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Salutation Foreword. Where Are Salutation Let me first of all thank Professor Donald B. Melrose for the invitation to the University of Sydney both to participate in the scientific activity and to share with you my political experience in taking part in the revolution in Russia, which, hopefully, will be of no practical use for you, since God save us from revolutions. It is only to quench your curiosity. Thank you for coming. I am also thankful to Dr. Phil Dooley for organizing this event, especially for the very lucky choice of the date: the first Thursday after the first Sunday of December, when the elections of the Duma occurred. That was the day, which may mark an end of an era. Foreword. Where are we? I used to speak in front of various audiences with sketches about our recent history. I used to say about what I thought was right to call ”Russian revolution of the XX century” referring to very profound and fast transformations that took place in Russia in the ninetieth. Just look around - I would say - we are facing a country, quite different from what it was before Gorbachev. The industry is mostly privately-owned. Democratic institutes are operating, which resemble very much the ones characteristic of every civilized nation. A multi-party system has been created, as well as the new tradition of competitive elections. It is true - I was forced to make the reservation - many people feel themselves disappointed. It is the same na¨ıve people who in every revolution that happened throughout the history always believed that at last all the dreams would come true. Not all is as good as it might be desirable. The country with a heavy inheritance of a half-millennium of despotism, very much Asian in its depth notwithstanding the European appearance, cannot be expected to readily accept democracy. Nevertheless, I used to say, although the victory of the democracy is not total, the country is much better; it no longer is an Empire of evil. As time passed, step by step the course of life forced us to abandon this mild attitude. Now, after the 2nd of December we woke to see that the dream is over. The 64% vote in support of a single party of bureaucracy, ”Yedinaya Rossia” (United Russia), whose electoral list of candidates was recently headed by President Putin himself, signifies that the country is left at the mercy of a single person. The attempts that can be traced back to Yeltsin’s administration to implant ad hoc a system with two competitive political parties, with a president, like a monarch, directly associated with neither of them, failed. Now such attempts are completely denied, although at the beginning of the present Duma cam- paign it might seem that they were renewed by organizing a pro-Putin poppet- oppositional, more left-wing in its appearance, party ”Spravedlivaya Rossia” (”Just Russia”). Nothing of the sort: the role of this party was only to draw 1 off votes from the communists. The one-party rule, confirmed by almost unan- imous public vote, notorious at the Soviet time, has been resurrected in a quite direct, cynic way. During the electoral campaign Mr. Putin used every mean at his disposal to gain maximum for his party, even a complaint was raised against him in the Supreme Court for illegal use of his presidential authority for propaganda. The campaign in mass media was openly unilateral, repressive measures including short-term arrests were taken against the opposition party activists and certainly the vote count was falsified to a certain extent. What, under the sun, was it needed for? The dominating position of United Russia in the Duma has been a priory guaranteed without any additional efforts. It is sufficiently popular. No wonder: he, who commands TV, commands minds. TV made people overestimate the current improvements in economics and mis- attribute them to the credit of the present authorities, although these are due to the structural transformations laid by the previous Yeltsin’s government, and to high oil prices. Evidently, Mr. Putin needed not just a victory, but a total victory. His goal is to preserve his personal position at the top of the authority, despite the constitutional ban of being elected as a president for the third term. With 64% vote he is sure to find one or another way to achieve this goal within the Constitution or beyond it, if he chooses so 1. How was it that we could win? What I was saying up to now was only a preface. My talk is not about this. Its subject is intended to cover a fragment of history, namely, its most turbulent revolutionary period, when I happened to take a personal part in it as a member of two Russian parliaments - The Congress of People’s Deputies and The State Duma - from 1990 to 1996. I am aware that as far as events are concerned, which occurred after my retirement from the political activity, my witness is no more than the one of an ordinary political analyst. But I could not withstand the temptation to respond to the current situation. The more so that I am undertaking in the present lecture to not only elucidate the question of how it could happen that the Soviet regime that seemed so inviolable faded away so 1Note added in preparation of the written version. The way Mr. Putin has taken a fortnight later is to become the prime minister, with Dmitry Medvedev elected as a president under his auspice. Once the Constitution endows the president with a greater authority than the premier, Mr. Putin’s personal priority in this case may only rest on inertia, the personal loyalty of Mr. D. Medvedev and a position of the head of the party of parliamentary majority, which he yet has to acquire. (Now, formally, this position is occupied by another person, Boris Gryzlov, who will readily make way to Mr. Putin). None of these three whales makes a reliable bearing. The first two are not everlasting, whereas the third one is not sufficient in itself. Hence, during a restricted time after the presidential election in March, when these three factors are expected to be still in effect, the corresponding amendments to the Constitution should be taken. The necessary majority in the Parliament is provided. 2 readily and without a mass bloodshed, but also why the regime that substitutes for it is of the same nature. I will not discuss the economical background behind the whole thing. The reason is that the economical circumstances though understood as most im- portant, work in an indirect way behind the scene and are not the subject of a sensual observation. My main concern will be psycho-social aspects. Only one remark of economical character is in order. Yegor Gaidar, the head of the reformist government in 1992 (under Boris Yeltsin as a president), and later the leader of the political party to which I belonged, once remarked that the Soviet regime would have fallen much earlier if not for the vast oil resources discov- ered in the seventieth in the West Siberia. It fell when the oil prices stood at their minimum. Now that they are the highest, the like regime is resurrecting. The natural riches became a disaster for Russia. When we are surprised to see how easily the Russian people has changed its political religion, it is worthwhile recalling the proverb of Canadian fishermen: In cod we trust! My personal political history. I am educated as a theoretical physicist from Moscow University. I was working in quantum field theory in Lebedev Physics Institute of the Science Academy in Moscow, and never openly opposed to the Soviet regime. In exams in the University, during the brainwashing interviews associated with trips abroad and on other official occasions, I complied with the rules of game that followed from the communist philosophical system and used to be saying what anyone was expected to. The Soviet regime looked unbreakable; I could not imagine that I can live to see its end.2 I was one of the many who, according to a popular Soviet 2 Josef Stalin succeeded to create an unbelievably strong fusion between devotion and fear, laid by him into the foundation of stability. On the top of all, there was an ideologue that consisted, on one hand, of the Marxist theory, believed to have scientifically proven the statement that the public ownership of means of production sooner or later will dominate in the whole world, and, on the other hand, on a social utopia, called ”communist society”, a future kingdom of good and justice with the possibility for everyone to quench all one’s living needs, with only those limitations that one deliberately establishes for oneself. The author of this utopia remains unknown to me. At least it was not any of ”the Marxist-Leninist classics”. To the best of my knowledge, even Stalin was cautious not to merge his name with this nonsense. Nevertheless, ”the great Soviet people was constructing communism!” This philosophy was studied at all levels of public education starting with children in kindergartens and up to postgraduate students, irrespective of their professional profile. Like any other sophisticated religion, that philosophy admitted many levels of understanding, so that a person of any educational basis, even if he or she did not know how to read and write, might be satisfied by achieving an illusion of understanding. Simultaneously he or she believed - that is very important - that there were other, cleverer people, who understood the whole philosophy in a final way.
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