Fall 2005 Liberty above All: Vladimir Ryzhkov and the Republican Party of Russia By Leon Aron Since its disastrous showing in the 2003 Duma That morning in the Rusotel Hotel on the elections, Russia’s badly splintered and quarrelling outskirts of Moscow, where the Warsaw Highway democratic opposition has been trying to find crosses the Ring Road, it was also obvious that the ways to forge a common platform that would renewal had gone far beyond a change of structure, unite and energize its sizeable but apathetic and management, or program planks. Rejuvenation, disillusioned constituency. The stakes are very even exuberance, were in evidence everywhere: in high. The liberal (that is, in Russian political par- the hall where the registration took place and in lance, right-of-center, pro-market, pro-reform, and the cozy auditorium where three hundred delegates pro-Western) forces view the Putin Kremlin’s turn from fifty-eight of eighty-nine Russian provinces Russian Outlook to recentralization of national politics and the clapped, cheered, and booed, overflowing with the economy as a dead-end street, leading to creeping kind of energy and optimism I have not seen authoritarianism, rampant corruption, political among the democrats since the late 1980s. crises, economic slowdown, and even disintegra- Most reminiscent of the revolution, however, tion. In this perspective, forging a united opposi- was the critical abandon of the speeches that tion strong enough to contest the Kremlin’s attacked the Kremlin and were webcast in real control over the Duma in 2007 and the presi- time to the party’s website. Like the party program dency in 2008 acquires particular urgency. (platform) and the Appeal to the Citizens of Russia, distributed beforehand, the speeches were remark- The Spirit of the Late 1980s able both for the scope and the no-holds-barred mercilessness of their condemnation. One of the more credible attempts to create such Yes, the program stated, Russia has had a a political force was the national conference of period of remarkable expansion since 1999, with the Republican Party of Russia (RPR) on July 2 in both GDP and incomes increasing by a third and Moscow. the number of people in poverty reduced by half. Founded in 1990, RPR is one of Russia’s old- But the growth has largely been due to high oil est liberal parties. Having failed repeatedly to prices. Outside the commodity sector, the rate of gain a foothold in the Duma, it was largely for- expansion has been modest and is falling behind gotten. This year, however, the party was back in that of China, India, and Brazil.1 the headlines, as it overhauled its rules, adopted The society is getting less and less of the “oil- a new platform, and acquired new leadership. soaked” economic pie. According to the RPR pro- gram, Russia is eighty-second in the world in Leon Aron ([email protected]) is a resident scholar and per-capita GDP, and one-fifth of the country’s the director of Russian studies at AEI. A shorter ver- sion of this essay was published in the September 26, population still lives in poverty. Corruption is 2005, issue of The Weekly Standard. among the most pervasive in the world. The 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 202.862.5800 www.aei.org - 2 - Soviet-era systems of education, health, housing, and apparent determination to create a “police-bureaucratic utilities are threadbare, starved for funds and failing at state” is driving Russia deeper and deeper into “shabbi- the time when the demographic crisis from low birth ness and injustice.” That is why the struggle against such rates and high male mortality is threatening Russia’s very a state and for “freedom and democracy” is the “key con- survival as a great nation. At the same time, the bloated dition of Russia’s success.”7 and ineffective conscript armed forces and just-as-useless The muzzling of Russian television and the increasing and completely crooked police are incapable of protect- pressure on the print media, the restrictions on demon- ing the society against terrorism despite billions of rubles strations and referendums, and the abolition of the elec- in additional funding.2 tions of the heads of the regional administrations The concentrated ferocity of the criticism aside, virtu- (governors) have all resulted in the sharp weakening of ally all the elements of this jeremiad, in one form or “democratic control” over the government. The another, had been the staples of the Russian opposition unelected bureaucrats are again in charge of the state. and often the mainstream press for at least two years. It is The state’s attempts to regain control or ownership of the Republicans’ explanation for these and many other some the most lucrative sectors of the economy threaten ills, spelled out in section one of the platform, that stands economic liberty and will lead to the diminution of out. Titled the “The Quagmire of Authoritarianism,” investment and the tapering of economic growth. Pro- this section ascribed “all the systemic failures of Russia tection of private property rights remains flimsy, while in recent years” to the Kremlin’s seeking a “monopoly blackmail and extortion of private businesses by the of power.”3 increasingly uncontrollable bureaucrats are on the rise.8 At the heart of the Republican Party’s quarrel with From society’s servant, the state again has become its the Putin government is the latter’s undermining the master. A new unified democratic opposition party is fledgling democratic institutions and practices forged by needed to reverse the trend—a party that would “con- the democratic revolution of the 1990s. Starting with duct a daily struggle for political and civil liberties of the the party’s motto—“With People to a Free and Dignified citizens of Russia, [and] for a modern, competitive, mar- Life!”—svobodny (free) and svoboda, meaning both “free- ket economy.”9 The first of the five “priority tasks” listed dom” and “liberty” in Russian, are by far the most fre- in the program is “the struggle for the democratization quently used words in the Republican Party’s documents. of Russia” and the return to “democratic control” over The program’s title was Free Individual, Honest Govern- the state.10 ment, and Dignified Life, and the conference’s Appeal to the Citizens of Russia started with these words: “Citizens Vladimir Ryzhkov: “Gorbachev’s Child” of Russia! We are guided by the conviction that as a strong, unified, and peaceful state, which competes suc- It would be hard to think of a more fitting leader for the cessfully with other states, Russia can be preserved and reconstituted Russian Republicans than Vladimir developed only in freedom—political, economic, intel- Ryzhkov, a member of the party’s political council. (To lectual, and spiritual freedom!”4 minimize the struggle for the top command and dampen The appeal, the program, and the speeches at the the battle of the egos that has plagued the Russian conference tied Russia’s fate directly to the preservation democrats and badly damaged the movement, RPR dis- (or abandonment) of democratic values, to the country’s pensed with chairmen and presidents.) staying on “the path of freedom” it started on almost Unlike the Moscow- or St. Petersburg-born or based twenty years ago5—or veering off. It was a difficult road, liberal elite (but like Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin before the documents stated, and many mistakes have been him), Ryzhkov is a quintessential Russian provincial—a made. Yet so long as Russia “moved toward freedom,” native of the Altaiskiy Krai, a province in southeastern there was a chance of creating a just society and digni- Siberia that is located 1,860 miles east of Moscow and fied existence. “Today Russia is being forced off the path covers about 65,000 square miles (an area slightly larger of freedom and thus deprived of its future! That is why than England). A graduate of the department of history we declare our principled non-acceptance of the present of the Altai State University, he taught there and political regime and its social and economic policies.”6 received his Ph.D. in 2000. Ryzhkov is married to a fel- With its “fear and non-freedom, authoritarianism can low history student, who became a lawyer. They have an result only in backwardness and poverty.” The regime’s eleven-year old daughter. - 3 - At thirty-nine, Ryzhkov is a bona fide member of a free election, the deafer and blinder it becomes and the new generation of Russian politicians who came of less capable it grows of solving the big and urgent prob- political age in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He calls lems the country is facing.16 himself “Gorbachev’s child.”11 Nineteen years old and a The dignified life in Russia, Ryzhkov declared at the university student when Mikhail Gorbachev came to conference, was impossible without an honest govern- power in 1985, Ryzhkov quickly became a leader of the ment. In turn, the honest government can be ensured pro-democracy movement in the Altai. When after the “only by democratic principles and the free individ- failed hard-line coup in August 1991 Boris Yeltsin ual.”17 The last line of his conference speech was: “Long appointed new “heads of regional administrations” (gov- live great democratic Russia!”18 ernors), the governor of the Altai picked Ryzhkov, who A venue Ryzhkov chose for an interview with me was was twenty-five, as his first deputy. Two years later, in very much in character as well. Instead of a stuffy Duma 1993, Ryzhkov was elected to the first post-Soviet Duma office with a Cerberus of a secretary blocking the from Altai’s capital, Barnaul (population of 600,000), entrance to the boss’s office, we met for breakfast in a and was reelected in 1995, 1999, and 2003 by large mar- slick chrome-and-glass Zen Café (a Moscow Starbucks- gins.