Advance Praise for Russia’S Revolution “Leon Aron is one of our very best witnesses to, and analysts of, the new Russia. His collected essays track two decades of the changes within Russia itself and in Russian and Western opinion of them. But they also present a consistent Aron voice that deserves to be heard— judicious, broad (as much at home in literature or the restaurant scene as in arms control or privatization), sanely optimistic, and invariably rendered in graceful yet unpretentious prose.” —TIMOTHY J. COLTON, professor of government and director, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University “Leon Aron stands out among the West’s top Russia experts as a per- son with a 360-degree vision. He is a political scientist, sociologist, and historian, endowed with a keen understanding of the Russian economy and a passion for Russian literature and the arts. This book is a testimony to his unique breadth, which allows the reader to see ever-changing Russia as an integrated whole.” —DMITRI TRENIN, senior associate and deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Moscow Center “In a series of essays that range from the war in Chechnya to the res- taurant scene in the new Moscow, Leon Aron proves himself to be an exceptional guide to Russia’s transformation. His essays are sharp, opinionated, at times provocative, and always a good read. They emphasize the progress that Russia has made despite the ups and downs of the last fifteen years and remind us that Russia’s revolution is far from finished.” —TIMOTHY FRYE, professor of political science, Columbia University RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION Essays 1989–2006 Leon Aron The AEI Press Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute WASHINGTON, D.C. The characters of nature are legible, it is true; but they are not plain enough to enable those who run to read them. We must make use of a cautious, I had almost said a timorous, method of proceeding. We must not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In considering any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct ingredient in the composition, one by one. —Edmund Burke, On Taste To a considerable degree, these arguments are flawed by presentism, by a tendency to read history backwards, measuring change over time from the point of arrival rather than the point of departure. But this is the wrong way to measure change. It is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope—everything appears smaller than it really is. —James McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution For Mother and Father Distributed to the Trade by National Book Network, 15200 NBN Way, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214. To order call toll free 1-800-462-6420 or 1-717-794-3800. For all other inquiries please contact the AEI Press, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 or call 1-800-862-5801. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aron, Leon Rabinovich. Russia’s revolution : essays 1989-2006 / Leon Aron. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8447-4242-7 ISBN-10: 0-8447-4242-2 1. Russia (Federation)—Politics and government—1991- I. Title. DK510.763.A76 2007 947.086--dc22 2006103252 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5 © 2007 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Wash- ington, D.C. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or repro- duced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the American Enterprise Institute except in the case of brief quotations embodied in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the publications of the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not neces- sarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI. Printed in the United States of America Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi PREFACE xiii PART I: THE STORM 1 1. WHAT GLASNOST HAS DESTROYED 3 2. MOSCOW DIARY: JANUARY 12–17, 1991 14 3. TWO REQUIEMS FOR PERESTROIKA 33 PART II: A NEW RUSSIA: THE LAYING OF THE FOUNDATION 41 4. THE STRANGE CASE OF RUSSIAN CAPITALISM 43 5. RUSSIA’S NEW FOREIGN POLICY 58 6. LAND PRIVATIZATION: THE END OF THE BEGINNING 73 7. FROM STATE-OWNED JUSTICE TO A LAW-BASED STATE 87 PART III: REINVENTING VALUES AND VIRTUES 105 8. IN SEARCH OF A RUSSIAN MIDDLE CLASS 107 9. AN ANCHOR IN THE MUD: THREE NOVELS AS A GUIDE TO PRACTICING FREEDOM AND CONSTRUCTING A NEW SELF 121 10. A PRIVATE HERO FOR A PRIVATIZED NATION: BORIS AKUNIN’S MYSTERIES 139 11. RESTAURATION: THE ART OF EATING RETURNS TO RUSSIA 157 PART IV: MAKING SENSE OF THE 1990S 173 12. IS RUSSIA REALLY “LOST”? 175 13. IN SEARCH OF A HISTORIC YELTSIN 189 ix x RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION 14. POOR DEMOCRACY 203 PART V: THE PUTIN RESTORATION 217 15. THE YUKOS AFFAIR 219 16. INSTITUTIONS, RESTORATION, AND REVOLUTION 236 17. CHECHNYA: NEW DIMENSIONS OF AN OLD CRISIS 252 18. THE BATTLE OVER THE DRAFT 270 19. PUTIN’S RISKS 283 20. RUSSIA’S OIL: NATURAL ABUNDANCE AND POLITICAL SHORTAGES 297 21. THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA: IDEOLOGIES, POLICIES, AND RELATIONS 307 EPILOGUE AS PROLOGUE 321 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 323 NOTES 325 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 363 INDEX 365 Acknowledgments I am very grateful to Igor Khrestin for his hard work, patience, and perse- verance in seeing this book through the many stages on the way to publi- cation. Lisa Ferraro Parmelee has done a superb job editing the manuscript. Her passion for excellence became an inspiration. Sam Thernstrom oversaw all aspects of these notes’ evolution from an untidy manuscript to a hand- some volume. Karlyn Bowman’s advice was very helpful. Alanna Balaban, Molly McKew, Vance Serchuk, Igor Khrestin, and Jadwiga Rogoz.a have assisted in researching many of the topics in this collection, Ann Petty ably edited the original drafts, and Milana Vayner helped greatly with the preparation of the chapters for publication. My boss, the vice president of foreign and defense policy studies, Danielle Pletka, was supportive of this long project. As usual, David Gerson, the American Enterprise Institute’s executive vice president, made sure I had all the resources and conveniences a scholar and a writer can dream of. My largest debt, as always, is to AEI’s president, Christopher DeMuth, on whose payroll most of the research and thinking that went into this book have been done. Without his constant interest, encouragement, and wise counsel, it hardly would have seen the light of day. xi Preface The still unfolding Russian revolution—an epic experiment in democracy and modern capitalism in a country which has seen little of either in its thousand-year history—is not unlike the movement of a long and disorderly caravan on a vast swampy plain: stopping, stumbling, occasionally all but drowning in muck, yet stubbornly creaking forward. Following closely behind this caravan is a crowd of journalists and experts. Their heads are hung. They look neither back to measure the road already traversed nor to the sides to compare the caravan’s progress with that of neighboring nomads, nor yet forward to where the road might lead. Their eyes seem forever to be on the dirt covering the wheels, the ruts in the road, and the ugly swamp creatures feasting on the piles of refuse in the wagons’ wake. Correcting this narrow focus on things of passing significance was very much on my mind as the essays in this book were being written. As a result, the chapters deal only with seminal events and trends in the Soviet Union, and then Russia for the fifteen years from the cleansing firestorm of glasnost in 1989 to Vladimir Putin’s increasingly risky post-2003 “restoration.” Of course, no author could hope to capture every fateful twist and turn of the last great revolution of the twentieth century. Like every historian, I had to choose what seemed to me most important at the time. It might be useful to think of the outcome as a diary kept by a fairly well-informed and analytically inclined spectator at a great historic drama— descriptions of grandiose occurrences and meditations on their meaning. A pointillist portrait, to be sure, but one on a very large canvas and seeking to capture grand themes: demilitarization and de-Bolshevization as the core ele- ments of the revolution; a fierce national debate over capitalism and the extent and nature of the state’s control over the economy; the new value system forged in the destruction of Soviet legitimacy and the official mythology; and xiii xiv RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION the post-Soviet middle class as the embodiment of the post-Soviet ethos. With one or two exceptions made for thematical unity, the essays appear in the chronological order of their writing; and, except on technical matters, no attempt has been made to correct the substance of the texts with the benefit of hindsight. I wanted to convey the complexity and enormity of the transi- tion that has changed the lives of millions of ordinary Russians—people who are neither Kremlin bosses and super-rich “oligarchs” nor voiceless victims, but voters who (in turnouts that put Americans to shame) have, by their voices and votes, shaped the course of the country’s present and future. Dr. Johnson’s dictum about literary criticism is just as applicable to the writing of political and social history: The result should be neither a “dull collection of theorems nor a rude detection of faults .