Kagarlitsky on Russian Liberalism

[John Metz <redsolidarity@xxxxxxxxx>]

A Decade of Consciousness
Boris Kagarlitsky - TNI Fellow
The Moscow Times, 9 July 2002

For 10 years now a chorus of politicians, journalists
and sociologists have been telling the public a story
as simple and appealing as the fairy tale about Little
Red Riding Hood. The story goes like this: Society was
deformed by seven and a half decades of life under the
Communist regime. The public consciousness was warped
in exactly the same way. And to the extent that a new
life takes shape in Russia, that consciousness will
change (according to the now much-reviled Karl Marx's
famous thesis, existence determines consciousness).

In the fullness of time, society will come to
understand the wisdom of liberal reforms. Future
generations will be proud to stand up for enterprise,
private property and Western values.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the launch of reforms
in this country, the Academy of Sciences' Institute of
Integrated Social Research, together with the
Independent Institute for Social and National Issues,
summarized the results of sociological surveys
conducted over that period. If the ruling elite and
its ideologues have any interest at all in what their
own citizens are thinking, they would do well to study
this report.

The public consciousness has most definitely changed
-- in what direction is another matter. At the dawn of
the reforms more than 63 percent of Soviet citizens
supported the idea of private enterprise, and were
even prepared to give business a try themselves. Over
the next 10 years, during which the ruling elite
promoted market values with all the energy of their
Communist predecessors, the number of people viewing
business favorably dropped to 52.6 percent.

During the 1990s scores of pundits explained that
people would have to get used to social inequality.
But even here the new propaganda met with only limited
success. In a recent poll, 35 percent of respondents
said that Russian capitalists were ruthless and
exploitative. At the beginning of the reform era only
26 percent were of that view.

The poll results become even more interesting when you
look at the issue of property rights. After 10 years
of privatization, the public's attitude toward private
property is significantly more negative than it was
during the Communist era. In fact, the notion of
renationalization is finding ever wider support.
Eighty-eight percent of the population are in favor of
state ownership of the energy sector; 72 percent
believe that machine-building plants and foundries
should belong to the state. Sixty-three percent of the
population now insist the state should exercise
exclusive authority over the housing sector. This
number has risen dramatically in recent years.

The percentage of the population that supports the
liberal market economic model has decreased steadily
over the past decade, during which a series of
revolving-door governments has been busily
constructing that very market economy. In 1994, 12.5
percent of the population backed the liberal model --
a low number in itself, given the nearly unanimous
support for this model among the ruling elite. Now
popular support for the liberal model has fallen to
just 8 percent. The Soviet economic model continues to
enjoy the support of 18 percent of those polled. But
37 percent now favor a mixed economic model with a
strong state sector.

The most unpleasant surprise for the champions of
Russian liberalism is that people's views on political
and economic issues vary little with age. Sociologists
note that the responses of 18-year-olds and
55-year-olds yield nearly identical results. Social
status, not age, now seems to be the leading factor in
determining people's attitudes.

Two-thirds of those polled consider Russian-style
democracy to be mere window-dressing designed to
conceal the authoritarian state beneath ("Democratic
processes are nothing but a sham. The country is in
fact run by the rich and the powerful".) It doesn't
follow, however, that Russian society is incapable of
achieving democracy. While the population
overwhelmingly rejects liberal economics, it still
gives strong support to such basic democratic
principles as equality before the law (up from 54 to
83 percent), an independent judiciary (up from 41 to
46 percent), and so on.

It's no wonder the majority of those polled rated the
results of reform as unsatisfactory. And if our chief
criterion for determining the success of reform is not
loyalty to the system, but rather people's capacity to
think critically and to draw their own conclusions
despite the constant din of propaganda, then the polls
paint a rather optimistic picture. Ten years have not
passed in vain.

Copyright 2002 The Moscow Times
http://www.tni.org/archives/kagarlitsky/decade.htm

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