[PEN-L:2876] Fathoming Russia

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From Mark Jones:


Primakov no longer wants power: he needs it and for the same reason everyone
else who is a player in Russian politics does: just to survive. He has already
frightened too many people to be able to retire into quiet obscurity if his
present power-play goes pear-shaped. It isn't just Yeltsin and Berezovsky who
need an amnesty, it's Primakov. Unlike the fallen oligarchs he has no
reserves in Swiss numbered accounts, no chalets in the Cote d'Azur to set
against a rainy day. Secret policemen cannot afford to retire, especially when
they have begun to use their files in the grandiose way Primakov has.

Now that he has come down from Olympus and entered the same swamp as everyone
else, Primakov can be seen for what he is: a centrist in the tradition of
Abalkin, trying to give perestroika a makeover. It cannot work. The situation
in the country no longer permits experiments. The absurdity of his position
ought to be self-evident: here we have the inheritor of the pontificate of
Dzerzhinsky, Yezhov, Yagoda, Beria and Andropov, using their means, or
threatening to, to install a social-market economy in a place where there is
neither society nor economy to begin with.  He is clever - it was clever to
have someone like Roy Medvedev of all people try to invest him with the aura
of power which all secret policemen need. But the task is hopeless, in fact he
is entering the swamp in its deepest place, in the centre. He is doomed. The
best he can hope for is that Berezovsky and Yeltsin will be sucked down with
him, which seems quite likely. Russia is careening on course for its fourth
revolution. Primakov has made his play and it is already clear that he has
lost. He did not have enough: enough time, because it takes more than six
months for the kind of creeping coup he initiated to roll through the
apparatus against so much entrenched resistance; enough programme, because his
goals seem meaningful only among the tinkling silver service of Davos and they
have no meaning at all in Russia, indeed to speak of a 'social-market economy'
simply abstracts from meaning and deepens the general night, imperilling still
more thousands of his hapless citizens with extinction from cold, disease and
hunger.

Crucially, he did not have enough support: Primakov was left untouched only as
long as he did nothing and appeared no more sinister than the smile on a
Cheshire cat. The instant he showed signs of movement in any particular
direction, people united to tear him apart.

So what next? As usual, the chorus of comment almost entirely misses the real
point about what is going on. It is like watching Hamlet without the prince:
talk as you will of Luzhkov, Lebed (who he?) or anyone else in the thinning
list of aspirants, until you start to talk seriously about (a) the Duma and
(b) Zyuganov, you are wasting your breath. That, incidentally, was the point
Chikin and Prokhanov were making -- because even Zyuganov, these days, seems
to forget about Zyuganov (incidentally, there was a time when David Johnson
was ruthlessly criticised by the denizens of Carnegieland, who have mostly
gone back into lurk-mode on this list, for even publishing the outrageous and
fascistic opinions of Taibbi, Zavtra/Sovetskaya Rossiya and even of yours
truly: but who now dares to deny the simple truth repeated by Chikin/Prokhanov
(JRL 3041) that "The "hunters for extremists" are those who have robbed the
people and do not want to return the spoils.  The "social peacekeepers" are
those who shot at us from tanks in October 1993.  The fighters against
"Russian fascism" are those who are to blame for the disappearance of 4,000 of
the Russian population a day." Who?).

Without Zyuganov (who made him) Primakov can do nothing, is paralysed and
helpless: but Zyuganov cannot help create a 'social-market economy' however much
he'd like to try: the people won't let him, and so far the people have not
been abolished in sufficient numbers to ignore totally.

So Primakov cannot abolish Zyuganov and the Duma either, he can only send
them pathetic letters asking them to tie their own hands. Nor, come
to that, can Zyuganov abolish himself even if he wants to, even if Mad
Allbright wants him to. The people wouldn't let him, and that is really the
point: the Fourth Estate has made its appearance at last. You only don't
notice the masses shuffling into the room because they are, well, so quiet
and kind of, you know, grubby.

The people will not let this despised rabid dog, the Duma, be put down.
The people still have power in their hands. Squirm as much as you want
around that fact, but it is so, otherwise the Duma would have been
abolished long ago. In fact, the plain truth is that nowadays
only Zyuganov and the KPRF stands between the wrath of the people and their
tormentors: Berezovsky, Yeltsin, even Primakov, need him more than they dare
admit.

The imminent disappearance of Yeltsin threatens final chaos at the centre; the
hoped-for orderly transition to the Primakov-era has proved chimerical. The
desperation of Primakov's own actions already shows clearly that even the
limited programme of holding up the scenery while a new president is elected,
is impossible: Primakov is too weak even to guarantee orderly elections, and
that, risibly enough, is why he is forced to seek more power. His position is
hopelessly compromised and contradictory.

Who is strong enough to pluck power from the street? There is no Lenin.
Luzhkov controls the capital but his street-gangs and mafia-militia are not
enough to build a regime on, and he knows that. Luzhkov's will be a regime
bathed in blood from day one. As for Zyuganov, whether or not he is Hamlet,
his stage army belongs to Gilbert and Sullivan. I foresee the descent into
warlordism and national oblivion which so many have spoken of without quite
believing it can actually happen. But it can. Only when a warlord with an
ideology emerges can peace be restored.

As for the West, the colonial fantasising of a year or so ago has already
dissipated; after all, we can't even make a go of Serbia. The best you can
hope for is that the regime of obscurantism and terror now beginning in Russia
can be contained within its borders. Don't expect that, either, though.



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