets tired of being responsiblefor the world, he capitulatesand betrayshis calling. This is what the current crisis in Russia is all about. In Russia, literaturehas always been more importantthan it hasin Europe. Without financial protection,our native culture will yield to a com- mercial and implantedWestern culture. Our ballet, opera,and films are being pushedout of the world's art arena.Without correctingthis, we could graduallydeprive ourselves of our historical-culturalfoundations. Commercializationof real art is impossible.Only massculture can be financially profitable. Basic science,the arts, museums,theaters, libraries, and other creative organizationsmust be partly or totally supportedby the state. Television is today the most important channel for influencing minds, but it is currently pouring out a streamof vulgaritiespromoting contemptfor culture. We are shown three main scenarios:money and moneygames, endless murders and violence,and pornography.I am in favor of setting up a public council for television consistingof noted scholars,educators, writers, andpriests. The worst kinds of Westernproducts of culture are being brought into our society on a massscale. The commercializationof our culture degradesand reducesthe national cultural space and createsinside 12 A RUSSIAN COMMUNIST

Russiansociety an atmospherein which the personwith more money, more capital, setsthe tone. We face a progressive"Americanization" of our culture, which is already dangerouslydeprived of national spirit. Most of our movie theatersshow American films, predominantlycontaining pornography andviolence. The currentrulers have eliminatedthe statefinancing of our culture. Expenditureson culture comprise0.3-0.4 percentof the annual bud- get. Our nationalpublishing business is closeto bankruptcy.

About History Even in the Soviet era, I never agreedthat we had no history before 1917. I did not agreewith the motto "We all were born in October." And, by the sametoken now, I do not agreethat we had a period of anti-history. History and culture should be treatedas continuing entities, the bridgesfrom one epochto the next. You cannotstart your life anew from some given day of your choice. The same is true about nations. Our nation has one history. It should be studiedrather than cursed. You cannotthrow out Peterthe Great,or Alexanderthe Third, who did so much for Russia,or Lenin, or Stalin. We have one Russia, and all those who are ready to defend its interestsshould find their placeshere. But Russia'sinterests definitely include the interests of its history of the twentieth century and its culture of the twentieth century. All of it. If you do not respectthe history of your fathers, your children, likewise, will treat you with contempt. The twentieth century has been a complicatedepoch for Russia. We have had so much war, from the Russo-JapaneseWar [1904-5] to the Great Patriotic War [1941--45]. Each generationwent through its own war. We startedthe century with a great tragedy,and we are closeto finishing it with another.Our country is on the edgeof an abyss.It is losing its uniquenessand becominga semicolony.We mustprevent this by all meanspossible. If we look at our thousand-year-Ionghistory, it becomesclear that the moral-ethical principles of Orthodox Christianity and socialist ideascoincide in many respects.There have beentwo core tendencies that have shapedworld development.One is private-egoistical,and the WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 13 other is social-collectivistic.The private-egoisticaltendency has been expressedvariously through fascism and wars, betweengenerations and across continents. At the beginning of our century, becauseof terrible social contradictions,revolutionary cataclysmsshook Russia and othercountries. In the fall of 1929, a crisis in Americaput millions out of work and onto the streets.Eventually, PresidentRoosevelt gath- eredthe fifty peoplewho controlledall the capital in America and told them: "Give me 40 percentof your income,and I will usethe moneyto creatework programsfor the unemployed,retrain those who can be helped,and changethe profiles of our obsoleteindustrial plants. Other- wise, America will go the way of Russiain 1917." All of them agreed to give him the neededmoney. The essenceof his reforms was to combine the harsh private-egoisticalform with the socio-collective form of life. Without everusing the word, he socializedAmerican life. All of this is history from which we shouldlearn.

On Science and Education The antipeopleregime is driving our country's scienceinto an early grave. The reasonfor this is that foreign capital, which is out to get our natural wealth, can reach its goal only by first technologicallyenslav- ing Russiaand destroyingour scienceand advancedtechnologies. The humiliation of our national dignity and threatsare usedas instruments to put pressureon our scientific institutions. From time to time, small concessionsand promises are made to force the current regime to cooperatein this process.This cooperationleads to further retreatson the part of our pro-Westernleaders. Everywhereelse in the world, science,especially basic science,is supportedby the government.Our current regime could not do this even if it wantedto, becauseRussia's state treasuryis almost empty due to the negligentdestruction of the productionsector of our economy. Our country'sscience will improve only when the entire national economy of Russia improves. However, in the meantime,we must urgentlyadopt serious multilevel measures. First, we should heed the advice of our scientistsconcerning the neededstructural changes for an optimal allocation of resourcesto the Russian Academy of Sciences,universities, researchinstitutes, and designbureaus. 14 A RUSSIAN COMMUNIST

Second,our unique institutions----academicand scientific "towns," scientific centers----allneed to receive immediateassistance from the federal governmentand local authorities. Third, our sciencehas traditionally beensupported by our own national systemof education,which includes scienceschools renowned all over the world. This tradition must be continuedwithout a break; otherwisewe will face a dearthof teachersfor the next generationof our young people. We must save thescientific-technical potential of our country. We must prevent a "brain drain" due to the emigration of our best scientists. And we must act beforeit is too late.

About the West We have only begun to understandhow the West, while talking about Russia's"admission to civilization," hasactually beentrying to removeor weakenits chiefgeopolitical competitor. The West has alwaysconsidered historical Russia--whetherthe RussianEmpire or the Soviet Union---to be its numberone geopoliticalrival. Our territory hasbeen subjected to so many intrusionsand invasionsbecause of Russia'sunique proximity to all the powercenters of America, Asia, and Europe. As a rule, attemptsto conquerus have beencovered over by some ideological veneer.But in reality, all conquerors-to-became to us for our land and our wealth, hoping ultimately also to enslaveour souls and take away our faith. After the Caribbeancrisis, John Kennedy formulated a radically new doctrine aimed at Russia.It was not called perestroikaor radical reform but was, in fact, a program for destroying the USSR from within. He gathereda small group of specialistsand told them: "A military confrontationwith the USSRwould be fatal for us. We need an effective policy to underminethe USSRfrom the inside." According to some sources,America made a $200 net profit on every Russiankilled during World War II. By 1945, America owned 50 percentof the world's gold currencyreserves. But today, the West is not tightly unified. There are thosewho hate Russiaand are readyto eraseit from the face of the earth. But thereare others(including businesscircles) who understandRussia's important role, its geopoliticalplace in the world, and its importancein maintain- WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 15 ing a balancein the huge expanseof Eurasia.They are ready to coop- erate with us. We should respondreciprocally, assuringthem that we can and will createnormal conditionsfor their work in Russiaand that we will insure their investmentsand guaranteetheir legitimate profits. But this must be an honestcooperation of equal partners. Not everyonein the West will acceptus on equal terms. We are a communal nation, brought up on a thousandyears of experiencein mutual supportand patriotic feeling. And the West is trying to impose on us their individualism and Protestantegotism. Some in the West would demandthat we live by rules that are completely alien to us, which we could neveraccept. Today, our people are beginning to understandthe sophisticated forms that Westernexpansion takes on and are reactingwith growing spiritual resistance.In spite of powerful propagandisticdeception, our peopleare beginningto wake up and realizethat they may be deprived of their Fatherland,their culture, their rights to perpetuatetheir families, and their opportunity to move freely in their own country. They seehow talk about"developed capitalism" has produced a feudal-clan administrativesystem busily accumulatingprimary capital by the ruthless methodsused in the West during the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries.They realize thatto repeatthose former stagesof West Euro- peanhistory would meana catastrophicstep back for Russia. Some Europeanswould like to see a Russia that is a barbarian country they could "civilize" in their own way; a large Russia they could subdivide; an aggressiveRussia against which they could orga- nize coalitions; a reactionary Russia with a decaying religion that could be subjectedto a forced Reformationor a conversionto Catholi- cism; or an economicallyinefficient Russiapossessing underused territory and unlimited raw materials,which theseEuropeans would like to claim for themselvesor at leastexploit.

A New Soviet Union? Voluntary reunification is inevitable. It is a matter of common sense. Time will soontell what form this reunificationwill take. The documentadopted by the Duma in March 19966 cannotphysi- cally or legally resurrect the USSR as it existed before December 1991. This is perfectlyunderstood even by thosewho shoutthe loudest 16 A RUSSIAN COMMUNIST about the fragmentationof the USSR. But at the sametime, it is also clear to everyonethat there is a real needfor a definitive political and moral assessmentof the BelovezhAgreements (which hadbeen under- taken behind the backs of the peoplesof the USSR and againsttheir will). Without such an assessment,it will be impossibleto begin the reintegrationof the post-Sovietrealm. The State Duma's documentin no way encroacheson the sovereignty of the new membersof the CIS [CommonwealthofIndependent States];its only purposeis to open a way for the orderly and voluntary reintegrationof the fraternalpeoples. The generaldenunciation of the BelovezhAgreements came as no surprise.Beginning in 1993, the CPRF on numerousoccasions stated the need to restore historical justice and confirm the results of the popularreferendum calling for the preservationof the USSR.7 During the past two years, this question has been put to vote in the Duma fourteentimes--each time collectingmore votes. The denunciationof the Belovezh Agreementswas well deserved. These agreementsbrought grief and suffering to all peoplesand in- flicted much damageto the economiesand the securityof the fraternal republics. Five years of disunion have demonstratedthat no single republic can climb out of the crisis by itself. It is our political and moral right to abrogatethese agreements. But this does not meanthat tomorrow someonewill forcibly be joined with someoneelse. No one is about to challengesomeone else's sovereignty. The right to reunite belongsto the peopleand no one else. But we would take all necessary stepsto reestablish(on a voluntary basis)fraternal ties amongRussia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.This would start the incremental voluntary reestablishmentof a federalunion state.

On Nuclear Safety There have beensustained efforts to createthe impressionthat Russia as a nuclearnation is irresponsible.Russia itself is being led to believe that it has a political inferiority complex that makes it a dangerous country. Insidiously, the rationalefor establishingan internationaltute- lage over Russia is being created.This threatensto undermine and erodeour nationalsecurity. The problemof safekeepingnuclear substances and controlling their WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 17 proliferation has assumedgreat importance.There have certainly been cases of illegal disseminationof these substancesin practically all partsof the world, including WesternEurope and the United States. We are for international cooperationin ensuring nuclear safety, which is equally important for us all. But in some important areas involving Russia'ssecurity-areas concerned with the storage and control of nuclearmaterials--our country is gradually losing its sovereignty through growing dependenceon the "assistance"of other countries andthe internationalorganizations these countries control. What do you think preventsthe carrying out of the various schemes and projectsaimed against our country'sinterests? And thereare more of theseplots now than during the Soviet era. One of the main factors cooling down hostile intentionsis Russia'sstrategic nuclear arsenal- or, to be more exact, what is still left of it (the part not destroyedby Gorbachevand Yeltsin).

Armed Forces We are againstsaber rattling, againstthe assumptionby any stateof the postureof a self-appointedinternational gendarme, against the eastward expansionof NATO. We are for peace.But it is unwiseto beg for peace on your knees. Our armed forces must receive all they need for the securedefense of Russia'sborders in the interestsof peace. Our army needsto be reformed. This applies equally to organiza- tional and military-technicalaspects and to the ideological-moralstate of all members of the armed forces. A strong army must love its Fatherland,have confidencein its leaders,and be socially protected. Our country needs a military doctrine that guaranteesour national securityand makes it illegal to usethe armedforces againstthe people. A statesmanonce said, "If you are unwilling to keep and feed your own army, you will soon feed someone's else army." This is very much to the point! Look how eagerlyNATO is trying to move closerto our borders,cutting our country off from its natural allies, partners,and markets.This developmentis synchronizedwith the destructionof our defenseindustry, armedforces, nationalself-awareness, and spirituality. We must take off our hats and bow our headsbefore Russia'soffi- cers,sailors, and soldiers,who have selflesslyprotected our humiliated Fatherlandand defended the armedforces from completecollapse. 18 A RUSSIAN COMMUNIST

Kremlin Plots In March 1996, there was an [aborted] attemptto make a power play. The pretext was the Duma's denunciationof the Be10vezh Agree- ments.The Duma resolution,which had beenexpected for a long time, suddenlyprovoked hysteria. I want to remind you that since 1993 the CPRF had repeatedlystated that it was necessaryto restorehistorical justice and confirm the results of the March 1991 referendumcalling for the preservationof the USSR. During the first two yearsof the First Duma, this question was put to a vote fourteen times. In December 1995, it mustered209 votes,just short of the numberneeded to adopta resolution. At that time, no one fell into a rage. But now, before the presidentialelections, the authorities are trying to grab at what they believeis a suitablepretext to cancelthe elections.

***

Today we know enoughto statethat in December1993 the Constitu- tion was adoptedas the result of a fraudulent addition of nine million ballots to the tally. This fact was confirmedby the publishedresults of an American electronic-intelligencedata survey which has not been challengedby the central authoritiesnor by the Election Commission. Unfortunatelythis canno longerbe checkedbecause all the documents havebeen destroyed.

* * *

During the last week of June 1996-betweenthe two rounds of the presidentialelection!r-Boris Yeltsin suffereda heart attack. This fact was concealedfrom the Russianpeople, the StateDuma, and the Cen- tral ElectoralCommission. In a matterof days,this deceptionby omis- sion becamea lie by commissionwhen Yeltsin's top aides officially assuredthe public that their bosswas merely indisposedby a mild case of laryngitis. Voters who cast their ballots on July 3 for the next presidentof Russiawere unawareof the true stateof Y eltsin's health. There is no doubt in my mind that, had the voters known the truth, the results of the secondround of the presidentialelections would have beendifferent, and Russiacould have beenspared weeks of agonizing confusion,uncertainty, and embarrassment. WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 19

"Junior Partner"? No Way. This pieceoriginally appearedin The New York Times on February 1,1996.

It is often said in the Americanpress that Russia'sCommunists are by definition unfriendly to reform and to the United States.Yet the Com- munist Party of the RussianFederation was born six years ago pre- cisely as a party of reform in oppositionto decadesof stagnationand to Mikhail Gorbachev'sitch for revolution. While the West sanghallelu- jahs to perestroika,we knew that revolutions in Russiahave always hadpainful consequences. We thus called for evolutionaryreform consistentwith Russianhis- torical traditionsand world trends.Unfortunately, we were not listened to, andthe SovietUnion collapsed. Boris Y eltsin's regime has thoughtlesslytried to bring the "bless- ings" of neoliberalismto Russia, whose economy and characterare quite different from those in the West. The results have been disas- trous: The gross domestic product and living standardshave fallen drastically. Mr. Yeltsin's promisesto increasesocial spendingand improve living conditionsare merely an electoralmaneuver. Mr. Gorbachevand Mr. Yeltsin are consideredfriends of the United States.Although we are deniedthis honor, we will sharewith you our view on post-Yeltsin relations betweenthe United Statesand Russia and of Russianforeign policy. We would restorethe might of the Russianstate and its statusin the world. That would make its policies incomparablymore predictable and responsiblethan they are today. Our foreign-policy priority would be to maintaincontinuity with the foreign policies of prerevolutionaryRussia and the Soviet Union. We would seekto restoreour state'sunique role as the pivot and fulcrum of a Eurasiancontinental bloc-and its consequentrole as a necessary balancebetween East and West. We considerthe disruptionof military and strategicparity causedby the collapseof the SovietUnion dangerouslydestabilizing. And we see the- restorationof the union of the former Soviet peoples--basedon voluntary association---asa historical necessitydictated by Russia's needsand those of world security. Guided by pragmatism,we would free foreign policy of ideology, which imposes ruinous actions and 20 A RUSSIAN COMMUNIST obligations.We reject fantasiesabout "world revolution" but also considerthe "new world order" no less alien to Russianinterests. And we would stringently adhereto universal moral principles and the norms of internationallaw. Above all, we would concentrateon internal healing and national rebirth. The foreign policy conduciveto this effort would be limited to maintaining state security. This rules out being drawn into suprana- tional organizationsthat claim the right to interfere in others' internal affairs. Thus, we take an extremelynegative view of plans to expand NATO into EasternEurope, up to Russia'sborder, and we regardthe entry of NArO troops into the former Yugoslavia as the first step towardcarrying out thosedangerous plans. Several years have passedsince the cold war ended, but relations betweenour countries are far from harmonious.Though it must re- nounceuseless and excessivemilitary spending,Russia never was-----{)r could be--a''junior partner."For Americans,too, the burdenof being the only superpoweris unnecessaryand undesirable.Any policy that countson Russia'sremaining in its humiliating position, following in the Americanwake, is doomedto defeat. We respectour democratictraditions and outstandingachievements. We are deeplyinterested in expandingeconomic cooperation and edu- cational, scientific, and cultural exchanges.We are ready to guarantee American investmentsand to create better conditions for them than now exist. Recognizingthe uniquenessof the American experience,we insist on acknowledgmentof our equalright to follow our own path in accordancewith our traditions and conditions.The principle of diversity, on which you have successfullybased your domesticpolicy, should ex- tend to foreign policy as well.

Editor's Notes

1. All other union republics comprising the Soviet Union had their separate communistparties. The largest republic, Russia,was an exceptionuntil a Com- munistParty of Russiawas establishedin 1990. . 2. During the early 1980s,mujahedeen began to infiltrate Tajikistan from neigh- boring Afghanistan,where Soviet troops were defendingthe pro-Sovietregime. 3. Much of Georgiawas put undera Russianprotectorate in 1783. For three centuriesprior to that, Georgiawas subjectedto severalpartitions betweenIran andTurkey. WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE 21

4. AlexanderN. Yakovlev was Gorbachev'sclosest associate during the years of perestroika. After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, Yakovlev becamea senioradvis~r to Boris Yeltsin. 5. With the appointmentof Yegor Gaidaras Yeltsin's acting prime minister. Gaidar servedin the Russiangovernment in various capacitiesfrom November 1991 to January1994. 6. This was the communist-sponsoreddenunciation of the agreementdissolv- ing the Soviet Union that had been reachedby the presidentsof the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusianunion republics in December1991 at a hunting lodge in the BelovezhForest (near Minsk). The three presidentswho signedthe agreement were Boris Yeltsin (Russia), Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine), and Stanislav Shushkevich(Belarus). 7. By a majority of about two-thirds, participantsin the referendumvoted on March 17, 1991, to preservethe union. This page intentionally left blank Part 2

The Drama of Power

From Perestroika to Catastrophe

The articles comprisingZyuganov's book The Dramaof Power(1993) were written and publishedin various Russianperiodicals during the early 1990s, when the SovietUnion either was still in existenceor had just collapsedand when the real political powerin Moscowwas mov- ingfrom Mikhail Gorbachevto Boris Yeltsin. Presentedhere are selectedparts ofthis compendium,mostly entire sectionsbut in a few instancescondensations or excerptsfrom someof the longer or moredated articles. -V.M. This page intentionally left blank Three Times To the terms that define our time, such as "perestroika,""democratization," and "glasnost," a new one was added recently-"crisis." The wounds from national conflicts are bleeding, shop shelvesare being emptied, and aggressivenessis growing in practically every group of people.This crisis manifestsitself in many unexpectedways; today its most frightening aspectsare twofold: the shortageof competenceand the feeblenessof political will. By now, almost everyonecan seethat the "foremen" of perestroika are trying to erect a state edifice whosejoints will not fit and whose comers will not fall into place. The constructionproject is governed not by normal team discipline but by the principle of indiscriminate sovereignty,which seemsto meanthat lower administrativeunits are equalto or greaterin authority than higheradministrative units. No social or biological system lives and works by this principle anywherein the world. But in theory, a systemin which a village chief can cancelany decisionof a prime minister is not new. Anarchismhas left its mark in our history, but it seemsthat we do not learn from the past. Hence,we have the following results: an economythat is becoming more and more disorganized,and historical ties that are becoming weakerday by day. The populationis disappointedand depressed,and indifferenceand irresponsibility dominatepublic attitudes.People are panicking: someare leaving the Party, and someare leaving the country. But thoseat the top are bluntly pretendingthat nothing unusualis happening. The masseshave graduallycome to understandthat perestroikais a difficult and delicate task, not an endlesstalk mill, and that we have gone far enoughto destabilizeour society. The cavalry chargesand horse-drivencarts with mountedmachine guns usedin 1917 are different in effect from the nuclearreactors and missile submarinesof today. The latter can, alas, in a few momentsobliterate any legal differences betweena constitutionalmonarchy and a democraticconfederation. What we needare coordinatedand purposefullydesigned systemic transformationsrather than acts of irresponsibledestruction. The wise Rasul Gamsatov[a Dagestanipoet] remarkedthat a new Swedencan- not be createdin Dagestan,just as the Swedes,despite their devotion to hard work, cannot create a new Dagestanin their country. World civilization, to which we "lost lambs" are supposedto return, consists

25 26 THE DRAMA OF POWER

not only ofa West Europeanlifestyle and North Americancomfort but also of the multifaceted Latin America, boiling Africa, and the economic miraclesof Asia. And, finally, it is also the difficult evolution of "Homo Sovieticus," designednot by some arrogant mind but rather through our history, rich both in tragedy and in surgesof liberated spirit. How we hoped that glasnost, this beloved child of perestroika, would grow into a beautiful precursorof true justice! We hoped that stagnationwould evaporate,repressive barriers would fall, while good will and mutual humantrust would blossomand fraternal interestsand the national desireto put in order our commonhome would rise. How difficult to seeinstead before your eyesan ugly creaturewith a narrow forehead,a malicious look, and a screamingvoice laughingheartlessly at the bedsideof her own sick Motherland. I beg my readersto understandthat I am not given to emotional reactions.But under glasnosttoday the splendid intentions of a spiritual liberation and cleansingof society are often distortedbeyond recognition, to the point of threateningthe national health of the people and the entire causeof perestroika. The spoken and written word has always been more essentialin Russiathan anywhereelse. For a long time there was no legal means of opposition in our country. Some opposition was voiced by daring writers, whose talent and consciencestemmed from the people and who could feel their pain and expectations.But today'sprophets and leadersare in reality frauds. They do not care about the people and their needs.They haveappropriated the press,radio, and televisionand are holding the peoplehostage to their borrowedopinions and distorted tastes. The official monopoly on truth has been replacedby a new monopoly, now by gang memberswho are just as intolerant of different opinions. The very same people who so recently preachedthe "absolutetruth" of "advancedsocialism," cried hallelujah, crawledbe- fore their superiors,and supportedany initiatives from above without regard to common sensenow furiously and fervently worship new gods and spreaddifferent ideas. Could it be that they have "seenthe light"? Everything is possible. But prejudice, anger, and nihilism are poor guidesin the searchfor true values. A cure sometimesrequires bitter medicine. But what if the cure is worse than the disease?Glasnost has becomea kind of psychological warfare against our own people. To promote further destabilization, FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 27 rumors are concoctedand circulated, criminal activities are justified, generationsare set againsteach other, and the army and the peopleare depictedas adversaries.Sophisticated technological methods are used to portray whole republics, parties, and social groups as enemies. Mass-mediareports about prisons and coffin factories, the cruelty of tyrants and the privileges of the "elite," and deprivationand hardships are designedto provoke more lawlessnessand create agreater thirst for destructionand pillage. All these things have happenedbefore. Our country lived through the suppressionof private entrepreneurs,the destructionof churches and manor houses,the repressionof the intelligentsia,the demolition of sacredrelics, and the denunciationof entire nations as enemies. While we rehabilitateand repent, we simultaneouslycreate new enemies. Look at the newspapersof the 1930s.Are not someof the arguments usedthen identical to the intolerant and provocativestatements now beingmade? In the past,people designated as undesirableswere hunteddown by men with weaponsin their hands.Today, modemheadhunters follow their prey with telecamerasand taperecorders. They interrogateneigh- bors, relatives,and acquaintancesto dig up "dirt." They sit for days to ambushunsuspecting victims in unflatteringpositions. Experts in sex- ual pathologyhave suddenlyswitched to producingpolitical portraits so humiliating that ideologistsof the Third Reich could not have done better--orworse. And this is happeningafter the publication of the Law "On the Print Media." An American author, Sam Keen, wrote a curious book a few years back entitled Faces o/the Enemy.l Later a movie was madefrom this book. He very convincingly showed how each great crime against humanity is precededby a campaignof hatred that transforms the enemy into a subhumanwho is nobody'sson, brother, or father and who can be killed without any pity. This demonizationhappened in Europe before the beginning of World War II; in Japanbefore the attackon PearlHarbor; and in the United Statesbefore thefirst atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima--andalso when badgesappeared saying"Kill a Russian"during the cold war. Today, we are assuredthat nothing similar is possible,that the authorities would never allow it to happen,and that we are building a humanelaw-based state. Well, as the sayinggoes, God is merciful! Or perhapswe will be let down again by the desireto destroyeverything 28 THE DRAMA OF POWER down to the ground first and begin a new life from next Monday? As you know, we recently witnessedextreme vandalism, but our authorities appearparalyzed. In fact, they are not very authoritative and re- semble"clouds in trousers."2An infinite hot showerof laws, decrees, and orders,which nobodyobeys, is pouring down upon us. A kind of pseudoglasnostcontinues to permeatethe country. It is part of a servile effort to implement a plan drafted decadesago by transatlanticexperts: depict the Soviet Union as the largest and most predatoryempire on earth, trivialize its heroes,demoralize its population, and revive national-religiousschisms. This is probably the only "plan" that will be carriedout during the currentfive-year-plan period. Preliminary results are already visible. State television studios are being seized by mobs, state radio stations are transmitting calls for civil disobedience,and governmentofficials are promoting general strikes. Monumentsare being toppled, people who dare to carry red flags on "national" holidays are being beaten,undesirable journalists are being harassed,medals are being tom from veterans,trains are being stoppedat will, and planesare being hijacked. And the people who are perpetratingthese outragesare not Munich shopkeepersor Chicagogangsters but our own, domesticallygrown "fighters for perestroika." And they are beingencouraged by opportunisticpoliticians. Now we know what our late dictator was thinking somefifty years ago as he looked significantly at his colleagues.We have condemned the secretprewar protocols.3 But we are at a loss when it comes to seeinghow we can convert to a regulatedmarket when none of the regulators is working. We are completely ignorant of what extreme measuresshould be put in place to fight rampantcrime and of what responsiblepersons think of the fact that thousandsof peoplewho ride trains are suddenlyunable to reachtheir homes,workplaces, or resorts and that in hundredsof instancesproducts and goodsare left out in the opento be ruined by the elementsor pilfered. In any democraticcoun- try, such things are referred to simply and clearly as terrorism. And this brings appropriateconsequences for those who break the laws. We, however,prefer a different explanation:these are our civic activ- ists assertingtheir freedomby taking over stationsand having fun with railroadlines. Today, our glasnostregime is not only suffering from social color- blindnessbut is also carelessand indifferent to everydayproblems. It has almost forgotten the schoolchildrenwho lack boots, notebooks, FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 29 and textbooks. It does not deign to notice today's refugeesor the victims of crime or our unemployedyouth. It is not concernedwith such things as crop harvestingand preparationsfor the winter. It has startedtalking aboutthe peasantsbut only after the peasantspresented an ultimatum to the cities. In the meantime,in somecities breadration- ing has reappeared;in others,residents receive less than the war-time quota of cereal grain. But in the nearbycountryside, unprecedentedly high yields of cropscannot be harvestedbecause nobody cares to help. If glasnostfails to wake up the public, which has talked itself to sleep,we may face really big troubles. Glasnostencourages people to think that talking, and especially complaining, takes care of things. This is reminiscentof a characterin the Saltykov-Shchedrinstory who, upon returning from the vegetablegarden, indignantly tells his wife: "Sweetheart,something strange is happeningin our Fatherland.I've expressedmy angerabout three times, but the turnip still isn't growing."4 Now our turnips and other goodshave grown, but nobody wants to harvest them. Some of our citizens are going abroad, some are canoeing,while our marketsoffer only rotten cabbagesand half-grown carrots.And everybodyis silent. These days glasnost is creating new "idols." Among them are a hard-luck associateprofessor, a talkative builder, a reprimandedgen- eral, and a notedhistorian without notablepublications. They are char- acters of a different caliber. Many are sleek rascals, professional squabblers,pimps, and prostitutes. Completely missing from the list are real creators of new life, such as Likhachev, Paton, Fyodorov, Kabaidze,or Starodubtsev.5 Their place has beentaken by the members of a stripteasegroup called "Pioneersof Sex-GraveErotica" who perform in open city squaresand sports arenaswhere your typical spectatoris a fan aged 13--17. Isn't this just like a "feast during the plague"?6Any state thatpromotes the moral corrosionof its children and cannot ensurethe inviolability of the home may be considered criminal andhas lost any right to collect taxesor call itself a state. Recently, I openedone of our magazines.Inside, I found the promising headingof a new section-"People."At last, I expectedto see articlesabout men like the Russianswho in eighteenmonths built a car factory on the Volga; or like our young Ural engineersin the Great Patriotic War who in forty days designed,built, and producedtanks that stoodup to the "Tigers" and "Ferdinands";7or perhapslike those men who, led by Korolyov, createda new rocket systemeach year.8 30 THE DRAMA OF POWER

There was nothing of that sort. The pagesof the magazinewere, as usual, adornedwith gloomy portraits of notorious historical villains. Among them was the Roman emperor Nero. The story was well written, curdling one's blood. But the article did not explain what made him a murderoustyrant. It did not describehow he becamethe first poet of the empire by hiring a few scoresof claqueurs.And when this crazy poet could not createa sceneof fire in his poem, he ordered a torch put to Rome, hoping to be inspired by the sight of a burning city. The word "perestroika" connotes"building," not "enflaming." Glasnoststands for the search for truth, not terrorism and outrages committed upon everything that is holy. Democracy means the people'spower, not anarchy. Anarchy, like dictatorship, leads to the atrophyof consciencefollowed by asphyxiaand ultimately the decom- position of the whole social organism.

Truth Requires Courage and Will Marx observedthat social consciousnessmost intensively decays in two seeminglymutually exclusivecases: when the peoplesee a crime but see no punishmentfor it; and, on the contrary, when they see the punishmentbut do not know the allegedcrime. Our country endured a period when people saw punishments abound-neighborsand comradesdisappeared-but they did not know the reason. Today, we seemdetermined to prove the validity of the secondpart of Marx's paradox. Submarinesare sinking; trains are being blown up; the chernozem[black earth]--acentimeter's layer of which requires 100 yearsto form-is being sold. In a matterof hours, 200 kilometersofthe stateborder, sacred and inviolable, are removed. Various emissariestravel throughoutthe country instigating violence of one peopleagainst another. No one is blamedfor this exceptthe insignificant "scapegoats."Nor is there an appropriatereaction by the public. Justiceis silent and so is the SupremeSoviet. In our glasnostage, responsibility has become anonymous.It is now more difficult to identify malefactorswho are alive than to blame our malaiseon thosewho have died. Irresponsible acts continue,while the country desperatelyneeds stable working conditions and law andorder. FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 31

Power has always been the main prize of any revolution. Today, everyonespeaks about it: the left and the right, centrists and bom- again monarchists,desperate radicals and typical conservatives----even those who have never been involved in politics. "All Power to the Soviets,""Down with the Power of the Party Bosses,""Apparatchiks Have GrabbedPower," "Party, Give Us the SteeringWheel"--the din of these sloganscontinues by force of inertia. But if a group has seizedpower, why are the leading expertsso alarmingly complaining abouta "vacuumof authority," "powerlessness,"and "paralysis"?This is becausemany of us have again become victims of one more manipulationof social consciousness.The fact that all of the thirty or so laws adoptedin one year by the SupremeSoviet do not work properly makes people think: What is the matter? The matter is simple enough.For any law to function, at a minimum two conditionsmust be met: theremust be a mechanismthat makesthe law work, and the law has becomepart of the generalconsciousness. Given theseconditions, one consciouslyavoids stepping over the line that is forbiddenby law. Party power strongly built into the mechanismof administrative managementhad long been a feature of the state system. While the Party often usurpedand even abusedadministrative authority, it also cementedthe whole public organism. Although it was natural to remove the Party from the administrativemechanism, this expulsionwas done so abruptly that the administration shudderedto a stop. This breakdownhas created a dangeroussituation--and not only for us. Our country has all kinds of weaponsand should not be left without a reliable control system.Unfortunately, once again we destroyedthe old systemin haste,and now, in equal haste,we are trying to createsome- thing new. We leap first andthink later. Today we attachmuch hopeto the presidentialoffice, believing that it can restorethe normal functioning of the state. However, a recon- structedexecutive branch would be able to solve our problemsonly if it were firmly supported.Our Party has much to do through individual communistswho work in all bodiesof power. But now this should be donein different ways and by different methods. What actions are neededto changethe situation for the better?In my opinion the answeris clear. We needto ensurethe preservationand consolidation of a unified Soviet Union on the basis of a renewed federation. We need to acceleratethe resolution of urgent problems within Russia----thecore of the Union. We needuniform laws and rules 32 THE DRAMA OF POWER of humancommunity for all the peoplesliving in our country. We need a uniform and consolidatedCommunist Party. And we needto maintain reliable defenses. Crime is the strongestdestructive factor in our situation. Increased crime is the main negativeresult of all our miscalculations.Crime is rampant, the statistics are overwhelming,the press is having a field day, and the man in the streetis terrified but is lapping it all up. I might add that this situation is actually worse than it seemsat first glance.In 1989, for example,almost 45,000 more peoplelost their lives to crime in one way or anotherthan in the previous year, and 109,000 more peoplewere robbed, maimed,or rapedthan in the year before. Ponder thesefigures. They are greaterthan our lossesin the ten-yearAfghani- stan war. Rememberthat our peoplein Afghanistanwere soldierscar- rying out orders.That is someconsolation. And what about now, here in Russia? There is a lot of shoutingabout the red and white terror. But doesn't all this talk push us once again into settling old bloody accounts?The country is (as many years ago) witnessingpogroms, arsons, refugees. In the past three years, there have been almost 30 attemptedcases of airplane hijackings and about 700 avertedattempts. In the meantime, the tidal wave of mass street meetingsthreatens to sink our loosely built ship of state.National conflicts are raging acrossthe entire country, but hardly anyone has been punishedfor instigating them. Why does this occur? What promotesit? What measuresshould be taken? Who is responsible? Almost all public institutions have made somecontributions to the continuing growth of crime. And if we do not admit this, no special police forces, truncheons,or armoredvests will be enough.We must all acceptresponsibility. Look at the productsof our massculture, which now is dominated by the cult of an idle life, sex, and vulgarity. Yet our renownedcultural leaders,for reasonsunknown, are silent. They are now so busy in the political arena that they have no time for anything else. Take, for example,our cinematography.Members of this industry were in the first rank of perestroikaadvocates. But recently, they have been flooding the screensof our movie theaterswith picturesshowing naked men andwomen. Recall the past five or six yearsof our films for the young, during which a fully justifiable protest against social problems has been repeatedlyexpressed by primitive scenesof brutal FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 33 sexualviolence againstwomen. Why then shouldwe be surprisedthat suchbrutal crimesas rapehave been mushrooming? When a pleasantcommentator with a "robotized" voice tells millions of television viewers, without a trace of protest or compassion, about dismemberedcorpses and children dumped from bridges or found in trash dumps, this is more than the disseminationof information. It is ethical anesthesia,which lowers the moral standardsof society and legitimizes indifference and permissiveness.Psychologists know this very well. But try to object, and you will be attackedfrom all sides. However, if we wish to live in normal humanconditions, we will haveto take theseproblems seriously and correct them. The highestprinciple of educationis devotion to truth. As Pushkin said, where there is truth, beautywill appearby itself. But truth requires courage, will, and the ability to analyze. Unfortunately, truth itself often becomesan object of speculationand is mixed with conjecture and self-interest.As a result, while fighting dogmatismwe often end up engagingin neodogmatismourselves. Examples of this are numerous. Bringing this principle to a practical level, let us look at the administrative-commandsystem. A lot of money has beenmade by cursing and damningit. It is clear even for someonewho is not initiated in its intricacies that this system can be overcome only by introducing a more modemsystem, one that is betterorganized and more efficient. It is also true that someadministrative abuse is inevitable as long as we have a shortageof culture, knowledge,and conviction. So let us up- gradethe level of our professionalismand culture ratherthan concentrating on finding a "magic system."Much shouldbe donein this area. We should also realize that legality and the law require consistent administrativeenforcement, especially in a country with an out-of-balance economy. We needto find the proper proportion for the use of administrativeenforcement while striving to switch, as soon as possible, to effective economicmethods. A legitimate desirefor self-reliancehas beenequated with absolute independenceand freedom, which do not exist in nature. Nor are we likely to invent them, thoughwe love to claim we are doing something "for the first time ever." This tendencyleads to a separatismthat is tearing apartthe living fabric of our country, the republics,the territories, branchesof the economy,nations, and evenfamilies. Othershave decidedthat independencemeans "do it your own way." This philosophy leads to situations where many Party [CPSU] committeeswith 34 THE DRAMA OF POWER newly electedmembers simply haveceased to function. How are we supposedto take the frequent assertionthat the mass media merely reflect life? This makesjournalists to be no more than messengers,not responsiblefor the message.In reality, the media not only reflect but have long been organizing, forming, imposing, per- suading, directing, and manipulating. If this were not so, why would anybodypay huge sumsfor commercialadvertising, conceal new technologies, or seekeditorial posts?The media'spower to influence has existedfor a long time. But now this power can be bought not only in rubles but also in dollars. Whoever controls the. stock of the media outletsdictates his own terms andcontrols access to information. The power of the massmedia was particularly evident during the last elections.Five membersof the small editorial staff of the weekly magazineArguments and Facts were electedpeople's deputies. I do not question their electoral mandatesor personalqualities. But I am concernedthat their media importancemay have beentoo easily con- verted to political authority. This is indeeda phenomenonthat appar- ently has never occurredbefore in the history of our country or, for that matter, of any other country. It can be safely enteredin the Guin- nessBook of World Records. We should allow no further abusesof the power of information. Otherwise we will be given a new "off-limits" zone for criticism, a new "okhranka" that may not be any betterthan the previousoneY We should rememberthat deliberately targetedinformation can create a powerful sensationof imminent violence---apsychotic state that can compel people to arm themselveseven if they have never held weap- ons in their handsbefore. Neodogmatismhas been used in most sophisticatedways in the fight againstapparatchiks. 1O The current campaignagainst them has exceededsimilar efforts undertakenduring the 1920s. The central Party apparatusis portrayedas the source of all our problems. Such wholesalecondemnation of the apparatusis convenientfor somepeo- ple today-thosewho hold powerbut fail to maketimely decisionsand then hide behindthe muzzledapparatus, those who are afraid to criti- cize their superiorsby namebut who are willing to attack anonymous membersof the apparatus,and those who do not see the real reasons for our difficulties and use membersof the apparatusas scapegoats. And thereare also thosewho cravepower themselves and havealready secretlyprepared their own new apparatuses. FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 35

I have never met a [Party] instructor who would pretendto be the secretaryof a district, city, or regional Party committee.I I But secretaries of Party committeescannot be consideredapparatchiks. They are electedofficials accountableto their committees.Today's critics of the Party, however,lump all together.We are dealinghere with deliberate attemptsto confusedifferent conceptswith the intention of weakening and destroyingthe Party. Perestroika'sextremist enthusiasts have suggestedthat all Party officials, or perhapsthe whole Party, should be deemeda collective enemy. They justify this on the basis of formal logic: all communists are in chargeof something,hence they are all bureaucrats,and, therefore, they are all enemies.But if we took this as fact we would have to conclude that one out of every three or four people living in this country is an "enemy." The purges of 1937 would look like just a warm-up for an even greatercataclysm. This is a philosophical and moral impassefrom which there is no way out for anybody. Unfortu- nately, our societyis being pushedin this direction. Lenin's memory is no longer sparedfrom verbal attacks.For some renegadesin our own country, Lenin has always beenan impediment, becausehis powerful mind encompassedthe whole world and injustice aboveall. This man, who could speakmost of the Europeanlanguages and who wrote fifty-five books in the fifty-four yearsof his life, con- tinues to be one of the most read authorsin the world. He was always distinguishedby clarity of interpretation and awarenessof the im- plications of various political viewpoints. He could anticipatethe developmentof events and led the people accordingly. Our "nouveaux riches" are afraid of him becausehe always denouncedcheats as para- sites on the nation'sbody and warnedthat any relaxationof the struggle againstthem would be a crime againstsocialism. Demagoguesand intriguers fear Lenin becausehe saw throughtheir deceptions.He warned that people will be victims of deception in politics until they learn to see the interestsbehind flowery words and phrases. Let us rememberthis: There are no desperatesituations, only desperate people. In any situation, it is possible to apply personalcon- science and a senseof proportion. I have had to analyze various emergencysituations. Some of thesemight neverhave occurredif the people involved in them had had a strongersense of civic duty and personalresponsibility. 36 THE DRAMA OF POWER

The late AcademicianLegasov, who spentmore time in Chernobyl than anyoneelse, said that the main reasonfor the disasterat the power plant wasthe fact that the engineersand technicianswho managedit had to rely on their superiors------technocratsjust like themselves-rather than on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.Their moral and cultural levels were not adequateto make the decisionrequired by the complexity of the technology entrustedto them. I think this is the basic reasonfor many other disastersin our country, which are also a matterof culture: the culture of management,the culture of mutual relations,the culture of analysis. Where is the high level of our culture of analysiswhen we enrage television viewers by showing them lines of railroad cars waiting in vain to be unloadedeven though each car hasan earmarkeddestination and a specific person responsiblefor its timely delivery? If the TV cameraswere to be redirectedonto the idle bureaucrats,you would get goodsto waiting consumersin no time. To stabilizethe situationin our country, we must changethe tone of our printed and spokenwords. Otherwise we will be at each other's throats. Our descendantswill never forgive us for that. There is too much confrontationand dispute.We all rememberwhat happeneddur- ing the recentcontroversy over so-calledpromising versusunpromis- ing villages.12 It should be clear to everyonehow counterproductive sucharguments are. Yet new and no lessdestructive confrontations are pitting Russiansagainst non-Russians, indigenous peoples against non- indigenouspeoples, occupants against non occupants, emigrants against nonemigrants,supervisors against subordinates, and young againstold. All this destroysour respectfor traditions and continuity, althoughit is clearthat no societycan developwithout thesemoral precepts. We should, and will, overcomechallenges with honor. No matter what anyonesays, we will continueto believein valuessuch as Moth- erland, Fatherland,peace, home, family, love, freedom, labor, knowledge,justice, conscience,dignity, and charity. Thesevalues have been earnedby the sufferingsof humankindand affirmed by generationsof our own ancestors.We must live up to this preciouslegacy.

With and Without Masks By early 1991, the Yeltsin clique was moving to replaceGorbachev's team. It consolidatedits ranks around a destructivepolicy, strength- FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 37 enedits social base,and stoodready to sweepaside anything in its path ... Even then it was clear that to achievetheir purposesthese circles were ready to sacrifice the Soviet Union and Russiaitself. I wrote an article about this on the eve of the [March 17, 1991] referendum[on preservingthe Union]. On their way to power, the false democratsare preparedto sacrifice all national and state interests.For the third time in this century, our country is being draggedinto a fratricidal conflict in which there can be no victors. The surest path to this goal is the undermining and destructionof the Soviet Union. It is no wonder that all such "democrats" are furiously opposedto the idea of a renewedUnion of Sover- eign Republics.But what a terrible price all the peoplesof our country would pay for a "divorce" conceivedat the whim of politicians striving to become"masters" and ofthe forcesbehind them! The disintegrationof the Soviet Union would prove to be a terrible blow to the integratedeconomic organism of the country that took centuries to develop. Here is just one example. Each one of 1,500 products vital both to the population and to the national economy is being manufacturedexclusively by only one factory for distribution throughoutthe whole country. This is not the best situation,but this is how it is. How can we deal with this problem if the Soviet Union disintegrates? The disintegrationof the Soviet Union would inevitably result in hundredsof thousands,even millions, of refugeesand migrants.Let us leaveaside for the momentthe monil and psychologicalaspects of this problem and considerthe economic aspectalone. World experience has shownthat a sum equivalentto 200,000rubles is requiredto settle one family of three or four peoplein a new place. When Boris Yeltsin signed agreementswith Estonia and Latvia that containedan article aboutresolving the problemof migrantsfrom the Baltic Statesto Rus- sia, did he stipulatewhere the tens of billions of rubles for the recep- tion of the migrants would come from? Even if only one out of ten families living outsidetheir "own" republic moved,more than atrillion rubles would be requiredto resettlethem. It would take eventhe most healthyeconomy some twenty yearsto provide for this. The disintegrationof the Soviet Union could have unpredictable consequencesfor the whole world. Such dissolutions do not occur peacefully.Bloody conflicts inevitably occur, and a Lebanonizationof the country begins. Now imagine Lebanonor Karabakhas a country 38 THE DRAMA OF POWER that occupiesone-sixth of the planet and is heavily annedwith weap- ons of massdestruction. Ifwe start to "throw stones"at eachother, our neighborswill havebroken glass in their windows or worse.The West, by the way, is beginningto realize this danger.But the samecannot be said of the "democratic forces." Otherwise, why would there be so much loosetalk aboutcreating a separateRussian anny? The Persian Gulf War demonstratedthat the epoch of wars for natural resourcesis not over. Against this background,the attemptto dismemberour economic and defensive potential shows a criminal indifference to the fate of millions and to the security of both present and future generationsof our citizens. Who could guaranteethat the regions of the Soviet Union rich in raw materialswould not become arenas of anned confrontationsbetween militarist groupings in the eventof its disintegration? During their most recentmass meeting in Moscow, the "democrats" assertedthat they were for the Soviet Union but called for a vote "against" it in the March 17 referendumas an expressionof no confidencein the presidentof the USSRand his government.Is it not insane to risk so much for the sake of so little? Even if we were to take this deceptionfor sincereintentions, the outcomewould be clear: the So- viet Union would ceaseto exist. Is this a rational way to express mistrust of some political figures and support for others?Of course, nothing will come of a schemesuch as this. What do you take your own peoplefor, forcing suchactions upon them? Our [Russian Communist Party] Plenum was right in stating that this is not about choosingbetween Gorbachev and Yeltsin, or about choosinga social system,but about the existenceor the nonexistence of our country.13 At mass meetings on Manezh Square in Moscow and on Palace Squarein Leningrad [in August 1991], the "democrats"Popov, Gdlyan, Starovoitova,Salye, and others proclaimedthe entire CPSU to be a collective enemy of the people, thus condemningsome 60 million Party membersand their families.14 After that, Otto Latsis of the news- paperIzvestia wrote an exposeentitled "Masks" that was aimed at the Plenumof the Central Committeeof the CommunistParty of Russia.The tone of the article differed little from the speecheson the two city squares.The street speakerstalked about "traitors" and "gangsters," and he wrote about "enemiesof perestroika"and "neo-Stalinists."Our friend, who spentmuch of his earlier careerat the journal Communist, FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 39 managedto misquotemuch of the Plenum'sreport. To be sure, this is nothingnew for him. Mr. Latsis, do you really not seethat the country has lost its brakes and steeringand is sliding ever more rapidly back into totalitarianism? Look at the Baltic States,republics to which you constantlygave advice. Basic humanrights are alreadybeing routinely violated there.But you are silent about this. Take an unprejudicedlook at "democratic" Georgia,where opengenocide has beenunleashed. Do we want this to happenin Russia? Look at a report on crime and you will see that the number of civilian casualtiesof crime in our country in the past two yearsalone far exceedsour battle lossesin the ten-yearAfghan War. You appar- ently do not have enoughcourage to remove these masks. For you, Russiais apparentlyno more than an experimentallaboratory, but we Russiansare fed up with it.

The Fatherland Above All We are talking about the Russian question not in its quasi-patriotic sensebut in regardto its global historical significance.We are talking about the danger of losing a unique value-a strong state that for several centuries has acted as a guarantor of world stability. This would be a loss not only for our peoplebut for all humankind.It is a fact of world history rather than an invention of the originatorsof the Russianidea that Russiahas beena guardian-inthe highestand most humanesense----of Europe and Asia and of the whole world. No other country could take its place. The humiliating condition in which the citizens of a formerly great power find themselvesdisturbs their historical consciousnessand, at the same time, awakenstheir national self-awareness.Intentional or not, the destructionof the statesystem will damageeverybody's interests -workers, peasants,the intelligentsia, and businessmen.If the state falls, all will fall. The paramountneed for a union of state-patrioticforces has not yet been realized by all those who should be concerned.Among these diversegroups are state-oriented,genuine democrats who are awareof the dangerof an Americanizedpresidency for the yet immatureSoviet democracy;state-oriented patriots with a social consciousnessand ap- 40 THE DRAMA OF POWER preciation of Russian national pride; and state-orientedcommunists who acceptthe blame for having beentoo patient with the Party elite responsiblefor bringing the countryto ruin andchaos. To unite in one organization,they do not have to agree about all things, but they must be of a single mind about one thing-a genuine and deep senseof responsibility for the Russian-Sovietstate and an understandingof the fact that this state is a historical form of the communalexistence of the large and small peoplesliving in Russia,a form guaranteeingthe civil rights about which so much is said and so little is actually donetoday. We can anticipatea sarcasticremark: "You are attemptingto unite things that opposeeach other: democracy,the Russianidea, and socialism." History gives many examplesof the unification of things that appearto be disparatewhen faced with the necessityof national survival. Who in 1933 would have thought that the United States,En- gland, and Franceon the one hand and the USSR on the other--huge intereststhat seemeddivided by an abyssof irreconcilableinterests-- would be united in an anti-Hitler coalition? At presentwe are separatedand splinteredby ideological,political, and national hostilities and by our irreconcilably different views of history. When the anticommunisthurricane struck the country, many of us who sincerely longed for a purification thought that it was here. We failed to notice that the hurricanewashed away the union's state structures,which certainly neededto be modernizedbut did not need to be liquidated. The Commonwealthof IndependentStates offered to us today seems betterthan the Union of SovereignStates, which is a very unclearand amorphousform. IS But the benefitspromised by the Commonwealth- the developmentof economicrelations on the basisof a single mone- tary unit, the ruble; the preservationof a unified command; control over nuclearweapons; and open stateborders--have no guaranteesof permanence.The benefits have survived, so far, thanks only to the unity of three state leadersin their oppositionto the so-calledNovo- Ogarevoformula "8 + I." But the "+ I" [the USSR] will soonbecome history. Then many problemswill reappear,but they will be problems betweenstates rather than between republics. Our country, which paid the highest price for peacein World War II, has suffered a defeat forty-six years later at the hands of its own leadership."But now we have freedom," someonemay say. Freedom FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 41 of what? Of total privatization,auctions at which what was createdby the labor of many becomesthe property of a few? Freedomof price liberalization? History cannotbe deceived,and it is for this reasonthat we had to recognizeprivate property. But history also teachesthat private property without a senseof social responsibility brings the confrontations that havecost us dearly in the past. Out of despaircaused by chaosand by wild anarchy,when the law of lawlessnessstrikes at the very fiber of our state organism,our people will be compelledto opt again for dictatorship. Honest and thinking citizens have tried to convince others that we needa changein our national economyto ensurethe unity and propor- tionality of state,collective, and private ownership,which would con- nect and reconcile"mine" and "ours." This is close to the philosophy of the NEP [the New EconomicPolicy of the early 1920s].16 Does NEP once again meanLenin? Yes, becauseit was Lenin who offered a deideologized development of our national economy.NEP is the unfinishedpage in the history of Soviet Russiathat may not be able to be copied but that does deserveto be studied.What is important is the methodologyofNEP: a way offorming an economythat combines economicfreedom with strong state authority, ensuringthat this freedom does not exceedthe limits of necessity.When properly exerted, the authority of the state makes sure that private property does not suppressstate property and vice versa. Above all we need unity, which is so hard to achieve.Those who are still trying to drag us into the commonEuropean home and deprive us of our own home are quick to accusesome peopleof Russophobia and others of national-socialismand apostasyfrom the ideals of freedom and democracy.Politically, everything is done accordingto the sameold principle-divideand rule. In the meantime,the last statestructures in the sphereof production are being destroyed.The threat of the destructionof the stratum of professional managers-administratorsand managersof large industrial, scientific, and agricultural enterprisesand military experts- is real. Only Russiacan becomethe center of the revival of a new union destinedby history. Russiahas been assigned this role by the historical developmentof our state.If Russiais seento be a strong, flexible, and truly democraticstate, other nations will be attractedto it becauseof 42 THE DRAMA OF POWER historical necessityand good will. The modemera doesnot removethe needfor a suitablefederal systemfor the political community of peoples and nationsthat havecreated a unified historical space. History shows that Russia'shonor has always been defendedby patriotic movementsof its peoples.This happenedat the time of the great trials. And it will happenagain. History will work for us if we work for history.

Failures of Perestroika I know that today millions of my compatriotsare asking themselves: What should an honestperson do who is convincedthat the socialist choice is correct?We all seethat blind and furious gaspsof hatredare freezing and destroyingour home. Crisis eventsare unfolding every- where literally every day. I am not even talking about the breakdown of economic ties, the sharp drop in production, and shortages.I am depressedby the generalmood: our peoplehave grown tired of political talk mills, uncertainties,intolerance, and hostility. The idea of brotherhoodand justice is rapidly becoming worthless becauseof a generallack of responsibilityand a cult of violence. The living conditions of socially unprotectedpeople are deteriorat- ing. Spiritual emancipationis turning into loose behaviorand a mood of all-permissiveness.Intoxication with this kind of freedom has sharply increasednihilism in all legal matters. Under the bannerof pluralism, our society has been penetratedby zoological anti-Sovietism. Today's "friends of the people" are persistently pushing the perestroika processesinto a counterrevolutionarydirection. The actionsof the new authoritiesin many placesshow not only that we have gone back to a dictatorial style dressedin democraticverbiage but that this time the administrativepower is in the handsof much more incompe- tent, intolerant,and cruel individuals than everbefore. We are displayinga fatal obsessionwith conferences.Last year, our ministers, politicians, and managersspent almost 150 days each in various organizationalmeetings. Many of them also managedto spend two or threemonths on official businesstrips abroad.With this kind of work schedule,no one could manage even a perfectly functioning nationaleconomy. In short, the currentgoals of perestroikahave movedaway from its FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 43 original idea, and anypoint of view that does not coincide with that of perestroika's"foremen" is immediatelysubjected to ostracism.And yet, the truth about what is happeningin our country is coming out. Perestroika'smain purpose-toopen up the potential of socialismby engagingall the creativeforces ofthe people--hasnot beenrealized. There were major miscalculationsin planning, followed by an attempt to solve all problemsat once by haphazardlychanging and jug- gling priorities. The political reforms were startedfrom the wrong end by promoting political pluralism from the outset rather than first de- mocratizingand modernizing the CommunistParty. The Party machinehad internal organizationalweaknesses, as was shown in the most recentelections of central, regional, and local state authorities. The public has been pressuredinto believing that the massmedia are a mirror that faithfully reflects reality and not a powerful instru- ment for influencingminds and moods.It was not fully understoodthat external forces were interestedin making sure that events should un- fold in a particularway. A great error was to destroy the all-union structuresof public and state managementand control simply becausethese were part of the old system.Under the pretext of a struggleagainst the administrative- commandsystem, mainstays oflaw and order, economicactivity, and security-allvital for every state-havebeen seriously damaged. Taken together,this proves beyondany doubt that the whole perestroika reform faces a crisis brought about by lack of competence,an absenceof political will, and a deficient senseof ethics on the part of the leadershipat various administrativelevels. The crisis could definitely havebeen avoided.

On the Outcome of Seven Tragic Years Formally, all peoplesof the USSRhave supposedlyacquired independence, sovereignty, and freedom. But simultaneously,the joy in people'seyes and the feeling of well-being in their homes havedisap- peared.Our people are sick and tired of contentions,conflicts, social problems,lies, andhypocrisy. To understandwhy this is so, it is enough to watch our bluntly 44 THE DRAMA OF POWER

pro-Yakovlev and totally Americanizedtelevision, which reacts and commentsin identical ways about magnificent official receptionsin the Kremlin and bloody interethnic carnages.The state TV lives on taxpayers'money while doing its utmost to destroy our state. What could be more ridiculous? Here, for example,is a typical information cocktail eagerly broad- cast and rebroadcastwithin a few hours by three or four announcers pretendingto be professionalcommentators, people's deputies, casual observers. "One more bloody massacrein Dubossar... In Tver, people in a bread line rioted and stormedthe bakery ... There is no gasoline in half the country'sairports ... In our country we have the highest level of crime ... No! Now Czechoslovakiahas overtakenus by declaring all communiststo be criminals. Havel unexpectedlyhelped us! Shevardnadzefinally admitsthat famine, cold, plus streetpeople make a hellish mix. 17 He shouldknow. He has experiencedall this firsthand in Georgia.And Popovis aboutto flee his post as mayorof Moscow.... Only our two Nobel Prize winners appearundisturbed and consistent. Televisionpictures resurrect the tirelessAndrei Sakharovfighting for humanrights (for some reasonno one caresto follow in his foot- steps). And Mikhail Gorbachev,shown with his still hopeful [wife] Raisa Maksimovna, is seen enjoying some rock music and an aca- demic choir. A real madhouse.No serious analysesare offered, no reasonsfor events are given, no consequencesor conclusionsare presented.We are one stop away from the infamous Russian free-for-all riot. One watchesand wonders: Where are the democratichuman-rights activ- ists? Why are they nowhereto be seen?Are they really contentwith the total fascizationof the country? But the "democrats"have trappedthemselves in a web of their own lies. It is unreasonableto expect an objective estimationof our new reality from those who have made every effort to create universal disorder. Theseare the people for whom Darwin's laws do not exist. They are grimly holding on to the "feeding trough" and refusing to yield to more conscientiousand fit individuals. But the time is ap- proaching wheneverybody-regardless of political orientation, religion, or amount of capitai--will have to face reality. Without an honest assessmentof the situationwe cannotclimb out of this mire. The main reasonfor our tragedy must be eliminated first. It was FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 45 causedby the forced imposition of a prehistoric liberalism that totally ignoredthe foundationsof our statehood,the multinationalcharacter of the peopleand their sociopsychologicallife.Both the "architects"and the "foremen" of perestroikahave shown themselvesto be outrageous neo-Trotskyites. By now, it is probably obvious to all that this liberal model was madefor Russiaby specialorder. Only this model provideda blueprint for breakingup a great nuclearpower into piecesthat "world civilization" could swallow without fear of choking. And it has seemingly accomplishedits purpose.The conspiracyseems to be working. But, as the saying goes,the day is not over yet. As for "world civilization," it is dominatednot by liberal ideas but by a traditionally conservative conceptthat developmentmust be basedon strong state and national interests.The West doesnot practicewhat it preaches.All the advisers of Mikhail Sergeevich[Gorbachev] and Boris Nikolaevich [Yeltsin] are fully awareof this. Even when the country is still in the processof being revived from taking the wrong medicine,the new governmentof Russiais planning to give it a dose of anotherimported remedy--shocktherapy of the Polish kind. It is difficult to imaginea more pernicioustreatment. Why not listen insteadto thosewho have beensaying for yearsthat the only way to get out of this crisis is through the stabilizationand growth of production,not the manipulationof prices and salaries?The key crite- rion for developingand selectingprograms to be introducedinto the economyshould be creativepotential. Russia does not need a new round of failed liberalism. It needs soundpragmatism coordinated with our historically formed systemof moral-ethical values. Russia is ready to accept a genuine market insteadof marketmirages. We needan economicenvironment with various forms of ownership. Our people have long since earned some well-deservedpeace and rest. But this is hardly possible unless we convincethem that no one will be savedone by one and that we must together develop and implement a well thought through program of nationalsecurity. Now the emotional state of our citizens can be describedby one word-

To keepthis from happening,serious corrections should be madeto the strategy of interstate relations,recognizing that Russia has exhaustedits historical quota of revolutionsand civil wars and that time for a nonapocalypticdisintegration of the "empire" is running out. If the idea of a new, unified, but interdependentcommonwealth does not take root in our long-sufferingland, no economic,financial, or human- itarian assistancefrom the West will be of any useto us. The samekind of chaoswill emergewith which Russiahas always respondedto forced attemptsto imposeon it a lifestyle not suitablefor its uniquecharacter. We are enteringthe decisivestage of the formation of Russia'snew state system.Once again, a narrow circle of close confidantsis working out treaties, programs, and agreementsaffecting the destiny of every nation and the geopolitical balanceof the entire world. As we know, the leadershipof the SupremeSoviet of Russiahas not even engagedin a preliminary discussionof the real effects of a shocktherapy transition to a market economy, not to mention measuresof social protection,without which the trade unions would refuseto support sucha program,as they have recently announced.In effect, a new kind of confrontationis being cultivated,this time not with the banned CPSUbut with the largestorganization of workers. A state is not a rigid entity. It submitsto the laws of development and changesits political shapeand form accordingly.But whateverthe sociopolitical system,there are certain basic elementswithout which a statecannot carry out its normal functions. Theseare a commoneco- nomic space,a mechanismfor tax and fiscal policy, uniform rights for the individual with the institutions to protect them, a languagefor interethnic intercourse,a systemof basic social values,and a uniform defenseand foreign policy. Without anyoneof thesemainstays, the whole edifice of the statebegins to collapse. The currentleadership [in the union republics] is alreadypaying for its battle againstthe former political centerof the USSRand its disregard for the laws governingevery federativestructure. After all, Russia is also a federatedstate, and any local leaderjoining the "paradeof sovereignties"should be preparedfor a similar display of stubbornness and selfishnesson the part of any autonomousrepublic. But what would then be left for the Russianfederative center? Where would the ongoingdisintegration stop? This is a questionnot of political prestige but of the limits of sovereignty.Even more unseemlyare the secret negotiations,conducted behind people'sbacks and contrary to their 50 THE DRAMA OF POWER

will as expressedin the recent[March 1991] referendum,to replacethe Soviet Union with an amorphousconfederation, semiconfederation, or commonwealththat would fall apartat the first vicissitudeof fate. But as in everythingelse, our leadersare not guided by world experience. Are we really the only country that doesnot learn from its own errors or from the errorsof others? Our radical mass media, especiallyradio and television, seemun- awarethat Russiawas the first but not the only great imperial statethat at the beginningof this century steppedonto the road of revolutionary shock. After the RussianEmpire beganits radical political moderniza- tion in 1905, the Ottoman Empire followed suit in 1908, then China three years later, and then Japanand Germany in 1918. During the fifteen yearsof that era, someof the largestcountries in the world were directly affectedby powerful political explosions.True, somepolitical scientistsconcluded that thesestates were unableto carry out overdue reforms becausethey lacked the decisive support of the traditional democracies.But just ten years later, the democraciesthemselves beganto fall apart. By the autumn of 1929, even prosperousAmerica suffereda most severecrisis, from which it recoveredonly by install- ing stateregulatory mechanisms and programs of a truly socialisttype. The main reasonsfor those political shocksmay have had little to do with a lack of talent amongthe monarchsand politicians and even less with the intrigues of the Bolsheviks. They had everything to do with the fact that the prevalenceof private property and the egotistical psychologyof the early twentiethcentury came into flagrant contradic- tion with public needs,compelling the ruling regimesto undertakea radical reorganizationof economic relations. For most, it was much too little and far too late. Our own experienceduring the following several decadesdemon- stratedthe polar extreme--thatto rely completelyon stateproperty is just as badand leadsto the sameimpasse. Today's leaders have to find that golden middle ground--theoptimum ratio betweencollective and personalinterests--that can save the peoplesof the planet from new suffering. Unfortunately,our modemRussian "revolutionaries" do not want to be involved in this laborious search.They prefer to take the line of least resistanceand to follow the old path of designatingnew "enemiesof the people." Russia'shistory has witnessedmany schisms. The religious split over three centuriesago resultedin many thousandsof Old Believers FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 51 leaving their villages and towns. The irreconcilabledivision between "proletarians"and "bourgeoisie"some seventyyears ago swept away millions of lives. Today, as if the deep schisms dividing republics, generations,cities, and villages were not enough, the ruling regime wants to add anotherschism based on political beliefs and has already formulated a presidentialdecree that will make it the law of the land. Forty million of our ancestors,comrades and former and presentmem- bersof the CPSU, are to be brandedas criminals. But our Party did not consist only of scoundrels.Among its memberswere hundreds of thousandsof people prominent in culture, science,and education.It was the party of Sholokhov, Zhukov, Korolyov, Chkalov-people honoredby the whole world. We most certainly do not need another schism that would draw a dividing line through all our, homes and families, pushingus, by intent or inadvertently,toward new confrontations, violence,and disorders. For a long time in our political history we tried to fly using one wing alone, the left. Nothing good came of it, and now this wing is broken. The entire left half of the political spacewas left vacated, creating an extremely dangerousimbalance. Now this gap is being slowly filled by the nascentnew parties.On the right, the "democrats" have taken power. They have shown somepolitical inventiveness,re- membering to borrow from overseasthe term "mayors" and even "White House"and "Congress."But so far they have failed to borrow the most important thing-a stable two-party political system,the basic values of which are sharedby all well-behavedAmericans. But you will not get far on one wing; you will fly in circles, lose altitude, and then fall. If this happens,even those who have supportedthe "democrats" will realizethat they havebeen deceived in their expectations. Our one-wing country is really on the edge of an abyss, and the chaosin all aspectsof life is growing worse. Political forces have been fragmented.Our leaders,who are endlesslydividing power and booty amongthemselves, have now reachedthe questionof who shouldcon- trol the nuclear button. But who will unite us and how? For-I will repeat-noone will be savedseparately. It must be all of us together.I seethe new RussianAll-People's Union movementas such a unifying force. It has simple and clear goals: justice, democracy,patriotism. I am sure that this movementcould becomethe nucleusof a union of genuinely state-patrioticforces for whom to serve the people and the Fatherlandwill be the highestduty. 52 THE DRAMA OF POWER

The Trial: Judges and Fates In 1992, the Yeltsin regime tried unsuccessfullyto have the Constitu- tional Court declare the entire former CommunistParty ofthe Soviet Union a criminal organization (like the Nazi Party in Germanyafter World War II). GennadyZyuganov was a key witnessforits defense.

-V.M.

HonorableCourt! I well understandthat, in a country with "transpar- ent" bordersand a destroyedstate administration,it is doubtful that a legal systemcan function normally. Nevertheless,as a personand a citizen, I sincerely wish the high court successin restoring constitu- tionallegalityand orderin our tormentedland. Saltykov-Shchedrinonce wrote: "The cruelty of Russia'slaws has always been softened by the fact that they are not necessarilyen- forced." But todaythe failure to enforcelaws hasreached the point that it is causing general exasperationand lawlessness,which, unfortunately, affectsthis trial as well. There is something unnaturaland inhuman in the very fact that former membersand leadersof the CPSU haveessentially banned and are now trying to put on trial the party that gave birth to them. This meanstrampling on an eternalmoral norm: children cannotjudge their own parents. Another curious fact is that a nonparty attorney, Yu. Ivanov, is defendingthe CPSU,and a former memberof the CPSU, A. Makarov, whose remarksat times remind us of Khazanov[a popular comedian],is its main prosecutor. On the otherhand, let us ponderthe logic of the charges.The Party, whoseruling position was officially affirmed in the Constitutionof the USSR, turns out to be unconstitutional.It is further alleged that the CPSU was not a party at all but a state, or a state structure,with its own constitution,the Charterof the CPSU. Moreover, themillions of personswho havepassed through the Party, accordingto Makarov, are not on a par with ordinary citizens. And all this is neededto justify, with masochisticlust, the destruction of the stateand its constitutionalfoundations; to justify the chaos that reigns in our country and the violationof all internationalpacts on humanrights; to camouflagethe unprecedentedbetrayal of allies and friends, relatives, the elderly, and children. It is neededto justify the FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 53 appropriationof property acquiredby the labor of three generationsof Soviet people. And this outrageis occurring not on a commodity ex- changeor in a marketplacebut in the Constitutional Court--our last hopefor a legal outcometo a lengthy litigation. Honorable Court! In my view this is such a perversionof justice, logic, and consciencethat it cannot be commentedon within the framework of common sense.The logic of the chargesshould not be the object of inquiry of this Constitutional Court but rather of some other institution. I realize that an irrational consciousnessis dominant in our society,thanks to the type of relationsbeing introducedin which one person steals from nine others and promisesto share the booty with them later. Of course,everybody knows that suchrelations can be basedonly on big lies and much violence, with the rights of the individual completely suppressedand laws disregarded.And even then, this can last only a short time. Nevertheless,despite the conditions reigning here in the Constitu- tional Court, I would like to focus in my statementon two issues:the so-called"state of the CPSU" and the impact of this trial on the deep- ening schismof our society. The choiceof theseissues is not dictated by my desire but rather by the characterof the charges,which are purely formal and disassociatedfrom the pain and fate of millions today, when all that happenedin the past is impudently presentedas the result of the intriguesof the illegal CPSU. According to this hind-sight logic, membersof this "illegal organization" included all the front-line commandersduring the Great Patri- otic War, from Georgy Zhukov to Nikolai Vatutin; all the main designersand directorsof factories, from SergeiKorolyov to Yevgeny Paton;half of our writers and professors;and, if you will excuseme, a majority of the peoplepresent in this courtroom.21 Think about it: some 40 million people have passedthrough the CPSU in all its years of existence.And since the averagesize of a family in our country consistsof four or five people,this meansthat a minimum of 160 million of our citizens were in one way or another connectedwith this illegal-and some allege criminal--organization. And those who accuseus today were yesterdaynot only membersof the CPSU but leadersissuing commandinginstructions. I believe that even such villains as Vyshinsky, Beria, and Yagoda could not see anythinglike this in their worst nightmares.22 It is well known that every political and legal systemhas its own 54 THE DRAMA OF POWER capacities.In our instance,the need for reforms had been obvious to everyone.That is why the absolutemajority of our citizens actively supportedthe transformationsstarted by the Party in the middle of the 1980sand, aboveall, the creationofa full-fledged Republic of Soviets, relieving the Party of the unusual functions it had been compelledto assume,especially in the years of the Great Patriotic War. Our es- teemedprofessors of history have convincingly spokenabout this, but, unfortunately,their statementshave been hushedup by the so-called independentand free democraticpress. But the reform processdid not reachthe country at large, and soon it was led astray in anticonstitutionaland antistateways. Let me remind you that in the mid-1960sa whole special program was developed, and it was not called perestroikaor radical reform. It was a program aimed at undermining the country's constitutional structure and at destroyingthe USSRas a uniform and greatpower. Its key item and basic componentwas the statementthat it would be impossibleto blow apart the USSR from within without first destroyingthe CPSU. But the CPSUcould only be destroyedfrom the top, by penetratingthe decision-makingcenters of the Party and the state. This could not be accomplishedfrom the bottomup. HonorableCourt, pleasegive your attentionto the basic conceptual ideas formulated in the various documentspertaining to this program. Many of them are no longer secret. They can be summarizedin five points: • first-to portray the USSR as the last and most predatoryempire on earthand to undertakeeverything possible to destroyit; • second----toprove that the USSR was not the chief architect of victory in the GreatPatriotic War but was as villainous as fascism,that this country doesnot deserveany respect; • third----to escalatethe arms race and deform completelythe Soviet economy,which was already underminedby the war; to prevent the USSR from carrying out social programsthat could demonstratethe true essenceof the statesystem and its attractiveness; • fourth-to fire up nationalism,and with supportfrom national-religious extremism,to blow the countryapart from within; • fifth-to seizecontrol of the massmedia with the help of "influ- enceagents" and try to destroy the collective foundationsof people's lives in our state by once again cutting our people'spresent off from the pastand depriving themof the future. FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 55

Consciously or not, this program was put into high gear after Gorbachev,Yakovlev, and Shevardnadzeassumed power. If you read closely the articles in the newspaperMoscow News and in the maga- zine Ogonyokof that period, you can easily notice signs pointing out ways to realizethis program.23 They were in effect orders,which were then multiplied and distributed across the entire country to form a destructive,antinational policy. The most effective successorof this line underpresent conditions is the newspaperIzvestia. It is no accident that this newspaperhas become the focal point for heated debatesin the Supreme Soviet of Russia.This is not glasnost,as we are being assuredby the journalist Yevgeny Kiselev on his program"ltogi," but a free hand to continue manipulatingpublic opinion with completelyalien positionsand values. I have personallyprepared many reportson conditionsin Lithuania and the Caucasus,about the work of their sovietsand law-enforcement institutions-all of which were shelvedby the leadership.Under the guise of creatinga civil society, a law-basedstate, democracy, pluralism, sovereignty,and independence,the constitutionalfoundations of the state---theCongress and the SupremeSoviet of the USSR, the people'soversight-were all destroyed,and the army and the law-andorder establishmentwere all but destroyedas well. The tool of this destructivepolicy was a fundamentallynew weapon,which has yet to be studied very thoroughly-informational-psychologicalprogram- ming using huge capacities,which has succeededin causing dissent and discord within our society and has proven to be more powerful than the fascisthordes in World War II. However,the basic causesof our tragedywere inside our own state, foremost in the monopolizedeconomy and the moral-political character of its leadership. HonorableCourt! I cannotassert, as someothers do, that the Party is not guilty of anything. This would be far from the truth. The Party is aboveall guilty of having exercisedexclusive power for a long time, as a result losing its sense of political struggle, its ability to analyze conditionsaccurately, and the supportof the masses.In the processof democratization,the CPSUwas obligatedto begin with itself bybring- ing into leadershippositions talented, state-oriented people with a real love for Russiainstead of peoplewho call Russia"this country." Such new peoplewould havebeen able to find an evolutionaryway to carry out urgently neededreforms. They would have understoodthat com- 56 THE DRAMA OF POWER

plex state systemscan be modernizedonly one part at a time. Other- wise, you end up with a loss of control and completechaos of the kind that we are witnessingeverywhere today. The Central Committee of the CPSU unfortunately did not have enough courage to relieve Gorbachev of his duties even when his completeinability to lead the Party and the state,his moral unscrupu- lousness,and his violation of his public oath becameobvious. Amaz- ingly, this winner of the Nobel PeacePrize, who unleasheda civil war in his own country, lowered the state flag from the Kremlin, and ap- propriateda whole city block of CPSU property, is continuing to give adviceon how we shouldlive and work. Many of us did not have enough political senseand courage to object when PresidentYeltsin, traveling all over the country and promising everyoneboundless sovereignty, committed himself to the creation of an independentstate with just three functions: unified defense, transport, and energy systems(now the last of these is not even included). The idea was not only unconstitutionalbut also politically illiterate. Every professionalperson knows that a state rests on seven pillars, at a minimum, and is in dangerof collapseif anyoneof them falters. These pillars are a uniform economic and territorial space,a uniform systemof financesand taxes, a uniform languageof interethnic exchange,uniform human rights protectedby the state, and uniform defenseand foreign policies. We did not react appropriatelyto an extremely disturbing signal, when in respectableEstonia they started talking seriously about the priority of one nationality above anotherand initiating clashesamong nationalities within the entire country. Now, in independentEstonia, brown passportsfor so-calledRussian-speaking persons are being is- sued. Even the racists in South Africa did not allow themselvesto do such a thing. Latvia went even further: for severalmonths they have been finding out who in the leadershiphas a Russianwife. Such a marriageis judgedto be a compromisingcircumstance. Genuine citizens of our Fatherlandworried about its integrity and destiny have beenfed one after anotherto voraciousjournalists acting on the orders of Alexander Yakovlev, that masterof undercoverin- trigues. Just rememberthe case of General Rodionov, who [in April 1989] was the only memberof the GeorgianPolitburo to vote against the use of troops to dispersedemonstrators in Tbilisi.24 For that he was immediately removed from his post as military district commander. FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 57

Later a large numberof our compatriotswere addedto this blacklist, and some of them are actually still behind the walls of Matrosskaya Tishina Prison. And look at the barrageof accusationshurled at the courageousRussian general Alexander Lebed, who has honestly in- formed us about the ongoing genocide [against Moldova's Russian minority] in the DniesterRegion!25 Most of all, the Party is guilty of allowing incompetentopportunists to come to power, people who did not understandthe constitutional foundations of our state and the specific features of Russia and the Soviet Union as a unique national-stateentity. They are the people who have also ignored the historical and political experienceof all other countries. This experienceteaches that the constitutionsof all countriesproceed from the premisethat the first priority is to protect territorial security. It is easy to see why: all stateswere founded on conquests,and hardly any state has been destroyedwithout bloody wars. As we can see,we are no exception.In the wake of the destruction of the USSR, war fires are burning everhotter in Central Asia, the Caucasus,and the DniesterRegion. Summarizingwhat has been presentedabove, I can state that the issue is not the constitutionalityof the CPSU. Its constitutionalityhas nothing to do with the charges.All the efforts of Mr. Makarov to presenthere one more "confessionon the given theme,"26in my view, have beenin vain. The samegoes for his attemptsto impressthe High Court with such emotional expressionsas "proletarian petty bureaucrats," "party bonzes,"or "trembling handsand cheeks,"which simply underscorethe legal weaknessof his speech.As for the RCP [Russian CommunistParty], there was not a single argumentin his speechsup- porting the allegation that it violated the laws of Russia in the past, aside from the fact that it was a part of the CPSU! But if you follow the reasoningof Mr. Makarov far enough,you will seethat it makesno sense.The CPSU was a party of the USSR, which, accordingto the "democrats,"no longer exists. (However, I believe that the Soviet Union does exist and will certainly be restored.)But if we are talking hereabout a party of anotherstate, this HonorableConstitutional Court is apparentlyexceeding its own authority andinvading the prerogatives of the CIS, which still hasno similarly lofty judicial body of its own. As for the RussianCommunist Party, I want to mention that, after Russia'sdeclaration of sovereignty,according to which Russia'slaws were to have precedenceover those of the Soviet Union (which was 58 THE DRAMA OF POWER one of the main reasonsfor the collapse of the Soviet Union), the RussianCommunist Party cannoteven be consideredas being legally a part of the CPSU becauseits sovereigntyis abovethat of the CPSU. It is therefore likely that this High Court will have no choice but to permit it to resumenormal work in the nearfuture. HonorableCourt! Why has Deputy Oleg Rumyantsev,by bringing in the secondquestion, drawn us into this fruitless, extremelydanger- ous litigation? Is it not clear that the country is like dry wood soaked with gasoline?Look aroundyou: banditry and racketeeringare on the rampage,rivers of weaponsflow from the South and the West to the Center, peasantsrefuse to deliver grain to the state (remember1928 and what followed), all large-scaleproduction is about to come to a halt, and soon ManezhSquare in Moscow will be filled not with ven- dors but with thosewho feed themselvesby their own labor. I believe that all this was done deliberately,not accidentally.Although I am of the opinion that the "democrats"made an inexcusableerror in banning the activity of the CPSU, it has not been a unified entity for a long time. At its next Congress,it would have divided into two wings, giving our countrythree large political centerscapable of engagingin a constructivedebate. In this way, true democracycould have come into existence,although its development,naturally, would have beendiffi- cult. But this way everything has been turned into a political mess, which is conduciveto the rise of a dictatorship,although the essential prerequisitesare lacking even for a dictatorship: a strong army, the supportofa significant part of the population,and a smoothlyworking systemoflaw-enforcement agencies. There are, however, many candidatesfor the role of dictator--the leaderof the "democratic"movement, Gavriil Popov, for example.In an article publishedin the Frenchpaper Liberation, he brazenlycalled for the seizureof powerby a "thin upper layer,"which could suppress the "majority of Russians"and force the country to proceedto a free market-ofthe mafia type, no doubt. As you can see, Popov is quite ready. He had a stint as mayor of Moscow and managedto transform the city into a world garbagedump; now he wantsto sit on the Russian throne---provided,as he wrote, that he is "not obligated to undergo examinationsby election" and not "subject to people's sanctions." What a rare democrathe is! And yet, I believethat our opponentsare trying to solve threemajor strategicproblems with this trial. FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 59

First, by artificially associatingthe statewith the Party, they want to finalize the collapseof the Soviet Union and vindicate their disregard of the people'swill expressedin the nationalreferendum. They want to do it here, in the ConstitutionalCourt, a high and respectedinstitution, therebyputting it in an ambiguoussituation as the supremeguardian of justice. Second,they want to avoid personalresponsibility for the failure of their radical reforms by putting the blame on the former communists andon the national-patrioticstate forces, who understandperfectly that the sovereignrepublics cannot survive alone in our country, for an entity that has enduredfor centuriescannot be divided in one hour by anyone. Third, they want to be able, as a last resort,to usethis legal decision to prosecuteand rout all inconvenientpeople---whether directors of factories, or officers of the Soviet Army or statesecurity, or obstinate writers and our own businessmen----underthe pretext that the absolute majority of them were membersof the CPSU and could thus be de- clared"criminals." The ultimate goal of this strategy is to bring to completion the destructionof a united Russiacapable of assertingnational and state interestsand carrying out independentpolicies. The last meetingof the "G-7" in Munich confirmed the goals of this strategy. Our huge oil fields were offered to Germany for exploitation in payment for our debts, and the United Statesunambiguously demanded the transferof the SouthernKuriles to Japan,tying this condition to promisedeco- nomic aid, which no one hasyet seen. Our country hasbeen artificially pushedtoward a new schismbased on ideological-nationalattributes: if you think differently, you are an opponent;if you are of a different nationality, you are an enemy.This schismcould be even more terrible than in 1917, when over 650,000 membersof the national-stateelite, whoseprofession was to servethe Fatherland,were summarily outlawed. The purged group included high-ranking imperial officials, gentry, officers, businessmen,professors, clergy, Cossacks,and others. Our grandfathersand fathers made peaceamong themselves only after the bloodbathof the massrepres- sionsand the GreatPatriotic War. This time, we had every opportunity to carry out the appropriate reforms slowly, without extremistradicalism. But this is not what happened.To this day, our new revolutionariescannot control their itch to 60 THE DRAMA OF POWER settle accounts. The current Soviet elite was almost all part of the CPSU. Although the CPSU containedmany scoundrels,turncoats, and traitors, to find the entire Party illegal would amount to a masscon- demnationof the Russiannational elite, which would be absolutely ruinous for our state and especially its intellectual-administrative sphere.This would be a greattragedy for Russia.It could be the end of Russia. I, however, continue to believe that no one would succeedin doing this one more time to our country. Honorable Court! We are entitled to expect a fair decision in the matter before you. At the same time, regardlessof your pending verdict, I want to inform you that the united opposition, the bloc of national-patrioticforces, and the RussianNational Assembly will do everything to prevent a new fratricide, a recurrenceof 1937, and the emergenceof a new compradorianoprichnina [secret police] in our Fatherland.Should it becomenecessary, we will tum directly to the nation'spublic opinion and find the courageto stop provocateursof a new confrontationin Russiaand to nail the political adventurersto the pillar of shameforever. With its 1.5 million refugees,thousands of nuclearwarheads, and an abundanceof worn-out nuclear reactors and dangerouschemical plants,Russia has exhaustedits capacityfor revolutionsand civil wars. It is left with two remainingways to settle disputesand controversies: dialogue and law. We are ready for this, and we hope that the High Court is interestedin seeingthat thesetwo remediesbecome the main instrumentsfor settling the disputesof politicians and the final argu- ment oftoday'skings. Let me make a brief remark in conclusion.When I was listening to the many-hour-Iongspeech of the attorney Makarov, which sounded more like a public prosecutor'sverdict, I constantly found myself thinking that all this had a familiar ring, that I had read it somewhere before.Now I know why. I recommendto Mr. Makarov, who now has accessto the Party archives,that he look up the materialsof the Six- teenthParty Congressof 1930 and closely readthe text of a statement given there by ComradeKirshon, who thunderedagainst Russian na- tionalliterature,culture, and philosophy,condemned the great scholar Alexei Losev for every imaginable sin, and recommendedthat for holding the wrong philosophicalviews Losev shouldbe placebefore a firing squad.27Fortunately, Losev was not executed,but he was im- prisonedfor a long time. He was eventually releasedand lived to be FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 61 more than ninety years old, departingour world as a philosopherof world renown. Kirshon's own destiny was more tragic: he was exe- cutedbefore a firing squadin 1938. The point I am trying to make is that all of us, including the attor- neys who have become involvedin higher politics, are obligated to learn the necessarylessons from history and to calculateour movesat leasttwo or threesteps ahead. This appliesalso to Mr. Makarov.

We Will Withstand and Win Russiais experiencinga truly uniqueperiod in its history. A historical rollback is taking place disguisedas "democracy"and "a return to the world community." In practice,a political shift is occurringbehind the scenesthat fits the conceptof a counterrevolution.It beganapproxi- mately in 1989, reachedits peakin August 1991, and at the momentis metastasizingthroughout all the strata of our society and all the spheresof the economy,in the processchanging the fundamentalprin- ciples of humanrelations. But it would be a political error to limit this shift, this counterrevolution, to any timeframe.The initial stageof the actual systemiccrisis datesback to the 1970s,when socialismin the USSRgradually began to lose its historical initiative. At that time, the CPSU could no longer adequatelyaddress new problems in the domestic and international spheres,and its top echelonshowed signs of moral, political, and ideological degradation. Parallel with thesecrisis phenomena,shadow capital was develop- ing and shadoweconomic, financial, and subpolitical structureswere being created.Gradually, thesestructures penetrated the stateappara- tus, its economic complex, and its political system, including the CPSUnetwork, all the way up to the highestlevels of power. By the middle of the 1980s,the country'sleaders and the peopleat large beganto realize that they neededto find a way out of the crisis situation, improve their economy,and democratizelife in general.By this time, the shadoweconomy was running out of spacefor expanded reproduction; consequently,its bossesraised the question of how to weakenpolitical restraintsby influencingthe stateand Party apparatus, including the CPSU Central Committee,from the inside. It was under such pressuresthat perestroikacame into existence.From the start, it 62 THE DRAMA OF POWER

was a political double deal. Its leaders, from Gorbachev,Yakovlev, and Shevardnadzeto Gorbunovs[of Latvia] and Snegur[of Moldova], used propagandato disorient people. Behind this smokescreen,they nourishedthe idea of a radical changeof the political system,culminating in the opencounterrevolution of August 1991. The statementregarding the uniquenessof the present historical period is not accidental.The political movementbackward is phenom- enal by itself. Perhapsthe most amazingfact is that wild capitalismis being imposedon Russiaunder conditions in which political authority is already changingand adaptingthe superstructureof society while the economicsystem and the formal managementcomplex still retain a public (state) character.Shadow capital and its owners, the political- economicmafia, have gaineda political victory and taken power, but they have not advanceda single step in the economicsphere. In this sense,the currentpolitical power in Russiais baseless,and, at the same time, the state(public) economicorganism and the social strataof the populationrelated to it are outsidepolitics. Realizing this, it is easyto understandwhy the Yeltsin regime is striving to take over the national property, which can only be done through the dictatorshipof a small group of legalized shadowbusinessmen and their political lobbyists. Hencethe feverish movementsaimed at creatinga so-calledpresiden- tial republic. It is also easyto predict the growth of political activity in all strata of society, which have lost their basic rights, including the right to work, againstthis further alienationof public (state)property. Collisions of economic interests cause political confrontations- even bloodshed.This is the bottom line of all revolutions, as well as counterrevolutions.However speedy and triumphanta political revolution, its ultimate successor defeatis determinedby the outcomeof the struggle of political-economicinterests, a struggle that is accelerated by the momentumof the revolution or counterrevolution.The 1917 OctoberRevolution was followed by a civil war, which we now per- ceive as a national tragedy. Since August 1991 and the subsequent actionsof the Yeltsin political regime, a new national tragedyis loom- ing on our horizon. Completeresponsibility for sucha tragedywill be borne by the regime, which has neither understoodnor learned anything from the scholarshipof Marxism-Leninismor from the Chicago school of economic enslavement.This regime, realizing the limiting narrownessof its social base, has started to generatecompradorian bourgeois supporters,who are closely connectedwith transnational FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 63 corporationsand Westernmafia structuresand who pump the riches of Russiaand their capital to the West. This is what makesthe current regime antinationaland a paid agent of transnationalpolitical centers outsideour country. The union of the political regime, legalized shadow capital, and foreign political-economicstructures leaves no room for our own national entrepreneurship,which is consequentlyaspiring to be involved in the sphereof the opposition'sactivity and at this stageis an ally of the humiliatedand plunderedworking people. For all practical purposes,we can now offer a picture of the distribution of political forces in Russia.On the one hand, a political regime leaning on a corrupt state apparatusand a mafia-compradorianbour- geoisie.Even by creatingits own vertical chain of command(represen- tativesof the president,administrative heads, executive structures), this regime has neither the ability nor the possibility to control conditions in the country or steer political-economicprocesses. That is why its aim is to switch to a regime of personalauthority, that is, to createa dictatorship. The provocative actions of Yeltsin on December 10, 1992, the unfair manipulationsof the referendumon the draft Constitu- tion,28 and the creationof a new antinational"democratic bloc" are all stepsleading to a dictatorshipthat would permit the useof any method, including repression,to strengthenthe political regime and bolsterthe powerof compradorianand supranationalcapital. On the other side are all the plunderedpeople--workers, peasants, working intelligentsia,scientists, cultural workers,and military person- nel. Dozensof political parties,movements, and public organizations, including professionalassociations, are vying for political representa- tion. The deprived people are representedin the legislative body by this joint opposition, which has little or no influence on executive authority and is insufficiently organized. This poorly put-together "multivoiced mass" testifies to the current weaknessof our political organizations,but, simultaneously,it nurturesa broadpolitical movement capableof preventinga national-statecatastrophe and initiating a righteouscause to revive the country. All valid oppositionmovements and parties are characterizedby a strongly expressedaspiration to defend the state'sintegrity, support nationalrevival, and ensurepolitical stability. The programdocuments of theseparties--from monarchists and nationaliststo communistsand socialists--assertthese principles. And all are in opposition to the 64 THE DRAMA OF POWER presentpolitical regime. A significant number of parties of various ideological and political coloring have declaredthemselves ready to defendthe interestsof labor, the classes,and social groups. By doing so, they havedeprived the communistsand socialistsof a monopolyon the interestsof workers, peasants,and the working intelligentsia. Cer- tainly, it is possibleto claim that these are mere verbal declarations, but now the communistsand socialistswill have to show by concrete deedsthat they are firmly tied to the working and exploited people. Neither historical memoirs nor the purity of their Marxism-Leninism can help. Only real, concretework will now be acceptedas proofof the truthfulnessof their political manifestosand theoretical-ideologicalpo- sitions. To avoid falling into sectarianismand dogmatism,we must clearly recognizethis fact as we preparefor the restorationcongress of the Communistsof Russia. At the sametime, the declaredexpression of national-stateinterests gives us a basis for the creation of a broad coalition opposing the antinational and antistate regime. All opposition partiesand movements recognizethat a catastrophehas engulfed Russiaand that this catastrophecan be overcomeonly through the cooperationof left and right, believers and atheists,working people and nationally oriented businessmen.Such national unity already existedbefore, in the years of the GreatPatriotic War, when a significant part of the white emigration participatedin the Resistanceand helped the Red Army, Soviet Russia,and the USSR any way it could. At that time the communist Mikhail Sholokhovand the anticommunistIvan Bunin both unequivo- cally believedin our eventualvictory.29 All were united by their devotion to Mother Russiaand their hatredof the occupiers.To ignore this lessonwould be inexcusable.Now again it is much more important to save Russiathan to preserveone's ideological innocence.To be more exact, now, in the face of a national-statetragedy, ideological and political disagreementsbecome secondary. The fundamentalproblem now is to strengthenthe unity of the opposition forces for the sakeof Russia'ssalvation. Only such a united bloc can bring to power a governmentof national salvation,and only sucha united oppositioncan savethe country and its people from the tragedyof a new civil war, after which there would be no victors and no losers left in Russia,and the Russianstate itself would most likely not survive. In spite of the screamsof the treacherous"democratic mass media," we, the opposition,have every FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 65 right to call ourselvesthe party of peaceand national consensus.This shouldbe reflectedin the programdocuments of the CommunistParty and in its actions. The fact that the events of recent years were manifestationsof a national-statecatastrophe instigated to a large extent from abroadand that each additional day of the Yeltsin political regime prolongs the loss of our state independenceand sovereignty leads to one more important conclusion.The reborn CommunistParty of Russiashould make patriotism its bannerin the struggle for the minds and heartsof our people, while remaining faithful to the historical achievementof friendship among all peoples living in Russia. In this way, we will strengthenour people'sconfidence in the party of workers, allow the communiststo find reliable allies, and help establisha constructive dialogue and cooperationin the whole spectrumof oppositionparties and movements.In doing this, given the efforts to imposeon humankind a barrackslifestyle in the "new world order," our strugglefor the revival of Russiawill becomea contribution to the fulfillment of our internationalduty. Only a powerful Russiawill be able to preventthe coming of a one-dimensionalexistence under the conditionsof a new world order and allow all peoplesto live accordingto their historical traditions, spiritual values, and long-developedideals. Fostering Russia'sreturn to great-powerstatus is now a natural goal of the oppositionin generaland of the rebornCommunist Party in particular. By resistingthe perestroikacatastrophe and strugglingagainst "democratic genocide,"we haveproved our loyalty to the working peopleand the entire nation. We have also proved that the Communistscan meet the challengeof nihilism and antinationalobscurantism. We seea future Russia in all its greatness,power, and prosperity enjoying complete spiritual and ideological diversity. Russiawill restorethe brotherhoodof nationsthat was crushedby the so-called"universal humanvalues" in the centerand by the nationalisticdemagogues at the local level. His- tory is not over-Russiais alive, is struggling,and will win.

At a Sharp Bend in the Road Any radical transition of a society is complicated,painful, and bound to result in hardships.Anyone who does not understandthis or does not want to acceptthe inevitable costsof progressis a defenderof the 66 THE DRAMA OF POWER old system.This is the argumentthat my most diligent opponentsuse to justify their disagreementwith my recentarticles. This is the one and only argumentamidst a flood of curses and threatspouring down on me from the pagesof many publications.But this gives me the opportunity to continue the dialogue without the rancor that has recently become characteristicof our "pluralism of opinions." So progressis inconsistentand one hasto pay for everything.This is absolutely correct for all times and peoples.But by virtue of its ab- straction,its applicationto the presentsituation requiresa particularly careful analysis, which is being evadedby my opponents.Even the historianA. Kiva, who rememberedeverything from Vologda butterto smokedham, has not yet delved into a historical interpretationof the period of perestroika.Supporters of "progress"should know that the price paid for it is not unimportant,because it is possibleto pay so dearly that you end up bankrupt.Indeed, such cases have not beena rarity. Any changecomprises in itself an element of preservation,otherwise it is not a changebut rather a disintegration.In spite of all the discussionsabout the inevitability of destroyingthe old order, the culture and humanismthat compriseits core should, nevertheless,be re- tained and nurtured. A genuine revolution is different from a "senselessand ruthless" rebellion, becausesocial changes,however drastic, are madewith continuity and with care for the improvementof the basicconditions of humandevelopment. But our society is losing its feeling of self-preservation.The situation is so desperatethat the questionis not about what "-ism" to build next in our country but about physical and spiritual survival--to beor not to be? The heirs of the Komsomol who speakabout "overcoming alien- ation" and "increasingdegrees of freedom" have in some places al- readystepped over the red line.3o In video salons,pornography, horror, and violence are shown to young children and teenagers.The timid protestsof indignantparents drown in this murky streamof indecency. Excited by what they see on the videos, boys go into the streetsand repeatthe "lessons"they learned.I think that not everyone realizesthat the doubling of the teenagecrime rate in many regions over just two years will soon bring a sharp increasein the numberof repeatcrimi- nals. If the moral foundationof a personis destroyedat a young age, it is extremely difficult to restore. While we are hypnotizing ourselves FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 67 with discussionsabout "humanizationand discovery of the true self," time-delayedmines are beingplaced under society. History tells us that the most reliable way to get rid of aboriginal peoplesis to tum them into drunkards.As you can see, we are being made into "addicts" by muchmore potentmeans. Predatorymarket forces are stealthily encroachingon the fundamental sciencesand breakingapart and destroyingthe scientific-technological potential of our country-ourlast remaining hope for a dignified way out of the crisis. We createdthe rocket Buran, a miracle of engi- neering. This allowed us to create 500 new unique technologies----an entirely new industrial culture! Today its creatorshave been laid off and have to work for cooperativesmaking knickknacks-thestate has no funds. If this is the price we must pay for the next phantomof a "glorious future," I am categorically against such "progress." But I am sure progresshas nothing to do with it. All civilized statesknow that the market is not an end in itself but a meansthat requiresconstant regula- tion. They recognizethat politics is fruitless if it is not basedon economics. In culture, education, science, defense,crime, and social justice, no one countson sponsorsand charity. The state, responsible to its citizens, must take these spheresunder its supervision,control, and management.It is the task of the stateto ensurethe viability and sustainabilityof societyand to createthose frameworks and conditions without which freedomdegenerates into chaosand barbarism. But insteadof strengtheningthese frameworks, already weakened in the "epoch of stagnation,"our politicians continue their destruction. This showsa lack of responsibility,a misunderstandingof the essence of statehood,a direct underminingof marketrelations, and the absence of a strongstate policy in the social sphere.Even in the now criticized 1960s, the share of funds channeledfrom national revenuesinto the developmentof scienceand education was twice as high as it is today. Somepoliticians pretendto be amazedby the interethnicconflicts in our country. But many people living in theserepublics have already long been living by different laws. It is obvious that even the most correct teamsplaying in the samegame but following different rules will inevitably fight. This is what inequality and discriminationin ethnic relationsbrings. A state is certainly not an inflexible entity frozen in time. It obeys the logic of developmentand changesits political shapeaccordingly. 68 THE DRAMA OF POWER

However, blinded by perestroikaenthusiasm and angry nihilism, the ultrarevolutionariesare recklesslydestroying the building of our statehood, which they havecondemned and labeledtotalitarian. Let us assumethat the state does collapse.What would follow-a radioactivemeltdown? We can alreadyfeel its hot breath. I think there is anotherroad to the future. It leadsthrough strength- ening and developingthe federal state that had historically formed in our country, clearly differentiatingbetween the rights and duties of the centerand thoseof the sovereignrepublics. As an indispensablecondi- tion for renewingour Union, we must sign new and binding Union and Federalagreements. But thereare many public figures who do not seeand do not want to see any of this. At the very moment when the Americansrenounced the label "evil empire," this label was picked up inside our country and promotedto the rank ofa political doctrine. Now the imageof the "last colonial empire" is being vigorously implanted into the public consciousness.This may be a good time to recollectthe experienceof the United States,where even verbal calls for the disintegration of the country are severelypunishable under the law. But in Russiathe processof feudal disintegrationis being persistently encouraged.Gavriil Popov has not merely proposedthe formation of fifty nuclear ministates with disputable borders "out of the fragmentsof the empire" but, with the energypeculiar to him, is working on the creationof a new Moscow "principality." A similar recom- mendationwas made by Hitler's chief intellectual adviser, Dr. Abel, who developedthe EasternPlan to enslaveand destroythe USSR.This expandingepidemic of total "sovereignization"has nothing in common with the splendid idea of the interdependenceof the world. It is nothing more than the naive notion, doomedto failure, that salvation can be achievedseparately, which in reality only exacerbatesthe general chaos and devastation.Its logical end calls for absolutely"independent"individuals, eachsitting in his or her own cellar armedwith a sawed-offshotgun. Only vigorous and energeticbusinessmen with initiative can rescue Russia today! This appeal is sounding louder and louder from the camp of the "democrats,"and under its bannera new mass political party is being organized.Its publicists portray a decentsociety in which the "enrichmentof one benefitsall." But they do not mentionthat there are two kinds ofbusiness----civilizedand criminal-speculative.The lat- FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 69 ter lurches in a destructivedirection, gravitating to financial specula- tion, racketeering,drugs, and prostitution. A black marketeernever voluntarily becomesa farmer. He would rather arm himself to assert his "legal rights" than changehis occupation.Harsh laws are being usedall over the world in the battle againstsuch criminal-speculative businessmen.Look, for example,at what is going on to fight organized crime in Colombia. The capital in our country--nine-tenthsof which has a criminal origin-----stems from the era before anyone ever heard of perestroika, when the union of a shadoweconomy, organized crime, and a corrupt bureaucracywas alreadyprospering in the blatant and refined plunder of working people. The transferof power into the handsof this union (and our country is just a few stepsaway from this) will be the con- cluding chord in a long ongoingprocess. And this will spell the end of our great multinational state. Our domesticmafia, stealing its way to power, has sufficiently revealedits basic antipublic, antistate,and anti- nationalcharacter. I doubt that any additional evidenceis neededafter exposuresin the press of the slimy acts committed by the "democratic" authorities. Doctor of EconomicSciences Tatyana Koryagina, a people'sdeputy of the RSFSR,honestly and convincingly told us about someof them. In one single affair, which was fortunately stoppedin time despitevigor- ous attemptsto whitewashit, a 140 billion ruble sale to international criminals would have resulted in an avalancheof spontaneous privatization and the loss of national sovereigntyover almost half the materialwealth of Russia. But who can guaranteethat other similar deals are not being made or contemplatedtoday? The whole monitoring systemof the state has been destroyed.Without its restorationand strict observanceof the laws, it will not be possibleto carry out any reform. The sameis true of the entire infrastructure. I am surethat the nouveauxriches cannotlong retain statepower in their handsor protectthe national interestsof the peoplesof the Soviet Union and the RussianFederation. All they are capableof is plunder- ing, selling the nationalwealth, anddestroying the country'sintegrity. The presentunfolding of eventsis in some respectsreminiscent of the summerof 1917, depictedby GeneralDenikin in his Essayson the RussianTime of Troubles. "Somethingunimaginable is happeningin our country! ... Anarchy. Disorders.Pogroms. Mob law ... Banditry 70 THE DRAMA OF POWER and robberies on all railroads and on all waterways! ... The most fertile regions are perishing! Soon nothing will be left but the naked ground!"3! Thesewere the fruits of the worthlessrule of an outworn czarist regime and the eight-month-Iongattempt of the Provisional Governmentto correctth~ situation. Theyproved their inability to rule over Russia. Today, in newspapersand magazineswith circulations in the millions and in thousandsof hours of radio and television broadcasts, cynical lies are being told about the "irresponsibleBolshevik experi- ment" in Russiain 1917, which is allegedto be the sourceof today's problems.An honesthistorian will tell a different story. On the eve of the October Revolution, Lenin wrote an anticrisis programentitled "The ThreateningCatastrophe and How to Fight It." What was it about?It was about disorderin transportationand industry, unemployment,and approachingfamine. And about the fact that the measuresto fight this catastrophewere well known, not invented by the Bolsheviks, and had been tested in practically all countries engagedin the war. He pointed out that the ruling classesof Russia appearedunable to implementthese measures. Only the working people and the Soviet governmentcould rescue Russiaand assertits national interests.Nikolai Berdyaev,who had no sympathyfor the Soviet regime, recognizedthe "indisputablemerit of communismto the Russianstate."32 Recall his testimony: "Russiawas under the threat of complete anarchy and disintegration. This was stoppedby the communistdictatorship, which found slogansthe people werewilling to obey." What took placelater is anothermatter-important, but nevertheless different. I am convincedthat the subsequenttragic eventswere con- nectednot with socialist ideas but with a deviation from theseideas, not with revolution but with quiet, creeping counterrevolution.The transfonnationof this counterrevolutioninto a very loud one madethe situation even more tragic. This is why I would treasurethe goals of genuineperestroika: a humanerenewal of society, a return of powerto the soviets,that is, to the people; and the creationof genuinedemoc- racy anda truly law-basedstate. Any otherway leadsnowhere. But to move along the path of renewal,it is necessaryto engagein the most essential,urgent business.Our most important goals should be the preservationof the country and its unique multinational and cultural-historicalvalues and the preservationof its economicand po- FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 71 litical integrity. I believe that an overwhelmingmajority of my coun- trymen will join me in this cause. A time of troubles never comeswithout false prophets,vaudeville stagepoliticians, political narcissists,costly adviserswho can guessin advancethe ideasand actionsof their bosses,not to mentionthe indis- pensable"ideological" yes-men,who appearin too large numberseven during normal times. However, when you see how the writer Valentin Rasputinis honestly assertingthe honor and conscienceof the nation, how confidently and professionallySergei Baburin is struggling againstthe encroach- ment of the clan regime, how GeneralBoris Gromov is courageously protecting our true statehood,and how the scholarRamazan Abdula- tipov is cleverly and consistentlydefending the friendship of nations, you cannotbut feel confidentthat reasonand commonsense will pre- vail.33 Theseare all, of course,very different people. But they are united by their beliefthat a genuinebasis for consentand consolidationis that civic spirit which we have inherited from the best sons and daughters of Russiaand without which the most eloquenttalk about humanism andfriendship will degenerateinto a greatlie and new tyrants.

Eurasia-Fate and Challenge Today,many citizensof the USSRcomprehend the catastrophicconse- quencesof the destructionof their huge country. Most of us are rising through the tragedy to a new level of spirituality and thought. To us, the efforts of thosewho tried to understandthe disintegrationand then restorationof the Russian Empireafter 1917 are pricelesstoday. We include in this legacy the powerful voice of the "Eurasians"-proponentsof a scholarlyand political movementthat aroseduring the 1920s. In 1921, four emigresfrom Russia-PavelSavitsky, Pyotr Suvchin- sky, Nikolai Trubetskoy,and GeorgesFlorovsky-published the book Exodusto the East: Presentimentsand Accomplishments.Affirmation ofthe Eurasians.34 This intellectualand ideologicalmovement quickly receivedwide recognition amongRussian emigrantsin Europe,draw- ing hostility from right-wing circles andan enthusiasticresponse from youngpeople. From its beginning, Eurasianismwas the creative responseof the 72 THE DRAMA OF POWER

Russiannational consciousnessto the RussianRevolution and the en- suing civil war. The philosopherBerdyaev, in this connection,created the aphorism:"Eurasianism is the dreadof and a reactionagainst revolutions." But this was not a dreadthat leadsaway from reality; this was the reactionof thinkerswho took a new look at Russiafrom a perspec- tive that combinedtheir deepknowledge of geography,history, ethnol- ogy, and linguistics. In 1927, the Committee of Eurasiansin the USSR formulated a credo:35

Who are the Eurasians?What do they want to achieve?Eurasians are those who have revealedRussia as a special cultural-historicalworld. They are those for whom Russiais not just a statebut one-sixth of the world; not Europeand not Asia but a specialmiddle continent-Eurasia with its self-assertiveculture and a special historical fate. To copy Westernforms of life is unnaturalfor Russia-Eurasia.Such copying has entailedand will continue to entail the hardestshocks for our country. Russiahas no needfor either a police autocracyof the Prussiantype or a parliamentarydemocracy that camouflagesthe dictatorshipof Euro- peanand world capital. As for communism,which proclaimeda battle againstcapitalism but, having been itself generatedby Europeancapi- talism, has deceivedthe expectationsof the working people--it has degeneratedinto a form of rule by a corrupt bureaucracy.

Proceedingfrom their acceptanceof the specific featuresof Russian culture, Eurasiansformulated and establishedprinciples of their own sociopoliticaland economicprogram. The soviet system,freed from an ideological doctrinaire attitude, was recognizedby them as the best state form. They believedthat the soviet systemin its authenticform would ensurepeople's democracy and the selectionand promotion of the most suitablepeople for office. The federal principle of the union, accordingto them, was to be kept. The USSRwas to becomea fraternal union of the peopleswho inhabit Eurasia.Its principle was to be a supranationalsystem built on nationalfoundations. We should note thatthis was said and written in 1927, when communism and the Soviet Union were associatedmainly with the ardent speechesof Trotsky, who consideredsoviets to be only a temporary, historically causedform of the dictatorshipof the proletariat. But the Eurasianworldview, aimedprimarily at revealingRussia's uniqueness, consideredsoviets to be a permanentform of national self-government FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 73 for Russia. In this connection, the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gassetobserved in 1930: "Moscow is coveringitself with a thin veil of European ideas, that is, with Marxism, which was created in Europe with referenceto Europeanissues and problems.Under this veil live people who differ from Europe not only ethnically but, more importantly, by their age--theyare a young nation that has not yet been leavened.If Marxism were to win out in Russia, where there is no industry, this would be the greatestparadox that could befall Marxism."36 In arriving at this conclusion,he proceededfrom the simple obser- vation that the developmentof a capitalist economy inevitably frag- ments society, in which the key role begins to be played by the atomizedperson. But the Soviet peopleremained a people of a traditional Eurasian society. And by the end of the 1920s, the Russian worldview had "digested"and adaptedMarxist ideology to fit its own culture. The samething took placelater in China. To understandthe condition of Russiaat a crossroadtoday, we must comparethe fundamentalcategories characterizing the way of life and the worldview of Eurasiawith those of Europe. Europeis supposedly the only possible"world civilization," to which we all should return. This civilization has beenvividly depictedby suchWestern scholars as Nietzsche,Weber, Spengler,and Hayek. A time-portrait of Russiahas beendrawn by Fyodor Dostoevsky,Dmitry Mendeleev,Georgy Ver- nadsky,and the Eurasians.But the "modernizers"of Russiawho want to drag our people into a market economypresent a vulgarized and "enhanced"caricature of Europeancivilization. They are totally insen- sitive to the drama of the West. As was noted by the Eurasians,the samewas true of their predecessors.For example,Georges Florovsky wrote about the Russian Westernizersof seventy years ago: "Their seemingadmiration for Europeonly coversup their deepinattention to and disrespectfor its tragic destiny." Here we must limit ourselvesto a sketchycomparison of thesetwo civilizations as they really are:

AssumptionsAbout the Person and the People

ModemWestern civilization is basedon an atomist-mechanicalpicture of the world. The traditional bonds uniting people in a patriarchal 74 THE DRAMA OF POWER

society were cast off underthe slogan: "Each personis a free atom of humankind!" A marketplaceindividualism becamethe basisof man's worldview and his economic and political ("one person--{mevote") assumptions.Hence the absolutizationof individual rights, which in the national spherejustified melting smaller nationalities into larger nations and in the social spherestood for competition--a"war of all againstall." In Russia, such a complete atomization has not taken place, even over the past seventy-fiveyears. The individual continuesto feel part of a collective structureof one type or another-alabor collective, a collective farm, or a brigade.(Alexander Yakovlev thus writes angrily: "We needwillpower and wisdom gradually to destroy the Bolshevik community--thecollective farm.... Here there canbe no compromise ... decollectivizationmust be conductedlawfully but forcefully.") The most important spiritual categoryfor Eurasiansis the people [the nation], which is rejected by our Westernizers.The perception of the people as a single organism,a sort of social microcosm,was formulated by the EurasianL. Karsavin as follows: "One can speakabout a body of people.... My biological organismis a concreteprocess, my concreteinteraction with other organismsand with nature.... A nation living in a given territory is the same kind of organism (only it is supraindividual).It has its own body." It is obvious how much this cultural-historicalconcept contradicts the Westernmodel of the individual that underliesthe Yeltsin-Gaidar reforms. This fact Gausessuch uncontrollablerage amongthe defend- ers of a market democracythat they even forget elementarycivility. For example,Yury Buyda recently wrote in The IndependentGazette: "The oppositionto a market is an attribute of the traditional [Russian] mentality that is tied to a "communal"economy .... Our economicdefor- mity still makesit possibleto exploit more or less effectively the myth about us as somecommunality united by blood, soil, and fate, for real humanties are still in their rudimentarystage and will attain strength only in a multilayer, atomized society." Answering a foreign corre- spondentabout the characterof thesestrong new "ties" toward which we are all imaginedto aspire, the poet Iosif Brodsky used one word: "Money."37 And theselofty "aspirations"are being imposedon Russia! The conceptofthe personas an atom breaksthe great,time-honored tie of generationsand takes Europe'ssuicidal society of selfish con- sumptionto be the ideal. FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 75

Against this, the sacredconcept of "the people" presupposesa most profound responsibilityto the dead and their descendants.Today, we would be frightenedof meetingthe shadowsof our fathers and grand- fathers;as we were warnedafter February1917 by one of the contribu- tors to Landmarks:38

The deadare silent. ... Nevertheless,this anny of the deadis a great- one could say the greatest-politicalforce of our entire life. They died and live transformedin the people'ssoul. There, in that new profound life, they have indissolubly mergedwith the causeand the faith for the sakeof which they perished;their souls speakdistinctly only about the Motherland,about the protectionof the state,about the honor and dignity of the country; about the beauty of heroic deedsand about the shame of treason. They complain about deliberate and unintentional acts of betrayal, about democratizedpillage, about senselessand un- scrupulousfeasting on their graves, about the plunder of their native land, soakedwith their blood. Let us respectthe shadowsof the deadin our national soul.

AssumptionsAbout the Country and the State

The atomized individual of the West, being.thecarrier of "personal rights," is incorporatedthrough spontaneousmarket forces into civil society. He regards the state as merely a "night watchman" of the market with rather limited functions. The old empireshave broken up into small "nation-states,"which today are integratedthrough economic ties. Eurasia, however, with its unique continental landscape, has traveled a totally different road. Here, the state was given the sacredstatus of "father" (if sometimesan unduly strict father), not a "servant."Georgy V. Vemadskynoted that "the ties of the peoplewith the state formed by this people and with the spaceinhabited by this people,with its development,are not accidental."And Pavel Savitsky explainsit in more detail:

The unique, supremelyprecise and at the sametime simple geographic structureof Russia-Eurasiais relatedto a numberof major geopolitical circumstances.The natureof the Eurasianworld is minimally favorable for various kinds of "separatism"-whetherpolitical, cultural, or eco- 76 THE DRAMA OF POWER

nomic.... Ethnic and cultural elementshave [here] gone through an intensive interaction, cross-breeding,and mixing .... It is no accident that the spirit of a "brotherhoodof nations" hovers over Eurasia,which has its origins in many centuriesof contactsand cultural mergers of various peoples.... The "will to join togetherfor a commoncause" can be easily awakenedhere. In this way, the RussianEmpire, the USSR, and earlier the Scythian,the Hun, and the Mongol Empires were established. Thus emergedthe unique, distinctive coexistenceof culturesthat the Eurasianscall a "rainbow" or a "symphony."

This historical fact, which the Eurasiansexplained with their lin- guistic findings (Nikolai Trubetskoy)and their terrain research(Pavel Savitsky), is totally rejectedby their current opponents-the"democrats." As Algis Prazauskas,a writer for The IndependentGazette, noted, Russia and the USSR are a "unique Eurasianpanopticum of peopleswho havenothing in commonexcept clan propertiesand artificially created disasters."But then how can you explain that at the beginning of the century there were about 1.5 million Armenians in Russia,and they lived safely until perestroikaand createda strongand modemstate. There used to be about2.5 million Armeniansin Turkey, and now there are only 100,000; they have lost their national self- awarenessto such an extentthat they evendeny the genocidesuffered by their own peoplein 1915. The "last Eurasian"(as he called himself), Lev Gumilyov, noticeda very important link in Eurasianideology: "The nationalism of each separatenation in Eurasia(USSR) must be combinedwith all-Eurasian nationalism."This explainswhy there were no destructiveflare-ups of aggressive,egotistical nationalism in the USSR. Local nationalisms were strongly linked with a great-powerconsciousness, Eurasian "all- union" patriotism, and all-Eurasiannationalism. For example, an in- habitant of Nagomo-Karabakh[a region in the Caucasuscontested betweenArmenia and Azerbaijatr-Ed.]felt himselfto be aboveall a citizen of the USSR, and the very idea of a war betweenArmenia and Azerbaijanwas absurdto him. But after the USSRwas seriouslyweak- enedand the "imperial Eurasian"consciousness was ideologically dis- credited, local nationalism, now releasedfrom the bonds of union power,began to tearthe country apart. The Eurasiancharacter of the Soviet Union made eachof its parts "neither Europe nor Asia" and synthesizedand combinedits various FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 77 cultural genotypes.Soviet Tajiks and Kazakhs,although living in Asia, were also Europeans.Perhaps Tajik students,overtaken by "democratic" intoxication, failed to realize what it would really mean to "break up Eurasianism,"but their advisersin the USSR Academy of Sciencesand in overseasacademies knew perfectly well what was going to happen.Central Asia is a complex ethnic world, which has beendeveloping in its own civilized way. The strong influenceof clan and family relations often resulted in collisions and local wars. This changedwhen the CentralAsian peopleswere integratedinto the Eura- sian geopolitical space.In this manner,"absorbing rods" were inserted into their ethnic reactor.By joint efforts, a refined, flexible mechanism for quelling conflicts was createdand used. Clans that were hostile to each other were separatedby Russian fortressesand garrisons,dis- puted areas were seized by the state treasury, food and even water supplieswere regulatedto keep excessivelymilitant princesin check, and so forth. During the Soviet era, thesemethods were augmentedby the work of soviets,intermediaries from regional Party structures,per- sonnelselection, bonuses, medals, and so on. Why did all this cometo a suddenend? Why did the army garrisonsbegin to look indifferently at the destructionof children, women, and the elderly? Entire regions found themselvesthrown outsidethe boundsof civilization and pushed to the vergeof destruction. Therehave been many attempts to destroythe Eurasianbonds of the USSR and Russia. When our "Chicago boys"39 proudly declarethat they are true Westernizerswho are consciouslyfollowing the Western (more correctly, the Anglo-Saxon) version of capitalism, we should recall that their main slogan, which dates back to the 1960s and is being usedto destroythe whole Eurasiancivilization of Russia,called for the dissolutionof the Slavic-Turkic symbiosisand the "return" of Russiansto the "Europeanhome." Had this idea beenimplemented, it would have thrown Russiaout of the Urals and even out of the Volga region. Peter Vail and Alexander Genis, emigrantsfrom the USSR, demonstratedthis in their book The '60s. The World ofSoviet Man. 40 The authorsdescribe how the disputeabout our attitude toward the Western influence on Russia becamea war for the values of world civilization. It was no longer a questionof different directionsor various schoolsof thought but of Russia'shistorical place on the map of humankind.Ilya Ehrenburgbecame the ideologist and prophetof this new kind of Westernism(Vail and Genis likened him to the Apostle 78 THE DRAMA OF POWER

Paul).41 According to them, "I. Ehrenburgpassionately argued that the Russianswere neither betternor worse than the West simply because they were part of the West." In those years, after the spaceflight of Yury Gagarin, the appealto give up our burdensomeunion with the "Tatars" and to transformthe "Asian" componentof the USSR into a well-controlled internal "third world" was presentedin a flattering wrapping(what a contrastto today'smocking!). Vail and Geniswrote: "What I. Ehrenburgwanted to tell us, and did tell us, is very simple: Russiais part of Europe.... Indeed,what can divide such remarkable peoples?Only trifles." Today, there is no more courting of Russians, and the liberals are vying with each other to prove that Russiansare not and could never have beenEuropeans because they choseOrtho- doxy and preferredthe Asian inhabitantsof the steppeto the cultured Teutonic knights. Partly as a result of such ideas, we can now be acceptedinto "world civilization" only on the rigid conditions of the InternationalMonetary Fund. Today, the destruction of our country and the demolition of its Eurasianbase are being accomplishednot only by splitting apartethnic unions and fueling national separatism.Nations and ethnic groups themselvesare being split along all possiblefractures (including even schismswithin religious denominations). An important goal of the "democrats"today is to split apart the uniform body of the Russianpeople and underminethe "communal spirit" that, although not even mentionedfor seventy-five years, in reality united us so firmly (as the Great Patriotic War proved). At the beginningof the century, an earlier attemptto destroyus as an entity through classantagonism led to an almost fatal catastrophe.And now, already spent class antagonismsare being artificially rekindled. A major task of the reform, we are told, is the "formation of a new class of private proprietors."Can you imaginea more ideologizedtask? The emergenceof this classby revolutionaryexpropriation at the expense of the working people rather than by natural accumulationof capital over time through entrepreneurialactivity will inevitably result in social and political disaster.And this processis being expeditedby creating an artificial cultural confrontationbetween generations. To disunite Russians,ideologists are trying to convince them that they do not representone nation but are divided into two very different subspecies.Just read the "democratic"newspapers, which are calling for a new civil war in which "two nationswill fight: the new Russians FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 79 and the old Russians--thosewho can adapt to this new epoch, and thosewho are incapableof doing so." This is the main idea of our new spiritual shepherds.Judging by the behaviorof our teenagersand youth and the words of their favorite songs, this propagandahas in many respectsbeen successful. Young peopletoday seethemselves as "new Russians."They think they can adapt to the new epoch----theyneed only not be afraid to settle accountswith the old Russianswho are block- ing the way. This notion once before led to a "Russiawashed in blood." Let everymother who hasheartfelt ties with her sonremember this. Today, the creativeassimilation of the ideasof Eurasianism,which for many reasonsare disquietingfor nationalists,patriots of the "white idea," andcommunists alike, can serveas the pathto reconciliationand is the right responseto those who would reopenour old wounds and again set whites against reds, Russiansagainst Tatars, Christians againstMoslems. In this effort, we shouldexpect attempts at sabotage by those politicians who hate Eurasianismin all its basic aspectsand who may evenmask themselves as Eurasians.But life is quickly teach- ing us to overcomeour blindness and credulity. Both our scholarly knowledgeand our innate feeling for our Motherlandwill help us to understandthis. All we needto do is use our brains and listen to our hearts,as was recently done at the Congressof the National Salvation Front, where a historical reconciliationof thosewho had beendivided by the terrible year 1917 took place.

The Russian Question Let us be frank: the slownessof today'sRussian patriotic consciousnessis its main defect.If the patriotic movementin Russiais to survive and if its leadersare seriousabout saving our state, it is necessaryto make an urgent effort to developan ideology for national revival that is wholesome,comprehensive, and effective in practice. It is on the basisof such an ideology that the strategyand tactics of the national- liberationmovement should then be developed.This is our only chance to wrestthe initiative from the handsofthose who hateRussia. What hastaken place in Russiain recentyears has not beenacciden- tal. Only a completely naive person could believe that these events havebeen the resultof our country's"natural development." It is our duty to formulate in a simple, accessibleform answersto 80 THE DRAMA POWER

the major questionsof the day: Who is destroyingRussia? How is this being done and why? And, most importantly, what should be done to opposethis betrayal? Acquiring a harmonious,sensible, and universally acceptablephi- losophy cannotbe simple and easy.False stereotypes have beendelib- erately embeddedin the public consciousnessto divert our attention from the reality of events.Skillfully designedby Russophobicideolo- gists, thesestereotypes have for many yearsprevented us from imparti- ally and sensibly comprehendingwhat has been occurring all around us. For this reasonit is necessaryto state honestly that this will be difficult for us to do. Many of us will have to abandonour favorite illusions anddogmas and accept new realities,which can sometimesbe very bitter and disturbing. We will also haveto learn how to assessthe world on our own and to act with initiative, quickly, and resolutely.

Who Is DestroyingRussia?

Many of our readerswill simply say: "Why do you even ask? This is certainly the handiwork of the unscrupulousand shamelessregime of politicians andgrabbers that establisheditself on the ruins of the Soviet Empire." But some more sophisticatedreaders will remark: "It is not that simple. Yeltsin and companycould never have stayedin power after all they have done toRussia were it not for the powerful and extensive support of the West. Strictly speaking,Yeltsin can hardly be considered an independentpolitical figure. He is a puppetwhose strings are being pulled from acrossthe ocean. America, our main geopolitical opponent,has becomethe indisputableworld leader. America is the real sourceof hostile influence." The most thoughtful readersmay add further arguments:"But even the United Statesis not quite independent.Look more closely. This is not a traditional statebut an overgrowncommercial-industrial corpora- tion. As such, it has no national interestsbut hides underthis term the interestsof an internationalfinancial oligarchy. This worldwide corpo- ration usesthe political, military, and economicpower of America as an instrumentto achievemercenary interests and purposes.T,he cosmopolitan elite of international capital is the real behind-the-scenes orchestratorof Russia'stroubles." All three answersare no doubt correct. Yet all threeare also insuffi- FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 81 cient and incomplete.The regime of the "Yeltsinoids" is a brief pass- ing episodein the life of Russia.Deprived of any significant intellectual resources,it cannot pursue an intelligent policy, except for the Kremlin's court intrigues and the mercenaryinterests of the corrupt bureaucracy.The source of the influences that are so pernicious for Russiais to be soughtmuch deeper. An analysis of the position of the United Statesand the West in relation to the "Russianquestion" provides the beststarting point. The many centuriesof military, religious, political, and economicrivalry between Russiaand WesternEurope clearly show the differencesbetween our own and the West'spublic and state values,cultures, and historically formed national worldviews. There is much about us that the West does not understand.It is afraid of our state power. It is in the interestsof the West to weaken,divide, andeconomically enslave Russia. More than a thousandyears of failed efforts to eliminate Russia from the historical arenashould have proved to the West the futility of this approach.Besides, the materialprosperity and unlimited consump- tion that have been raised by Western civilization to a rank of the highest value require international stability, which from time im- memorial hasbeen ensured only by a balanceof powers. For the sake of its own peaceand quiet, the West is now ready to acceptthe existenceof a nationalRussian state. For the samereasons, international capital, although interestedin the total economicweakening of Russiaand its elimination from the world stageas a dangeroustrade competitor,has every reasonto avoid the cataclysmsthat would inevitably ensueif the Russiangeopolitical spacewere to disintegrate. Nevertheless,all these structures-----thepolitical regime established on the territory of Russia,Western states, and transnationalbanking-financial corporations------areall vehiclesof an aggressiveand irreconcil- able anti-Russianpolicy. In the modemworld, an independentRussia is the main obstacleto the creation of a "new world order," which would entail the formation of supranationalbodies of political, economic, andmilitary leadership. This delusion of absolutepower has a long history, closely related to the developmentof secretpolitical societies,obscure religious sects, and mystical cults. But only now, at the end of the twentieth century, hasit becomepossible to makeit a reality. Only with a realization of this dangercan the purposefulnessand 82 THE DRAMA POWER clarity of the patriotic movement'sactivity be fully appreciatedand given the neededpopular support.

How Is RussiaBeing Destroyed?

To answerthis question,we needto analyzethe technologyof power behindthe flimsy facadeof Russian"democracy." First, we will find that there are both real and illusory centersof power. We will see a persistenttendency to hide the mechanismsof real power from the eyes of outsidersby concealingthem under various official structuresand simultaneouslyto transform the latter into obedientexecutors of decisionsmade in advance.The manipulatorsare consistentlytrying, and not without success,to make the system of state power in Russia into an "executive" machine capable only of blindly implementingconcepts that have beenworked out by persons unknownin placesunknown. Second,we must appreciatethe fact that there is a secrethierarchy of authority that is not the official chain of commandof the formal bodiesof statepower or the notorious"executive vertical" but rathera behind-the-scenesnetwork of agentswho have "decisive influence" in all areasof Russianlife. At the bottom of this hierarchyis its most primitive tool, the power structureof physical force. It is used if needed,but, as the eventsof May 1 [1993] in Moscow demonstrated,42it is likely to provokeretali- atory reactionsand thus cannotsolve the problemsfacing the regime. Moreover, history unambiguouslyconfirms that it is impossibleto destroy Russiaby force alone. The next level is representedby the powerof economiccompulsion, which in its effects, if not by intention, has already acquired some characteristicsof a plannedgenocide. Economic compulsionmakes it possible to program people'sbehavior by creating certain kinds of socioeconomicrelations. This power is more flexible and effective than openviolence and is less conspicuous.People do not immediately realize that the problems of survival and the programmedterms of their solutions sharply limit their freedom of choice, making a large part of their behavior and consciousnesssubject to "decisive influences"from outside.However, at presentthis economicinstrument of powerlacks the neededtechnological precision. Political powerhas more precisionand universality and henceoffers FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 83 broaderopportunities. It has the ability to program the "rules of the game" for the systemsof the state and society. By modifying these rules in accordancewith its own ultimate goals, the conductorscan achieveany desiredresult within an acceptablerange of probability. The highestform of power, undoubtedly,is conceptual-thepower of ideological programmingbased on the technologyof purposefully constructinga worldview andthe fundamentalvalues of personal,family, community,and statelife. In this construction,the stereotypesof public consciousness(ideals) that do not fit the given program must be destroyedand replacedby new "values" that accommodatethe needsof the "programmer"and carry a predeterminedphilosophical code. The main concernhere is to conceal these actions thoroughly and present them as the "natural courseof events." Now we are ready to review the technologiesused for the destruction of Russia. In ideology, theseare the destructionof our spiritual roots; the dis- ruption of the Russianhistorical tradition; the discrediting of com- monly acceptedstate, religious, moral, and otherphilosophical values; the cultivation of individualism; the propagationof Westernmass culture; the deprivationof a national identity; the promotion of hostility; andthe encouragementof humanpassions and vices. The ultimate goal is clearly the destructionof our nationalself-awareness. In politics, the ancientprinciple "divide and conquer"is being prac- ticed in its modemversion. In economics,the goal is to integrateour national economy into the global economic systemas a peripheral structureincapable of independentexistence by breakingup the unified nationaleconomic complex, denationalizing property, concentrating on the priority developmentof raw-materialsand extraction branches, and suffocatinghigh-technology industries and fundamental sciences.

What Can We Do to OpposeRussia's Destroyers?

In ideology, we have to achievea preciseand clear comprehensionof our supremenational task. For centuriesRussia has considereditself destinedto show the world the treasuresof the human spirit as re- flected in personallife, family traditions, the social system, and the form of the state. Over many centuries,this idea has taken on diverse philosophical,religious, and ideological forms. It inspiredthe creators 84 THE DRAMA POWER

of the universal formula "Moscow as the Third Rome," expressedin the severe, courageous,and ascetic colors of Russian Orthodoxy. Later, garbedin the trinity of the RussianEmpire's motto-"Ortho- doxy, Autocracy, Nationality"--this idea rallied under the majestic arch of the Russianstate the "score of tongues" forming the unified family of Russiannations. Fighters for the nation's happinesswere inspired by it, and after October 1917 its life-giving breath kept the national soul togetherin spite of ideologistsof a "permanentrevolution"---<:ynical cosmopoli- tans who looked upon Russiaonly as a basefor instigating a worldwide conflagration. It helped us to get through times of cold and famine, destruction, and hostile international actions. It helped us achievea glorious victory in a most bloody war and then re-createthat greatpower on the ruins of which renegades,traitors, and Russophobes are feastingtoday. We have now reacheda decisivemoment. By restoringthe Russian idea in all its historical greatnessand spiritual power and enriching it with our recenttragic and heroic experiences,we can at last reuniteour dismemberedhistorical Fatherland,cure its illnesses,mend its frac- tures,and heal the ulcersof nationalself-awareness. In politics, we must rally aroundthe ideology of Russia'srevival to create, as soon as possible, a practical and effective mechanismfor coordinatingthe interestsand actionsof all patriotic forces within the frameworkof a unified national-salvationmovement. We should agreeabout our understandingof a multiparty systemas a tool for realizing the social, ethical, economic,and religious aspects of the unified national idea. For centuries,this conceptwas basedon two premises.First, a powerful statewas the main guarantorof the free and historically continuousdevelopment of society. And second,the basic purposeof this developmentwas the maximally complete im- plementationof our traditional social, state,family, and moral-ethical ideals. Within the frameworkof this ideology of Russia'srevival, therewill be a place for everyone:supporters of the principles of social justice, adherentsof the idea of a law-basedstate, Orthodox and Moslem believers, and those who expressthe expectationsof the working class, the peasantry,and the intelligentsia. And we should firmly tell those who would provoke confrontation,discord, and division: "It will not work, gentlemen!"The convergenceof the deep, historically formed FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 8S intereststhat bind our society into a unique and original organism-- political, economical,spiritual, cultural, and religious-ismore important and more substantialthan the short-term tactical interests of various ethnic and professionalgroups, social strata, and ideological movementsoftoday. Now we must mention the interests of the "fifth column," the "agentsof influence" who are promoting the "new world order." This small but extremelyactive group cannotbe considereda natural factor in Russia'spolitical life but is rather the product of the purposeful activity of forces openly hostile to basic Russianinterests. The uncon- ditional removal of this group from power should be the first step on our way to normalizinglife in our country. Questionsof concretepolitical activity are not within the scopeof this work. In conclusion,I would like to repeat:today we cannotafford to be lazy in our thinking or slow in our comprehensionof the new realities. We are simply obligated-it is our duty to our people--to wrest our country away from the designersof a global political dictatorship and return it to the path of our historically continuous,harmo- niousdevelopment!

A New World Order Since World War II, the scientific revolution has brought humankind to the very technologicaledge of gaining comprehensiveglobal control over its own development.Today's information systemscan already effectively coordinateall the essentialaspects--ideological, political, economic, demographic,and ecological--<>f the developmentof humanci"ilization. It is thereforenot surprisingthat we are witnessingtoday the extensive activation of transnational,cosmopolitan forces, which seethis as a real opportunityto give concretegeopolitical form to their dreamof a world superstate.The authorsof one-world schemesbelieve that their supranationalstructure, once established, will gradually absorball national sovereignstates. Large powers will first be subjectedto inter- nally stimulatedprocesses of disintegrationand will then be brokenup into smallerpieces that canbe more easily "digested."The bottom line calls for all countries,as they continueto lose their independence,to be subsumedinto a field of universal political influence and turned into 86 THE DRAMA POWER peripheral entities and "relay stations" for the directives of a single governing center. Practical efforts to create such a center have been going on for a long time. What are the consequencesof all this for Russia?In very general terms,they may be summarizedas follows. First, in the economicsphere, we are today more certain than ever that the world's reservesof raw materialsare far from infinite. In fact, they are quite limited, allowing us to calculate that any attempt by Russiaor the developingcountries to reach, for example,the level of energy consumptionthat supports the high living standardsof the "golden billion" in the so-called"developed" countries is doomedto failure. Any such attemptwould lead to an enormousglobal economic crisis and ecological catastrophe.To ensure hatmoniousworldwide development,the West must acceptself-imposed limitations. This is the only way to bridge the gap betweena handful of superrichcoun- tries and the rest of humankind.Needless to say, the West considers such a solution unacceptable,at least in the near future. And it is preciselyfor this reasonthat the developedcapitalist countries support the idea of establishinga "new world order" (NWO), within the framework of which they hope to be able to retain their privileged leading positions. With this in mind, the model of a united world economywithin the NWO framework envisagesdifferent levels of consumptionfor different componentsof the system.Certain regions would continueto pros- per, while the developmentof other regions would be artificially frozen. Need we botherto conjecturein which categoryRussia would endup underthis "division of labor"? Second,in the military-political sphere,the unevennessof living standardswill continueto be a sourceof justifiable, endlessconflicts. And the useof military powerwill be requiredto localize and suppress them. The so-called"carpet bombings" in Iraq andthe punitive raids of the "blue helmets" in virtually occupiedMogadishu demonstrated the degreeof cynicism and cruelty that the "international community" is willing to acceptin this connection.Small as it is, Serbiahas so far managedto escapea similar fate only thanksto the heroic resistanceof its entire nation. In 1993 alone, the United Nations undertookmore than ten "peace- keeping" operations.In 1994, the total numberof international"peace- making" forces will far exceed 100,000 troops. It is significant that FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 87 there have alreadybeen several calls for their use in the territories of the former republicsof the USSR. Thereis reasonto believethat, since the liquidation of the Soviet Union, the role of the United Nations has rapidly been changing from that of the harmonizerof international relationsand to that of a tool to put in placea geopoliticaldictatorship. The consequencesof thesedevelopments are especiallydangerous for us, becausethe regime of national betrayalnow in powerin Russia will most likely becomean obedientagent of foreign influence in the event of a stateof emergencyin our country. It is easyto seewhy: our self-appointedpseudo-elite of unprincipledpower mongers and corrupt nouveauxriches is temptedby the opportunity to be admittedinto the transnationalruling class----the new masters of the world, who are holding the steeringwheel of the "internationalcommunity"--even if it hasto crawl on its belly to do so. Third, in the national-culturaland spiritual sphere,it is not possible to governhumankind from a single centerwithout first achievingmax- imum unification and standardization.To do this, all the local specific features of the countries subjectedto control must be minimized. In plain language,this meansthat the national and cultural uniquenessof various peoples,as well as their spiritual, historical, and religious orig- inality, would be in dangerof completeannihilation. Accordingly, as is already being done in Russia, measureswould have to be taken to impose ''universal human values" on everyone without exception.In the areaof religious life, for example,the prospects of this activity are tied to the ecumenicalmovement and in the areaof culture to rampantcommercialization. Ethnic diversity and regional demographywould also be subjected to unification efforts. Nationsjudged to have an unpromisingfuture or to exceednumerical limits as determinedby projectionsof minimal consumptionwould be subjectedto planned reductions. This could easily be done by regulating living conditions----thereis no need for concentrationcamps and gas chambers.At least in Russia,population growth figures have declined two years in a row. This is a concrete exampleof how economic "reforms" can be used to regulate demo- graphicprocesses. What awaits us in the immediatefuture? In principle, we have two choicesunder existing conditions.First, we can acceptthe rules of the game that are being imposed upon us and then fight to expand our essential"quotas" within the blueprints for universal world develop- 88 THE DRAMA POWER

ment. This would mean reconciling ourselvesto the loss of political and economicsovereignty, to the irreversibledestruction of a millennium of Russianspirituality and culture, to flagrant social injustice, and to the transformationof our country into a launchingpad for the "new world order." In exchangefor this, we would be given the opportunity for a majority of us to survive biologically; for a select,"quali- fied" minority to live decently; and for the compradorianelite, in its role as trustedoverseers of their own compatriots,to enjoy world-class luxury. The secondchoice assumesthat Russiawould stand upto the historic challengeour peopleface today. In this case,we would refuseto reconcile ourselvesto the prospectof enslavementand would try to regain for our country our former role as a great power. Russiawould againstrive to harmonizedifferent national-politicalinterests, preserve a balance of power in the world, ensure a diversity of patterns of development,and prevent geopolitical monopoly by any nation. In essence,this is a question of the life or death of our state. Of foremost importancetoday is our struggle for national liberation. All ideological differencesare overshadowedby this struggle.Today, two partiesare confrontingeach other in Russia:the party of "this country" and the party of "our country." Let us not lose time floundering. Let us act while our future is still in our hands!

Editor's Notes

1. SamKeen, Facesof the Enemy(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1991). 2. This is the title ofa poemby Vladimir Mayakovsky(1893-1930). 3. The Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement(1939) had secret protocols con- cerning the Baltic States.For some fifty years Moscow denied the existenceof thesedocuments. 4. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin(1826--1889) was a Russiansatirical writer. 5. Theseare the namesof prominentscientists and political figures. 6. This is the title of a one-actplay by AlexanderPushkin (1799-1837). 7. Thesewere a tank anda self-propelledgun madein World War II Germany. 8. Sergei Korolyov (1907-1966)was a pioneer of the Soviet space-rocket industry. 9. Okhrana,or colloquially okhranka,was the secretpolice in tsaristRussia. 10. Thesewere officials of the CentralCommittee of the CPSU. 11. "Instructors" were middle-ranking party officials; "secretaries"were higher-rankingparty officials. The latterwere nominally electedto their offices. 12. The referencehere is to a controversial effort to consolidatesmall de- populatedvillages. The effort was aborted. FROM PERESTROIKA TO CATASTROPHE 89

13. The referencehere is to the first plenarymeeting of the CentralCommittee of the newly established(1990) CommunistParty of Russia as a branch of the CPSu. 14. All cameto national prominenceas membersof the Congressof People's Deputieselected in 1989 and as participantsin the resistanceto the August 1991 coup. Gavril Popov is a noted economist who served as the first post-Soviet mayor of Moscow. TelmanGdlyan rose to fame for exposingofficial corruption. Galina Starovoitovachampioned the rights of national minorities. Marina Salye was a people'sdeputy from St. Petersburg. 15. During 1991, there were many unsuccessfulattempts to create a dimin- ished version of the Soviet Union and thus to prevent its approachingcollapse. Gorbachev'splan for a Union of SovereignStates was drafted at his dacha in Novo-Ogarevo,outside Moscow; but the treaty signing plannedfor August 1991 nevertook place. The CommonwealthofIndependent States was conceivedat the early December 1991 meeting of the presidentsof Russia (Yeltsin), Ukraine (Kravchuk), and Belarus(Shushkevich) at BelovezhForest, outside Minsk. 16. Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) was introducedin 1921. It called for a mixed socialist-capitalisteconomy. The NEP was phasedout by Stalin by the endof the 1920s. 17. Eduard Shevardnadzewas a close associateof Gorbachev'sduring the initial yearsof perestroika.He is now presidentof Georgia. 18. A niece of Peterthe Great's,Anna Ivanovna ruled Russia from 1730 to 1740. 19. Alexander Yanov bas written several books and articles on Russianau- thoritarianism.More recently he has comparedthe Yeltsin regime with the failed WeimarRepublic in Germany. 20. Nikolai Kararnzin (1766-1826),a writer and historian, servedas tutor to the future EmperorAlexander I. 21. Georgy Zhukov (1896-1974)and Nikolai Vatutin (1901-1944)were fa- mousmilitary leadersin World War II; YevgenyPaton (1870-1953) was a prominent scientistand engineer.For Korolyov, seenote 8. 22. Andrei Vyshinsky (1883-1954)was Stalin's favorite prosecutorof "enemies of the people." Lavrenty Beria (1899-1953)and Genrikh Yagoda (1891- 1938) were chiefs of Stalin'ssecret police. 23. MoscowNews and Ogonyokwere the most radical pro-perestroikaperiodi- cals during the 1980s. 24. GeneralIgor Rodionovwas appointedRussia's defense minister in July 1996. 25. When he commandedthe 14th Army stationedin Moldova, GeneralAlex- ander Lebed and his troops protectedthe Russianenclave, the self-proclaimed Trans-DniesterRepublic. After the USSR collapsed, Russiansfeared that Moldova would seekto unite with Romania. 26. This is the title of Boris Yeltsin's autobiography. 27. Vladimir Kirshon (1902-1938) was a noted playwrite. Alexei Losev (1893-1986)was a philosopher. 28. From December1992, when the SupremeSoviet rejectedthe appointment of Yegor Gaidar as prime minister, Yeltsin was on a collision coursewith the Russianparliament, culminating in the October shootout. New elections and a referendumon a new Constitutionwere held in December1993. 90 THE DRAMA POWER

29. Ivan Bunin (1870-1953)and Mikhail Sholokhov(1905-1984) were Nobel Prize laureatesin literature.Bunin emigratedfrom Russiaafter the 1917 revolution. 30. Komsomol standsfor the CommunistYouth League. 31. General Anton Denikin (1872-1947)was one of the top leadersof the White armiesduring the 191 &-21 civil war in Russia. 32. Nikolai Berdyaev (1874--1948)was a Russianreligious philosopher.He left Russiaafter the 1917 revolution and lived for somethirty yearsin France. 33. Valentin Rasputinis a popularRussian writer who is actively involved in variousnationalist-patriotic organizations. Sergei Baburin is a prominentpolitical leader of the younger generationwho opposedthe dissolution of the Soviet Union. General Boris Gromov, is popularly regardedas a strong defenderof Russianinterests. Ramazan Abdulatipov was chainnanof the Russian Federa- tion's Sovietof Nationalities. 34. Exodusto the Eastwas publishedin Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1921. 35. By 1930, all the activities of the promotersof Eurasianideas in the Soviet Union were banned.Many membersof the movementwere arrestedand exiled to Siberia. More recently their ideas were popularizedby the late ethnologistLev Gumilyov (1912-1993), son of the poets Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova,who spentmuch of his early life in the Gulag. 36. Jose Ortegay Gasset(1883-1955) was a noted Spanishphilosopher. He frequentlyvisited the Soviet Union. 37. Joseph(Iosif) Brodsky (1940-1995)was a Nobel Prize-winningRussian poet. He was expelledfrom the Soviet Union and lived the last twenty yearsof his life in the United States. 38. The Vekhi (Landmarks) anthology was published by a group of liberal intellectualsin 1909 including Nikolai Berdyaev,Sergei Bulgakov, and five others. 39. Referenceis to economicrefonners influenced be the "ChicagoSchool." 40. The '60s. The World ofSoviet Man was written in Russianby the emigres AlexanderGenis and PeterVail in the 1980s. 4l. Ilya Ehrenburg(1891-1967) was a major Soviet writer andjournalist. 42. Referenceis to a May Day demonstrationthat endedin a confrontation with police.