Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia 9781139845342, 9781107031395

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Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

During the Soviet period, political symbolism developed into a coherent narrative that underpinned Soviet political development. Following the collapse of the Soviet regime and its widespread rejection by the Russian people, a new form of narrative was needed, one which both explained the state of existing society and gave a sense of its direction. By examining the imagery contained in presidential addresses, the political system, the public sphere and the urban development of Moscow, Graeme Gill shows how no single coherent symbolic programme has emerged to replace that of the Soviet period. Laying particular emphasis on the Soviet legacy, and especially on the figure of Stalin, Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia explains why it has been so difficult to generate a new set of symbols which could constitute a coherent narrative for the new Russia. g r a e m e g i l l is Professor of Government and Public Administration at the University of Sydney, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia Graeme Gill Department of Government and International Relations The University of Sydney

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107031395 # Graeme Gill 2013 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed and Bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Gill, Graeme J. Symbolism and regime change in Russia / Graeme Gill. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-03139-5 1. Soviet Union–Politics and government. 2. Regime change–Soviet Union. 3. Russia (Federation)–Politics and government–1991– I. Title. JN6531.G469 2013 320.947–dc23 2012018850 ISBN 978-1-107-03139-5 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of tables Preface

page vi vii

1

Symbolism and regime change

1

2

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

11

3

The leader’s vision

28

4

The symbolism of the political arena

79

5

Russian identity in the public arena

134

6

Moscow: a material basis for post-Soviet identity?

178

Conclusion: The difficulties of a post-Soviet narrative

212

Bibliography Index

231 243

v

Tables

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7

vi

Popular evaluation of the political system Does Russia need democracy? What kind of democracy for Russia? Order or democracy? Trust in institutions Nature of the political system Attitude to the burial of Lenin Popular attitude to Stalin Youth attitude to Stalin Feelings for Stalin Evaluation of Stalin’s leadership ability Attitude to breakdown of USSR, 1 Attitude to breakdown of USSR, 2

page 127 129 130 130 131 132 155 173 173 174 175 175 176

Preface

This book is a sequel to Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011). It continues the story from where the earlier book ended in 1991 through until 2011, charting the attempts by the political elite to design a narrative that would help explain the Soviet fall and provide a basis for the future development of the Russian polity. The focus has shifted somewhat from the earlier volume, reflecting the reality of the different political systems with which each book has had to deal: the nontotalist nature of contemporary Russia means that the inclusion of artwork in the earlier analysis would be much less relevant for this one. Nevertheless, together these books provide a comprehensive analysis of the growth and use of symbolism over the lives of the Soviet and post-Soviet regimes. Many debts are incurred in a volume such as this. The principal one is, of course, to those scholars who have spent the past two decades studying the changing course of Russian politics. Among this group I would like particularly to identify those whose early careers were built in Soviet studies but who, with the Soviet collapse in 1991, made the transition from being what in those times were often called ‘Kremlinologists’ into being students of contemporary Russia. The historical sensitivity they bring to their work is often underestimated. This book relies heavily upon the insights and the results of the labours of many of these scholars. Efficient research assistance was provided by James Young and Anya Poukchanski, while important periods in working on this book were spent at St Antony’s College, Oxford, at the Davis Center at Harvard, and in Moscow. Financial support came from the Australian Research Council, which generously granted me an Australian Professorial Fellowship, during the tenure of which much of the work for this was completed. The Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney has again provided me with a stimulating and comfortable intellectual home within which to work on this book. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments have greatly improved the book. But, finally, to the one without whose support, love and all-round care this book would have been impossible, Heather, go my greatest thanks. vii

1

Symbolism and regime change

The essence of regime change is the replacement of one set of rulers with another. But regime change often also involves alterations to the institutional structure of the polity, the replacement of one set of institutions with another set, claiming to be superior to those pushed from the political scene. The more extensive such changes are, the greater the likelihood that the particular instance of regime change will be considered to be a revolution. This sort of change of personnel and institutions can be reasonably quick, with the seizure of power promoting new elites into the apex of the polity who then set about reordering the institutional structure. What takes longer to change, but what must change if a regime radically different from that replaced comes to power, is the symbolism associated with the old regime. Symbols are a primary means of understanding the world. They simplify complex reality by representing in linguistic, ideational or visual form ideas which cannot be expressed easily or simply. They constitute a form of language which gives expression to principles, assumptions, conceptions and ideas which can be very complex, and thereby through image and allegory can express things simply and give meaning to them more effectively than would be possible through a longer exegesis. For example, the national flag is not merely a coloured piece of cloth associated with a particular country, but a symbol of national identity and meaning which can evoke a whole range of emotions and images in the minds of observers. By simplifying reality in this way, symbols can actually create meaning; in the words of one early student of symbolic politics, man (sic) ‘reconstructs his past, perceives his present condition, and anticipates his future through symbols that abstract, screen, condense, distort, displace, and even create what the senses bring to his attention’.1 Symbolic discourse, or the projection of meaning through the coherent arrangement of symbols, is therefore central to understanding the 1

Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action. Mass Arousal and Quiescence (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1971), p. 2.

1

2

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

present, the past and the potential future, and therefore new regimes will seek to develop a symbolic discourse that will justify and legitimate their positions. However, it is important to realise that symbols can be ambiguous and possess ‘layers of meaning’,2 which means that they may be interpreted in different ways by different people at different times. This creates a potential problem of the incoherence of a regime’s symbolic programme, of how to ensure over time that the symbols the regime seeks to use remain coherent and consistent. If the symbolic matrix of the regime becomes highly incoherent, it can have significant effects on the regime’s capacity to maintain effective dialogue both within its own ranks and with the populace as a whole, as well as on the regime’s very stability. The representational role of symbols projects them into the heart of the functioning of the polity. All regimes invoke and use symbols as part of the way they govern. At a surface level, all regimes associate themselves with the symbols of the state – flag, emblem, anthem – and when a new regime comes to power, those symbols may change. More fundamentally, regimes use symbols in an attempt to legitimate their rule by associating themselves with principles and images which they believe have (or will have) resonance within the society as a whole. Such principles and images are usually linked to conceptions about what it is the society stands for, often themselves embedded in myths about the society’s history. By symbolically trying to associate itself with ideas about what the nation means, a regime seeks validation of its programme through conceptions of national authenticity. Of course, in revolutionary situations, the conceptions of what the nation means may be reworked quite fundamentally in the direction of the introduction into the national discourse of abstract principles that were not there before. When this happens, both the symbols which the regime uses and the conception of what the society means undergo significant change. The point is that every regime generates a symbolic programme which seeks to encapsulate the existing symbolic matrices and articulate what both society and regime stand for. The Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991, was an unusual political system. At its heart was a formal ideology which, in theory, spelled out the trajectory of development the society was following, its projected end point (communism), and the historic dynamic whereby that end point would be reached. This vision of the present and the future constituted not only the heart of the regime’s legitimation programme, 2

D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels, The Iconography of Landscape. Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 2.

Symbolism and regime change

3

but also a clear rationale for the way in which society was organised. The regime was therefore ideocratic in nature in the way that most other regimes of the twentieth century (with the major exceptions being the other communist regimes that were modelled on the Soviet) were not. But even among ideocratic regimes, communist regimes, and in particular the Soviet, were unusual to the extent to which ideological values, assumptions and ways of thinking permeated all aspects of public and private life. It was not just that the political system reflected the values of the ideology but that, because of the totalist aspirations of the regime, every part of the society was closely linked in to the ideology. Throughout almost all of the life of the USSR, communism was the officially avowed teleology, the end point toward which they were working and the fundamental goal which gave meaning to everything else. The organisation of society, in particular collective ownership and the overwhelming role of the state, was explained in substantial part by the attempt to build a socialist society. All policy was rationalised by its contribution to this overriding aim, while the basic legitimacy of the system was grounded in the claim that progress was being made towards the creation of a new type of society, communism. The ideology was complex and ontological, explaining the society’s trajectory through a philosophy of history and a teleology. The ideology was therefore the basic philosophical foundation of the regime, its formal intellectual basis and the core of its legitimation. It provided the basic rationale for the Soviet project, and underpinned the dominant conceptions of social reality in the society. But because of its complexity and philosophical nature, it was not well suited to the day-to-day tasks of communication between government and governed. This role was played by the Soviet metanarrative,3 a body of discourse which simplified the ideology and acted as a means of mediation between regime and people. The metanarrative was the means of transforming the principles of the ideology into the practice of day-to-day reality for the citizenry. Through its projection of a simplified form of the ideology, and its connection to the daily life of the society, the metanarrative provided a symbolic construction of the society and an explanation for why it was the way it was and where it was going. In this way, it provided the basic definition of the community and its future. It therefore defined what the society and its political system stood for in terms consistent with the ideology. An important component of the metanarrative was myths. Myths were the narratives which gave substance to the social construction of Soviet 3

For an extended discussion of this, see Graeme Gill, Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

reality contained in the metanarrative. Myth is essentially a socially constructed story about the community and its origins4 which provides meaning to the members of that community by explaining important aspects of the community and its development. Myths generate social solidarity and identity by creating images of the past which are meant to resonate with the present, linking past and present in a way which gives meaning to the current state of affairs. Such myths may be based on real historical events, or they may rest on mythological episodes like those at the heart of the beliefs of the ancient Greeks in the role played by their gods in human affairs. But what is more important than their historical veracity is that the members of the community believe them. Myths are thus central to the community’s understanding of itself and its nature. In the Soviet case, it was the interweaving of a number of myths5 which constituted the metanarrative. The Soviet metanarrative was unusual in international comparative terms because of both the degree to which it was formalised in an official ideology which had its roots in a range of exegetical texts, and its allencompassing nature. Only theocracies matched the communist systems in the extent to which their guiding ideas were said to have a clearly defined textual base, and in the twentieth century there were few such regimes around. But it was the all-embracing nature of the Soviet metanarrative which set it apart from most regimes (although perhaps not from theocratic post-1979 Iran). Because of both the theory of history embedded in Marxism and the teleology at the heart of the metanarrative, all aspects of Soviet society were organically linked with the metanarrative. This organic linkage was reflected in the integration into the metanarrative of symbols from all parts of society. It was the case not only that all policy had to be consistent with, or at least rationalised in terms of, the metanarrative, but also that all aspects of life were to be understood in terms of that metanarrative. Certainly in most societies there is an incentive to frame everything in terms of national conceptions and stereotypes, but the teleological nature of the Soviet metanarrative meant that the failure to have something framed in its terms appeared not only odd, but actually as being opposed to that metanarrative and what the society was seeking to achieve. This wholistic, all-encompassing 4

5

On this, see David I. Kertzer, Politics and Symbols. The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 16; Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action, p. 14; and the classic Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1954), pp. 100–101. The most important were the myths of the October Revolution, the building of socialism, the nature of leadership, the place of opposition, and victory in the Great Patriotic War: Gill, Symbols.

Symbolism and regime change

5

nature of the metanarrative, allied to the role it played in regime legitimation, meant that it dominated Soviet society. There were four major vehicles through which the Soviet metanarrative was expressed.6 First, the language of political discussion and debate. In public discussion, leaders’ speeches, official decisions and documents, and the mass media, the basic categories of analysis and understanding of the metanarrative were generated and promulgated. The result was that public discourse was dominated and shaped by the basic conceptions of the ideology, which meant that the public language that people had to use to get by in the system was that of the metanarrative. It became the dominant form of discourse in the society, with the logic of its concepts, values and symbols constituting the public sphere within which people had to function. Second, the visual arts, particularly painting and political posters. As official control over the production of artwork expanded, reflected in the notion of socialist realism, this became a major medium for the projection of symbols and images linked to the underlying conceptions of the regime. Third, the physical environment. Central here was the reconstruction of Moscow with the aim of turning it into a model socialist city, representing all that was good about the Soviet experience. The capital appeared as the material representation of the Soviet aim, and therefore as a physical symbol of the metanarrative. Fourth, ritual. The development of rituals in all walks of life – birth, marriage, death, entry into the army – not just the regime’s feast days, provided an interactive format for the playing out of the metanarrative. Combined, these four modes of expression ensured that the metanarrative dominated the Soviet public sphere and profoundly affected the diminished private sphere of life in the USSR. Importantly, the principal mode of expression of the metanarrative through these means was symbolic; in all four areas, the discourse was through symbolic representation whereby particular terms, images, structures and actions embodied the basic principles and categories of the metanarrative. Through its domination of the public sphere in this way, the metanarrative was clearly central to the continued existence of the Soviet regime. But the metanarrative was not simply something handed down from on high. Although the top Soviet elite was the principal force shaping the metanarrative and its development,7 especially given the control it was able to exercise over the means of mass communication (and therefore its capacity to project across the society as a whole and to exclude 6 7

Gill, Symbols, pp. 6–16. Officials at lower levels of the Soviet structure could also be instrumental in shaping the metanarrative: Gill, Symbols, p. 19.

6

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

alternative visions), it was neither alone in this nor did it do it in a vacuum. Given the ambiguous character of symbols and the consequent possibility of people interpreting them differently, the dialogue within society could never be just a monologue from elite to populace. The only way an elite-driven metanarrative can gain intellectual dominance in society is if there is some connection between that metanarrative and the values of the populace as a whole. This means a form of mediation between elite and popular values in which at least part of the popular values is co-opted and incorporated into the metanarrative. Traditional popular symbols and values can be taken up and given new life and meaning, a new signification can be given to existing cultural phenomena, and traditional concepts and images can be reinterpreted in a new way, thereby embedding the elite narrative in traditional culture. The reverse can also occur, whereby elements of the elite culture can be given meaning and power through their association with the more popularvalue culture. In practice, both processes generally occur,8 creating an overlap between the two while rooting elite culture in the mass culture. This overlap was also relevant to the way in which the mass of the populace were not simply passive receivers of the message from above but active shapers of the form the metanarrative took. They could help shape that metanarrative through the decisions they made about what to accept and what to reject of the message projected by the regime, with popular resistance to aspects of the metanarrative likely to shape the way it developed in the future. Similarly, through its own interpretations of parts of the metanarrative, the populace could be the root of innovation and change in that metanarrative; the way each individual interacted with the official culture could change that culture, at least for the individual and those in the immediate vicinity. James C. Scott’s notion of the people turning official language into a ‘hidden transcript’,9 taking it over and using it for their own purposes as a mode of subaltern resistance, shows how the shape of the metanarrative can be affected by the mass of the populace. Given the nature of the Soviet metanarrative, the usual problems created by the need for a change in the symbolism of the regime when 8

9

This is facilitated by the fact that the elite culture usually is shaped in part by the established values in the society. On culture and values playing the part of a ‘generative mechanism’ or ‘cultural memory’, see Ju. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenskij, ‘The Role of Dual Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture (up to the End of the Eighteenth Century)’, Ju. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenskij, The Semiotics of Russian Culture (Ann Arbor: Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Michigan, 1984, ed. Ann Shukman), p. 28. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

Symbolism and regime change

7

a regime changes were significantly greater than normal. With both the ideational principles and the material structures of the society justified and suffused by the Soviet metanarrative, when that metanarrative was displaced, it became a question not only of what was to replace it but also of how the principal structures of Russian society could be justified. In principle, this could have been achieved through the generation of another metanarrative but, given that the post-Soviet regime has sought assiduously to avoid formal ideologies and that it lacked the sort of totalist control enjoyed by its Soviet predecessor, such a solution was unlikely. But the regime could not exist in an ideational vacuum, especially in light of the Soviet experience. A structure of symbolic values was needed if the new regime was to gain legitimacy and project a sense of the essential worth of the society. The growth of symbols was crucial if the post-Soviet regime was to explain the collapse of the Soviet experiment and why the post-Soviet regime deserved to replace it. Given that the populace as a whole had known only the Soviet Union and retained many of the values they had imbibed during the Soviet period, and given that many seemed even twenty years later to look nostalgically towards the Soviet past, it was imperative that the new regime generate and project a symbolic narrative to justify its existence. It was not only that the all-embracing nature of the Soviet metanarrative meant that when it was gone the gap it left was significant, but also that the unique nature of the circumstances of the change in regime demanded a response. A decade before it disappeared, the Soviet Union had seemed to be an impregnable superpower. While there were weaknesses in its structure and performance, for most people the collapse of the system did not seem to be imminent. Most Soviet citizens, while they may have complained about various aspects of their lives, had little sense that the regime which had seemed so solid for so long was in danger of collapse. And, unlike in the West where the collapse could be, and was, easily explained in terms of the fundamental deficiencies of the system, for those who lived within it and had experienced it as a functioning structure, its demise came as a major shock. Both the fact and the speed of its demise were unexpected given its perceived stolidity and demonstrated capacity to survive. In such circumstances, with the disappearance of something that to many had seemed all-enduring, some sort of credible explanation for this that transcended the ubiquitous conspiracy theories was needed. This would have particularly been the case if, as Serguei Alex. Oushakine has argued,10 many Russians experienced the Soviet collapse 10

Serguei Alex. Oushakine, The Patriotism of Despair. Nation, War, and Loss in Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).

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Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

as extreme personal trauma. For some people, the socialist system had been psychically linked to their own persons and to the shaping of those persons; they saw themselves as both created by and in turn helping to create socialism in the USSR. Their way of being was defined by the socialist experiment in the USSR, and therefore its collapse had dramatic implications for their own sense of who they were. Even for some who were not as psychically engaged and for whom the impact of the collapse was not psychic in nature, trauma could nevertheless be the result through drastically changed personal circumstances. For those Russians cut off from historical family roots by the emergence of independent states, plunged into penury by economic reform, and with their long-standing values cast into question by the collapse of the socialist ideal, these changes could trigger both personal trauma and a loss of a sense of community, something which could reinforce that trauma.11 Where this sort of response was present, there was a clear need for a new narrative that could make sense of what had happened and give direction for the future. Adding to the pressure for explanation was the nature of the regime change. The break-up of the USSR and the emergence of independent Russia was not a case of the replacement of an incumbent elite by an oppositionist one, but the replacement of a federal elite by an already established republican one. The new rulers of Russia were not outsiders who drove the incumbents from power but another group of insiders who displaced the federal authorities. This means there was significant continuity between Soviet and post-Soviet elites, represented most graphically by the person of Boris Yeltsin. This created the unusual situation where a change of regime and whole social system seemed momentous, alongside significant continuity in the elite. The result was a potential legitimation crisis in two ways. First, how could this apparent paradox of major systemic change along with limited elite change be explained? And, second, if the Soviet system had been so bad that it collapsed, how could those who had been implicated in its running remain in power? Some sort of narrative was needed to answer these questions. This need for explanation created an opening for the new regime to respond through the generation of a new narrative integrating an understanding of the past with an explanation of the present and future. And while a complex, all-embracing metanarrative along Soviet lines integrating myths and symbols from all areas of life was unlikely, a more limited symbolic narrative giving meaning to the recent past and present 11

Oushakine, Patriotism of Despair, ch. 1.

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was a possible response. If such a new symbolic narrative was to emerge in post-Soviet Russia, its initial impetus and direction had to come, like the Soviet metanarrative before it, from the political elite. It was this group which was most sensitive to the need for legitimation, at both the systemic and personal levels, and which was best placed to articulate such a vision. If a coherent narrative was to emerge, the elite needed to take the lead and give it an intellectual foundation and focus. However, as with the Soviet metanarrative, this did not occur in a vacuum. Any elite drive to generate a post-Soviet narrative had to be conditioned by the values, perceptions and actions of non-political elite actors. Unless an elite-derived narrative had popular resonance, its ability to both explain the Soviet collapse and provide a basis for future development would be significantly compromised. In post-Soviet Russia the gaining of this sort of popular resonance was complicated compared with the Soviet period by the pluralisation of Russian society that had accompanied the Soviet collapse, and the resultant proliferation of social forces able to feed into the process of narrative development. This significantly complicated the emergence of a coherent, post-Soviet, Russian narrative. In seeking to develop such a narrative, the political elite could not start from a blank sheet of paper. All members of the elite had come from within the interstices of the Soviet system; they all carried the effects that system had had upon their politically formative years. Some attention therefore needs to be given to the Soviet legacy, and this is done in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3 the focus is upon the way successive leaders have sought to frame Russia’s past, present and future. What sorts of visions are to be found in the presidents’ speeches, and have they articulated a clear future for the post-Soviet polity? Chapter 4 looks at the sorts of symbolic representations of politics and political life that are embedded in the institutional structure and how it works. The symbolism of the political system and how it works, or the institutional culture, is an important contributor to any narrative that seeks to render legitimacy to that system, so its symbolic representation can be seen as an indicator of the sort of narrative that is taking shape. This is particularly important given the attempts by various figures, especially Yeltsin, to differentiate the post-Soviet from the Soviet era. In Chapter 5 the focus turns to the public arena, and in particular the way that the past is being presented. A particular aspect of this is the Soviet era and, within that, the figure of Iosif Stalin, because it is against this Soviet era that the contemporary regime must be measured. Chapter 6 looks at the way in which the architecture of Moscow has changed since 1991. During the Soviet era, Moscow was seen as the model socialist city with

10

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

architectural forms meant to reflect that ideological value. With the postSoviet era, the question arises of how those classic Soviet architectural forms have been treated and whether there is a discernible post-Soviet pattern to urban development. Does the creation of material culture in the form of the urban development of Moscow convey a clear message about the nature of post-Soviet Russia? The Conclusion discusses the difficulties of finding a post-Soviet narrative. These four different areas that would potentially feed into a postSoviet narrative – presidential rhetoric, institutional culture, public arena and the material culture of architecture – are not the only possible arenas of symbolic growth. Art and literature, the theatre, home and working life, and organised sport are some of the other areas of life that could help to produce a post-Soviet narrative. But they are less important in this regard than those focused upon in this book in the sense that, if we were to conclude that a coherent narrative had emerged, it would have to be reflected in presidential rhetoric, institutional culture and the public arena, and, given the symbolic importance of Moscow for the Soviet metanarrative, any response to that metanarrative would be likely to be reflected here also. Given the nature of post-Soviet Russia, with no all-powerful Soviet-like centre ensuring co-ordination between all areas of life (and thereby generating a metanarrative), it is by no means clear that a dominant political narrative would find expression in those lessimportant areas of life noted above. But, if the regime sought to construct a narrative that through symbolic expression would underpin its existence and development, it would be reflected in the arenas of life with which this book is primarily concerned.

2

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

A central aspect of the collapse of the Soviet political system was the dissolution of the metanarrative. The seeds of this were sown in the earlier decades of Soviet rule with the metanarrative becoming increasingly incoherent from the early 1950s,1 but this came to full fruition at the end of the 1980s with Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to reform the Soviet system. The result of the particular dynamic of development unleashed by Gorbachev was that the ideological legacy bequeathed from the Soviet to the post-Soviet period was highly problematic. Not only had the metanarrative collapsed and left an ideational vacuum, but even the individual elements of that metanarrative did not provide a favourable basis upon which the search for a new narrative could rest. From its early days, it was the quest for communism that formally animated the regime. What was meant by communism was set out in programmatic form initially in the 1919 Programme of the party and was revised in subsequent programmes in 1961 and 1986. The discussion of communism was most extensive, and most optimistic, in the 1961 Programme, where the more utopian elements of the communist conception were prominent. But also given increased prominence at this time was the prospect of material abundance. While there had been a focus on increased material prosperity in the second half of the 1930s, associated with the claimed achievement of socialism in 1936, prior to 1961 this had generally been overshadowed by the emphasis upon the way in which communist society was to be structured. However, in a burst of enthusiasm, in 1961 the promise of material abundance was linked with dates both for exceeding the production of the USA and for the achievement of communism. The effect of this was for the first time to give the populace a yardstick whereby they could measure progress towards communism; if the approach of communism was to bring material abundance, they could measure that approach by reference to 1

See Graeme Gill, Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

11

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their own material situation. In the past, with communism associated more with intangible things like the disappearance of classes and the withering away of the state, there was no easy way for the populace to gain a sense of progress towards the teleological end point. However, once that was associated with material abundance, their own life situations constituted a personal form of measurement of the regime’s claims. The ideocratic regime’s legitimation thus became subject to popular calibration in a way it never had in the past.2 This reconfiguration of the meaning of communism to project it primarily in terms of material abundance diluted the regime’s claims about its exceptional nature. While the task was seen to be creation of a qualitatively new type of society, the Soviet regime was distinguished from its contemporaries by the nature of this task. However, if its aim was seen to be creation of a society characterised primarily by increased material abundance, this did not seem to be qualitatively different from the task being faced by its adversaries in the great battle of ideologies that was occurring in the second half of the twentieth century. The Soviet experience thus seemed to be robbed of its excitement and enthusiasm, and reduced to the level of those countries it had criticised in the West. This view that the Soviet experience was not unique was reinforced by the way in which, from the mid 1960s, the myth of the Great Patriotic War superseded that of October as the regime’s primary myth of legitimation.3 This impression was reinforced by the humdrum ambience of the Leonid Brezhnev period. Not only was the modus operandi of Soviet politics seemingly made colourless and bureaucratic in nature compared with the period under Nikita Khrushchev, but through the introduction of the notion of ‘developed socialism’ communism seemed to be postponed even further into the future. The effect of these changes was to dilute the strength of the ideocratic message and to render it more diffuse and ambiguous than it had been throughout much of the earlier life of the Soviet regime. Other factors which contributed to the growth of incoherence in the Soviet metanarrative were Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s subsequent campaign of destalinisation. Until his death, the position occupied by Stalin in the regime’s imagery was central to the sustenance of the metanarrative. As the chief interpreter of ideology and the overall source of guidance for the USSR, as the acknowledged fount of wisdom and ‘great leader and teacher’, his word was the final authority. Thus any discordant elements within the metanarrative could be reconciled 2 3

For this argument at greater length, see Gill, Symbols, ch. 4. This is discussed in Gill, Symbols, ch. 4.

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

13

through the person of Stalin. When he died, that means of reconciliation disappeared and, when Khrushchev effectively destroyed his authority through destalinisation, the central pillar of the metanarrative as it had unrolled in the 1930s and 1940s was discredited. The resultant incoherence was not offset by the emergence of another authority to take Stalin’s place. Thus, by the time Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, the Soviet metanarrative had become incoherent. In his attempts to reform the Soviet system, Gorbachev exacerbated this problem. Gorbachev set out to implement a course of change aimed ultimately at transforming the Soviet polity, something which would of necessity have involved reworking the Soviet metanarrative even had that metanarrative not been exhausted.4 Although it is not clear that such transformation was the aim from the outset, this was clearly in mind from at least 1987. In his pursuit of this aim, Gorbachev relied heavily upon the mobilisation of support of both state and party officials and the general populace through the use of symbolic appeals. Initially this was in the form of appeals to the symbols of the Marxist-Leninist heritage. Although from an early stage he had introduced new symbols into the political lexicon – perestroika, glasnost and democratisation – (or perhaps better invested new meaning into words which were already present in the Soviet lexicon), the ultimate rationale for the policies which were associated with these symbols was defined in traditional Soviet terms. The new party programme introduced in 19865 was declared to be based on Marxism-Leninism and envisaged the further advance of society towards communism and its practical building based on the acceleration of socio-economic development. The leading symbols of Soviet socialism – Marxism-Leninism, the vanguard role of the working class, its leading role in the alliance with the peasantry and the intelligentsia, the party as the ‘leading and guiding’ force, the October Revolution as the source of the move to socialism, and the existence of contradictions in the hostile international arena – were all evoked by Gorbachev at this time,6 although he appeared to be already edging away from some of the traditional meanings of these symbols; for 4 5

6

For a more extended discussion of this, see Gill, Symbols, ch. 5. ‘Programma Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo soiuza’, XXVII s’ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo soiuza. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Politizdat, 1986), vol. I, pp. 554–623. See also Gorbachev’s speech at the CC plenum of October 1985, M. S. Gorbachev, ‘O proektakh novoi redaktsii programmy KPSS, izmenenii v ustave KPSS, osnovnykh napravlenii ekonomicheskogo i sotsial’nogo razvitiia SSSR na 1986–1990 gody i na period do 2000 goda’, M. S. Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i (Moscow: Politizdat, 1987–90), vol. III, pp. 5–15. In particular, see M. S. Gorbachev, ‘Politicheskii doklad Tsentral’nogo komiteta KPSS XXVII s’ezdu Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo soiuza’, XXVII s’ezd, vol. I, pp. 23–121.

14

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

example, he called for the fundamental restructuring of the economy (in the face of criticism of the established model’s performance) and implied that truly humanistic Marxist-Leninist ideology came not just from Marxist roots but from all that was best in world culture. Nevertheless, the main thrust of the position as enunciated by Gorbachev at this time remained broadly within the established discursive bounds of the metanarrative; it was about improving the work of the party, achieving the aims of October, and strengthening the march to communism. While the approach of communism was postponed once again and material sufficiency remained the watchword in regard to the question of living standards, communism remained the avowed end. By mid 1986, Gorbachev’s notion of ‘perestroika’, which was the central element in his plan to change Soviet society, implied a fundamental transformation of that society; in contrast to earlier when this had seemed to mean a tinkering with aspects of the system, now it came to be equated with revolution,7 which clearly implied deficiencies in the current Soviet structure. Similarly, at the beginning of 1987, Gorbachev transformed the established notion of democracy to include competitive elections (even if initially there were limits to this), a change which fundamentally recast the image of what elections were meant to do and what they meant.8 The increasingly radical critique of Soviet society that was emerging, added to the growing radicalism of the solutions Gorbachev was beginning to embrace,9 meant that the established forms and symbols of Soviet society were coming under question from the very top of the political system. With the widening of glasnost (including the beginning of the view that this should involve initiative from below), Gorbachev’s February 1987 injunction that there should be no ‘blank pages’ in Soviet history and his speech in November of that year on the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution,10 Soviet reality also came under increasingly critical discussion from elsewhere in Soviet society, particularly the press. No longer were the Soviet model and its achievements immune from criticism. 7

8 9

10

See his reference to ‘perestroika’ as being similar to the word ‘revolution’, in M. S. Gorbachev, ‘Perestroika neotlozhna, ona kasaetsia vsekh i vo vsem’, Gorbachev, Izbrannye, vol. IV, p. 37. In October 1987 he referred to ‘revolutionary perestroika’: M. S. Gorbachev, ‘Partiia revoliutsiia – partiia perestroiki’, Gorbachev, Izbrannye, vol. V, p. 354. M. S. Gorbachev, ‘O perestroike i kadrovoi politike partii’, Pravda 28 January 1987. Major early steps here were the widening of glasnost following the Chernobyl accident of April 1986, the democratisation measures he advocated at the January 1987 plenum, and the programme of ‘radical’ economic reform of 1987. M. S. Gorbachev, ‘Oktiabr’ i perestroika – revoliutsiia prodolzhaetsia’, Gorbachev, Izbrannye, vol. V, pp. 386–436.

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

15

In 1988 the shift from traditional Soviet symbols accelerated. In his speech on the seventieth anniversary of the revolution, Gorbachev had reaffirmed the central role of Vladimir Lenin, in the sense that perestroika was seen as ‘the full theoretical and practical re-establishment of Lenin’s conception of socialism’. Gorbachev sought to disentangle Leninism from the Stalinist distortions that he argued had subverted the true Leninist intent and prevented this from being realised.11 Gorbachev sought to present perestroika as both restoring the Leninist essence to socialism and personifying Leninism in practice. He was trying to frame perestroika in the established Soviet symbols. However, at the same time as he was trying to invest traditional Soviet symbols with new meaning, he was also moving away from some of those traditional symbols. The clearest linguistic indication of this was Gorbachev’s enunciation of ‘universal human values’ rather than class interests as the appropriate standard for political work.12 This denied the basic class approach which had been at the heart of official political analysis since the birth of the regime, and it called into question the teleology underpinning regime legitimation; the exceptional nature of communism did not seem to fit with the universality of the values to which Gorbachev was now appealing. Furthermore, this seemed to deny the long-held claim that Soviet society was superior morally and politically to those in the West. In 1988, the metanarrative underwent further major transformation. Significant changes to the traditional institutional architecture were introduced at the XIX Conference in mid 1988 and implemented over the following months, which transformed the established Soviet model. The party’s administrative role was weakened (including the gutting of the party’s central administrative apparatus in the Secretariat), semi-free competitive elections were introduced, a more vigorous legislature was instituted, and the principle of a law-governed state was enunciated. Even the Conference itself constituted a radical departure from the recent past, with widespread criticism in the speeches and a spontaneity that had been missing for sixty years. Associated with this was the

11

12

In particular, see his ‘Demokratizatsiia – sut’ perestroiki, sut’ sotsializma’, ‘Revoliutsionnaia perestroika – ideologiiu obnovleniia’, and ‘Cherez demokratizatsiiu – k novomu obliku sotsializma’, Gorbachev, Izbrannye, vol. VI, 6, pp. 18–32, 58–92, 204–215. These were addresses to, respectively, a meeting with heads of mass media, ideological institutions and artistic unions (8 January 1988), the February CC plenum (18 February 1988), and another meeting of heads of mass media, ideological institutions and artistic unions (7 May 1988). He had actually begun to enunciate this as early as February 1987. See his speech ‘Za bez’iadernyi mir, za gumanizm mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii’, Gorbachev, Izbrannye, vol. IV, pp. 376–392.

16

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

conception of socialism which Gorbachev outlined at the time.13 This description was characterised by a relative absence of references to Marxism-Leninism and Leninism and to traditional ideological categories and formulations. These were replaced by references to humanism and to the heritage of humanity as a whole. The class basis of policy was therefore pushed to the side, and with it the conception of the regime as a vehicle for working-class interests. Gorbachev also began to refer to ‘communism’ on fewer and fewer occasions; according to Archie Brown, Gorbachev ceased to refer to communism in a positive fashion after the XIX Conference.14 But not only was the official conception of Soviet socialism changing, the practical reality was also undergoing fundamental transformation. In the three years following the XIX Conference, the traditional model of Soviet socialism was completely reworked. The political monopoly and dominance of the Communist Party were overthrown by the emergence of independent political movements, parties and popular fronts, something recognised symbolically by the removal of the party’s ‘leading and guiding’ role from the Constitution in March 1990, with at the same time the notion of ‘socialist pluralism’, itself a revolutionary concept when introduced by Gorbachev in July 1987,15 being replaced by that of ‘pluralism’.16 The myth of the happy multinational federal system was destroyed by the flourishing of ethnic popular front movements and their drive to break up the federation with the aim of achieving national independence. The unity and discipline of the party were eroded as the level of conflict within its ranks increased. The traditional centralised economic model was partly dismantled as economic reform took hold, and Gorbachev increasingly began to talk about the ‘socialist market’ and later simply the ‘market’, while the rhetoric of material sufficiency was shown to be hollow by the rising levels of economic difficulty being experienced. Internationally, the image of the Soviet superpower was tarnished as increasing attempts at accommodation with the West were interpreted as signs of weakness. In all areas, the traditional Soviet model 13

14

15 16

M. S. Gorbachev, ‘O khode realizatsii reshenii XXVII s’ezda KPSS i zadachakh po uglubleniiu perestroiki’, XIX Vsesoiuznaia konferentsiia Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo soiuza. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), vol. I, pp. 18–92. Archie Brown, ‘The Rise of Non-Leninist Thinking About the Political System’, Archie Brown (ed.), The Demise of Marxism-Leninism in Russia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 38. M. S. Gorbachev, ‘Prakticheskimi delami uglubliat’ perestroika’, Gorbachev, Izbrannye, vol. V, p. 219. This appeared in Pravda 15 July 1987. For one discussion, see Kristian Petrov, ‘Construction, Reconstruction, Deconstruction: The Fall of the Soviet Union from the Point of View of Conceptual History’, Studies in East European Thought 60, 3, 2008, p. 196.

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

17

of socialism, including the metanarrative that gave it meaning, appeared to be under significant challenge. And it was clearly evident to all that central in this were the actions of the Gorbachev leadership. In early 1989 Gorbachev had sought to combat the growing opposition to his policies symbolically by continuing to seek to associate them with Lenin and the socialist past. He defended what was called ‘the socialist choice’ and argued that perestroika was tapping socialism’s potential as society was renewed, and affirmed the NEP as a ‘road to socialism’ that had been cut short by the mistaken application of command-administrative methods to the economy.17 Perestroika was presented as the direct continuation of the Marxist and Leninist essence of the Soviet system that had been distorted by the command-administrative methods of the 1930s.18 Rather than being a betrayal of Marxism-Leninism as some were arguing, perestroika was presented as the very essence of Marxism-Leninism. However, this sort of defence was hollow because, although Gorbachev sought to clothe his policies in the traditional symbolism of the regime, his use of those symbols effectively involved a reinterpretation of them in non-traditonal ways; for example, in the last years of Soviet power, when Gorbachev referred to Lenin it was usually to Lenin the man and the actions he took rather than to his writings or ideological legacy.19 Perhaps the best indication of this is to be found in the development of a new programmatic document for the party in the eighteen months before the August 1991 putsch. In his report to the XXVIII Congress of the party in July 1990, Gorbachev described it as being a party ‘of the socialist option and communist perspective’,20 a description included in the document adopted by the congress entitled ‘Towards a Humane, Democratic Socialism’.21 Because of the opposition to it, this was not formally a programme, but a ‘policy statement’ to remain in force until a new programme 17

18 19

20

21

See M. S. Gorbachev, Narashchivat’ intellektual’nyi potentsial perestroiki (Moscow: Novosti, 1989), and his ‘Ob agrarnoi politike KPSS v sovremennykh usloviiakh’, Materialy plenuma Tsentral’nogo komiteta KPSS (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989). NEP, the New Economic policy, was a brief period in the 1920s when some capitalism was allowed. M. S. Gorbachev, ‘Sotsialisticheskaia ideia i revoliutsionnaia perestroika’, Pravda 26 November 1989. For one discussion, see John Gooding, ‘Lenin in Soviet Politics, 1985–1991’, Soviet Studies 44, 3, 1992, pp. 403–422. Gorbachev’s emphasis on NEP as a precedent for perestroika is a partial exception to this. M. S. Gorbachev, ‘Politicheskii otchet tsentral’nogo komiteta KPSS: XXVIII s’ezda KPSS i zadachi partii’, XXVIII s’ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo soiuza. 2–13 iulia 1990g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Politizdat, 1991), vol. I, pp. 55–101; originally published in Pravda 3 July 1990. See the congress resolution, ‘K gumannomu, demokraticheskomu sotsializmu’, Pravda 13 July 1990. This was a revised version of a document presented to a CC plenum as a ‘CC Platform’ in February 1990. For the earlier version, see Pravda 13 February 1990.

18

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

could be produced. While a compromise document, this did significantly downgrade Marxism-Leninism as a source of ideological guidance, and either rejected or qualified many other features of the traditional Soviet way of functioning. It envisaged private property and a market economy, the rule of law rather than the dictatorship of class, and the party losing its role of politico-administrative dominance and being replaced by political pluralism. Furthermore, its description of the aim, rather than ‘communism’, was ‘democratic socialism’, a term which, along with the description of the society it offered, seemed very like the social democracy that had traditionally been the object of sharp Soviet criticism. Universal human values, not Marxism, were seen to be at the heart of this vision. A new draft programme was adopted as a basis for yet further discussion at a Central Committee (CC) plenum in July 1991.22 Entitled ‘Socialism, Democracy, Progress’, this document relegated Marxism to being merely one of the ‘concepts from domestic and world humanistic thinking’ from which the party’s ideological base was drawn. Despite the criticism of this sort of argument, it was formally adopted in a document which reads much more like a social democratic manifesto than it does either a socialist or traditional Soviet one. The picture of society that it presented, with its focus on a mixed economy, civil society, the rule of law, and real democratic choice, was in sharp contrast with that of the traditional Soviet image. This clearly reflects the fact that, by the time the Soviet system collapsed, the party was no longer offering a clear and focused ideological definition of what it stood for. Its message had become fuzzy, its values unclear, and its reflection of the earlier Soviet metanarrative pale in the extreme. But this was not the only potential source of ideological guidance around at this time. There was a strong trend of opinion in the party which opposed this development on the basis of traditional Soviet principles. As the programme introduced by Gorbachev became more radical, opposition to it within the Soviet structures of power mounted and became more open. The January 1987 plenum, the Andreeva letter of March 1988, the XIX Conference in June–July 1988, the July 1989 plenum, and the XXVIII Congress were all public high points of criticism and conflict where Gorbachev’s opponents did not hold back in expressing their views. The creation of the Russian Communist Party in June 1990 established an institutional structure from which conservative opposition to Gorbachev’s measures could be mounted.23 Such views 22 23

Pravda 27 July 1991. For the text of the document, see Pravda 8 August 1991. For the views of delegates to the congress that established the party, see the stenographic record published in Sovetskaia Rossiia 20–26 June 1990, and the survey of delegates’ views in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 7, 1990, pp. 7–39.

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

19

were also projected through a range of newspapers, magazines and broadsheets. Although the views of the conservative opponents of Gorbachev’s measures did change over time and there were differences between various groups, the essential point that they shared was about the basic value of Soviet socialism and how perestroika was betraying or destroying it.24 These opponents looked to the creative potential within Soviet socialism rather than universal values, to Marxism-Leninism, class analysis and Soviet practice rather than the vague ‘liberal’-style positions that Gorbachev was accused of adopting. For them, perestroika amounted to rejection of the Soviet heritage and betrayal of the Soviet experience, while the difficulties of the time were laid directly at the door of Gorbachev and his associates. For some, Stalin was an unambiguously positive figure; for all, the Soviet experience and the Soviet model were positive symbols that they preferred to the negative, nihilistic and destructive impulses of perestroika. Thus, by mid 1991, alternative visions were emanating from the party. That championed by Gorbachev involved a move away from the traditional Soviet model, with all of the main features of that model recast in ways very different from what they had been but often expressed in the same terms. But the problem was that, while this seemed to constitute the destruction of the old, it was not clear what was to replace it. The social democratic position adopted just prior to the putsch was very different from the Soviet model it was to replace, but what it would mean in practice and how it would work out on the ground for people was not clear. Furthermore, in the eyes of many people, even those who might have been looking to replace the existing system, Gorbachev could not be trusted. Although he was espousing a seemingly different set of arrangements, he remained wedded to the Communist Party, and therefore in their eyes, the old system. So not only was the vision he was offering unclear, but also his determination to see through change remained in the view of many problematic. The other vision coming from the party remained rooted in various conceptions of the traditional Soviet model, seeming to involve only minor tinkering with the structure and processes that had been in operation before 1985. This involved a restoration of much of the past, albeit with recognition that some things had to change because of evolving realities, but it was essentially the reimposition of a form of the traditional model that was being espoused. Rather than the rejection of Soviet socialism, it was its confirmation that was being sought. But these two visions, one seeking to transcend the 24

For a clear public statement, see the letter by Nina Andreeva criticising Gorbachev’s reforms, ‘Ne mogu postupat’sia printsipami’, Sovetskaia Rossiia 13 March 1988.

20

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

Soviet past and the other remaining solidly rooted within it, were not the only visions being presented at this time. A feature of development as the course of perestroika became radicalised was the proliferation of independent groups in society. The range of views being expressed by these groups spanned the political spectrum,25 and many of them offered their own vision of the preferred future of Soviet society. While it would be simplistic to see such views purely in terms of ‘democrats’ versus ‘statists’,26 this characterisation does capture a major pole of the debate: those who emphasised the way the Soviet system had denied democratic rights and freedoms and saw the powerful state as responsible for this, against those for whom the primary need was a strengthening of state power. While most of these groups had little immediate relevance to the ongoing course of Soviet politics or much resonance among the populace, the views they expressed did provide an intellectual context within which the developing views of major political actors could both interact and change. Another significant strand of the debate was constituted by those emergent national organisations which increasingly from 1988 sought to advance arguments about republican sovereignty and even independence from the Soviet centre. Such views, which were initially spearheaded in their radicalism by the national front movements of the Baltic republics, could draw from both democratic and statist strands. From the former they took the argument that democracy could be achieved only by throwing off the control exercised by the Soviet centre and devolving power to the republican community. From the latter, many gained sustenance from the way in which the argument for strong state power was allied to nationalist themes, in particular the evocation of a mythical past for the national community which was characterised by national greatness and a powerful state. But what was most important about these views was that they envisaged a very different sort of community to that which remained at the heart of Gorbachev’s conception. The focus of their thinking was the republican political community, an entity which in many republics, increasingly as time wore on, came to be seen as something both separate and independent from the Soviet Union. Rather than a renewed Union, which was the image Gorbachev was projecting, these images ultimately involved the destruction of that 25

26

For a survey of the array of different perspectives that came to populate public discourse, see Thomas Sherlock, Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and PostSoviet Russia. Destroying the Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). These are the terms used in John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Princeton University Press, 1993), chs. 3 and 4.

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

21

Union and the creation of new, independent national states. Crucial in this, and central to the future course of Russian development, was Boris Yeltsin. Initially Yeltsin’s message was based on social justice and the way in which the needs of the people were being callously disregarded by the bureaucratic stratum that had come to dominate the Soviet system. The beginnings of this position were evident in his speech to the XXVII Congress of the party in February–March 1986,27 where he criticised the way the CC apparatus was functioning and called for the abolition of the special privileges enjoyed by the party elite. Yeltsin repeated these criticisms at the October 1987 CC plenum,28 an action which brought to a head opposition to him within the leadership and led to his sacking from leading party posts, and at the XIX Conference of the party in mid 1988.29 When he made his comeback to political life in the March 1989 election to the new Congress of People’s Deputies, his electoral platform focused upon democracy, including seeing the people as the source of all authority under socialism rather than the elite bureaucratic stratum as was currently the case, and upon social justice issues and the way in which these were being ignored by the party. As yet, he was not casting his message in national (Russian) terms, although his platform did argue that ‘all peoples of the USSR must have de facto economic, political and cultural independence’.30 He broadened his message when he sought to use a position within the Russian republic as a political base in 1990. During Yeltsin’s campaign for election to the Russian Supreme Soviet in early 1990, he began to sketch a vision in which the relevant political community was Russia rather than the Union.31 He talked about Russia having its own democratic political institutions (presidency, full-time parliament, constitutional court, state bank, academy of sciences, territorial militia, and multiple political parties), and significant decentralisation of the Soviet state. Russia, and the other republics, should have the ‘maximum possible self-rule’, with the republics deciding which powers 27 28

29 30 31

XXVII s’ezd, vol. I, pp. 140–145. ‘Plenum TsK KPSS – Oktiabr’ 1987 goda. Stenograficheskii otchet’, Izvestiia TsK KPSS 2, 1989, pp. 239–241. Gorbachev’s and Yeltsin’s speeches are reprinted in M. K. Gorshkov and V. V. Zhuravlev (eds.), Gorbachev–Yeltsin. 1500 dnei politicheskogo protivostoianiia (Moscow: Terra, 1992). XIX Vsesoiuznaia, vol. II, pp. 55–62. He also called for significant democratisation in the party and society. Cited in Dunlop, Rise of Russia, p. 44. The platform was published as ‘Perestroika prineset peremeny’, Moskovskaia pravda 21 March 1989. See the discussion in Timothy J. Colton, Yeltsin. A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. 179. The quotation is from B. N. Yeltsin, ‘Nuzhen shag vpered i shag vlevo’, Gorshkov and Zhuravlev (eds.), Gorbachev–Yeltsin, p. 173.

22

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

to surrender to the centre rather than the other way around. Yeltsin did not make clear what the exact nature of the relationship between the centre and the republics should be, but his references to the presidency presaged the importance this institution would later have in his image of the Russian republic. Following his election as Chairman of the Russian (RSFSR) Supreme Soviet in May 1990, Yeltsin was more explicit. He projected an image of a democratic Russia having ‘real sovereignty . . . its own independent domestic and foreign policy’. Rejecting the ‘diktat of the centre’, he said that ‘Russia will be independently adopting its decisions on everything. Russia’s laws must be above Union ones’, and he envisaged Russia as entering into treaties with both the Union government and with those republics that were content to do so.32 Russia would be a ‘sovereign, democratic, law-based state’ with all power belonging to the people. Relations with other republics and with the Union would be regulated by agreements, with decisions about the powers to be exercised by the centre lying with the republics, which would have their own independent domestic and foreign policies. Within the Russian Federation, a federal treaty would guarantee the subjects of the federation sovereignty (including economic autonomy); there would be a single Russian citizenship, political pluralism and a multi-party system operating through parliamentary democracy. Citizens would be guaranteed civil, political and property rights, which in his view were based on universal principles of human rights. Within the Union, Russia would enjoy full economic sovereignty and a market-based economy.33 While Yeltsin sought the economic, cultural and spiritual revival of Russia, which could be realised through Russian statehood, he continued to affirm the importance of a strong union based on horizontal ties between the republics.34 For the following twelve months, Yeltsin was engaged in a rhetorical (and power) struggle with Gorbachev, and what underpinned this was a continuing perception of a strong Russia within a renewed union. It was through the development of a democratic Russian statehood that Yeltsin believed his long-term commitment to social justice could be realised. This sort of vision, emphasising democracy and justice, was consistent 32 33

34

News conference, 30 May 1990, Moscow Television News Service 30 May 1990, FBISSOV-90-106, 1 June 1990, pp. 76–78. See his speech to the I Congress of People’s Deputies of the RSFSR, 21 May 1990, and his questioning for the post of chairman of the Supreme Soviet, 25 May 1990, respectively Izvestiia 25 May 1990 and Sovetskaia Rossiia 27 May 1990. This vision was given legal form with the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies’ adoption on 12 June 1990 of a declaration on state sovereignty. See his interview in Moscow News 23, 17–24 June 1990.

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

23

with the fact that he always saw Russia in formal juridical rather than ethnic terms. Throughout, Yeltsin’s public conception of Russia was based on a civic Russian nationalism rather than an ethnic nationalism.35 He tended to use ‘Rossiiskii’ rather than ‘Russkii’ and always emphasised that when he talked about the Russians he was generally referring to all who lived in the boundaries of Russia, although his references to Russian-speaking people abroad as also being part of the community did muddy this view of a civic conception somewhat.36 This was in stark contrast to some of those who opposed him on the political stage and sought to mobilise a narrowly defined ethnic Russianism as a political weapon; Vladimir Zhirinovskii is the most prominent example of this, but there were also many others. Yeltsin’s civic, constitutional conception of Russia was also reflected in his support for Russia as a federation, even if his instrumental call for republics to ‘take as much sovereignty as you can swallow’37 and the real threat it posed to the viability of the federation may have run counter to this aim. The Russian civic political order that Yeltsin was promoting in the months before the August 1991 coup was essentially part of a broader view of a renewed confederation of sovereign republics, but he never outlined how this was to work. In his inauguration address in July 199138 Yeltsin emphasised the democratic legitimacy that flowed from popular election of the president and declared that Russia would become ‘a prosperous, democratic, peace-loving, law-based sovereign state’ with a market economy and would take its place among the ‘normal’, ‘civilised’ liberal democracies. By emphasising the importance of the presidency as an element of Russian statehood and in the achievement of greater Russian independence from the centre, Yeltsin was presenting himself as central to Russian state-building.39 This image was strengthened by the vision of Yeltsin atop the tank at the beginning of the coup attempt in August 1991; he was the personification of resistance, and of Russia, defying the coup plotters seemingly with the strength of his will. At this time he reaffirmed the unity of the Union and rejected those whose illegal and immoral acts would drag it back to the era of the cold war.40 35 36 37 38 39 40

For one discussion of this, see Dunlop, Rise of Russia, pp. 55–56. See George W. Breslauer and Catherine Dale, ‘Boris Yel’tsin and the Invention of a Russian Nation-State’, Post-Soviet Affairs 13, 4, 1997, pp. 318–320. Colton, Yeltsin, pp. 186–187. This was a tactic designed to weaken the Soviet centre and thereby his rival Gorbachev. This is discussed in Dunlop, Rise of Russia, p. 58. See the discussion in Breslauer and Dale, ‘Boris Yel’tsin’, pp. 313–314. This is discussed in Colton, Yeltsin, p. 200.

24

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

Yeltsin used the coup attempt to advance his notion of a sovereign Russia within a renewed Union, but never making the precise relationship clear. In a speech to the Russian people after the collapse of the coup,41 Yeltsin described this as a victory of democracy over reaction. He declared that Russia and its position on democracy and reforms had been the central target of adventurists who had tried to seize power and cast the country back into the abyss of violence and lawlessness. He said that the responsibility of the Communist Party was clear, that Russia had been defended by the people, and that Russia had saved democracy, the union and peace. He was more expansive in his address to the RSFSR parliament on 28 October 1991.42 He described the collapse of the coup as the collapse of ‘the entire totalitarian system founded on the diktat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU] and the dominion of the conservative centre’, and that the time had now come to shift to a ‘large-scale reformist breakthrough’. Although he acknowledged that there would be difficulties, he anticipated that real results would be seen by autumn 1992. Reforms in Russia, he declared, were ‘the path of democracy and not of empire’, and there would no longer be a centre above the republics exercising diktat; the republics were sovereign states, and inter-republican bodies would only be consultative and co-ordinating. He hoped the union would be maintained, but he did not elaborate on the form this would take. Within Russia itself, the economy would be based on the market and private property, with reforms being carried out by ‘a government of popular trust, which people will believe in’. He affirmed a multi-party system and a strong presidency, federalism as a process of dialogue between all political actors, and the rule of law. And in a point he made on numerous occasions in the post-coup period, he declared that Russia was to be a ‘civilised’ country and would join the international community in this form;43 ‘universally recognised norms concerning human rights’ were to apply.44 Yeltsin’s publicly expressed view remained consistent up until early December 1991: a sovereign Russia should be able to grow and prosper within a renewed confederal Union. It is not clear how long during this period he was really committed to the maintenance of the Union, but this remained his public position. Even when the USSR was dissolved 41 42 43

44

TASS report, FBIS-SOV-91-163, 22 August 1991, pp. 68–70. Sovetskaia Rossiia 29 October 1991. In September 1991 he even talked about Russia proceeding along the civilised path already taken by countries such as France, Britain, the USA, Japan, Germany and Spain: Colton, Yeltsin, p. 218. In this particular case (the Belovezh Accords), the reference was to within the Common wealth of Independent States (CIS): Rossiiskaia gazeta 10 December 1991.

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

25

with signature of the Belovezh Accords on 8 December, Yeltsin supported the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, an entity that recognised the ‘historical association of our peoples’. However, his actions soon showed that this was very much a second-order priority compared with his commitment to the Russian state. Thus right up until the end of the USSR, the image Yeltsin projected was one of continued Union, albeit one in which Russia was more powerful than the Union centre. This was the contrast that existed with the final image that Gorbachev sought to project. From late 1990 through to the end of 1991, Gorbachev had consistently emphasised the importance of retaining the USSR and, while over time he recognised that the nature of this was to be fundamentally changed, the Union would nevertheless remain. The extent of the changes he was willing to accept can be seen in his support for the name Union of Sovereign States in the draft union treaty whose signature was aborted by the coup.45 Indeed, Gorbachev came to agree with Yeltsin on many points. He saw the coup as an attack on democracy and an attempt to plunge the country back into totalitarianism, which was rejected by the people. The defeat of the coup was made possible by the changes that had been introduced into the country through perestroika.46 On the eve of the Belovezh Accords, Gorbachev reaffirmed47 the value of preserving the Union, appealing to the notion of a multiethnic community united over centuries on the territory occupied by the USSR. He said that the new Union, which he still believed would come into existence, would not be ‘the old centre in a new vest’ but a ‘completely new state and inter-state structure, as defined in the draft Union Treaty’. This would combine two basic ideas: ‘self-determination, independence, and state and national sovereignty’, and ‘union, co-operation, interaction and mutual assistance’. It would be ‘a renewed Union, the Union of Sovereign States, a confederate democratic state’. Gorbachev sought to retain Soviet statehood as the vehicle within which the multinational Soviet political community would continue to find a home. However, this image of a continued Union in a new form was not persuasive to some republican political elites, and the Soviet Union formally ceased to exist at the end of 1991. The image of the union succumbed to that of sovereign republics, including the Russian. 45

46 47

For some details on this wording, and its predecessor Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics, see Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 288, 303. See his address to the Supreme Soviet, 26 August 1991, FBIS-SOV-91-166, 27 August 1991, pp. 2–7. See his appeal to the parliamentarians, Izvestiia 3 December 1991.

26

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

Ultimately Gorbachev’s attempt to rework the Soviet metanarrative failed. By the beginning of the 1990s that metanarrative had become even more incoherent than it had been in 1985 as Gorbachev’s attempt to rework the meaning of many of its basic symbols (democracy, glasnost, the Union itself) while abandoning others (leading and guiding role of the party, command economy, communism as teleology, and ultimately Lenin) left the metanarrative as a confusing and, in the eyes of many, empty set of symbols. The issue was: what could replace it? The leading candidate in Russia was the set of symbols being developed by Yeltsin focused around Russian independence, freedom and democracy, and economic prosperity. It is not clear how persuasive his message was among the general populace; after all in the March 1991 national referendum, a very large majority voted in support of the retention of a ‘renewed federation of equal sovereign republics’. But it persuaded leading elites within Russia, and this was crucial to the break-up of the Union. Newly independent Russia was now faced with the task of coming to grips with a whole range of issues which needed to be resolved. These included questions of the type of political and economic systems the country should adopt, the location of its borders, the attitude to Russians now outside those borders, the relationship with other former republics of the USSR, and the attitude to communists and the former Soviet regime. These questions amounted to a query about the nature of the Russian political community. During Soviet times, this question would have been answered by looking at the metanarrative in all its parts. With the post-Soviet regime lacking both the sort of totalist aspirations of its predecessor and the control to be able to prevent alternative views from being aired, such an all-encompassing metanarrative has never been likely to evolve. Nevertheless, the intellectual gap created by the collapse of the metanarrative, added to the need of the new regime to legitimate itself, meant that some form of discourse, less all-embracing and totalist than the Soviet metanarrative had been, was needed. The new state was confronted with the issue of how it came to be, with the need to provide an intellectual rationale for its birth and the developing form it was taking. In the strictly political realm this could be seen in terms of political legitimation, but in practice the issue was much larger. It was not just that a new political system needed legitimising; in the wake of the failure of the Soviet experience to build a new civilisation, a new rationale was needed for the construction of the post-Soviet Russian community. A new form of symbolic discourse to replace that of the USSR was needed. While it could not be all-encompassing like that of the USSR, a discourse embodying a vision of Russian society and its

Dissolution of the Soviet metanarrative

27

future was needed which could gain hegemony within the public sphere. This sort of narrative needed to involve not just a vision of the future, but also an explanation of how the society had reached its current stage and why that future was the chosen one. This sort of situation was not unique to post-Soviet Russia. The emergence of a new political system is often accompanied by a clearly articulated vision of what that system is meant to represent, of the values that underpin it, and in such cases it is reflected in the dominance of the public sphere by a discourse embodying those values. While not all historical instances are as clear in this regard as the United States, where at the time of independence there was a clearly elaborated vision of the values the new society was to use as a guide and an open discussion of the principles of rule that were to emanate from them, most instances of a new regime are animated by a vision of some sort; it may be a classbased vision as in the Soviet case, a race-based vision as in Nazi Germany, a religious-inspired outlook as in Iran in 1979, or a focus on so-called ‘traditional values’ as in many of the dictatorships of inter-war central Europe, but all regimes at their outset have some sort of sense of what it is they hope to achieve which becomes embodied in a narrative discourse which seeks to dominate the public sphere. In the construction of such a narrative, the political elite plays the central role.

3

The leader’s vision

If a new post-Soviet narrative was to emerge out of the wreckage of the Soviet metanarrative in the years following the fall of the USSR, a leading part in this would have to have been played by prominent political figures. The question of legitimacy was strongest for them and, as the national leaders, they had the responsibility to provide guidance for the future. Through their public addresses, successive presidents were well placed to articulate a new vision for society to lead it into the future. Particularly important here was the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. However, he was unable to create a vision that would unite all forces in Russian society. Certainly he was not alone in this; as Michael Urban has argued, all political actors had difficulty in articulating a clear vision around which consensus could be built,1 so that no consistent discourse could become established. But it was Yeltsin’s failure which was most important because as head of state he was the individual upon whom chief responsibility to articulate such a vision rested and, while this would not have been an easy task, it was one which he barely approached. With Russia independent and almost immediately plunged further into economic crisis by the freeing of prices on 2 January 1992, Yeltsin’s public speeches were taken up over the following two years with defence of the reforms he was championing and prosecution of the dispute with the legislature rather than the creation of a symbolic vision of the Russian state or community. It was the short-term dynamic between these two things, the reforms and the difficulties with the legislature, that structured his remarks concerning the sort of Russia he wished to see. The central theme was that it was only through the reform measures, seen principally in terms of the creation of a market economy and of a democratic law-based state, that Russia could escape its past. In January 1992 he declared that, despite the opposition of the 1

Michael Urban, ‘Remythologising the Russian State’, Europe-Asia Studies 50, 6, 1998, pp. 969–992.

28

The leader’s vision

29

former nomenklatura and mafia structures, Russia had now embarked on ‘the path the civilised world has taken’.2 There was now a ‘real opportunity . . . to finally put an end to despotism and to dismantle the totalitarian system’.3 By casting democracy as an important victory for human civilisation and the defeat of the putsch by ‘the people of Russia’ as a defence of democracy, Yeltsin was projecting an image of Russia as part of the ‘civilised world’. The ‘unconditional priority [was to guarantee] the sum total of human rights and liberties, including political and civil rights and suitable social, economic and ecological conditions for human life’. This was said to be a universal norm, and one by which Russia would abide. On the eve of the VI Congress of People’s Deputies in April 1992, Yeltsin expressed4 the view that the mandate he had received as president was ‘to push forward along the path of reform to a normal life’, and declared the priorities to be: ‘formation and development of civil society; a powerful and united democratic federal state; a system of state construction optimal in the historic conditions which guarantees freedom and security of the person; a well-thought-out effective social policy; and the rebirth of traditional values and the development of the cultures of all peoples of Russia’. Central to escaping the current difficult situation was said to be the strengthening of democracy. At the Congress,5 Yeltsin said the main threat of a return to the past was the sort of pseudo-reforms that characterised the previous seven years and ultimately destroyed the country. Now, he said, ‘We are parting from the vestiges of ideologised thinking and messianic ideas, to which the true interests of the people and the state were sacrificed.’ Russia was said to be ‘a great power by right of history, by its place in the world and by its material and spiritual potential’. Opponents of this path were accused of ‘uncivilised forms of discourse’ and of a ‘bloody attempt by the extremist communist minority to push Russian society from the peaceful path of reform, to impose on the country with methods of political violence’.6 It was the CPSU that had brought Russia to the edge of national catastrophe, and there would be no further compromise with the ‘“shadow authorities” in the person of the party–economic-nomenklatura’.7 2 3 4 5 6 7

Speech to the IV session of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, Rossiiskaia gazeta 17 January 1992. Speech to UN Security Council, 31 January 1992, Rossiiskaia gazeta 3 February 1992. Izvestiia 6 April 1992. See his two speeches of 7 and 21 April, Rossiiskaia gazeta 8 April 1992, 23 April 1992. Izvestiia 5 May 1992. Comments in the Altai, 27 May 1992, Izvestiia 28 May 1992.

30

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

Building on views he had enunciated in 1991, Yeltsin was clearly presenting a picture of a new Russia characterised by a market economy and by democracy that would take its rightful place among the civilised nations of the world, with himself as its champion. He argued in June 19928 that communism had been banished forever in Russia, the totalitarian system thrown off, to be replaced by freedom, democracy, a market economy and civil society. Again invoking international standards, he said there was a need to ‘make our legal practices as close as possible to world practices’. But this did not mean becoming a clone of Western states: ‘In entering the world community, we want to preserve our individuality, our special character traits and our history, to develop our culture and to strengthen the people’s spiritual principles.’ Yeltsin was clearly signaling a total rejection of communism and its metanarrative in favour of the adoption of what he saw as civilised universal values modified by Russia’s particular characteristics. This focus upon the development of culture and the people’s spiritual principles was consistent with the civic conception of Russian nationalism that Yeltsin had espoused during 1991. He eschewed ethnic nationalism, conceiving the community that inhabited Russia in basically legal and cultural terms; all of those who inhabited the territory of Russia and who shared its common background were part of the community regardless of their ethnic identity. The future was thus to be built for the multinational Russian community on the basis of civic rather than ethnic principles. Yeltsin’s view was of a de-ethnicised civil political order.9 On the first anniversary of the August putsch, Yeltsin addressed the Russian people.10 He declared that in August 1991 the Russian people had come to the White House to defend ‘their right to freedom and democracy’. The past year was the first without ‘the boundless dictatorship of the CPSU’, the ‘suffocating, poisonous atmosphere of the absence of freedom in society’. Now, he declared, although ‘we are stumbling and falling’, we are taking ‘the very first steps toward a normal human life’. It was impossible to return to the old ways; Russia’s experience of ‘revolutions, wars with enormous human losses and vast destruction,

8 9

10

Address to the US Congress, 17 June 1992, Rossiiskaia gazeta 19 June 1992. See the discussion in George W. Breslauer and Catherine Dale, ‘Boris Yel’tsin and the Invention of a Russian Nation-State’, Post-Soviet Affairs 13, 4, 1997, p. 316. This was consistent with the historical position. Unlike the empires of the West in which the imperial power developed a sense of its own identity separate from its imperial domains, which were geographically separated from it by the sea, Russia and the areas into which it expanded were geographically contiguous. Russian identity was therefore intrinsically bound up with its colonies in a multinational non-ethnic fashion. Izvestiia 20 August 1992.

The leader’s vision

31

savage repressions, and, finally, violence against people’s faith itself . . . formed a powerful immunity to any dictatorships and to a policy based on violence, tyranny and lies. A year ago, the Russian people could no longer be deceived or driven into the GULAG.’ Reinforcing this image, he declared to the Supreme Soviet in October11 that ‘Russia has made a start on a new life for itself’, and that there was no alternative to long-term relationships of partnership, even alliance, with the developed democracies of West and East. However, this ‘should not deprive our policy of its individual character, its Russian character.’ The task was to shift Russia on to a market footing, something which would facilitate achievement of the goal of ‘a strong Russian state. Strong not in the number of warheads but in advanced technologies, a developed and variegated economy, and a fitting living standard for the people.’ Such a state would protect them from tyranny and ideological fetters. Russian statehood would be built through the creation of institutions which would embody the principles and practices of democracy. It was this image that underlay Yeltsin’s continued focus upon political institutions and their construction, and why he would argue in 1993 that threats to the Constitution were threats to Russian statehood.12 Under continuing pressure from the parliamentary opposition, Yeltsin returned to the theme of a balance between the universal and the national in December 1992 when he said13 that reform had two main priorities: ‘the universal values of civilisation, and maximum consideration for Russia’s specific conditions’. He said that Russia relied on its own internal material and intellectual resources while remaining open to world experience and dynamically developing co-operation and partnership with the world community. Symbolically consistent with this, he now also spoke of a mixed economy with private and state sectors. Yeltsin also emphasised the danger the reform course was facing.14 He accused his opponents of trying to conduct a ‘creeping coup’ and cast them as reminiscent of when the country was ruled by the Politburo of the CC CPSU. He said that there were two positions: those who wished to continue reforms and restore the health of the gravely ill economy and revive Russia, and those whose position was one of cheap populism and 11 12

13 14

Speech to V Session of Supreme Soviet, Rossiiskaia gazeta 7 October 1992. For example, in April 1993 he argued that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ‘Russia was confidently modernising herself; she started off towards the market and democracy, and her culture was forcefully asserting common human values, while naturally retaining national specifics’: Rossiiskie vesti 21 April 1993, cited in Breslauer and Dale, ‘Boris Yel’tsin’, p. 327. Speech to VII Congress of People’s Deputies, Rossiiskaia gazeta 21 December 1992. Address to the people, Izvestiia 10 December 1992.

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Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

open demagoguery, disorganisation of complicated transformations, and ‘the restoration of the totalitarian Soviet communist system, which has been cursed by its own people and rejected by the entire world community’. This was a path leading nowhere, and he called on the people not to allow Russia ‘to leave the civilised path on which it has just embarked’. Yeltsin continued to attribute the political crisis to the legacy of the past. It was said to be due to the cumbersome system of government inherited from the past that took the form of absolute power to the soviets,15 but it was also a result of the actions of representatives of that past system. In March 1993 he accused16 the VIII Congress of People’s Deputies of being a dress rehearsal for revenge by members of the former party nomenklatura. Their presentation of themselves as democrats was said to be a lie. They sought to deny the people the right to decide their own fate, and any check on their own power. He said that officials of the former CC CPSU had found cozy spots for themselves in the structures of the Supreme Soviet, and they were now calling the shots. Russia would not survive a second October Revolution; it would be a leap into the abyss. He declared that Russia would collapse if there was a return to coercive ways of managing the economy. He had been seeking a compromise that would enable the country to work ‘normally’, but all attempts had failed. The image Yeltsin was trying to project was reflected in the title of a report of a meeting between Yeltsin and journalists in April 1993: ‘A Totalitarian Regime or a Democracy? A Command Economy or a Market? A Decrepit Empire or a Strong State?’17 Yeltsin was drawing a stark binary divide between the new Russia and the old, between himself and his opponents. The problem for Yeltsin was that the current difficult economic conditions robbed the notions of democracy and market economy of any intrinsic attraction. The symbolic constructions Yeltsin was using were being defined by contemporary economic reality in ways greatly at variance with his intent; rather than symbols of the bright new future, they seemed to many to represent poverty, economic difficulty and general social dislocation. Yeltsin continued to seek to integrate the internationalist and nationalist aspects in his speech to a constitutional conference in June 1993.18 He argued that the adoption of a new constitution was the means of completing the founding of a genuine democracy in Russia, a process that had begun with the proclamation of a republic by the Provisional 15 16 17

Address to the people 18 February 1993, Rossiiskie vesti 20 February 1993. Address to the people, Rossiiskie vesti 23 March 1993. 18 Rossiiskie vesti 15 April 1993. Rossiiskie vesti 8 June 1993.

The leader’s vision

33

Government on 1 September 1917 but had been cut short by the October Revolution and the republic of soviets. The Russian republic had behind it the glorious traditions of free Novgorod and the unique transformations of Peter the Great and Alexander II. ‘It was Russia that brought into the world treasure-house of democracy the experience of the zemstvos19 and the experience of the most advanced judicial reform of its time.’ He argued that a democratic state system was not contradicted by Russia’s traditions or the distinctiveness of its peoples, but that, on the contrary, these could be preserved only with the help of such a system. Russia would, he declared, acquire ‘a civilised constitutional foundation’. Russia had never had authorities bound by law; rather, whatever emanated from the authorities was declared to be law. Soviet power could not be reformed and was incompatible with democracy, and the existing soviets were but a continuation of this system. They should be dispersed and a democratically elected assembly created. This would be part of a peaceful transition from the totalitarian legacy. ‘The main goal of the Constitution is to preserve the integrity of the Russian state and overcome the weakness of state power.’ In this speech Yeltsin therefore cast the Soviet period as both a historical aberration and illegitimate in contrast to the constitutional order he embodied. As the political crisis reached its zenith, Yeltsin attacked his opponents using images designed to discredit and denigrate them;20 he referred to them as criminals, hoodlums, gangsters and thugs. He declared that armed rebellion had been organised by communist revanchists, fascist ringleaders and some former deputies and representatives of the soviets. He referred to the ‘armed fascist–communist rebellion in Moscow’, and said that ‘Those who brandish red flags have once again stained Russia red with blood.’ Two days later, after the surrender of the parliament, he said21 that ‘Fascists and communists, the swastika and the hammer and sickle, came together in this dark deed.’ Their goal was ‘to establish a bloody communist-fascist dictatorship in Russia’. The danger of civil war had now been extinguished, but this showed that democracy needed protection through a ‘normal democratic Constitution’. Yeltsin evoked a historical parallel22 when he referred to the way in which the end of ‘dual power in Russia’ and the ‘October events’ (both terms resonant of 1917) had opened up new prospects for economic transformation and gave a powerful impetus to constitutional reform 19 20 21 22

A form of pre-revolutionary local government with limited representation. Appeal to the people, Rossiiskie vesti 5 October 1993. Address to the people, Rossiiskie vesti 7 October 1993. Rossiiskie vesti 3 November 1993.

34

Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

and thorough-going transformation of Russian statehood. The October events also showed the danger of political terrorism. There was a need to deepen market reforms. He argued23 that, rather than an iron hand, it was democratic state authority that would ensure progress towards ‘a normal dignified life for citizens and towards prosperity for a unified, integrated Russia’. He said Russia had paid a high price for its lack of a democratic Constitution, and that the level of guaranteed human rights and liberties and the mechanism for protecting them in the new Constitution would be in keeping with present-day international standards. The new Constitution24 would be the basis of genuine representative institutions. It would be a barrier to the restoration of the totalitarian power of the soviets and provide a legal foundation for the rule of law. It would limit the powers of the authorities, including the president. While civil society organisations remained weak, the Constitution was necessary to prevent the emergence of a ‘great leader’. Yeltsin argued25 that there was a need for dialogue between the authorities and the people, between society and the state, with a need for society to effectively monitor state actions. Although democracy was ‘still in its infancy’, ‘The book has been closed on the Soviet communist regime once and for all.’26 In the lead-up to the December 1993 parliamentary elections and constitutional referendum, Yeltsin thus presented the choice in terms of stark images: the totalitarian communist past with its history of repression and suffering compared with the bright democratic future where human rights and the sovereignty of the people would be supreme. Thus, during the first two years of the Russian republic’s life, Yeltsin had consistently argued for a type of society that was in sharp contrast with its communist forebear. Characterised by a market economy, democratic polity, human rights, popular control over the government, and a ‘normal’ life for its citizens, Russia was to become one of the ‘civilised’ nations of the world. However, there was a tension in this vision enunciated by Yeltsin, reflecting the presence of other views in the political sphere: a tension between universal values and the democratic states as a measuring stick on the one hand, and nativistic Russian traditions on the other. Furthermore, the problem for the dichotomy between the communist past and Yeltsin’s future was that it was not clear what the latter, in practice, would mean. Popular experience of the 23 24 25 26

Izvestiia 10 November 1993. Interview with correspondents, Izvestiia 16 November 1993. In a meeting with journalists, Nezavisimaia gazeta 23 December 1993. Segodnia 23 December 1993.

The leader’s vision

35

former, the communist past, gave it meaning for people, but if the contemporary situation was what was meant by the latter (economic hardship and political conflict), it is not clear that this was an attractive proposition. This was a perfect opportunity for Yeltsin to articulate a coherent vision of a free Russia and to embed it in a convincing narrative, but he was unable to do so, instead relying more on summoning up images of the past. The new Constitution projected a liberal, democratic image of society. It made provision for human and civil rights at an international standard, for private property and the right to buy and sell land, and for ‘social rights’, thereby embedding aspects of the social rights provisions that were such a feature of Soviet arguments for the democratic nature of the USSR into the body politic of the new Russia.27 There was to be no state ideology or religion, and the state was to be secular, based on the rule of law and popular sovereignty. The Constitution provided for political pluralism and freedom of political activity, but gave significant power to the president. As the Constitution said in its opening paragraph, Russia would be a ‘democratic, federal, rule-of-law state with a republican form of government’; sovereignty was vested unambiguously in the ‘multinational people’ of the Russian Federation. Following the parliamentary crisis of 1993 and the adoption of the new Constitution, an occasion was created at which it would have been appropriate for the president to articulate a vision for his country. This was the annual address to the Federal Assembly, often called the ‘state of the nation’ address, which the president was constitutionally obliged to present; it was to focus ‘on the situation in the country, on the basic directions of the domestic and foreign policy of the government’.28 From that point this was a major speech when the president had the opportunity to set out his views in a systematic fashion rather than having to respond to proximate issues. It was thus perfectly designed for the expression of the president’s vision of the country’s future. But rather than articulating such a vision, Yeltsin’s speeches surveyed many of the problems confronting the country and talked about the legislative and administrative measures that were necessary to come to grips with them. But his emphasis also now changed compared with earlier: the focus was much more on consolidation than transformation. But during this period he did at times seek to put this in the broader context of the trajectory on which he saw the country as embarked. 27 28

For the problematic way in which the Constitution dealt with rights, see Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (London: Routledge, 2002, 3rd edn), pp. 62–63. Constitution, §84e.

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Symbolism and Regime Change in Russia

In his first speech,29 Yeltsin made an effort to project an image of the society he desired, but mainly in a negative fashion by counterposing it to the Soviet period. He declared that the choice at the end of 1993 was the first time in the country’s history that there had been voting for a democratic constitution, and that this had ushered in a ‘democratic, federal, rule-of-law, social and secular state’.30 The ideological vacuum inherited from the Soviet period had been replaced by arguments about the merits of various ‘isms’, which had led to civil conflict, whereas what was required was national concord based on arguments appealing to all the people and each person individually, including security, freedom, prosperity and solidarity. The strategic aim was declared to be ‘to make Russia a flourishing country, in which lives a free people, proud of its ancient history and boldly looking to the future; a country in which power is based on law and does not repress the citizen; a country with an effective economy, combined with national peculiarities and world achievements’.31 He envisaged a strong state which was to help in the establishment of civil society and to protect the rights of the citizenry. However, only a developed civil society could prevent the state taking on a despotic, totalitarian character; a democratic state could not exist without a civil society. Crucial in this too was ‘a market economy, a society of civilised owners, the economic freedom of man, and partnership relations between citizen and the state’.32 Underpinning this was to be the legal basis of the state and the unleashing of the spiritual wealth of the country which had been repressed during the decades of totalitarian rule. The country could be restored to health only if it broke from the dehumanisation of life and culture, the growth of extremism, nihilism and lack of belief of the Soviet period. The vision Yeltsin sought to project thus remained one which was designed to be attractive through the direct contrast with the USSR, even though his discussion of this was at times somewhat oblique. Yeltsin continued to warn against the ‘totalitarian legacy’33 and to claim that his actions in October 1993 had prevented a second October Revolution, civil war and the break-up of the federation, but at the same time he suggested a reconciliation through the honouring of all who died, regardless of whether they were defending democracy or seeking 29

30 32 33

B. N. Yeltsin, ‘Ob ukreplenii rossiiskogo gosudarstva: osnovnye napravleniia vnutrennei i vneshnei politiki’, 24 February 1994, Ezhegodnye poslaniia Prezidenta RF federal’nomu sobraniiu 1994–2005 (Novosibirsk: Sibirskoe universitetskoe izdatel’stvo, 2006), pp. 5–52. 31 Yeltsin, ‘Ob ukreplenii’, p. 7. Yeltsin, ‘Ob ukreplenii’, p. 7. Yeltsin, ‘Ob ukreplenii’, p. 32. In his address to counter-intelligence chiefs, Nezavisimaia gazeta 27 May 1994.

The leader’s vision

37

to drag the country into civil war.34 His aim, he said, was to transform Russia into ‘a strong, democratic, flourishing Russian state’,35 with a rightful place in Europe.36 The new Constitution represented the ‘civilised limits of freedom’.37 The strategy of linking rejection of the Soviet past with the development of the state and civil society from his first state of the nation speech was also evident in the 1995 speech.38 Russia was said to be crossing from one historic epoch to another, with most citizens having grown up and been educated in a world very different from that they were now in. Although the state was said to be still not under the control of civil society organisations, there should be no contradiction between the state and the principles of the observance of the rights of man and the citizen and other democratic values. This was in contrast to the beginning of the twentieth century when the idea of stateness was opposed to freedom and justice, and this had led to state political terror. He supported citizenship, active, conscious participation in the affairs of state, enjoyment of all rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, and the fulfilment of constitutional responsibilities. The state was to be based on fundamental legal, democratic and federal principles, and its task was defence of the rights and freedoms of man and the citizen, establishment of the conditions for life with dignity and the free development of citizens of Russia, and the strengthening of Russia and its security in the world. The unity of the state could be brought about in two ways – unitarism seen in terms of harshly centralised administration based on the command principle which had been tried in Russia, or the developing system of federalism based on decentralisation of administration and the law – but only the latter would ensure the integrity of Russia, effective defence of society and its citizens, and the harmonious development of spiritual, cultural and economic links between all parts of the state. The state was to be guided by the will of the people and should be subject to the law. It was also to assist in the establishment and all-round functioning of civil society, which was essential for freedom and democracy. With the legislative election looming in December 1995, Yeltsin affirmed the importance of the public freedom of information and the 34 35 36 37 38

See his press conference on the anniversary of the events of October 1993, Nezavisimaia gazeta 5 October 1994. Address to the Foreign Intelligence Service, Rossiiskaia gazeta 29 April 1994. Speech at the December CSCE summit, Rossiiskaia gazeta 7 December 1994. He saw Russia as ‘the eastern bulwark of European security and stability’. Izvestiia 10 February 1994. B. N. Yeltsin, ‘O deistvennosti gosudarstvennoi vlasti v Rossii’, 16 February 1995, Ezhegodnye, pp. 53–114.

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need for the press to be independent of the authorities.39 He also said that he would support those movements, parties and blocs that advocated the further democratisation of Russia, the continuation of reforms and social protection for the public.40 On the eve of voting for the Duma, Yeltsin’s address to the people again harked back to the evils of Soviet times.41 He said ‘the most dangerous thing is that representatives of certain parties want to return the country to the past . . . this would be a tragic mistake. For more than seventy years we followed the path to which they want to return us . . . Was our life really better than that of people in other countries. No! The country was unable even to approach the standard of living of the developed states.’ The command economy did not work and people were pulling in different directions. Russia did not need another revolution; it needed ‘prosperity, tranquility and order’, and, in his view, Russia was now ‘making progress towards a more tranquil, normal and decent life’. He called on the youth not to allow the forces of the past to return to power or ‘the country to return to the time when everyone was told what to think, what clothes to wear, what hair style to have, what songs to sing . . . Freedom is like air. When you have it, you don’t notice that it is there. But its absence is felt immediately.’ He called on people of his generation to remember what their parents went through – ‘real famine . . . real fear . . . mass repressions’. The comparison in the 1996 speech was more direct, reflecting the strong communist showing in the December 1995 legislative elections and the approach of presidential elections and Yeltsin’s desire to tar his principal electoral opponents, the communists, by association with the Soviet past.42 According to Yeltsin, no country had experienced the sort of abrupt turns Russia had gone through in the previous couple of years as it sought to extricate itself from ‘ideological diktat and monopolism in politics’.43 The Bolsheviks had established a mobilisational model of development with the concentration of all resources in the hands of the state under single party control. Civil society, the rudiments of democracy, and private property were destroyed. While Russia became a powerful military–industrial power, neither the political nor the economic model could meet the demands of the time, and Russia continued to lag behind developed powers in terms of living standards, labour 39 40 41 42 43

Comments at the Democratic Press Forum, Rossiiskie vesti 2 September 1995. Press conference, Rossiiskie vesti 9 September 1995. Rossiiskie vesti 16 December 1995. B. N. Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia, za kotoruiu my v otvete’, 23 February 1996, Ezhegodnye, pp. 115–151. Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia’, p. 117.

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productivity and the ability to meet the needs of modernisation in the second half of the twentieth century – the scientific–technological revolution, information society, and globalisation of the economy. The tragic consequences of the communist experiment were predictable: ‘mass repressions and cruel political monopolism, class purging and total ideological “thinning out” of culture, shutting off from the outside world, and the maintenance of an atmosphere of animosity and fear – all of these were generic signs of a totalitarian regime’.44 This was a ‘historical dead end’, leading to the destruction of Russia. The first attempt at reform was the ‘Khrushchev thaw’ which saw the weakening of total control over society and the introduction of some elements of openness which enabled the acceleration of development and the USSR’s becoming a leader in the scientific–technological revolution in the scientific and space spheres. However, this reform effort was blunted by the attempt to compete with world capitalism and the rejection of reform by the nomenklatura, leading to stagnation. Economic crisis, reflected in goods shortages, appeared in the late 1960s–early 1970s. The rapid rise in oil prices did not lead, as in the West, to innovation, but to ‘the satisfaction of administrative ambitions, dubious “projects of the century”, and foreign political and military adventures’.45 The quality of life deteriorated as the military sector became more developed. Yeltsin presented perestroika as ‘the most radical attempt at reform of the system within the limits of retaining party and state control over the economy’.46 However, despite public support, it ended in failure. There were goods shortages, state supply broke down, and regional autarchy developed in the economy; Russia ‘came to the rule of ration coupons and barter’.47 Chaos ensued, and the country stood on a precipice. Economic failure pushed the leaders to pursue reforms in other spheres, seeking to overcome the consequences of communist totalitarianism in the ideological and political spheres with the help of glasnost and democratisation. ‘The ideological emancipation of society was an enormous achievement of perestroika and the chief political victory of the people.’48 This inevitably led to political change, to the rooting out of the remnants of the totalitarian system and the destruction of the monopoly hegemony of the party nomenklatura as the people became politically active and as the first free elections were held. With the collapse of the party and repressive ties, the old ‘driving belts’, the state mechanism, partly collapsed and partly began to work independently. The republics 44 46 48

Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia’, p. 118. Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia’, p. 120. Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia’, p. 121.

45 47

Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia’, p. 119. Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia’, p. 120.

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began to establish their own institutions of power and seek sovereignty and often exit from the USSR. The proclamation of Russian state sovereignty, supported by all political forces in the republic, blocked the possibility of Russia being used as a bridgehead against the other republics and opened the way for attempts to reconstitute the USSR on a new principled basis. However, this prompted the August putsch, which was an attempt ‘to clamp the Union by force, with the help of the restoration of the old power structures’.49 The failure of the putsch led to the collapse of the USSR. Yeltsin then turned to the post-Soviet situation, arguing that the strategic task facing the country was to re-create the Russian state. Three alternatives were being championed at the time: return to the commandadministrative system, conduct reforms under crude state control, or rely on society in establishing market relations and democracy. The third alternative was the conscious choice of Russians: reliance on the energy of market institutions and stimuli operating on the basis of reborn democracy. There was conflict, chiefly in the field of constitutional law, with amendments to the old Constitution used as a means of placing pressure on the executive. There were two basic political forces, reformers located mainly in the executive and counter-reformers found mainly in the soviets; during 1992–3 they became polarised. The reformist course was always handicapped by the need to compromise with its opponents, but each compromise only made the opposition more intense. The critical point was reached in the second half of 1993 when compromise was no longer possible, so the president, resting on the constitutional principles of popular sovereignty, the division of powers and federalism, unilaterally revoked the mandate of the delegates in the soviets. The people were to have the final say through voting for the new Constitution, a new legislature and the president. However, he argued, those who refused to subject their fate to the will of the people had pursued the path of armed confrontation, forcing the reformers to take the necessary steps to prevent civil war. Since that time, the adoption of the new Constitution had created a legal basis for the new Russian state. A new political culture, underpinned by the Agreement on civil accord, had begun to form, and political institutions had begun to work on the basis of the Constitution. Despite the tendentious nature of aspects of Yeltsin’s narrative of events, what this did was to justify the structure he had created by contrasting it with the negative Soviet past and the aspirations of his political opponents. He went on to argue that the reforms that had been instituted were creating a Russia that was more open, stable and free

49

Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia’, p. 122.

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than at any time in its history. He argued that the economic difficulties being experienced were not a result of the reforms, which were necessary to save the economy from destruction, but were the legacy of the past. Positive results were beginning to flow from the reforms, which were in part a result of the dialogue the reformers had carried out with the people. The state no longer exercised an ideological monopoly; rather, society was free and culturally energised. Furthermore, it was only through defence of the people’s social and economic rights that democracy could become entrenched. Interestingly, he also discussed the future in terms of capitalism and socialism, arguing that the choice in Russia was not between these; capitalism had not existed in Russia for a long time and socialism could not be built anywhere. The problem was to find ‘a living balance between self-organisation and regulation, private initiative and social protection, freedom and justice’.50 Only a democracy could enable the establishment of a dynamic balance of interests based on the peculiarities of a country and its socio-economic and cultural development. The alternative to democracy was chaos and anarchy, and therefore the need was to embed democracy in the Russian state. Only through order provided by the democratic state could personal rights and freedoms be guaranteed, but the state had to be under the control of society if totalitarian rebirth was to be avoided. This was a constant theme in Yeltsin’s speeches in the lead-up to the presidential election. He had actually set the tone when in Yekaterinburg he declared that he would stand for re-election as president.51 He said that ‘there are still no firm guarantees of the irreversibility of the changes that are taking place; there are no guarantees that another presidential election will be held five years from now. We cannot allow the country to split into Whites and Reds. On 16 June we will be choosing not only a president but also what our life is going to be like in the near future; we will be deciding the fate of Russia . . . the leaders of today’s opposition . . . continue to believe that history can be reversed. To endure so much, to understand so much, to stand on the threshold of a civilised life of peace, and then be forced back again?’ This was not the course Russia should take. And by taking on the task of preventing this from happening, Yeltsin was again appealing to that image of himself which had been so graphic while he stood on the tank in 1991 and which he had revived in 1993, as the personification of the nation. But Yeltsin also seemed somewhat apologetic about the fall of the USSR. In contrast to his earlier view that it was a historical aberration,

50

Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia’, p. 149.

51

Segodnia 16 February 1996.

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he now acknowledged that it ‘was not without reason that the Soviet Union was created’, but that ‘certain people were unable to hold it together’.52 He denied that he broke up the Soviet Union, saying that this was an ‘objective’ process that had been underway for some time and could not have been stopped.53 The Soviet Union could not be resurrected (although he did support the voluntary reintegration of former republics), and the Duma resolution revoking the Belovezh Accords was unconstitutional and threatened to cast doubt on Russian statehood and on its status as a successor state.54 As the presidential election approached, Yeltsin was more insistent on the negative aspects of the Soviet past. He accused the Communist Party of ‘promising to take away property and land’,55 while his election programme was directed at ‘a tranquil, prosperous and happy life for all of Russia and for all of Russia’s people’.56 The state would not ‘dictate to society how it will live’, but would be characterised by the ‘triumph of the law’.57 In his final election appeal, Yeltsin was even more graphic in drawing on the evils of the past.58 He said, ‘For the sake of Russia’s future, for the sake of our children’s future, I urge you to forgive the grievances you have against one another and not vote against the new life.’ It is said that many people have begun to see the past as better than the present. ‘But did the common people really live that well under the old regime? Can even elderly Russian citizens remember a time when there was plenty of everything in our country? Such a thing never happened in seventy years. Only the party bosses lived well.’ We have, he continued, forgotten much – ration coupons and shortages, compulsory party meetings, comrades’ courts, uniformity of thought and word. The communists were proposing simplistic solutions implemented by the state – set low prices, impose discipline by sending people into exile or having them shot. Many politicians mouth a return to the past, but they in fact pursue only their own interests; many of them, he said, were from ‘the party nomenklatura’. All they did was criticise, while Yeltsin wanted ‘to maintain a normal, stable situation in our society’. Following his election victory and his return from a heart operation, later in 1996 Yeltsin returned to the past, although in more moderate terms, in his appeal to the people on the anniversary of the October Revolution.59 Yeltsin declared, ‘Today is 7 November, a date that marks a turning point in 52 53 55 57 59

On signing accords with Aleksandr Lukashenko about greater unity between Russia and Belarus, Kommersant Daily 28 February 1996. 54 Rossiiskaia gazeta 16 March 1996. Rossiiskie vesti 19 March 1996. 56 Segodnia 5 May 1996. Rossiiskie vesti 1 June 1996. 58 Kommersant Daily 1 June 1996. Rossiiskaia gazeta 28 June 1996. Rossiiskie vesti 10 November 1996.

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the history of our country. The sincere hopes and aspirations of that time turned into a tragedy that claimed millions of victims. Society became split. To this day the people are divided into Reds and Whites, ours and theirs. It is time to put a stop to this. We have one Russia, and we ought to be together. In my decree I have declared 7 November to be a Day of Concord and Reconciliation. This day should unite the people, not separate them. Our goal is a free and great Russia. We will not repeat the old mistakes. We will work together for the good of Russia.’ There was also a somewhat curious harking back to the past, at least in terms of that past as a model, when Yeltsin supported the notion of a new ‘national ideology’. In July 1996 he declared ‘In Russian history of the twentieth century, there were various periods: monarchism, totalitarianism, perestroika and finally a democratic path of development. Each stage had its ideology. We have none’, but one was needed.60 This view, which gave birth to the short-lived and ultimately futile search for a ‘Russian idea’,61 was curious because both before and after this Yeltsin was insistent that not only was such an idea not necessary, but also that in the past it had been a major cause of Russia’s troubles. Moreover, a formal ideology was explicitly banned in the Constitution. In the following three state-of-the-nation addresses, Yeltsin spent much less time on the shape of the new Russia. In the 1997 address,62 much of which was arguing for greater order in the running of the state and life in the country more generally, Yeltsin confirmed the importance of a market economy and strict legal order. The heart of the latter was said to be the Constitution, which was important not only for political stability (because, he said, it realised the principle of strong presidential power which conformed with the needs of society and the current transitional situation), but for limiting the possibility of ‘vlast’ (the rulers or authorities) to undermine society and strengthening the capacity of citizens to defend their rights. He also said that there was now a real chance to cross from ‘implacable political struggle to a normal political life, from confrontation to co-operation’, and that the chief resource for achieving order in the country was the ‘energetic completion of economic, social and legal reform’.63 Underpinning all of this was the rule of law: ‘Our choice is order based on law.’64 60 61 62 63

Cited in Breslauer and Dale, ‘Boris Yel’tsin’, p. 303. See also the discussion in Timothy J. Colton, Yeltsin. A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2008), pp. 389–390. See the discussion in Kathleen E. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia. Politics and Memory During the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), ch. 8. B. N. Yeltsin, ‘Poriadok vo vlasti – poriadok v strane’, 6 March 1997, Ezhegodnye, pp. 153–194. 64 Yeltsin, ‘Poriadok’, p. 158. Yeltsin, ‘Poriadok’, p. 193.

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Elaborating on these themes later that year, he argued65 that the market was not the reason for current difficulties. In a shift away from his earlier emphasis purely on the market, he now argued that, although a free economy had been firmly established, a new economic order which had a strong and intelligent government and a sturdy state needed to be instituted. ‘In any civilised state, market mechanisms and state regulation operate in a co-ordinated manner.’ The role of the state needed to be increased in the economy. ‘We are resolutely moving from a policy of “non-interference” to a policy of pre-emptive regulation of economic processes and oversight of vitally important branches of the economy and the effectiveness of budget spending.’ The government was establishing clear rules of economic behaviour which everyone must obey. Similarly, he lauded the development of rules to structure political activity. In October 199766 he declared that the current political conflict was ‘taking place within the framework of a civilised political struggle’, which was just as it was in developed countries. Progressive politicians were those who ‘[stood] for a civilised Russia and want[ed] it to occupy a dignified place in the new world’.67 This sort of activity was clearly preferable to those who sought to ‘head up rebellions and revolutions’,68 or engaged in terrorist activity.69 The focus on law and defence of citizens’ rights remained a feature of the 1998 address,70 with law being particularly important in regulating relations between the authorities and economic actors. Yeltsin argued that the state had to influence the economy through normative–legal regulation and supervision with the aim of creating favourable legal and institutional means for the conduct of business. But Yeltsin also stressed the role of civil society. The fate of Russian democracy was held to depend not only on the authorities, but also on the emergence of influential institutions of civil society which could keep a check on the state. The basis of civil society and the stability of the constitutional order were seen in turn to depend upon a large and powerful middle class. In a democratic society, the representatives of such a class, which Yeltsin associated with small and medium-sized 65 66 67 68 69

70

Address to the Federation Council, Rossiiskie vesti 25 September 1997. Rossiiskie vesti 18 October 1997. Interview with editor of Izvestiia, in Izvestiia 6 July 1999. He was here referring to striking miners: Kommersant Daily 23 May 1998. This term was used both in relation to Chechnya and to the apartment bombings in September 1999. For example, see Rossiiskaia gazeta 14 September 1999 and Kommersant 4 December 1999. See also his speech to the November 1999 OSCE summit: BBC News Monitoring 18 November 1999, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ monitoring/526343.stm. B. N. Yeltsin, ‘Obshchimi silami – k pod’emu Rossii’, 17 February 1998, Ezhegodnye, pp. 195–240.

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business, opposed any sort of radicalism and sought sufficiency in life style, high levels of education and a spectrum of cultural needs. A new level of trust between authorities and society was needed, with the people responsible and active and the state subordinate to the interests of public selfdevelopment. For seventy years the private life of the people had been subordinated to the mythical welfare of the country, but now people had the opportunity to live their own lives. One of the most important achievements was the constitutional prohibition on ‘state ideology’, with the state no longer having the right to impose on society any sort of ideological schemes. In his final such speech,71 Yeltsin returned to the theme of the scale of the changes Russia was experiencing and the opportunity that confronted them to give a decisive start to Russia in the new century and millennium. He reaffirmed that the path of peaceful development Russia was embarked on was ‘inseparably linked with democracy and the market economy’.72 In the past years the economy was said to have acquired many ‘civilised traits’ – free prices, single hard currency and the domination of non-state ownership. Market reform had been inevitable because of the Soviet experience of exploiting the country’s natural resources to maintain the stability of an ineffective political and economic system, something which was leading the country away from the path of world experience. There was no precedent for crossing to a market economy in this way. The process had been difficult, with popular support central to success. In this regard the propaganda of the ‘bright future’ was not useful, because people ‘live not for tomorrow, but for today’.73 The basic principles for the development of society were said to be a stable constitution, real federalism, developed organs of local self-government, democratic elections, legality and the security of citizens, and an independent judicial system. The Constitution was a stabilising factor in political life, but realisation of its principles depended upon the path the country took: the lengthy process of the creation of civil society and a law-governed state growing out of the totalitarian past, or changing of the Constitution to lead back to the restoration of the dictatorship of a single party and all power to the soviets. The protection of people’s rights was linked with a market economy, while the strengthening of authority was impossible without the development of trust between state and society. Over the previous three-year period, Yeltsin had evoked the Soviet experience much less than he had earlier. It was explicitly evoked in Yeltsin’s speech on the anniversary of the revolution in 1997, but it was 71 72

B. N. Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia na rubezhe epokhe’, 10 March 1999, Ezhegodnye, pp. 241–301. 73 Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia na rubezhe’, p. 243. Yeltsin, ‘Rossiia na rubezhe’, p. 259.

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in generally moderate terms.74 He noted that this was a very important day in the country’s history, when people believed in the bright tomorrow and the progress that was possible. And there certainly were many achievements to be proud of, including victory in the Patriotic War, the Dnepr hydroelectric power station, the feats of (Soviet aviator) Valerii Chkalov, successes in space and grandiose projects. But, he said, these were created by the people, although the Bolsheviks stole the credit for them. The other side of this coin was the conflict that was created in society, the subordination of human values to political fanaticism, and the isolation of Russia from the world community. The holiday should be retained, but it represented a lesson from history; Russians should remember all of those who perished in civil strife (hence Yeltsin’s signing of a decree to erect a monument to all of those who fell in the civil war) as well as forgiving ‘those who committed a fatal historical mistake by attributing to a utopian idea a value higher than human life’. He was more graphic in his comments at the burial of Nicholas II and his wife in St Petersburg in July 1998.75 He called the murder a monstrous crime, ‘one of the most shameful pages in our history . . . we wish to atone for the sins of our forebears. Those who committed this heinous crime and those who tried for decades to justify it are equally guilty. We are all guilty. We must not lie to ourselves by saying that political goals can justify senseless brutality.’ The murder was a result of the split of society ‘into “us” and “them”’. The burial was ‘a symbol of the unity of our people, of atonement for common guilt. We are all accountable before the historical memory of the people . . . In constructing a new Russia, we must build on its historical experience. Many glorious pages in the history of the Fatherland are associated with the Romanov name. But one of history’s bitterest lessons is also associated with that name: all attempts to change life through violence are doomed to failure.’ Interestingly, seven months earlier,76 while acknowledging that many millions of Russians had fallen victim to the security organs (including many security officers), Yeltsin had declared that earlier they ‘may have just gone too far’ in exposing and denouncing the crimes of the security agencies. There were not only dark but glorious pages in their history. At the heart of Yeltsin’s image of the future was a Manichaean division between the bad Soviet past (although this view was at times modified

74 75 76

BBC News Monitoring 7 November 1997, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/ 24845.stm. Rossiiskaia gazeta 18 July 1998. Rossiiskie vesti 20 December 1997. This was the eightieth anniversary of the creation of the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB.

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after 1996) and the good post-Soviet present. The negative features of the Soviet past were intrinsic to the nature of the system, while those difficulties being experienced after 1991 were a function of the Soviet inheritance, honest mistakes and political opposition. The contrast with the Soviet predecessor was evident not just in the direct comparisons that Yeltsin made, but also in the way in which he talked about the tasks confronting the country. The emphasis here, whether he was talking about economic reform, political life, social services or foreign policy, was always on the creation and maintenance of a system characterised by regularity and observance of the law. The impression that he gave was of a society that functioned in a predictable fashion, resting on popular sovereignty, the rule of law and the recognition of citizens’ rights. He continually eschewed use of the term ‘capitalism’ to describe the economy, preferring the term ‘market’, but made much use of ‘democracy’ as a descriptor. The sense of the sort of society he was sketching is captured by the description of it as ‘normal’,77 the term which emerged at the end of the 1980s, or ‘civilised’, both of which were implicitly at odds with the communist system and what it was believed to embody. It was also a means of defining Russia in terms of the West; to be ‘normal’ or ‘civilised’ meant to be like the West, at least in Yeltsin’s eyes. This was clearly reflected in his resignation speech78 when he talked about ‘the civilised, voluntary transfer of power from one president of Russia to another, newly elected one’ and when he apologised for ‘having failed to live up to some of the hopes of those people who believed that with one surge forward, in a single bound, we could leap from the grey, stagnant, totalitarian past into a bright, rich, civilised future’. Generally he did not define society in terms of some ‘bright future’, which had clear echoes of the communist teleology, but of an effective system which met the needs of its citizens, and therefore was clearly different from its communist predecessor. But while Yeltsin juxtaposed the communist past with the brighter communist future, he never integrated these images into a coherent historical narrative. Because of his aim of condemning the communist past and painting it in almost unrelentingly negative terms, the myths and symbols of the old metanarrative remained largely rejected. But this also meant that he was unable to integrate the Soviet past into a narrative that provided a convincing explanation of either the country’s recent history or its current situation. 77

78

For the popular view that Russia was not yet a ‘normal’ society, see Alexander Lukin, ‘Russia’s New Authoritarianism and the Post-Soviet Political Ideal’, Post-Soviet Affairs 25, 1, 2009, pp. 66–92. Rossiiskaia gazeta 5 January 2000, but actually broadcast on 31 December 1999.

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Instead, and paradoxically for someone seeking to claim ‘normality’ as his country’s form, the Soviet and post-Soviet periods appeared as extraordinary episodes outside a coherent historical narrative. Yeltsin had made little progress in generating a story that had real meaning for the Russian people.

Post-Yeltsin visions Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, picked up some of the themes enunciated by Yeltsin, but the tone of his remarks, especially concerning the Soviet past, and his use of Soviet-era symbols was very different from that of his predecessor. Putin’s speeches were generally not only considerably shorter than those of Yeltsin, but were more prosaic and to the point, concentrating upon specific policy issues and their resolution. At the outset, Putin articulated a view of major elements of the Russian future, aspects of which were then picked up again at different points in his presidency. Putin’s view seems to embody a greater emphasis upon Russia’s national particularities, less attention to external standards in relation to rights and democracy, and a more prominent role for the state. Putin set out his views in his programmatic ‘Russia at the Turn of the Millennium’.79 He attributed the country’s difficult economic and social situation to the economy inherited from the Soviet Union and the distorted development it involved, and in a direct criticism of the Yeltsin period, to ‘our own mistakes, miscalculation and lack of experience’ in the changes introduced in the 1990s. Despite the ‘problems and mistakes’ in this ‘first transition stage of economic and political reforms’, Russia had ‘entered the main highway of human development’. And, he declared, ‘World experience convincingly shows that only this path offers the possibility of dynamic economic growth and higher living standards. There is no alternative.’ Putin acknowledged the ‘unquestionable achievements’ of the Soviet period, but also the outrageous price that had to be paid and its ‘historic futility’; communism was a ‘blind alley, far from the mainstream of civilisation’. Russia did not need further ‘upheavals, cataclysms and radical reforms’. Rather what was needed was a ‘strategy for Russia’s revival and prosperity based on the positive experience that has been gained during the period of market and 79

‘Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii’, published on the Cabinet of Ministers website on 28 December 1999, www.pravitelstvo.gov.ru, and in Nezavisimaia gazeta 30 December 1999. It is reprinted in Richard Sakwa, Putin. Russia’s Choice (London: Routledge, 2008, 2nd edn), pp. 317–328.

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democratic reforms and implemented only by evolutionary, gradual and prudent methods’. The 1990s showed that success would not be gained through experimenting with ‘abstract models and schemes taken from foreign textbooks’ or mechanically copying other nations’ experience. Russia had to find ‘its own path of renewal’, something which had begun only in the previous year or two. Russia’s ‘future depend[ed] on combining the universal principles of the market economy and democracy with Russian realities’. Putin then turned to the first element of this strategy, the ‘Russian idea’. While he opposed the notion of an ‘official state ideology’, because this left no room for political freedom, he called for a ‘civic consensus’ based on ‘supranational universal values’ (such as freedom of expression and travel, and fundamental political rights and human liberties, including property ownership) and ‘the primordial, traditional values of Russians’. He then enumerated four of these values:
Patriotism, which was defined as pride in the country, its history and accomplishments; but he saw this as very different from nationalist chauvinism and imperialist ambitions.
The greatness of Russia (derzhavnost’), which meant that Russia would remain a great power. However, he argued, ‘In today’s world the might of a country is measured more by its ability to develop and use advanced technologies, a high level of popular well-being, the reliable protection of its security and the upholding of its national interests in the international arena than by its military strength.’
Statism, or a strong Russian state. He argued that Russia would not become a second edition of, for example, the USA or Britain where liberal values had deep historic roots. In Russia the state had always played an ‘exceptionally important role’, and was seen by Russians as a ‘source and guarantee of order, and the initiator and main driving force of change’. A strong and effective state did not mean a totalitarian state. However, while Russians had ‘come to value the benefits of democracy, a law-based state, and personal and political freedom’, they were concerned about the weakening of state power and wished to see ‘the appropriate restoration of the guiding and regulating role of the state, proceeding from the traditional and present state of the country’.
Social solidarity. Putin argued that a ‘striving for collective forms of social activity has always predominated over individualism’, and that most Russians were ‘used to depending more on the state and society for improvements in their conditions than on their own efforts, initiative and entrepreneurial abilities’.

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The ‘new Russian idea [would] come about as a mixture or organic combination of universal general humanitarian values with the traditional Russian values that have stood the test of time’. Central to the strategy outlined by Putin were two things. First, a strong state. Putin argued that correct economic and social policies required a strong state for successful implementation, but, he added, this did not mean a totalitarian or authoritarian state. These were both only transient forms; only democratic systems could last. ‘Strong state power in Russia is a democratic, law-based, workable federal state.’80 Among the measures he identified as important for achieving this was the creation of ‘fullblooded civil society to balance and monitor the authorities’, although he did accompany this with an argument for ‘stronger executive authority’ (note, executive, not state or legislative authority). Second, an efficient economy, which would be based on four lessons from the 1990s: the need for a national strategy of development, a coherent system of state regulation of the economic and social sphere (i.e. state involvement deeper than just setting the rules, but no return to planning by fiat), a strategy that was best suited to Russian circumstances, and no reduction in people’s conditions of life. This second element clearly depended upon the first; indeed, Putin committed the state to the staunch protection of the ‘fundamental elements of a civilised society’, freedom of speech, conscience and the media, and property rights.81 In Putin’s first attempt to articulate a vision for Russia, a number of aspects were clear. In contrast to the past, he declared, Russia needed steady reform based on experience rather than radical measures, and this meant that Russia needed to follow its own path rather than blithely adopting foreign models. In following this path, the achievement of both democracy and an efficient economy required substantial state involvement. Putin’s view as articulated at this time also involved rejection of communism as a ‘blind alley’, despite some unquestioned achievements. But if Russia was to develop in line with its historical traditions, Russia’s past emerged as a major issue, and Putin broached this in his inaugural address.82 He argued that the fact that Russia was becoming ‘a truly modern, democratic state’ was shown by the way in which for the first time in its history ‘supreme power in the country [was] being transferred in the most democratic and simplest possible way: by the will of the people, legitimately and peacefully’. He noted that there were ‘both tragic pages 80 81

Or, as he put it in February, ‘dictatorship of the law’ based on restored moral values: Izvestiia 25 February 2000. For an earlier reference, see Sakwa, Putin, p. 139. 82 Rossiiskaia gazeta 5 January 2000. Rossiiskaia gazeta 11 May 2000.

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and bright pages in our history’ and that, while democracy had to be preserved and expanded, ‘We do not have the right to deny our roots. We must not forget anything. We must know our history, and know it the way it was. We must learn lessons from it, and always remember those who established the Russian state, who defended its honour, who made it great, powerful and mighty. We will preserve this memory, and we will preserve this link in time. And all the best things, all the best things in our time, we will pass on to future generations.’ Russia should be ‘free, prosperous, wealthy, strong, civilised’. It was clear that the Soviet period was no longer considered an aberration, only to be blamed for current difficulties, as it was under Yeltsin. Putin returned to some of the themes of his initial programmatic statement in his first state of the nation speech in 2000.83 He emphasised the need to strengthen the state and establish a single vertical line of executive power. He declared that ‘Today, when we go forward, it is important not to dwell on the past, but to look to the future’, and that ‘Politics built on the basis of open and honest relations between state and society will protect us from a repeat of former mistakes and is the basic condition of the new “social contract”.’84 Russia needed an economy which was competitive, effective and socially just and which ensured stable political development. It was up to the state to ensure freedom of the individual, of entrepreneurial activity and of the institutions of civil society; an effective and democratic state would defend civil, political and economic freedoms and establish the conditions for a prosperous life for the people and the flourishing of our ‘Rodina’ (the only time he used this term in these speeches). He attributed many of society’s difficulties to the weakness of civil society and the inability of the authorities to speak to and co-operate with it, something which created the impression that everything in Russia depended on the authorities. However, much depended on Russian citizens and their sense of responsibility, and on the maturity of political parties, social organisations and the mass media. Despite real changes over the previous ten years – including constitutional guarantees of the rights and freedoms of individuals and the creation of a democratic system – only the framework of a civil society had been built. This needed to be grown into a fully fledged partnership with the state. Only a democratic society could ensure a balance between the interests of the individual and society. He noted the increased interest in national history, which he saw as part of a new spiritual upsurge. He also said that there was a need to learn the lessons of past experience, 83 84

Vladimir Putin, ‘Kakuiu Rossiiu my stroim’, 8 July 2000, Ezhegodnye, pp. 303–318. Putin, ‘Kakuiu Rossiiu’, p. 306.

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when they had been ‘hostages to an economic model based on populist politics’, and recognise the key role of the state in the economy, in the ‘defence of economic freedom’.85 This role lay not through increased administrative levers, the expansion of the state into individual branches of the economy (which had been tried and found to be ineffective),86 or in the support of selected enterprises and participants in the market, but in the defence of individual initiatives and all forms of ownership. The authorities had to ensure that the institutions necessary for the market to function (he cited the courts and institutions of law enforcement) worked effectively. Thus, the image Putin sketched had the state at its centre, with the achievement of both civil society (and the freedoms associated with it) and economic development dependent on that state. Putin revisited the question of the Soviet past when discussing state symbols, most particularly the adoption of the melody of the former Soviet national anthem with music by Aleksandr Aleksandrov.87 He noted that, while many rejected imperial symbols, Soviet-era symbols were even more sensitive because ‘there are people alive today who experienced first-hand all the horrors of the Stalin-era prison camps’. Opponents of these symbols associate them ‘with grim aspects of the history of our country . . . But there have always been such periods. There have always been periods in which the regime was unjustly cruel to its people and its actions were far from just.’ But these symbols were also associated with the achievements of Russian culture and science. ‘As for the Soviet period of our country, can we honestly say that it left us with nothing to remember except the Stalin-era camps and the repressions? What do we do, then, with Dunaevsky, Sholokhov and Shostakovich, with Korolev and our achievements in space? What do we do with the spaceflight of Yurii Gagarin? Or with the brilliant victories of Russian arms beginning with Rumiantsev, Suvorov, Kutuzov? And what about our victory in the spring of 1945?’88 If we refuse to accept the symbols of former periods, including the Soviet, he declared, ‘we would have to conclude that a whole generation of our fellow citizens, our mothers and our fathers, lived useless and pointless lives, that they actually lived their lives in vain’. History should not be rewritten. In December 2000 he declared that the adoption of the anthem was ‘an important indication that we have finally managed to bridge the disparity between past and 85 86 87 88

Putin, ‘Kakuiu Rossiiu’, p. 312. Although later in the speech he confirmed that the state would remain engaged in the defence-industry complex. Komsomol’skaia pravda 6 December 2000. In November 2002 he supported the return of the five-pointed star to the army banner: Nezavisimaia gazeta 27 November 2002. A victory he later directly associated with Stalin: Izvestiia 22 January 2002.

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present’, and that ‘one cannot be in a permanent contradiction with one’s own history and the destiny of one’s own country’.89 He returned to this theme of the meaning of the past in July 2001 when discussing calls for the burial of Lenin’s body.90 ‘The country lived under the monopoly of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for seventy years. That’s the lifespan of an entire generation, and many people see their own lives as linked with Lenin’s name. For them, burying Lenin would mean that they had devoted themselves to false values and false objectives, that they had lived their lives in vain.’ The idea of the strong state was again central in his second state-ofthe-nation speech in 2001,91 but on this occasion he acknowledged that a key question was the people’s trust in the government. This, he believed, was dependent upon the state’s ability to protect them from rackets, bandits and ‘grabbers’, that is, upon the role it played in society. He also noted the need for a strengthening and systematisation of its normative–legal basis. Consistent with this, he argued that, while the previous decade had been revolutionary in character, 2000 and the first part of 2001 had been relatively quiet. Russia had broken the cycle of revolution being followed by counter-revolution and reform by counterreform. While there were still substantial problems, they would not be solved by sudden attack but by steady work. Stability was the key. Russia would not depart from democratic freedoms or the adopted economic course. But the authorities had to work to guarantee improvement in the lives of all sections of the population and of the business climate. The authorities needed to earn the trust of the people. Building on this, Putin continued to affirm the importance of civil society. He argued in November 200192 that civil society could not be created from above but had to have its own roots, and that there should be a true partnership between state and society, a dialogue between equals. He also affirmed the need for a free and independent press.93 In his 2002 state-of-the-nation address,94 he said that the government’s aims were unchanged: ‘the democratic development of Russia, the establishment of a civilised market and law-based state. And most important – an increase in the living standard of our people.’95 Putin 89 90 91 92 94 95

Moskovskii komsomolets 30 December 2000, cited in Sakwa, Putin, p. 48. Trud 20 July 2001. Vladimir Putin, ‘Ne budet ni revoliutsii, ni kontrrevoliutsii’, 3 April 2001, Ezhegodnye, pp. 319–337. 93 Vremia novostei 22 November 2001. Kommersant 16 January 2002. Vladimir Putin, ‘Rossii nuzhno byt’ sil’noi i konkurento-sposobnoi’, 18 April 2002, Ezhegodnye, pp. 339–356. Putin, ‘Rossii nuzhno byt’, p. 341.

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pointed to a range of achievements, including progress in the development of the infrastructure of the market, but there were also problems, including an unwieldy, clumsy and ineffective state apparatus. Administrative reform could not, however, be accomplished through campaignist methods. He finished by asserting, ‘We must make Russia a flourishing and affluent country. So that life here is comfortable and secure. So that people can work freely, can earn for themselves and their children without restrictions and fear.’96 In 2003,97 he declared that ‘Russia must and will be a country with a developed civil society and stable democracy. In it in full measure will be guaranteed human rights and civil and political freedoms.’98 It would have a competitive market economy, and give reliable protection to property rights and to the economic freedoms that allow its people to work honestly and make money without fear and restrictions. It would be a powerful country with modern, wellequipped and mobile armed forces, able to defend itself and its allies and protect its national interests and citizens. This would enable people to enjoy a decent life, to feel proud of the country, to strive to multiply its wealth and to remember and respect its great history. History shows, he continued, that Russia could live and develop only if it was strong. Russia’s historic achievement had been to maintain a state over such a vast territory, to preserve a unique community of peoples, and to keep up a strong presence on the international stage, something which had involved untold victims and sacrifices. Discussing Russian business, he said that it needed to become ‘modern, enterprising, flexible and mobile. It must be a worthy successor to the great traditions of Russian entrepreneurship. And some patriotism would not go amiss.’99 A strong responsible government based on the consolidation of society was seen to be vital to preserve the country. Putin also addressed the question of the country’s political system. In a press conference in June 2002,100 he declared that he was opposed to a personality cult of the head of state. ‘I can agree, to a certain extent, to portraits or some other things . . . But everything has to be in 96

97

98

99

Putin, ‘Rossii nuzhno byt’, p. 356. But he did not argue that Russia had a special path of development, instead advocating strategic partnership with the West: Kommersant 14 June 2002. Vladimir Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta RF Vladimira Putina Federal’nomu sobraniiu RF’, 16 May 2003, Ezhegodnye, pp. 357–375. From this point, the addresses had no substantive title. Putin [16 May 2003], p. 359. Later that same year in discussing the arrest of businessman Mikhail Khodorkovskii, he declared that all had to be equal before the law and that, as long as the law enforcement agencies acted within the law, there could be no bargaining over their activities: Izvestiia 28 October 2003. 100 Putin [16 May 2003], p. 367. Trud 25 June 2002.

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moderation.’ At the end of 2003101 while lauding the role played by United Russia, he said that the president had to work with all political forces, later adding that failure to gain entry to the Duma did not mean that those ideas and people who ‘are aimed at positive solutions to the problems facing our country’ would not be drawn into government.102 He advocated ‘a truly multi-party system’,103 which implied electoral competition, but refused to campaign for the presidency, saying that he wanted to know how people reacted to his work rather than to campaign stunts.104 He also came out in opposition to ‘unhealthy limitations’ on popular demonstrations.105 Putin returned to the relationship between state and civil society in his 2004 state-of-the-nation speech.106 He said the aim was ‘a high standard of living in the country, a life that is secure, free and comfortable. A mature democracy and a developed civil society. A strong position of Russia in the world, but most importantly . . . noticeable growth in the welfare of our citizens.’107 He noted Russia’s political and economic stability, and how it had come through grave challenges to its statehood and territorial integrity. He said that some had interpreted the strengthening of the state as a shift towards authoritarianism, but there would be no going back on the fundamental principles of Russian politics; the commitment to democratic values was dictated by the people and was in the country’s strategic interests. He described the people as the country’s main competitive asset and the source of development, but they needed to be guaranteed a normal life through resolution of their pressing problems. The people were also seen as the only source and bearer of power, and only the people through the institutions of the democratic state and civil society could guarantee the stability of the moral and political base of the country’s development. He said that there was not yet a mature civil society, but there were many thousands of public associations and unions that worked constructively. However, he warned, not all such organisations were oriented towards standing up for people’s real interests, instead being concerned to get funding from foreign foundations or serve dubious groups and commercial interests.

101 103 104 105 106 107

102 Izvestiia 29 November 2003. Kommersant 9 December 2003. Izvestiia 19 December 2003. By this he meant a centre-right and a centre-left party, with allies on both flanks. Rossiiskaia gazeta 16 March 2004, reporting a press conference of 14 March. Vremia novostei 13 April 2004. Vladimir Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta RF Vladimira Putina Federal’nomu sobraniiu RF’, 26 May 2004, Ezhegodnye, pp. 377–393. Putin [26 May 2004], p. 379.

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But this was not, he cautioned, grounds for accusations against civil groups as a whole. Later in the year the Beslan tragedy caused Putin to reflect on Russia’s more recent past.108 Noting that there had been ‘quite a few tragic pages and painful ordeals in Russia’s history’, he said: ‘Today we live in conditions that took shape after the collapse of an enormous and great state. A state that, unfortunately, turned out to be unviable in a rapidly changing world. But despite all the difficulties, we succeeded in preserving the core of the colossus that was the Soviet Union . . . We all expected changes – changes for the better. But we proved to be totally unprepared for many of the changes that occurred in our lives. Why? We live in a transitional economy and under a political system that is not in sync with the current state and level of development of our society. We live at a time of heightened internal conflicts and inter-ethnic strife, which in the past were harshly suppressed by the ruling ideology. We stopped paying proper attention to defence and security issues, and we allowed corruption to penetrate the realms of justice and law enforcement. In addition, our country, which once had the most formidable system for protecting its external borders, overnight found itself unprotected to both the West and the East . . . we could have been more effective if we had acted in a timely and professional manner. All in all, it must be confessed that we failed to understand the complexity and danger of processes occurring in our own country and in the world as a whole.’ Some people, and he mentioned terrorists in this regard, sought to tear pieces off Russia, a threat which he said109 justified the centralisation of the political system. This was the strongest argument Putin had made for the increased power of the state, and it is striking that he made it in terms of what had been lost from Soviet times; but it was not an argument for the restoration of the USSR or the revival of its symbols. He referred again to the relationship between the Soviet past and the need for a powerful state in the 2005 state-of-the-nation speech.110 He said the main political and ideological goal was the development of Russia as a free and democratic state, embodying the values of freedom, democracy, justice and legality. He said that some argued that the Russian people were not used to and did not want freedom, but they should look at Russia’s recent history. He then said ‘we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical 108 110

109 Nezavisimaia gazeta 6 September 2004. Rossiiskaia gazeta 14 September 2004. Vladimir Putin, ‘Poslanie Federal’nomu sobraniiu Rossiiskoi federatsii’, 25 April 2005, archive.kremlin.ru/appears/2005/04/25/1223_type63372type63374type82634_87049. shtml.

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catastrophe of the century . . . Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Terrorist intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation [cease fire agreement in Chechnya] that followed damaged the country’s integrity. Oligarchic groups – possessing absolute control over information channels – served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances and the paralysis of the social sphere.’ Many Russians were now found outside the country. However, it was at this time that the Russian people showed not only the energy for self-preservation but the will for a new life. They sought to safeguard their own values, not to squander the undeniable achievements, and to confirm the viability of Russian democracy. ‘We had to find our own path in order to build a democratic, free and just society and state.’ By affirming these principles, Russia would become a ‘free society of free people’. Putin asserted (with considerable poetic licence) that Russia was a major European power which had followed the same historical path through the Enlightenment to democracy. What was needed was firm legal guarantees (including state power limited by the law), state protection of rights and freedoms, and equality of opportunity so that all could participate fairly in a competitive economy. He declared that Russia had chosen democracy of its own accord, and would ‘decide best how to ensure that the principles of freedom and democracy are realised here, taking into account our historic, geopolitical and other particularities, and respecting all fundamental democratic norms. As a sovereign nation, Russia can and will decide for itself the timeframe and conditions for its progress along this road.’ He also noted the gravity of the terrorist threat. The picture presented by Putin in this 2005 speech marks a significant change of emphasis compared with the earlier ones. While it retained references to the regularisation of procedures, the rule of law and, through these means, the creation of a prosperous society, the vision Putin presented contained a direct critique of the Yeltsin period, reaffirming the thrust of his speech after Beslan. Affirming the significance of the Soviet collapse (although he drew the significance in terms of the consequences of that collapse as opposed to the qualities of the USSR), Putin then went on to identify as the major problems those which came to light in the 1990s under Yeltsin’s rule. He was therefore contrasting his period of stewardship with that of his predecessor, as well as implying a future that was not cast in the Yeltsinite terms of the 1990s. In his most sustained discussion of democracy in any of these addresses, Putin declared that Russia was on the path to democracy, but a democracy of a particular sort, consistent with Russia’s particularities. Russia

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would follow its own path and rebuild the sort of community that had characterised the country in the past. Consistent with this was his declaration on the economy that ‘It is time to identify the spheres of the economy where the interests of strengthening Russian sovereignty and security dictate the necessity of special control on the part of national and state capital.’ The sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war in 2005 led Putin, in an interview with the German newspaper Bild, which was reported in Russia,111 to broach the litmus issue for many in regard to the past, the question of Stalin. He said, ‘I can’t agree with equating Stalin with Hitler. Yes, Stalin was unquestionably a tyrant, and many people call him a criminal. But he was no Nazi! . . . Stalin and his era are an integral part of the complicated and at times contradictory history of my country. That history needs to be known and its lessons remembered. One of them is obvious: dictatorship and the suppression of freedom are a deadend road for a state and for society. Unchecked authority and a regime of personal power inevitably give people license to commit crimes.’ This was the first clear statement by Putin criticising the high levels of centralisation of political power under Stalin, but it is clear that he did not see any danger of a contemporary parallel; he openly supported tight control over NGOs and non-commercial organisations (although this was not to ‘cause harm to civil society in Russia’)112 and the need for firm presidential authority.113 In 2006 Putin was still concerned with the relationship between state and society. His 2006 state-of-the-nation speech114 had little in the way of vision. It deplored the low level of public trust in some institutions of state power and in big business, attributing this to the failure of both to fulfil the hopes of the people and to the pursuit of personal enrichment at the expense of the majority in violation of the norms of law and morality. He repeated that the state’s authority was based on its ability to pass just and fair laws and to ensure their enforcement. The people were again said to be the source of Russia’s well-being and prosperity, and this could be ensured as long as ‘we ensure the rights and liberties of our citizens, organise the state itself effectively, and develop democracy and civil society’. In this regard, the following month he noted that Russia had 111 112 113 114

Komsomol’skaia pravda 7 May 2005. Kommersant 25 November 2005. Earlier he had said that government bodies should be in dialogue with NGOs but not interfere in their affairs: Izvestiia 2 February 2002. Rossiiskaia gazeta 1 February 2006. Vladimir Putin, ‘Poslanie Federal’nomu sobraniiu Rossiiskoi federatsii’, 10 May 2006, archive.kremlin.ru/appears/2006/05/10/1357_type63372type63374type82634_105546. shtml.

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made ‘a conscious choice in favour of democracy’ in the early 1990s and ‘the most important guarantee of its irreversibility continued to be freedom of the press’.115 He also emphasised the state’s ability to protect its interests militarily, part of an increasing focus from 2005 on Russia’s sovereignty. There were some echoes of the 2005 speech in his state-of-the-nation address of 2007.116 He argued that society had come together to overcome ‘the serious consequences of the transition period’ and that, in untangling these problems, they had ‘built a new life’. While the situation was changing for the better, they were only at the beginning of the difficult road to full and genuine recovery, and the more firmly society pulled together, the more quickly and confidently they would complete the journey. He spoke about ‘national projects’ to develop health, education, agriculture, housing and infrastructure. The spiritual unity of the people and the moral values that unite them were, he said, as important for economic development as political and economic security. ‘We will be able to achieve our goals only if we maintain respect for our native language, for our unique cultural values, for the memory of our forebears, and for each page of our country’s history.’ Crucial was the development of an effectively functioning civil society (which he saw as ‘developing’) and an effective state. He warned that the absence of Russia’s own ‘cultural beacons’ (which was a result of the impact of the economic crisis on Russian culture) and ‘blindly copying foreign models will inevitably lead to us losing our national identity’. Russia’s unique cultural and spiritual identity did not preclude building a country open to the world. ‘Our country has historically developed as a union of many peoples and cultures, and the idea of a common community, a community in which people of different nationalities and religions live together, has been the foundation of the Russian people’s spiritual outlook for many centuries now.’ Putin had again emphasised the unity between state and civil society, a position which, along with his emphasis on the spiritual unanimity of society, potentially turned political opposition into disloyalty to the state and nation. Putin returned to this notion of Russian values later in 2007. In May117 he emphasised the need to safeguard Russia’s cultural uniqueness and strengthen native cultural and moral values. He bemoaned the poor grasp of their cultural roots possessed by many youth, blaming

115 116

117

Rossiiskaia gazeta 6 June 2006. Vladimir Putin, ‘Poslanie Federal’nomu sobraniiu Rossiiskoi federatsii’, 26 April 2007, archive.kremlin.ru/appears/2007/04/26/1156_type63372type63374type82634_125339. shtml. Vremia novostei 31 May 2007.

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the internet and television for this. In a speech to delegates from a conference of social science teachers the following month118 he complained about the ‘mush’ in the heads of teachers and public alike and about attempts at ‘an interpretation of the course of history, and particularly of the results of the Great Patriotic War, that is unacceptable and even insulting to our nation’. While he acknowledged that there were controversial pages in Russia’s history, he drew a parallel with the USA: ‘At least we didn’t use nuclear weapons against civilians and didn’t spray chemicals over thousands of kilometres, and we didn’t drop seven times as many bombs on one small country as were dropped in the Great Patriotic War, like in Vietnam.’ In line with this emphasis on Russian history and the war, Putin came out in vigorous opposition to the desecration and belittling of the Soviet war effort that he saw as lying in Estonian plans to demolish a monument to Soviet soldiers in Tallinn.119 But alongside this emphasis on Russian culture and history, Putin also appealed to universal values. In his speech on Yeltsin’s death,120 he said that his predecessor was responsible for the ‘new democratic Russia . . . a free state open to the world. Thanks to Boris Yeltsin’s will and direct initiative, a new Constitution was adopted that proclaimed human rights as the supreme value. It opened up to people a chance to freely express their thoughts and freely elect their governing authorities.’ Later labelling himself an ‘absolute pure democrat’, he claimed that many ‘common values’ were better protected in Russia than in the West,121 although he quickly rejected the notion that Russia’s democratic credentials could be checked or validated by the West, such as through the oversight of electoral procedures. Later that year, during a visit to Butovo burial ground in the outskirts of Moscow where many repressed had been buried in the 1930s,122 he returned to history, and this time the purges. ‘All of us are well aware that although 1937 is considered the peak of the purges, the groundwork was laid by years of brutality – suffice it to recall the execution of hostages during the civil war years, the elimination of entire social classes and clergy, the expropriation of the peasants and the extermination of the Cossacks. Such tragedies have occurred many times in human history. This has happened when ostensibly attractive but empty ideals were placed above a fundamental value, the value of human life and human rights and freedoms . . . it occurred on such an enormous scale. 118 119 120 122

Vremia novostei 22 June 2007. Izvestiia 2 February 2007, and Moskovskie novosti 18, 11–17 May 2007. 121 Kommersant 24 April 2007. Izvestiia 5 June 2007. Vremia novostei 13 October 2007.

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Hundreds of thousands, millions of people were exterminated, sent to camps, shot and tortured . . . Much needs to be done to ensure that this tragedy is never forgotten, that it is forever remembered. This memory is necessary not just for its own sake. It is necessary so that people understand that to develop the country and choose the most effective paths, to solve the problems facing Russia today, and in the future we need political debates and battles, a struggle of opinions, but the process must be constructive, not destructive.’ Putin did not mention Stalin in the speech. Thus, the image Putin sought to project through these speeches was one of a country which, through the regularisation of its activities and the strengthening of its state, was building a modern, efficient and prosperous society. It was not a form of state capitalism,123 but was following a path consistent with its national traditions and values, and in so doing was building a society that was not going to be a mere replica of the West, but something unique and Russian. It would continue to pursue its interests internationally, emphasising multilateralism rather than a unipolar world, and Russia’s role as a good global citizen.124 The strong state was central to Putin’s vision; he saw this as crucial to the development of civil society, the pursuit of economic development, and effective international competition.125 The international system was, in Putin’s view, one of vigorous competition, and in this Russia needed international strength to ensure its survival; economic weakness led to political and economic vulnerability. While economic strength involved greater economic integration with the world, this was to be achieved on Russia’s terms. Hence the need for a strong state to manage this. And, while Russia was part of the universal theme of democracy, it was a democracy which had to fit Russia’s native traditions, values and realities. While it was part of Europe, Russia was also separate from it. What Putin did was to tie together his image of a strong state with Russian values stemming from its past, and in this he was more inclusive than Yeltsin had been because he did not exclude the communist era root and branch, as Yeltsin had done. And while at times Putin acknowledged Stalin’s role, he also often referred to some of the

123

124 125

He said that state corporations were important in some sectors of the economy because private business was reluctant to go into them, although such sectors would eventually be dominated by private business: Vremia novostei 12 December 2007. He continued to affirm the importance of a multi-party system: Rossiiskaia gazeta 5 December 2007. See his remarks at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in February 2007: Rossiiskaia gazeta 13 February 2007. See the discussion in Alex Pravda, ‘Introduction: Putin in Perspective’, Alex Pravda (ed.), Leading Russia. Putin in Perspective. Essays in Honour of Archie Brown (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 27.

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nastier aspects of that period without mentioning Stalin’s name.126 While acknowledging that Russian history was difficult, he saw it as no worse than that of other countries. In this sense, Putin sought to build on a vision of Russian history which acknowledged that the communist era had positive aspects as well as ones that were considerably darker in nature. But while acknowledging this and while introducing some of the symbolism of the Soviet period, he did not create a coherent narrative which integrated pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet eras into a single story. These eras remained separated from each other rather than being combined in a compelling way. He also, both openly and by implication, rejected Western models as appropriate for Russia; both ‘democracy’ and ‘market’ were much less prominent in his speeches than they had been in those of Yeltsin. A tandem vision? With Putin’s retirement from the presidency after his second term in 2008 and the election of his chosen successor Dmitrii Medvedev who then appointed Putin prime minister, an unprecedented situation was created at the top of the political structure: a new, untried president held the top position from where any articulation of a vision for the future should come, while a person with immense personal authority occupied a subordinate position which in the past had been more concerned with nuts and bolts than with expounding visions. Yet it was this latter person, Vladimir Putin, who had defined the vision, fragmented as it was, which now guided Russia. The question was whether Putin’s vision would remain intact, or whether Medvedev would use the authority that seemed to be vested in his office to develop a vision of his own. In a speech two months before the election that made him presidentelect but when it was clear that this would be the likely outcome, Medvedev discussed the role of civil society.127 He saw this as ‘an important element of our political life’ and as playing a defining role in the development of the Russian state. Society’s role was ‘all-pervasive and indispensible’, with parties becoming a real force. Government existed to run the country in the interests of its citizens and was responsible to the people; only a ‘social partnership’ between these would enable ‘the creation of a just state, the development of a robust civil society, and the well-being of the people’. Medvedev also complained 126

127

For one discussion, see Vladimir Shlapentokh and Vera Bondartsova, ‘Stalin in Russian Ideology and Public Opinion: Caught in a Conflict Between Imperial and Liberal Elements’, Russian History 36, 2, 2009, pp. 315–318. Vremia novostei 23 January 2008. This was an address to the Civic Forum.

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about the ‘contempt for law’ and ‘legal nihilism’. This emphasis upon the law was also evident the next month128 when he argued for the ‘supremacy of the law’ so that ‘citizens will feel like masters in their own country. They will always be able to defend their honour and dignity, freedom and security. And they will know that the state protects them from arbitrary rule, from a total breakdown of law and order in society . . . Respect for private property should become one of the fundamentals of the state’s policy.’ The country needed ‘freedom in all its forms – personal freedom, economic freedom and, finally, freedom of self-expression’, if it was to develop normally. In his inauguration speech,129 Medvedev declared human rights and freedoms to be the ‘supreme value in our society’, and asserted that ‘they determine the meaning and substance of all activity by the state’. What was needed was to ‘continue to develop civil and economic freedom and to create the broadest possible new opportunities for our people to realise their potential as free citizens – citizens responsible for their personal success as well as for the prosperity of our entire country’. Particularly important was ‘the fundamental role of law, which is the cornerstone of our state and our civil society’. It was essential to ‘achieve true respect for the law and overcome legal nihilism’. Medvedev’s initial foray into the complex of images at the heart of Putin’s vision – a strong state and its relationship with the people – was striking not because he said things that Putin had not, but because of the nuance and emphasis which gave the image that was emerging a subtly different tenor from what it had had under Putin. Medvedev did not reject the need for an active and strong state, but he cast this more in terms of the importance of law as a regulating and stabilising force. It was law which was essential for both the development of civil society and an effective economy and, although at one level the law could be seen as a manifestation of an active and powerful state, the imagery of that state seemed less dominant than under Putin. Medvedev continued to emphasise the importance of the regularisation of the system and its production of benefits for the people in his first state-of-the-nation address in 2008.130 He said that the military conflict with Georgia and the global financial crisis had ‘clearly demonstrated the maturity of our civil society and the political unity of our country’. He declared that Russia was ‘a people with more than a thousand years of history, a people that has developed and brought civilisation to a vast 128 130

129 Vremia novostei 18 February 2008. Vremia novostei 8 May 2008. Dmitrii Medvedev, ‘Poslanie Federal’nomu sobraniiu Rossiiskoi federatsii’, 5 November 2008, archive.kremlin.ru/docs/appears.shtml?stype¼63372.

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territory, created a unique culture and built up powerful economic and military potential, a people who act on the solid basis of values and ideals that have taken shape over the centuries and stood the test of time’. Those Russian values were said to be:
justice, in the form of political equality, honest courts, responsible leaders, social guarantees, the fight against poverty and corruption, and efforts to give each individual a decent place in society and the Russian nation a worthy place in the system of international relations;
personal individual freedom, meaning economic freedom, freedom of speech and religion,131 freedom to choose place of residence and job, and the independence and freedom of the Russian state;
welfare and the dignity of human life, meaning inter-ethnic peace and the unity of diverse cultures, protection for small peoples, family traditions, love and faithfulness, and care for the young and old; and
patriotism, meaning belief in Russia, deep-rooted love for the native land and great culture. These values were seen as the foundation and moral beacons of society, as what made it Russia, and would therefore never be given up. He said that Russia aspired to be a fair society of free people, a prosperous and democratic country, a strong country that offered people a comfortable life, the best country in the world for talented, demanding, independent and critically inclined citizens. The current difficulties would ‘not serve as a pretext for dismantling democratic institutions or for nationalising industry and finance. Citizens’ political freedom and private property are sacred’, and any measures that infringed civic freedom or worsened the people’s material situation were amoral and illegal. The government’s policies were said to be based on ‘an ideology which has people at its centre, people as individuals and citizens, people who are guaranteed equal opportunities from birth. Their success in life depends on their personal initiative and independence, and on their abilities to innovate and create.’ The source of continued development was ‘personal freedom and the maturity of the democratic institutions and procedures’ guaranteed by the Constitution. This document ‘pave[d] the way for Russia’s renewal as a free nation and a society that holds law and the dignity of each individual as its highest values’. In doing so, the Constitution was a barrier to ‘The cult of the state and the illusory wisdom of the administrative apparatus [which] have prevailed in Russia over many centuries.’ Society affirmed its commitment to the Constitution’s democratic values. ‘Not so 131

See also his speech to senior clergy of the Orthodox Church on 2 February 2009, www.kremlin.ru 2 February 2009.

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long ago, democracy was associated in our people’s minds with chaos, helplessness and degradation, but the new Russia has proven its ability to fulfil its social commitments and ensure economic growth, guarantee our people’s rights and demand compliance with the law, and successfully combat terrorism and outside aggression.’ According to Medvedev, no one now disputed that democracy was the way forward. The people were much better placed than they had been twenty years ago to be politically active; they did not need the state to look after their every step. But a strong state was still needed by civil society as a tool for development, for maintaining order, and for protecting and strengthening democratic institutions, although an all-powerful bureaucracy was seen as a mortal danger to civil society. In Medvedev’s view, democratic institutions needed to be strengthened and the democratic system shown to work. The balance between the images of state and people/civil society reflected in this speech seemed to be one in which the people/civil society were stronger vis-a`-vis the state than they had appeared under Putin. Medvedev enlarged on this in an address to the congress of United Russia in November 2008.132 After praising the role played by United Russia in prosecuting the government’s programme, he claimed that policy initiatives outlined in his state-of-the-nation address were ‘aimed at promoting democracy and improving the quality of representation in government, increasing the number of participants in the political process, developing political competition, strengthening the role and influence of various social groups, ensuring that the largest possible number of citizens become involved in politics, expanding their direct involvement in the formation of government and controlling the activities of government’. The state existed to serve the people. Following this up, in an interview with the editor of Novaia gazeta,133 Medvedev floated the notion of a contract between state and people, seeing this as embodied in the Constitution and meaning that the people passed authority to the state so that it would ensure them sufficiency, life and freedom. He affirmed the importance of civil society and its relationship with the state, and the independence of the judicial process. He also confirmed the ‘tradition’ that had developed of the president being non-partisan, independent of all political parties. He rejected the idea that democracy needed to be rehabilitated, saying that the perception of democracy had been coloured for many people by the introduction of its main institutions at a time of economic hardship. But, he declared, there ‘was, is and will be democracy’ in Russia.

132

See www.kremlin.ru 20 November 2008.

133

Novaia gazeta 39, 15 April 2009.

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In September 2009 Medvedev issued a programmatic statement entitled ‘Forward Russia!’134 He said that the present was characterised by ‘a primitive economy based on raw materials and endemic corruption . . . [and] the inveterate habit of relying on the government, foreign countries, on some kind of comprehensive doctrine, on anything or anyone – as long as it’s not ourselves – to solve our problems’; he also referred to Russia in the 1990s as being ‘paralysed’. Such obstacles had to be overcome if the country was to be modern and viable. But there was also a massive inheritance of a country rich in natural resources, solid industrial potential, and outstanding achievements in science, technology, education, art and military matters. How could this legacy be managed to ensure Russia’s place in the world, to allow society to become ‘richer, freer, more humane and more attractive?’ He went on to criticise a range of economic weaknesses (including the reliance on the sale of raw materials) and the way in which ‘democratic institutions have been established and stabilised, but their quality remains far from ideal. Civil society is weak, the levels of self-organisation and self-government are low.’ He summarised Russia’s main problems as ‘an inefficient economy, semi-Soviet social sphere, fragile democracy, negative demographic trends, and unstable Caucasus’. The ‘two greatest modernisations in our country’s history’, that of Peter the Great and the Soviet one, came at great cost. Now there was the opportunity to show that ‘Russia can develop in a democratic way. That a transition to the next, higher stage of civilisation is possible. And this will be accomplished through non-violent methods. Not by coercion, but by persuasion. Not through suppression, but rather the development of the creative potential of every individual. Not through intimidation, but through interest. Not through confrontation, but by harmonising the interests of the individual, society and government.’ We have a chance, he said, to build ‘a new, free, prosperous and strong Russia’. While continuing to develop the most important traditional industries (including the agro-industrial complex), Russia would develop its high-tech sphere to become a world leader. The growth of such technology would assist in ‘the realisation of fundamental political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and assembly’ by making the society more transparent and open, ‘even if the ruling class does not necessarily like this’. Medvedev then drew a picture of a political system which would be ‘extremely open, flexible and internally complex’ and based on a ‘political culture of free, secure, critical thinking, self-confident people’. Its 134

Dmitrii Medvedev, 3258568.shtml.

‘Rossiia,

vpered!’, www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/09/10_a_

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leaders would be the parliamentary parties, which would periodically replace one another in power. They would choose the federal and regional executive authorities, and engage in ‘civilised political competition’. Renewal and improvement of the political system would come about through ‘the free competition of open political associations’, and there would be cross-party consensus on the major political issues. He eschewed hasty reform for the sake of abstract theories, and said changes would be ‘gradual, thought-through, and step-by-step [b]ut they will nevertheless be steady and consistent’. However, he declared, ‘Russian democracy will not merely copy foreign models. Civil society cannot be bought by foreign grants. Political culture will not be reconfigured as a simple imitation of the political traditions of advanced societies. An effective judicial system cannot be imported. Freedom is impossible to simply copy out of a book, even a very clever one.’ While Russia will learn from others, only its own experience of democracy will give the people the right to say ‘we are free, we are responsible, we are successful’. He emphasised the importance of the judicial system and the judiciary in protecting citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms; the rule of law was central. He also called for the harmonisation of relations with the Western democracies, but without resentment, arrogance, complexes, mistrust and hostility. Medvedev turned briefly to Russia’s history. He said that Russian history had been ‘controversial, complex, ambiguous’, and that ‘much remains to be done to protect our historical heritage from distortion and political speculations.135 We must look clearly at our past and see our great victories, our tragic mistakes, our role models, and the manifestations of the best features of our national character.’ He then presented Russia as the power which often confronted those who sought to enslave small nations or who sought world domination, citing Saakashvili’s Georgia, Napoleon and the Nazis in this regard. Medvedev ended by seeking to mobilise people to his banner despite the opposition: ‘People will attempt to interfere with our work. Influential groups of corrupt officials and do-nothing “entrepreneurs” are well ensconced. They have everything and are satisfied. They’re going to squeeze the profits from the remnants of Soviet industry and squander the natural resources that belong to all of us until the end. They are not creating anything new, do not want development, and fear it. But the future does not belong to them – it belongs to us. And we are an absolute majority. We will act patiently, pragmatically, consistently and in a balanced manner. And act now: act today and tomorrow. We 135

He had criticised such distortion at the time of the celebration of the Great Patriotic War in May 2009. See his blog on www.kremlin.ru 7 May 2009.

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will overcome the crisis, backwardness and corruption. We will create a new Russia. Go Russia!’ Some eighteen months after his election, Medvedev had thus seemed to issue his programmatic vision for the future. While much of it was consistent with that of his predecessor, the focus had shifted. Putin’s main emphasis had been on the strong state, a theme he continued to maintain as prime minister, while the primary focus of Medvedev’s view was the people and civil society. Putin had argued for the strong state as necessary for society’s development, but Medvedev emphasised the creative capacities and abilities of the Russian people. These were the key to development, including of a powerful Russian state. Like his predecessor, Medvedev stressed that this would take place along lines informed by and consistent with the course of Russia’s history and its traditions, but he offered no schema of Russian history that could constitute the nucleus of a coherent narrative. Medvedev confronted Russia’s history on 30 October 2009, Remembrance Day of the Victims of Political Repression, when he issued a video blog on the government website.136 He emphasised the importance of young people having both historical knowledge of and empathy with ‘one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Russia’ which reached its peak in 1937–8. It was impossible, he said, to imagine the scale of terror. For twenty years before the outbreak of war, entire strata and classes were eliminated, the Cossacks were virtually liquidated and the peasantry weakened, intellectuals, workers and military were persecuted, and representatives of all religious faiths harassed. He said that 30 October was the day of remembrance ‘For people who were shot without trial and without investigation, people who were sent to labour camps and exile, deprived of civil rights for having the “wrong” occupation or “improper social origin”. The label of “enemies of the people” and “accomplices” was then pasted on whole families. Let’s just think about it: millions of people died as a result of terror and false accusations – millions. They were deprived of all rights, even the right to a decent human burial; for years their names were simply erased from history.’ Today some still claim, he continued, that this was justified by some higher national purpose, but ‘no national progress, successes or ambitions can develop at the price of human misery and loss.’ There ‘is no excuse for repression. We pay a great deal of attention to the fight against the revisionist falsification of our history. Yet somehow I often feel that we are merely talking about the falsification of the events of the Great Patriotic War. But it is

136

See www.kremlin.ru 30 October 2009.

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equally important not to sanction, under the guise of restoring historical justice, any justification of those who destroyed our people. It is true that Stalin’s crimes cannot diminish the heroic deeds of the people who triumphed in the Great Patriotic War, who made our country a mighty industrial power, and who raised our industry, science and culture to top global standards. The ability to accept one’s past for what it is is the mark of mature civil culture.’ We must reject, he added, both indifference and the desire to forget the tragic aspects of our past. He saw a need for more commemorative centres137 to pass on the memory of historical experiences, for uncovering more mass graves, for recovering the names of the victims, and when necessary to vindicate them. Only the Russians can resolve these issues. These comments by Medvedev were the strongest yet made by the president since the Yeltsin era in condemning the Terror, violence and repression of the Stalin years. But, while declaring that no achievements were worth such a cost, he sought to separate the suffering from the achievements of the Soviet period – victory in the war and the building up of the economic and cultural power of the country. This was essentially the same strategy employed and image projected by his predecessor; regardless of its tragic, even criminal aspects, the Soviet period did have major achievements to its name. But still no attempt was made at a coherent narrative. Medvedev again broached this historical legacy in his 2009 state-ofthe-nation address.138 He called on Russia not to continue to rely on the achievements and infrastructure of the Soviet period, but to ‘raise [itself] to a new, higher level of civilisation’. Although the Soviet Union had transformed itself into one of the world’s most advanced industrial powers, its ‘closed society and totalitarian regime [ensured that it] remained an industrial and raw materials giant and proved unable to compete against post-industrial societies’. The country needed to undergo ‘comprehensive modernisation . . . based on democratic values and institutions’. Russia would become ‘a modern and forward-looking young nation able to take a worthy place in the global economy’. A truly modern society, he declared, ‘is one that seeks constant renewal, continuous evolutionary transformation of social practices, democratic institutions, visions of the future, assessments of the present, one 137

138

During his trip to Magadan in September 2008, Medvedev had visited a memorial complex and laid a bunch of flowers at the Mask of Sorrow, a sculpture created in 1996 to commemorate those who were sent to the camps of the region: Reuters 24 September 2008. Dmitrii Medvedev, ‘Poslanie Federal’nomu sobraniiu Rossiiskoi federatsii’, 12 November 2009, president.kremlin.ru/transcripts/5979.

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engaged in gradual but irreversible changes in technological, economic and cultural spheres, the steady improvement of the quality of life’. This involved overcoming ‘our chronic backwardness, dependence on raw materials exports, and corruption’. The priorities for economic modernisation and technological development must be meeting people’s real needs. Medvedev also raised the role of the state in the economy, arguing that the state sector needed to be rethought in terms of strategic goals and that once their ‘purposes are accomplished’, state corporations should be transformed into joint stock companies under government control or be sold to private investors. He argued that the political and legal institutions needed strengthening, but that there was a need to accept that not all problems could be solved by the state; individual responsibility and initiative were important. The government must create the necessary environment for the development of civil society. ‘We will continue to support non-profit charitable organisations that help resolve complex social problems.’ He went on to declare that ‘The growth of civic consciousness and development of civil society [are] only possible in a developed political system.’ The people must be involved in the discussion of issues in the society, and it is the ability of government to take into account the interests and opinions of all people that is the main criterion of governmental effectiveness. Society’s political diversity is defined by the structures of the multi-party system, which are ‘the most important tool for ensuring the fundamental rights and freedoms of our people, including their exclusive right to power’. Our political parties, he continued, have stood the test of time and reflect ‘the entire spectrum of society’s political views’. We need to strengthen democratic institutions (he proposed a series of measures related to parties and the electoral system) and the rule of law, which must be the same for all. Government must be more transparent, something which would be a major element in the fight with corruption and with legal nihilism. Medvedev also said, ‘We must remember and respect our past and work hard for a decent future.’ He declared Russians to be ‘a strong and free people, [who] deserve a normal life in a modern, prosperous democratic society’. In this speech, Medvedev aired the concept that was to frame his approach to Russia and the future, ‘modernisation’. Much of the speech was devoted to technological modernisation and the development of a technologically advanced society. Such a development had to rest on its Soviet foundations, but it also had to transcend those foundations and develop in a democratic way, in a way that met the people’s needs. The course of modernisation went with the development of civil society and of the political system, a task which, along with the strengthening of the rule of law, would feed into the economic and technological

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modernisation of society. Medvedev was explicit about this in a question-and-answer session on the three television networks in December 2009.139 He confirmed that Russia needed to move away from reliance on the export of natural resources and concentrate on developing a modern high-tech economy. In this regard he reaffirmed five priorities of modernisation: the development of new types of fuel (including nuclear energy), information technologies, space technologies, public healthcare, and the production of pharmaceuticals. But also necessary were fair elections, the growth of political parties as the basis of the democratic political system, and improved quality of law enforcement. Medvedev emphasised the importance of development of the society and its political and legal systems for successful modernisation. Indeed, in July 2010 he declared that modernisation was not just about technological innovation and the transition to an innovative economy, but also about fighting corruption, decreasing administrative influence in the country, and the development of honest competition.140 However, the main focus of his notion of modernisation was technological innovation and development. To this end he emphasised the role that the Skolkovo innovation centre to be established outside Moscow would play in this process.141 But he noted142 that modernisation could not be achieved from above; it had to occur through the efforts of private business in a competitive environment. ‘The state’s job is to ensure a good business climate for Russian and foreign entrepreneurs, and a fair and honest competitive environment.’ Therefore, he announced, he was cutting the number of strategic (i.e. state controlled) enterprises; the number of strategic joint stock companies would fall from 208 to 41 and federal unitary enterprises from 230 to 159. He said that Russia was ready for international competition, involvement in the international economy, and foreign involvement in Russia, and promoted Moscow as an international financial centre. In May 2010, just before Victory Day, in an interview in Izvestiia, Medvedev again broached the question of history.143 In discussing the war and its aftermath, Medvedev acknowledged that not all countries had

139 140 141

142 143

See www.kremlin.ru 24 December 2009. Medvedev at a meeting of the Presidential Commission on Modernisation and Technological Development, www.russiatoday.com 27 July 2010. For example, see his comments to representatives of foreign venture capital funds in May 2010, www.kremlin.ru 25 May 2010, as well as those he made while visiting Silicon Valley in the USA, reported in Kommersant 25 June 2010. Speech to St Petersburg International Economic Forum, 18 June 2010; www.kremlin. ru and Nezavisimaia gazeta 21 June 2010. Izvestiia 7 May 2010.

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the same memory of either the conflict or the post-war period. While the liberation of Europe by the USSR and its allies had created a new Europe, he acknowledged that the USSR had been ‘definitely totalitarian’, and that it had suppressed the basic rights and freedoms of its own people, and the same thing had happened in other countries of the socialist camp. He denied the equivalence of Soviet and German forces, and argued that the morally responsible course of action was to pursue those Nazis who committed crimes against humanity. Turning to Stalin’s role, Medvedev argued that ‘our people won the Great Patriotic War, not Stalin, not even the military commanders’. He went on, ‘If we talk about the official position of the leadership of the state, then we can say that since the new Russian state was formed, this position has been clear; Stalin committed many crimes against his people. And even though he worked a lot, even though the country achieved a lot under his leadership, we cannot pardon what he did to his own people.’ He declared that the question of Stalin was often exaggerated. ‘If we talk about attitudes toward Stalin and some other leaders, then I can say that in the 1990s there were also many fans of this man, but no one talked about the renaissance of Stalinism. Now all of a sudden it becomes an issue. Yes, historic figures could become idols that people worship. Sometimes it is the young people who do it, especially young people with leftist views. But it’s their business. Of course in the hearts of the majority of people in the world Stalin’s figure does not cause any warm feelings. But we should not be saying that Stalinism becomes our everyday reality, because we are going to use some of the symbols of the past, some posters, something else. It is not happening and it will not happen. There is absolutely no chance.’ He blamed Stalin, and the purge of military officials, for the lack of preparation for the war. Turning to the post-war period, Medvedev argued that the economic and political system at that time were not ‘fit for normal development’. If the USSR had been more competitive and had had ‘conditions for economic development based on modern principles’, the Soviet Union might have been more appealing to the people and have avoided break-up. Medvedev’s comments on the USSR were among the strongest he had made, and the image he drew, that it was a dead end, echoed the view of his predecessors. Medvedev turned to the question of democracy when he addressed a Global Policy Forum on ‘The Modern State: Standards of Democracy and Criteria of Effectiveness’ in September 2010 in Yaroslavl.144 144

Dmitrii Medvedev, ‘Vystuplenie na plenarnom zasedanii mirovogo politicheskogo foruma “Sovremennoe gosudarstvo: standarty demokratii i kriterii effektivnosti”’, 10 September 2010, news.kremlin.ru/transcripts/8887.

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Medvedev declared that he believed in democracy as a form of governance and that its practice could save millions of people in Russia and elsewhere from humiliation and poverty. Although democracies could be different and have different historical roots, their shared values united them. He acknowledged the importance of international recognition of common standards, including human rights. Such standards should be subscribed to by countries without the fear that this would be used as an instrument to interfere in their internal affairs. Russia was a democracy; authoritarian tendencies did not reign. While Russia was only in its early days, ‘it is young, immature, incomplete and inexperienced, but it is nevertheless a democracy’. He then went on to identify five criteria which he considered essential for democracy: the enshrinement of values in law; the state’s ability to provide and maintain a high level of technological development to ensure the sort of economic development and wealth creation that underpins successful democracy (something he linked with the programme of modernisation he had outlined a year previously); the state’s ability to protect its citizens from all manner of threats; high levels of culture, education, communication and information exchange, including tolerance, freedom of speech, of assembly and of organisation; and citizens’ conviction that they lived in a democratic state – democracy existed only when people believed that they lived in a democracy and were free. Having set out these standards, Medvedev then declared that Russia met them only ‘to a certain extent, not completely’; Russia was only at the beginning of the path. Significantly, Medvedev did not argue for a special Russian path, or for the need to remain consistent with its traditions. It is possible that this was simply a nod to his international audience, but it is also consistent with the view that Russia must abide by international standards. Medvedev had emphasised the importance of democracy for Russia’s development, and the inappropriateness of the Chinese path, at a question-and-answer session before his Yaroslavl speech.145 In this he said ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union really was a difficult thing for many people to live through, and for many people it was indeed a tragedy, but I do not think there was any alternative development scenario’. And while things could have been ‘a bit more gradual and cautious’, they were kept within limits; there was no civil war, those who wished to reject a market economy have never got into power, and, while those who sought to keep Russia on the path of economic transformation made some ‘almost disastrous mistakes’, they also had real achievements. No 145

Dmitrii Medvedev, ‘Vstrecha s vedushchimi rossiiskimi i zarubezhnymi politologami’, 10 September 2010 www.kremlin.ru.

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other road was possible. Medvedev also pointed to a number of problems for Russian democracy: too much had been expected of it because people confused ‘democracy’ with ‘prosperity’; people were not ready to accept a fully fledged democracy because they were unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities that this carried; political institutions were not ready for democracy (he cited parties and their Soviet legacy as an example); the attitudes of officials were often in need of change. Medvedev also affirmed the importance of modern means of communication for fostering democracy. Medvedev returned to the question of democracy in a blog entry of 23 November 2010.146 He said that, over the previous two years, transformation of the Russian political system had been aimed at making the system fairer, more flexible, more dynamic and more open to renewal and development. Recently there had been signs of ‘stagnation’ in Russian political life, a significant term given its application in the late 1980s to the Brezhnev regime (and implicitly a criticism of developments under Putin). What was needed was increased political competition, because if a ruling party never lost an election and an opposition had no chance of winning a fair contest, both would degrade. But the main task was to improve the quality of popular representation, and this was to be done through ensuring that the ruling party did not act as simply a supplement to executive power but really represented the opinions of the electorate. Minorities and their rights must also be protected and their voices heard. Reforms must strengthen, not destroy, democracy, and they must therefore be gradual but steady (as argued in ‘Rossiia, vpered!’). Over the previous two years, he declared, progress had been made; the risk of electoral manipulation had been minimised,147 parties’ equality of access to state-run media had been ensured, parties with a majority in regional legislatures had been given the exclusive right to propose to the president candidates for governors, minority rights had been strengthened,148 the size of regional legislatures had been rationalised to ensure equality of representation across the country, and members of the Federation Council now had to be deputies of regional or local bodies. While Russian democracy was imperfect and Russia was at the beginning of the road, it was moving forward. 146 147 148

Dmitrii Medvedev, ‘Nasha demokratiia nesovershenna, my eto prekrasno ponimaem: no my idem vpered’, 23 November 2010 www.kremlin.ru. Through regularisation of early and absentee voting procedures and increased use of electronic vote-counting devices. The opposition was guaranteed some senior positions in regional legislatures, and some representation had been guaranteed for those parties which gained between 5% and 7% of the vote.

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Medvedev again discussed democracy when, on 30 November 2010, he delivered his address to the Federal Assembly.149 He began by noting the task he had set the previous year – modernisation of the economy based on democratic values – and declared that, despite the difficulties, substantial progress had been made. The main focus was on technological modernisation, something which Medvedev argued was essential for the sake of children and future generations. Modernisation was said to require new standards in governance and public service, higherquality courts and law enforcement, modern ways for people to participate in the development of their city or village, and greater popular involvement in the work of municipal authorities.150 In Medvedev’s view,151 democracy and modernisation were linked, with democracy, which he saw as requiring effective dialogue between government and citizens, continuing to develop through economic modernisation. But this required an economy not based overwhelmingly on raw materials because such an economy could not sustain democracy. He also 149 150

151

Dmitrii Medvedev, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu sobraniiu’, 30 November 2010 www.kremlin.ru. Medvedev enumerated ten steps necessary to achieve these things:
Interaction between state and citizen should be transparent, clear and simple; the foundation of democracy is that government officials serve the people, not control their lives. Government officials should not discredit the state, but improve the conditions people live in, especially by improving the provision of services. Officials should be legally liable for delays in provision of services or violation of procedures.
Improvement of service provision by including non-commercial organisations in such provision.
Each region must improve its investment climate, while a more satisfactory means of arranging revenue distribution between government levels must be established.
Authorities at all levels must hold property only when it is essential to the fulfilment of their duties. Other property must be privatised, as was done with 2010’s privatisation of strategic companies, which, he claimed, had been reduced to 20% of what they used to be.
Need fair laws, independent and respected courts, and trusted law enforcement bodies. Officials must be active in combating those who break the law.
The law should be tough but humane, and not simply produce new members of the criminal world. Therefore there needs to be more flexibility in sentencing.
Must fight corruption; bribery is rife and might be better fought through fines than imprisonment.
Need to regularise and systematise procurement processes, particularly in the field of military modernisation.
Need to improve the quality of the political system over and above the measures outlined in 2008 and 2009. Need to strengthen local government by increasing political competition at this level, which will make parties more accountable.
Need broad discussion of proposed laws, as was done on the laws on the police force and on education. Opening Address to World Economic Forum in Davos, 26 January 2011 www.kremlin.ru.

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argued152 for political competition, including ‘balanced representation of several parties’, seeing this as a form of vaccination against authoritarian and totalitarian trends; but he still supported the role of United Russia. Four months later, in a speech where explicit parallels were drawn between his own programme and the reform programme of Alexander II, Medvedev again referred to the ‘imperfect’ nature of ‘our democratic institutions’.153 By the end of his presidency,154 Medvedev’s vision of the Russian future seemed clearer and something of a departure from the ethos prevailing under Putin. Medvedev did not reject the notion of the strong state, but he built upon it and gave it a new tone. The idea that the state had to provide for its citizens, which a strong state was able to do, remained central to the vision, but what was added was the notion of ‘modernisation’ and what was given greater emphasis was ‘democracy’. The former presaged the economic and technological development of society, building upon the legacy of the Soviet past but expanding it significantly to make it accord with current needs. The latter, which became particularly prominent from 2009, was tied in with modernisation; they went together, essential for each other. In this latter period, Medvedev seemed much less insistent about Russia’s own unique path, on a number of occasions speaking as though he accepted the application of international standards to Russia’s development (although this did not include acceptance of election monitoring). Indeed, his focus upon the rule of law and the development of the party system in order to make the leadership more accountable was consistent with the view that Russia would have to meet the same standards of democracy as everyone else. This was his principal difference with the view Putin had espoused as president. Putin had spoken in favour of many of the general principles that Medvedev advocated, but the tone was different: democracy in accord with international norms has seemed to be a much bigger element of Medvedev’s outlook and vision than it had been for Putin. During Medvedev’s presidency, Putin had been much less outspoken about many of these sorts of issues than he had been as president. Nevertheless in 2009–10 he did make some interesting comments on 152 153 154

Interview in Vedomosti 26 January 2011. See 3 March 2011 www.kremlin.ru. Medvedev’s final state-of-the-nation address, delivered after the December 2011 Duma election and the initial demonstrations that followed it, did not add to his vision as outlined earlier. In this speech, which included lists of claimed achievements during his presidency and what he still hoped to do, emphasised democracy defined in terms of accountability, and modernisation: Dmitrii Medvedev, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu sobraniiu Rossiiskoi federatsii’, 22 December 2011, www.kremlin.ru.

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the repression and on democracy. On the same day that Medvedev had issued his blog on the victims of political repression (30 October 2009), Putin called155 for the victims of political repression to be commemorated and the identity of all of them to be established. Later that year, during his answers to people’s phoned-in questions,156 he referred to the ‘unacceptable’ way Stalin had achieved results, and how he had committed ‘massive crimes against our own people’. He also said ‘those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those who want it to be resurrected in its previous form have no brain’. In the middle of 2010 Putin turned his attention to democracy.157 He said that Russia had no future without democracy. Democracy and law and order always went together; the rule of law was impossible without democracy, and democracy was impossible without the rule of law. Citing the notion of the ‘dictatorship of the law’, he argued that everyone should obey the law and that, although people should be able to express their disapproval of the government, they should not disturb those who did not wish to demonstrate. He argued158 that there was no such thing as a single democratic model, but that the unity of democracy and law was essential. The Russian goal, he said, was to strengthen civil society so it could place limits on the authorities. He added that Russian civil society was sufficiently mature to prevent the development of a cult of personality or a repeat of the events of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. While Putin’s comments about democracy in 2010 constituted something of an elaboration of the position he had espoused as president and seemed to bring him closer to Medvedev’s position, the latter still seemed significantly more positive about democracy than Putin. Over the first two decades of independent Russia’s existence, successive presidents have thus tried to articulate a vision of Russia’s future that would gain widespread consensus, energise the people in its support, and provide the basis of a coherent narrative of Russia’s historical development. However, none was able successfully to do so. Although both Putin and Medvedev eschewed the epithet ‘normal’ used by Yeltsin, this was an accurate description of the sort of society they envisaged; one without drama and excitement, one working on the basis of regularised procedures and norms. Even given the economic dislocation of the late Soviet period and the 1990s, this was not an image likely to stimulate widespread popular enthusiasm. It was mundane and 155 157 158

156 RIA Novosti 30 October 2009. See www.premier.gov.ru. Transcript of his meeting with people in the charity show The Little Prince in May 2010, www.premier.gov.au. AFP Interview, 10 June 2010.

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devoid of any sense of excitement or idealism. Furthermore, it was an image which shifted subtly but nevertheless noticeably from president to president, swinging between more paternalistic and more democratic visions. No constancy or stability could develop; the emergent discourse as reflected in the words of successive presidents did not offer a consistent and coherent view of the Russian community, its historical past and its future.159 While a strong state, democracy and a market economy were all elements of each president’s vision, what they meant in each case seemed subtly different, resulting in competing paternalistic and democratic visions. The discourse emerging from the president’s office lacked essential unity, even if common themes could be discerned. Furthermore, this discourse did not constitute a coherent narrative which integrated Soviet past and Russian present and future in a convincing and coherent story that explained the relationship between these. In this sense, the leading political figures in post-Soviet Russia have not projected a narrative which could take the place of the discredited Soviet metanarrative. The symbolism of the past remained unintegrated into that of the present while the presidential discourse that should have constituted the heart of an emergent Russian narrative remained characterised by a tension between paternalist and democratic themes. The return of Putin to the presidency in 2012 did not signal any early resolution of this tension.

159

And it certainly did not contribute to an ‘official ideology’, which some have seen present in post-Soviet Russia: Shlapentokh and Bondartseva, ‘Stalin in Russian Ideology’, p. 303.

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With the symbolism emanating from the leaders’ discourse diverse and changing, was the symbolism embedded in the political structure any more clear or consistent? Did such symbolism contribute to the emergence of a coherent narrative about Russia and its contemporary situation? As argued earlier, new regimes are often characterised by a vision of what the regime stands for and seeks to achieve. Usually, political systems are designed with an eye to both consistency with and achievement of this vision; for example, the class-based nature of the membership of the formal legislative organs of the early Soviet state reflected the principle of workers ruling the state that was at the heart of the initial Bolshevik outlook. In this sense the institutional culture of the political system should reflect, at least to some degree, the values that underpin the regime more generally, and will therefore feed into an emergent regime narrative. However, one of the questions about the subsequent development of the political system is the extent to which, in its mode of functioning, it continues to embody that original vision. Once a system is established, its modus operandi will of itself generate an institutional culture reflected in the symbolism of the system and what it stands for, perhaps quite independently of any vision that its founders may have had at the outset. While the system’s modus operandi will be shaped by individual and collective political actors (as well as by the impact of events outside the control of those actors), who may (or may not) be attempting to realise in practice the ideals of the founding vision, its overall contours emerge as a result of the way the political actors play the political game and the institutions interact within the political arena. Institutional imperative is often as important in shaping a political system and its institutional culture as the actions of individual political actors. In this sense, the political system generates its own institutional culture and set of symbols and images about itself. The symbolism that thereby emerges may be contradictory. For example, restrictive voting laws in the pre-1960s South of the USA, or the hereditary nature of the British House of Lords before the Labour 79

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Party introduced changes around the turn of the century, project images of the respective systems and symbolise an interpretation of those systems at odds with the democratic ethos held to underpin them. Such symbolism is crucial in any understanding of the nature of the political system. The importance of this is heightened when the new system emanates from an ideocratic regime like that in the USSR, especially when, by the late Soviet period, despite the official rhetoric of democracy and popular rule, the symbolic representation of the system was very much one of a tired authoritarian regime. The institutional culture and the symbolism which characterised it were clearly at odds with the official regime rhetoric. So what was the symbolic representation of politics embedded in the emergent institutional culture of the postSoviet political system? The emergence of the new Russian state involved both aspects of the meaning of the word ‘state’. The first was the development of a new territorial entity whose boundaries corresponded with no previous historical independent state; the boundaries adopted were those of the RSFSR, which was a sub-unit of the USSR and, somewhat paradoxically, the only unit that gained independence not through a formal declaration of independence but through the dissolution of the USSR.1 The name of the new state was changed from RSFSR by the VI Congress of People’s Deputies in April 1992 to the Russian Federation, or Russia. This promoted debate about a new sense of national identity, discussed in Chapter 5. The second was the development of a set of political institutions that were to function without the presence of the Communist Party and on the basis of a new set of political principles. The focus of this chapter is not an analysis of the precise form the emergent political system took, but the broad contours of that system and the institutional culture it generated. Given the rhetoric about democracy, especially in the early 1990s, the question of the extent to which the system appeared open to popular involvement and control was a central one, particularly given Yeltsin’s vigorous rejection of communism and his criticism of it as being anti-popular and designed to cater for the interests of the elite rather than the people. If 1991 was to mark a decisive break with the past, one would expect it to have been symbolised by a much more open and participatory political system than that it replaced. The shaping of the institutions of the newly independent Russian political system was initially anything but a smooth process. The first couple of years following the fall of the USSR saw major conflict 1

The Declaration of State Sovereignty adopted on 12 June 1990 assumed Russia would remain part of a larger Union.

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between two of those institutions, the presidency and the legislature, and only after that was resolved in a bloody fashion and then ratified through the ballot box did the process of institutionalisation take a less disruptive form. An intrinsic part of this development, both in its violent and more peaceful forms, was the image which those institutions came to project. These images were a product both of the way the particular institution bore itself during the post-Soviet period (i.e. how it behaved and what it did), and how other leading actors, but particularly the president, chose to present it. While some of those images underwent quite significant revision over time, others remained largely unchanged. But, whatever happened to the images of individual institutions, when they were put together they gave a stark indication of the way the system itself had changed in the first two decades of post-Soviet rule. New symbols of state also emerged in the 1990s but, because many of them were controversial, they were not at that time formally adopted. The former tsarist tricolour dating from 1705 which had been used by the Provisional Government in 1917 and by the democratic movement during perestroika2 was used as the state flag, and the state emblem of imperial Russia was restored. A new anthem – Mikhail Glinka’s 1830s ‘patriotic song’, but without words – also appeared, introduced by presidential decree. However, all of these had a temporary feel to them owing to the fact that they were not formally adopted by the Duma and were vigorously opposed by the communists and, in the case of the emblem, by many liberals.3 This was rectified in December 2000, when the tricolour and the state emblem, the double-headed eagle with St George and the dragon on its breast (with minor changes – the shields denoting Muscovy’s victory over the former principalities were replaced by crowns symbolising the sovereignty of the Russian Federation and its republics),4 were both confirmed. Also that month the anthem composed by Aleksandr Aleksandrov that had been selected for the USSR in 1943 was formally adopted as the state anthem, but with new lyrics by the original author, Sergei Mikhalkov.5 Thus all three phases of twentieth-century 2 3

4 5

It was also used by anti-Bolshevik forces in the civil war and the anti-Soviet forces under Andrei Vlasov during the Second World War. In a 1997 Duma vote on state symbols, the Soviet anthem was supported by 57% of deputies, the Soviet emblem by 54% and the red banner by 53%, all well short of the two-thirds’ majority needed for the adoption of state symbols. See Kathleen E. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia. Politics and Memory During the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 161. They were introduced by presidential decree. V. N. Singaevskii, Voenno-gosudarstvennye simvoly Rossii (Moscow: Poligon, 2007), pp. 30, 36. For both the new and the old words, see Singaevskii, Voenno-gosudarstvennye simvoly, pp. 64–65.

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Russian history – tsarist, Provisional Government and Soviet – were represented in the formal symbolism of the regime. The Soviet period was also reflected in the symbolism of the armed forces; in 2002 the red star was restored as its emblem, while the red banner had already been adopted in 2000 as the official flag of the armed forces. In 2007 the ‘victory banner’ was approved. This reaffirmed the flag that was flown over the Reichstag in 1945 as the ‘victory banner’ after the State Duma had tried to remove the hammer and sickle from it. Putin overrode this decision to retain the Soviet symbol.6 In 1995 Yeltsin had permitted the red victory banner with a five-pointed star to hang with the tricolour on Victory Day (9 May), and in 1996 the military parade on Victory Day had featured the Reichstag flag.7 The hierarchical centre The creation of the Russian presidency in mid 1991 was from the outset an attempt to establish a centre of power that was dominant in the political system. Of course, this was not the way that all involved saw it. Initially the chief executive of the RSFSR was the chair of the Supreme Soviet, a position Yeltsin eventually won in a ballot in the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies in May 1990. This position was rooted in the legislature, with the chair appearing to have no independence from that body. Clearly dissatisfied with this situation, Yeltsin sought to create a political institution which would be independent of the legislature. This was not only because of the difficulties he had in maintaining a majority in that body, but also because he believed that such a post would best enable the government to meet the problems facing Russia, and that this would empower him in the struggle with Gorbachev that was going on at that time. Accordingly, he had a second question added to the referendum that Gorbachev was sponsoring on 17 March 1991: ‘Do you consider necessary the introduction of the post of president of the RSFSR, elected by universal suffrage?’ Some 70% of voters supported this,8 and on 12 June Yeltsin was elected to the post. The creation of a popularly elected presidency, and therefore one possessing a popular mandate, clearly established that post as independent from the legislature with its own powers and responsibilities; constitutional amendments had granted to this highest office in the land 6 7 8

Kommersant 5 May 2007. Smith, Mythmaking, p. 89. In the 2005 Victory Day celebration, period costumes with Soviet insignia had been worn by the marchers. Izvestiia 26 March 1991, cited in Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (London: Routledge, 2002, 3rd edn), p. 23.

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extensive (but not unfettered) powers.9 The office now had a popular legitimacy based on election which was the equal of that of the legislature, even if the circumstances of the Yeltsin–Putin, Putin–Medvedev and Medvedev–Putin successions in which in each case the former handpicked the latter and thereby at one level turned the presidency into something within the gift of the incumbent10 may have undercut this somewhat. Furthermore, it propelled the post into a symbolically prominent position in the state structure, with the president as the head not only of the executive branch but also of the country as a whole. In this way the president could be presented as personifying the country, and this is what Yeltsin sought to do. He argued that the unity of the country lay in the existence of a strong executive11 and, as the conflict with the legislature escalated during 1992 and 1993 and this came to be cast in terms of opposition by remnants of the Soviet past, Yeltsin presented the presidency as the symbol and guarantee of the future. By presenting the conflict in terms of his standing up to the ‘communist opposition’, Yeltsin was projecting the presidency as the personal representative of the people’s interests. This image was reinforced at the time of the 1996 presidential election when, once again, the contest was cast as one between the communist past and the bright future, with the former represented by Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) leader Gennadii Ziuganov and the latter by Yeltsin. The conflict of 1993, played out on the streets of Moscow and the television screens of the country at large, was not only the means of elevating the presidency over the legislature both symbolically and practically, but it also projected an image of a politics in which the people were distinctly second-tier actors. Certainly, the people were given responsibility for ruling a line under the conflict by voting in a new constitution, but the actual resolution of the differences between presidency and legislature was brought about through the exercise of armed force, not the popular will. The people were called upon to approve the 9

10

11

It was popularly seen in this way. In 2006, to the question of what ‘vlast’’ meant, 64% answered the president and 36% the government: Yurii Levada, ‘Obshchestvennoe mnenie v politicheskom zazerkal’e’, Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia. Dannye. Analiz. Diskussi 2(82), March–April 2006, p. 9. For the argument that Yeltsin actually instituted an ‘elected monarchy’, see Lilia Shevtsova, ‘From Yeltsin to Putin: The Evolution of Presidential Power’, Archie Brown and Lilia Shevtsova (eds.), Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin. Political Leadership in Russia’s Transition (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001), pp. 67–111. For example, see Rossiiskaia gazeta 8 April 1992. This argument carried some weight among the members of the legislature, because they granted Yeltsin special powers on two occasions – the Supreme Soviet in August 1991 and the Congress of People’s Deputies in November 1991 – to deal with the situation confronting Russia.

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terms of the resolution, not to bring about that resolution itself. The most serious constitutional crisis in the new state’s history was thus resolved neither by constitutional means nor by popular will, but through elite activity completely devoid of popular control. The principle of elite politics only very loosely articulated with popular control was thus established symbolically and in practice from early in the new regime’s life. When the new Constitution was adopted in December 1993, the responsibility of the president for the country and its welfare was clearly spelled out (Article 80). The president was to guarantee the Constitution, human and civil rights and freedoms, and the sovereignty, independence and state integrity of the Russian Federation, to ensure the coordinated functioning and collaboration of bodies of state power, to determine the basic guidelines of domestic and foreign policy, and to represent the country both internally and externally.12 This description of the responsibilities of the presidency clearly projected the holder of that office as the single most important figure in the state, and the principal guarantee of the state’s health and future. The constitutional provision that the president must deliver an annual state-of-the-nation address is a symbolic marker of the importance of this institution and its perceived role within the Russian polity. An attempt was made to give the presidency some grandeur and dignity to match this power by creating a new inauguration ceremony. The initial inauguration of Yeltsin on 10 July 1991 was a low-key affair. He took the presidential oath in the Congress of People’s Deputies, after which the Russian anthem was played and the flag of the RSFSR was raised beside the flag of the USSR above the president’s residence in the Senate Building in the Kremlin. With the installation of a new presidency separate from the legislature, and the disappearance of the USSR, this ceremony was no longer appropriate. Nor was it sufficiently grand. In recognition of the new office, a new presidential standard (or flag) and emblem were created, while on 20 March 1993 the so-called Kremlin Regiment was renamed the Presidential Regiment.13 These became important elements in the inauguration ceremony.

12

13

Much of this was encapsulated in the oath of office introduced by the Constitution: ‘In exercising the powers of president of the Russian Federation I swear to respect and protect human and civil rights and freedoms, to observe and defend the Constitution of the Russian Federation, to defend the state’s sovereignty and independence and its security and integrity, and faithfully to serve the people.’ The regiment had been based in the Kremlin since 1935, undergoing a variety of name changes during its life. From 1935 it provided the guards not only for the Kremlin but also for Lenin’s tomb, a responsibility it lost in October 1993. From 6 July 1976, the regiment’s first company was responsible for protocol events. In accord with the law of

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The inauguration ceremony soon adopted a standard format, although it did not become fully developed until the first Putin inauguration in 2000; the 1996 Yeltsin inauguration ceremony was truncated because of his illness.14 In its fully developed form, the ceremony was basically the same for all three of the Putin inaugurations (as of 2012) as well as that of Medvedev. The ceremony was held in St Andrew’s Hall in the Great Kremlin Palace before a gathering of specially invited guests, including members of the Federal Assembly, government, federal agencies and Constitutional Court, leading social and political figures,15 and foreign dignitaries and ambassadors. They were gathered along a red carpet that led from the entrance to the podium. The ceremony opened with the entry of some of the presidential guard in stylised uniforms carrying the state flag, the presidential standard, a special copy of the Constitution and the presidential emblem. They were followed by the chair of the Constitutional Court, prime minister, heads of the two houses of the Federal Assembly, head of the Central Election Commission and the patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia. As the state hymn sounded, the president-elect entered and walked along the carpet to the podium. Upon taking his position at the podium, the president-elect then heard the chair of the Central Election Commission formally declare the results of the election. The chair of the Constitutional Court administered the oath of office to the president-elect, who had his right hand resting on the Constitution. At this point, the chair of the Constitutional Court formally declared him president. In 2000 and 2008 the former president gave a short speech and handed the presidential emblem to the new president, who then addressed the gathered dignitaries. The new president, accompanied by the former president, then went out to Cathedral Square. A thirty-gun salute was performed, and the president then greeted and watched the Presidential Regiment as they marched past. This was followed by a special service conducted by the patriarch in the Cathedral of the Annunciation to bless the new president. Upon the declaration of the new president, the presidential flag was raised over the presidential residence in the Kremlin.16 The increased gravitas of the 2000, 2004, 2008 and

14 15

16

8 December 1997, ‘On Immortalising the Soviet People’s Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945’, the Presidential Regiment provides the guard of honour at the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There was also a Kremlin Orchestra, two presidential yachts and Kremlin chinaware. See Timothy J. Colton, Yeltsin. A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. 281. Izvestiia 10 June 1996. In 1996 the last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had not been invited, but in 2000 he was not only invited but even mentioned positively by Putin in the speech he gave at the reception following the inauguration: Nezavisimaia gazeta 11 May 2000. For some reports, see Izvestiia 12 May 2000 and 12 May 2004.

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2012 ceremonies compared with earlier was strengthened by the way in which the ceremony took place around the time of Victory Day, thereby symbolically linking the new president with victory in the war. A number of aspects of this ceremony are interesting. Elements of pre-Soviet Russian history are evident. The wearing by the Presidential Regiment of uniforms modelled on those of the nineteenth century harks back to Russian precedent, while the role of the Church in blessing the rule of the new incumbent and praying for the welfare of Russia under his rule also evoked tsarist practice. However, the basis of the president’s authority was clearly shown to be civic in nature by the fact that the oath was sworn on the Constitution, not the Bible, and was administered by the chair of the Constitutional Court. The power of the office was also accentuated by the president-elect’s entry. While not matching the symbolism of the way in which Napoleon placed the imperial throne on his own head (implying that he owed his position to nobody), the practice begun in 2000 of the president-elect entering the hall at the far doors and walking the length of the red carpet accentuated the individuality and separateness of the office; he was not a part of another institution, but an institution in himself. This was also implied in the relationship between president and Presidential Regiment, which appeared to owe allegiance to the president personally. But another aspect of this, at least in 2000, was interesting. The president-elect greeted the commandant of the Kremlin before entering the Great Kremlin Palace, and after the ceremony he greeted the regiment in Cathedral Square. On both occasions, both Putin and the soldiers used the Soviet form of address, ‘comrade’.17 The power vested in the presidency was also reflected in the primacy this office had over the prime minister and the government. These two offices were separated for most of this period; they were effectively combined under Yeltsin from November 1991 until June 1992 when he formally took on the post of prime minister although Yegor Gaidar in practice carried out most of its functions, and from January until May 2000 when Yeltsin’s resignation had meant that constitutionally the prime minister (Putin) became acting president. Although the government, and therefore the prime minister, could be subject to motions of no confidence in the Duma, they in practice reported to the president and he had the power to hire and fire all ministers (although the Duma also had the right to approve nomination of the prime minister); the government had to resign following a presidential election. Presidential power was also symbolically represented by the growth of the presidential apparatus. The development of this political machine, and the 17

See the report in www.kremlin.ru/eng/print/inaugur_2000.shtml.

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accretion by it of significant power, especially in Putin’s first term when there was significant attention devoted to the idea of strengthening the so-called power vertical, was a clear affirmation of the importance of the presidency. The symbolic dominance of the presidency was established not just practically but in the public mind by the result of the conflict in 1993. The confrontation between Yeltsin and the legislature had rumbled on through much of 1992 and 1993, but its dramatic resolution in October 1993, with Yeltsin’s mobilisation of military force against the legislature and the effective ratification of this in the election and constitutional referendum in December of that year, unambiguously presented Yeltsin as the victor. In the dispute between president and parliament, the president had prevailed and was widely seen as writing that dominance into statute through the introduction of a Constitution that seemed to vest his office with immense powers.18 It did not matter that his victory had actually been won through unconstitutional means. What was important was that, in this test of strength, the presidency seemed to have proved to be the strongest political actor in the land. This dominance seemed to many to be accentuated by the way in which President Yeltsin relied heavily on presidential decrees to enact his programme rather than legislation passed through the Federal Assembly. This portrayed the president as an activist leader, pushing through his measures even if they were opposed by his critics in the legislature. He could be presented as the strong, dynamic policy-maker, dedicated to the welfare of Russia and using all the powers of his office to press his policies. It did not matter that his reliance upon decrees was actually a weakness rather than a strength, that it showed his inability to work through the legislature to get his way and thereby forced him to rely overwhelmingly upon his own apparatus rather than the political structure more generally. Thus, while Yeltsin’s use of decrees projected him as an activist leader, in fact it underlined his weakness. In contrast, Vladimir Putin relied much less heavily on use of the presidential decree-making power, preferring to work through the legislature to get his programme implemented. This did not harm his image as a strong leader. There was also an attempt to invest the presidency with a sense of power and awe through the sort of relationship that was depicted between president and people. The literature on charismatic rule, in which the followers submerge their independent power of judgement 18

On ‘superpresidentialism’, see M. Steven Fish, Democracy Derailed in Russia. The Failure of Open Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch. 7.

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into that of the leader and follow wherever he/she leads,19 emphasises the sense of distance between leader and followers. While the leader is meant to be in tune with the values and views of the followers, that leader is always presented as somewhat remote from, even mysterious to, the followers. Rather than mixing with them on a day-to-day basis, the leader remains apart, with that distance increasing the sense of veneration and commitment on the part of the followers. But that remoteness cannot cut the leader off from the followers; the former must remain psychologically at one with the followers. It is this tension between remoteness and intimacy which is at the heart of the charismatic relationship, and it is this sort of balance which those around the Russian president tried to recreate. The remoteness was not difficult to construct, although in the case of Yeltsin they had to overcome the populism that had been so much a part of his political style (see below). From 1992 there was a sharp scaling back of those occasions on which he would mix with ordinary people; the walk-abouts, the riding on public transport, the appeals to direct action were all eschewed in favour of a more dignified image, except during election campaigns when the populism was revived. The president was shown conducting the business of state – his meetings with the head of government were frequently lead items in the television news – both at home and abroad. He was shown meeting foreign dignitaries, including the most powerful political leaders on earth and mixing with the sorts of people that ordinary Russians could never hope to meet. The image was clearly one of the president active in circles far removed from those of ordinary citizens. While he scaled the heights of the social hierarchy, his citizens remained rooted in the depths. This sort of image of social distance invested the presidency with some sense of the remoteness required for charismatic authority. In the case of Yeltsin, the attempt to construct a sense of his being in tune with the populace was to emphasise his very ordinary roots. Yeltsin was presented as the local boy made good, someone who had battled the communist machine and emerged victorious; this was an attempt to create a sense of intimacy through empathy. This relates directly to the image of each of the presidents personally, something which inevitably lapped over onto the image of the institution. From the outset of his period as president, Boris Yeltsin was a heroic figure. The origins of this image lay in his own political trajectory during 19

On charisma, see Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich), vol. I, pp. 241–255.

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the Soviet period and comprised two related elements, his record of success against seemingly overwhelming odds and his populism. Both elements involved a partial reading of the historical record, but both were also undeniably rooted in particular actions undertaken by Yeltsin. The former, his record of success against seemingly overwhelming odds, gained most sustenance from his political career between 1989 and 1991. Following his sacking from candidate membership of the Politburo and his post as first secretary of the Moscow gorkom (city party committee) of the CPSU at the end of 1987, Yeltsin’s political career seemed at an end. However, Gorbachev gave him the means of reviving it. Instead of expelling him from Moscow to some forlorn outpost of the Soviet administrative structure, Gorbachev gave him a job which enabled him to remain in Moscow and gave him significant free time and, when Yeltsin decided to re-enter politics in early 1989, Gorbachev not only did not prevent him from doing so,20 but actually created the means through which he was able to achieve this. It was Gorbachev who had been instrumental in creating a new legislative framework for the USSR (the two-tier Congress of People’s Deputies and Supreme Soviet) elected by popular ballot in semi-free, semi-competitive elections. Choosing to run in a central Moscow constituency rather than his home in the Urals where success would have seemed to be more assured, Yeltsin pulled off a stunning electoral win, easily beating the lacklustre candidate widely seen as a representative of the Communist Party apparatus. Yeltsin’s election victory immediately cast him as a sort of David against the Goliath that was the communist nomenklatura, the fighter for his principles against the machine of officials who had been running the country. Yeltsin enhanced this image by, at almost every opportunity, seeking to portray himself in just this light. By expanding the sorts of criticisms that he had been making since 1986 about the privileges enjoyed by communist officials into a more extensive critique of the system as a whole, Yeltsin strengthened this image of his principled struggle against unscrupulous communist officialdom. He began to appear as the chief opponent of the communist system, standing up to it despite its attempts to bring him down. This was an image that was only enhanced by perceived instances of ‘kompromat’, the use of (often fictional) materials by his opponents to show him in a bad light; the exaggerated and false reporting regarding his visit to the USA in September 1989 and in the same month the reports of his late-night arrival at a police station drenched and claiming that he had been forced 20

Certainly Gorbachev placed obstacles in his path, but these were not such as to prevent Yeltsin from overcoming them and making a successful comeback.

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to swim in the Moscow River in order to escape from thugs were two instances of this.21 Regardless of the true circumstances surrounding these (the reports of Yeltsin’s misbehaviour in the USA were clearly fabricated while the circumstances surrounding his swim remain unclear), for many they just showed that the authorities were willing to do almost anything to remove this critic from the political scene. This image of the victor was also reinforced by his success in the election for the Russian presidency in June 1991. The image of succeeding despite the concerted opposition of the authorities was enhanced substantially by his actions in August 1991. With the president of the USSR (Gorbachev) under house arrest in Crimea and power publicly claimed by a group of leading party and state officials who had formed the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP), Yeltsin took charge of the opposition to this coup, and he did so in a very public manner. He went to the White House, the location of the Russian legislature, from where he publicly rallied popular opposition to the coup. The most striking image of this was when he stood atop a tank on 19 August and delivered a rallying call to the Russian people before the backdrop of the Russian flag and a slumped soldier with his face in his hands. Here was Yeltsin standing up not only to those who were his recognised enemies, the representatives of party rule, but also to those who were threatening to take the country back to the worst reaches of its Soviet past. Yeltsin’s personal struggle against his entrenched foes was thereby merged with the fate of Russian statehood, and his personal role thereby elevated. His personal humiliation of Gorbachev in a session of the Russian Supreme Soviet, when he forced Gorbachev to admit that he had promoted and trusted those who had mounted the coup, seemed to set the seal on Yeltsin’s struggle with and victory over this formidable foe. The disbanding of the USSR, and Yeltsin’s role in this as the president of Russia, was the ultimate victory. Yeltsin’s heroic profile, and his image of victory over significant odds, was thus grounded in his political comeback from disgrace to the highest office in the land. But Yeltsin’s image was also shaped by his populism. Yeltsin’s populist political style was reflected from his earliest period in political life, but became increasingly important as he moved into positions of leadership in the Communist Party.22 While rising through the 21

22

For discussion of both issues, see Colton, Yeltsin, pp. 174–176. On reporting of the US visit, see Leon Aron, Yeltsin. A Revolutionary Life (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 341–350. For Yeltsin’s own discussion of his early political life, see Boris Yeltsin, Ispoved’ na zadannuiu temu (Moscow: PIK, 1990), pp. 11–39; and the discussion in Colton, Yeltsin, chs. 3–4.

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ranks in Sverdlovsk to become obkom (regional committee of the Communist Party) first secretary in November 1976 and during his tenure of that post until called to Moscow in April 1985, Yeltsin frequently sought to make direct, personal contact with the people, in stark contrast to most leading party officials who preferred to remain in their offices rather than mix with the mass of the populace.23 He did this by going out into the streets and factories to meet the people face to face in the ordinary course of their lives, rather than just at special events that the party leader was expected to attend, by riding on public transport and seeking people’s opinions of the service, by attending public meetings in which not all aspects were tightly scripted beforehand, and by talking directly to his ‘constituents’ through televised addresses, something that obkom leaders never did at that time.24 When he moved to Moscow as gorkom first secretary, Yeltsin took this modus operandi with him. While this sort of political style was unsettling to many of his leadership colleagues, it struck a positive resonance within the populace, as demonstrated by the public outpouring of support for him on his sacking at the end of 1987.25 It was this direct, personal appeal to the populace that Yeltsin was again to use in the 1989 election campaign, in his activities as a member of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies and Supreme Soviet, and in his rallying of opposition against the 1991 coup. But his populism lay not just in his use of direct personal appeals to the populace, including mixing with them personally, but in the message he was projecting. While playing the part of the oppositionist politician, Yeltsin’s message was consistently one which counterposed the needs and interests of the people with the privileges and activities of Soviet officialdom. This was the classic populist appeal: the people and their welfare were being sacrificed by uncaring officials who sought only to feather their own nests and to suppress those who questioned their actions. Yeltsin appeared as the personification of the people and their interests, in vigorous combat with those who sought to deny the people what was rightly theirs. Both the message and the mode of pressing it clearly presented Yeltsin as a populist politician of the first rank, and as very unusual within the Soviet context. 23

24 25

This was a criticism Gorbachev made of party officials in April 1985: M. S. Gorbachev, ‘O sozyve ocherednego XXVII s’ezda KPSS i zadachakh sviazannykh s ego podgotovkoi i provedeniem’, Pravda 24 April 1985. See also the discussion in Graeme Gill, The Collapse of a Single-Party System. The Disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 22–24. On public meetings and television addresses, see Colton, Yeltsin, pp. 101–103. On this, see Colton, Yeltsin, pp. 153, 159. For Yeltsin’s comments, see Yeltsin, Ispoved’, pp. 166–167.

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The populism, and in particular its origins in his opposition to the party, made Yeltsin appear as the people’s hero, an image that was transformed into that of the father of the nation with the collapse of the USSR and emergence of an independent Russia. This was a significant change in image, although at the time it may not have appeared so. But now, rather than being the rollicking politician who did not really have to answer for the positions he took, his place as head of state meant that responsibility for the people and their welfare now lay with him. He tried to maintain the heroic image of struggling against significant odds. His emphasis upon the malign Soviet legacy noted in Chapter 3 and his championing of radical economic reform against the supposed opposition of all of those placeholders who remained in office from Soviet times were an attempt to maintain the heroism of his opposition days. But this was not successful. Despite the waves of anti-communist rhetoric and the ratcheting up of the anti-communist message at election times, despite the best efforts of the KPRF to project itself as the leader of a mass movement seeking change against Yeltsin, and despite the difficulties that Yeltsin had with the legislature both in 1992–3 and later, the argument that the president was struggling against overwhelming odds carried little weight. Especially after the enhancement of his power in October–December 1993, Yeltsin could not realistically present himself as the underdog in a struggle for the future. In this sense, a major plank of his heroic image disappeared once he had achieved supreme power. But also important in this was the change in the mode of his political activity. While he continued to affirm that he was acting in the interests of the people, a claim many questioned given the short-term consequences of his initial economic reforms, he ceased to act like a populist politician and instead sought the gravitas that went with the person of the father of the nation. In the general course of life he adopted the reserve and distant persona that accompanied the office of president noted above, seeking to project the dignity of the state much more than the responsiveness of the politician and thereby foregoing the sorts of ordinary personal contacts which had done so much to sustain him in the last years of Soviet rule. This choice of modus operandi may have been influenced by his health, which was a continuing cause for concern and on a number of occasions forced him to abandon his official duties for rest or medical attention. But whatever the reason, throughout most of his two terms Yeltsin clearly eschewed populism in favour of the dignity of state office.26 26

For the view that Yeltsin saw his leadership of his associates, and perhaps more generally, in terms of pater familias or, the term he uses, ‘patriarch’, see George W. Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders (Cambridge University Press, 2002), ch. 8.

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The exception to this was during the 1996 presidential election campaign. Concerned by communist success in the 1995 campaign for the State Duma, those around Yeltsin encouraged him to revert to the populist style of campaigning which had served him so well in 1989 and 1990.27 This he did, speaking at a gruelling programme of public meetings and engagements, including dancing to rock’n’roll at televised concerts. In the classic populist strategy, Yeltsin also made promises to electors to fix their immediate (often personal) problems, including giving significant amounts of money to struggling factories and farms that he visited; in the months from the beginning of 1996 until election day, Yeltsin signed some eighty decrees doling out largesse to different parts of the electorate.28 There were also reports of public enthusiasm for him; for example, during a visit to Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk, where he had been obkom secretary in the first half of the 1980s), it was reported that Yeltsin had his hand kissed by a little old lady who kept bowing down before him and then escorted him to his car, singing ‘Our Father’.29 Television advertisements were broadcast showing ordinary people vouching for Yeltsin, while the hectic pace he kept up before the first round of voting and his direct interchanges with ordinary people filled the newswaves. Yeltsin the populist was back with a vengeance and, even though this performance was not repeated prior to the second round of voting because he was ill, he won the election easily. Once back in office, this populism was once again rejected in favour of the dignity of office (his deteriorating health during the second term was important here), although he did try to retain some common touch through the use of weekly radio addresses from his return to work after illness in 1997 until mid 1998. Although Yeltsin eschewed populism, the image that he projected of the relationship he possessed with the populace was distinctly plebiscitarian.30 Despite the increased formality that came to surround the office and the fact that, in practice, Yeltsin was largely cut off from the ordinary people, the view he had of his relationship with them and that he sought to project was that he was their incarnation. He represented their will and their interest, and he possessed unique insight into what 27 28

29 30

On this, see Colton, Yeltsin, pp. 366–370. The figures are based on Colton, Yeltsin, pp. 366–367. For discussion of this process by insiders, see Yu. M. Baturin et al., Epokha Yeltsina. Ocherki politicheskoi istorii (Moscow: Vagrius, 2001), p. 569. See also Daniel Treisman, ‘Why Yeltsin Won’, Foreign Affairs 75, September–October 1996, p. 67. See Colton, Yeltsin, p. 369, for a report from the time of Yeltsin responding directly to complaints by promising money or services. Moskovskii komsomolets 16 February 1996. This is the term used by George Breslauer: Breslauer, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, p. 146.

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they thought. Although this sort of conception was hard to maintain in the light of the low opinion-poll findings about popular belief in him, his willingness to go over the heads of other institutions and appeal directly to the populace reflects just such an image. The two bases for the pre-1991 heroic image were much less in evidence after 1991 – the struggle against all odds and political populism – but the father-of-the-nation image remained a continuing theme. However, this was not done primarily through emphasis upon either the collapse of the USSR or the inauguration of the new Constitution in 1993, probably because these could be seen as twoedged swords; the widespread popular sentiment expressing regret for the demise of the USSR and the bloody circumstances that opened the way for the adoption of the new Constitution could both have redounded on Yeltsin with negative effect. Indeed, for many, these were the essential elements of the view of Yeltsin as much more the destroyer than the builder. Rather, there was an emphasis upon the link between the president and a future which would escape the trials of the past. Whenever Yeltsin was under political pressure, especially during his first term and in the course of election campaigns, he and his office always emphasised the communist nature of his opponents. Here Yeltsin was not only trying to tar his opponents with the brush of representing the past, with all of the suffering that he was careful to note accompanied it, but also to appeal to the image of the father of the nation guiding his people into the bright new future. His consistent and vigorous anti-communist stance31 was always associated with the promise of the bright future. He personified the choice Russians were called upon to make: back to the Soviet past, or forward to the better future. In this sense, what Yeltsin represented was the choice to be made, the choice about the country’s future which, if left in the president’s hands, would lead to a much better outcome than the Soviet past from which they had come. The father of the nation was therefore central not only in the creation of the independent Russian state, but also in its achievement of the bright new future which, the president promised, was embodied in his reforms. He projected himself as the symbol of positive change, of the rejection of the past and adoption of the bright new future.

31

Although it is important to recognise the limits of this. For example, Yeltsin at no time supported retribution against those who held office during communist times, limits were placed on the disclosure of crimes committed by living people, and there was no lustration law. He did, of course, support the prosecution of the party through the courts, although the outcome of this was nugatory.

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Although Yeltsin could adopt the garb of a hero leading his country into the future32 (although explicitly not any ‘promised land’; this sort of argument had, for Yeltsin, been discredited by the communist experience), his figure was clearly a flawed one. His at times erratic behaviour often became public knowledge; his taking the baton and conducting the military band and singing at the ceremony for the withdrawal of Russian forces from Germany in August 1994 and his failure to come off the aeroplane when it landed at Shannon Airport while the Irish prime minister waited on the tarmac to greet him in September 1994 are two examples of this.33 His malapropisms and slips of the tongue were also highlighted by the Russian press which, perhaps because of its newfound freedom, were hypercritical of anything they deemed to be deficient among the country’s leaders.34 He was also a figure of fun in the television puppet show Kukly shown on NTV. Furthermore, his drinking was a problem during the first term (it seems to have been cut back considerably during his second term), with television reports showing him seemingly under the effects of alcohol while performing some state functions.35 The prevalence of this in the presence of foreign leaders helped to call into question in the minds of many the dignity of the office that Yeltsin had tried to build up. Another factor that affected the public image of Yeltsin was his health. Perhaps sensitised to the problems posed by ill leaders in the late Soviet experience, Russian society was only too aware that its president was not in robust health despite the attempts to suggest otherwise. The issue of his health had arisen as early as 1987, but it did not become a matter of major concern until his second term. After his 1996 election victory, Yeltsin had to enter hospital for heart surgery. His whole second term was plagued by health concerns, and it also opened the way for members of his entourage (colloquially called ‘the family’) to exercise significant influence at the apex of the state,36 and in so doing to diminish the post of president both practically and in 32

33

34 35 36

It is this aspect of his role that has led some to see him as a ‘transformational’ rather than a ‘transactional’ leader. On this, see Alex Pravda, ‘Introduction: Putin in Perspective’, and George W. Breslauer, ‘Regimes of Political Consolidation: The Putin Presidency in Soviet and Post-Soviet Perspective’, Alex Pravda (ed.), Leading Russia. Putin in Perspective. Essays in Honour of Archie Brown (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 23–36 and 37–58. See respectively, Moskovskie novosti 36, 4–11 September 1994, and Moskovskii komsomolets 4 October 1994. On his erratic behaviour while visiting Novgorod in 1998, see Obshchaia gazeta 33, 20–26 August 1998. See Colton, Yeltsin, p. 381. For a report about discussions of this in the Supreme Soviet, see Nezavisimaia gazeta 16 May 1992. For one insider description, see Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris Yeltsin. Ot rassveta do zakata (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997).

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people’s eyes. While his illness clearly disrupted the functioning of government at various times, the system was strong enough to cope. However, his image was affected. The ‘heroic president’ guiding the country into a bright future clearly had feet of clay when people took into account the history of health and alcohol problems, and most Russians (51%) were ‘satisfied/pleased’ when he stepped down;37 ten months after he left office, Yeltsin was thought to have played a positive role in Russian history by only 19% of respondents, while 67% believed he had played a negative role.38 When Yeltsin died, he was accorded a state funeral, including a lying-in-state in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery, with a hideous, offcolour replica of the Russian flag as a monument over his tomb.39 No other monument seems to have been erected in honour of Yeltsin until a statue was unveiled by President Medvedev on the eightieth anniversary of Yeltsin’s birth (1 February 2011) in front of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Centre in Yekaterinburg. His successor had none of the issues which bedevilled Yeltsin as president. Little was popularly known of Vladimir Putin before his appointment as prime minister and designation as Yeltsin’s successor in August 1999.40 The image of him developed through his prime ministership and, following Yeltsin’s resignation on 31 December 1999, his period as acting president until confirmed in office by the March 2000 election. His earlier career had lacked both the public drama and profile of Yeltsin and, although there may have been some public recognition of him in St Petersburg from his time working in the administration of Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, at the national level he was largely an unknown quantity. However, between August 1999 and March 2000 that changed, with a positive campaign by the Kremlin to shape his image. There were a number of elements to this emergent image of Putin. The first element was that he was not Yeltsin, and was, in a physical sense, almost his complete opposite. Much shorter and less heavily set than Yeltsin, without the latter’s shock of white (often uncontrolled) hair, with a speaking style from urban Russia and less resonant of rural origins, and nattily dressed in well-cut suits, Putin seemed the antithesis of his predecessor. But, more importantly, where Yeltsin appeared tired and sick, Putin seemed the epitome of good health and vigour, an 37 38 39 40

VTsIOM 12 January 2000. 25 October 2000, bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/ed002729. See Moscow News 24 April 2008. For Yeltsin’s recommendation, see Kommersant 10 August 1999.

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exponent of judo and an active life style. The fear that Yeltsin’s failing health, or perhaps the return of his drinking problem, would pose a continuing threat to the president’s ability not simply to provide decisive leadership but even to conduct the basic affairs of state seemed to be assuaged with Putin. He showed no evidence of health problems and the air of almost asceticism which surrounded him seemed to deny the likelihood of a drinking problem. He represented a clear change in generations. This was compounded by the decisive leadership style Putin adopted both as prime minister and as acting president. Eschewing the sort of subordinate role that seemed to go with the position of prime minister, and taking advantage of Yeltsin’s evident partial withdrawal from public life, Putin was an activist prime minister. And when he became acting president, he clearly did not see himself as simply a seat-warmer, doing the minimum necessary to keep things ticking over until he (or someone else) was confirmed in office. He was aided in this by the emergence of an opportunity to exercise such decisive leadership. In August and September 1999, Chechen insurgents made armed incursions into neighbouring Daghestan. Also in September, bomb blasts destroyed apartment buildings and killed a number of people in three different parts of Russia.41 Although the identity of the perpetrators of these explosions remained unclear, Putin linked these events and claimed that Russia was under attack from terrorists based in Chechnya and that a decisive response was needed. Accordingly, he launched the second Chechen war, to widespread public approval, especially as in its initial stages the military operation went well. Importantly, Putin had personally taken charge of this opportunity and moulded it to suit a new image: with Russia being attacked, the country needed to be led by someone who was willing and able to make the hard decisions necessary to defend it, and Putin was that man. The resort to forceful means fed into another aspect of the emergent image of Putin, his security background. Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Putin had worked as an official of the Soviet security service, the KGB, including in East Germany. Thus, although he had worked for the Soviet security apparatus, he was not directly associated in people’s minds with its domestic operations but with defending the 41

Bombs in Buinaksk in Daghestan on 4 September killed 62 people, in Moscow (Gurianov Street) on 9 September 100 people and on 13 September (Kashirskoe Highway) 124 people, and in Volgodonsk on 15 September 19: Richard Sakwa, Putin. Russia’s Choice (London: Routledge, 2008, 2nd edn), p. 21. There was also an apparent aborted attempt to explode a bomb in an apartment building in Riazan, although the circumstances surrounding this remain unclear.

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Motherland. Under Yeltsin there had been an attempt to downgrade this agency (even if Yeltsin’s last three prime ministers – Yevgenii Primakov, Sergei Stepashin and Putin – had all spent some time in the security apparatus, although Stepashin’s time and most of that of Primakov were in the post-Soviet era), but, even if this had been particularly unpopular among the liberal intelligentsia, it is not clear that the image of the KGB among the populace was as universally negative. For many, it had been fighting the good fight to protect the USSR from hostile forces abroad, and there was a view that, of all the late-Soviet institutions, it was the least corrupt. In any event, from the turn of the millennium, a campaign unrolled to refurbish the image of the security services. This intersected with the emergent image of Putin, the two reinforcing one another and giving institutional confirmation to the hard edge that Putin was perceived to possess. This image was further buttressed by the way Putin handled himself at the time of the bombings and the revival of the conflict in Chechnya. Putin came across not only as a decisive, no-nonsense leader, unwilling to put up with these atrocities, but he also sought to present himself as at one with the people. His use of street argot and underworld jargon to express himself in relation to the bombers and what he would do to them reinforced his image as a man of action, someone more concerned with getting the job done in a practical sense than theorising about it endlessly. Furthermore, by using such language, he was presenting himself as a man of the people, as someone who did not put on airs or get seduced by office. He was the former security officer who neither stood on ceremony nor was overly concerned about the niceties of any particular situation, especially if it got in the way of doing what had to be done. And he knew what had to be done because he was in tune with the people and their visceral concerns. This image of Putin as leading Russia in defence of itself also had another aspect, that of foreign policy. Under Yeltsin there had been a view that Russia had not stood up for its own interests in the international sphere. There was widespread suspicion that the West was seeking to exploit Russia’s weakness to take advantage of it and, if not effectively control it, then at least place the country at a continuing disadvantage. At its most extreme this was reflected in the belief that economic reform had been foisted on Russia to weaken it, but even those who did not accept such views were aware of the advance of NATO to Russia’s borders and the perceived unilateralism with which the USA pursued an activist foreign policy. In the face of such developments, Yeltsin was seen by many to have let Russia down and not to have been sufficiently vigorous in defending its interests. Putin was seen as the man

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who could restore power and dignity to Russia. He could translate his firmness of action domestically into the international arena and make Russia a great power once more. He soon made it clear that he would accept neither a subservient stance nor an empty aggressive attitude to the West, but rather would firmly and vigorously pursue Russia’s national interests. He promised to give Russians a sense of pride in their country again, to make them feel that they were the citizens of a major power who had to bend their knee to no one. And the source of this was the conviction that he was a man of action, both willing and able to defend Russia’s interests and restore its rightful glory. A further element of the emergent image of Putin was related to his asceticism, the view that he was uncorrupted. Throughout the 1990s there was a pervading sense of the ubiquity of corruption throughout Russia. This was not only fuelled by ordinary people’s experiences of having to give bribes to get some basic government services and by newspaper reports about the levels of corruption in both business and public life, but also by rumours about corruption at the highest levels.42 This seemed to be given substance with the corruption scandal which broke out in early 1999 in which it was claimed that Yeltsin and his family had received bribes from a Swiss construction company, Mabatex. Although nothing was ever proved, this reinforced the view that corruption reached the top of the system, a belief that was hardly assuaged by Putin’s first act as acting president, that of granting immunity to Yeltsin and his family on stepping down from office. Within this context, Putin was seen as a refreshing change not tainted by the stench of corruption. There were no rumours surrounding him at the time suggesting that he had been engaged in corrupt or illegal activities, while his service in the KGB and the reputation for incorruptibility that organisation had probably reinforced this view. In any event, he seemed to be a beacon of virtue compared with many of those around him.43 Once Putin had been confirmed in office in March 2000, his image underwent little significant change. The principal elements that had emerged while he was prime minister and acting president were reaffirmed during his years as president. But the circumstances were different, and so too was the task Putin faced. If Yeltsin represented the choice Russians made to leave communism behind and build a new future, then Putin was the steady-as-she-goes leader, the person to 42 43

For some details about publicly aired cases, see Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (London: Routledge, 2008, 4th edn), pp. 83–84. Although rumours later circulated about the way in which Putin had accumulated significant wealth during his first two terms as president.

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consolidate and strengthen the gains.44 He was not a leader of change and dramatic reform, of setting a new course for society and rejecting the past. He was a leader for consolidation and strengthening, for stability and steadiness. Rather than upheaval and dislocation, he promised a course of steady and measured development.45 This does not mean that he was not seen to represent the future of society; it is just that that future was cast in terms more mundane than heroic. Thus, while Yeltsin was seen as much about destruction of the old as construction of the new, Putin was about the consolidation and extension of what had been achieved. And as someone who had not publicly and ostentatiously rejected his communist past in the way Yeltsin had done, the consolidation he was involved in also included an element of the conservation of that past. Putin always appeared ‘in control’. During his presidency there was never any doubt about whether he was the person actually running the country, despite some initial suggestions that he might prove to be simply the instrument of those who had been around Yeltsin. He was the strong leader, able to impose his will on society without too much opposition. This image was enhanced by the way in which his appointment of key aides saw many people with careers in the security apparatus, the so-called siloviki, move into responsible positions throughout the political structure. While many of the views of and fears about the siloviki have been exaggerated,46 the movement of these people into high positions was widely interpreted as a strengthening of Putin’s power and position. But with this view of Putin being powerfully in control was also associated an appearance of quiet confidence and competence. Whereas people looked back at key moments in the Yeltsin years and saw a political leader under pressure, whose decisions may not have appeared well thought-through and whose judgement might have been called into question (e.g. the initial economic reform measures, the 1993 clash with the legislature, the late 1990s chopping and changing of prime ministers), with Putin there seemed to be none of this uncertainty. Even when mistakes were made (e.g. the handling of the sinking of the Kursk in August 2000, the Dubrovka/Nord-Ost siege of 2002, and the 44 45 46

For the description of him as a ‘consolidator’, see Pravda, ‘Introduction’, p. 26, and Breslauer, ‘Regimes’, pp. 48–51. This is clearly the image he projected in his election campaign. For example, see his open letter to voters in Izvestiia 25 February 2000. For discussion of this, see Olga Kryshtanovskaia and Stephen White, ‘Putin’s Militocracy’, Post-Soviet Affairs 19, 4, 2003, pp. 289–306, and Bettina Renz, ‘Putin’s Militocracy? An Alternative Interpretation of Siloviki in Contemporary Russian Politics’, Europe-Asia Studies 58, 6, 2006, pp. 903–924.

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bloody outcome of the Beslan school children hostage drama of September 2004), these did not eat away at the aura of quiet competence that surrounded the president. This image was in tune with the task as Putin outlined it: no more upheavals, but the building of a normal, modern society. This image was considerably reinforced by the way in which the economy boomed during most of Putin’s period as president, which meant that many people were materially much better off than they had been under Yeltsin, and there was a sense that the country was becoming in some sense ‘normal’. In another contrast, if Yeltsin was the ‘father’ of the country, Putin was its ‘protector’. A powerful part of Putin’s image was the picture of him as defending Russia against threats from both without and within. The most obvious instances of this have already been noted: his action against so-called terrorist attacks, and his standing up to the West in Russia’s national interests. In both cases, Putin personified the Russian state standing up to those who challenged it. No longer a weak state, crippled by internal economic difficulties and political division, Russia under Putin appeared to be strong, assertive and unwilling to be pushed around, and this was precisely the image that the president projected personally. He was the steel in Russia’s spine; his determination and the control he was able to exercise were fundamental for the safeguarding of the state and Russia’s interests. He personified the state and the beginning of the restoration of its greatness. In this guise, Putin’s aloofness was a benefit. Just as the state was something not to be trifled with, so the president was someone with whom the people could not closely associate. This does not mean that Putin stayed locked away in the Kremlin, never venturing into society to meet the common man. He did attend some public meetings, including of the youth group set up to support him, Nashi (see below), and even ventured into the crowded Red Square to take in some of the Paul McCartney concert in May 2003. He held prolonged press conferences and “open-line” question-and-answer sessions with the public when he answered people’s questions directly,47 occasionally seeking the common touch by swearing in his responses, and sometimes he ventured into the streets or work places and engaged citizens directly. However, these were not everyday events, and they had none of the glad-handing that characterised Yeltsin at his most populist. Furthermore, in the 2004 47

Large press conferences were held annually during his second term – December 2004, January 2006, February 2007 and February 2008, while he answered people’s questions via the so-called direct lines (i.e. by phone-in television or the internet) each year between 2001 and 2011 except for 2004. For quantitative data on these, see Stephen White, Understanding Russian Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 244.

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election he even eschewed campaigning, claiming that people already knew what he stood for. Instead, he tried to look presidential and above the political fray, projecting an image of the state leader who had only the interests of the state at heart and was too busy to stoop to making promises to the citizenry. But while Yeltsin’s aloofness and distance were criticised as showing his isolation from the people, Putin’s were seen as part of his competence and control. There was also a minor cult of personality surrounding Putin.48 Unlike under Yeltsin, a portrait of the president adorned all officials’ offices in the way that of Lenin had done prior to 1991,49 while public adulation of him was a continuing feature of the activities of the youth group formed in April 2005, Nashi. Other groups were also spun off to embellish Putin’s image: Idushchie Vmeste (Walking Together), Molodaia Gvardiia (Young Guard), and the pop group Poiushchie Vmeste (Singing Together) who produced a popular song entitled ‘Takogo kak Putin’ (‘Someone like Putin’). By the end of his second term as president, Putin’s image was, in the eyes of one observer, well rounded: the pacifier of Chechnya, scourge of the oligarchs, critic of deficiencies of the Yeltsin period, architect of Russia’s new position in foreign affairs, opponent of corruption, champion of the needy, and saviour of the welfare state.50 His image had many of the accoutrements of the classic personality cult: busts, pictures and medallions were created in mass quantities, eulogistic biographies appeared, and he was given prominent coverage in the press for his manly exploits – flying a jet fighter, helping to fight bushfires, driving in rugged terrain, and hunting and fishing, often without a shirt on thereby showing a well-developed muscular torso; his manliness was an overwhelming theme. These sorts of images, many of which were generated while Putin was on his annual vacation, projected him as involved in many of the sorts of activities to which ordinary Russian men aspired. They helped diminish the sense of social distance between president and people and generate a sense of empathy so important to the development of an affective tie between leader and 48

49 50

For comments on this, see Novye izvestiia 1 February 2002, 20 February 2003; Izvestiia 26 March 2002, 3 August 2002, 24 August 2002; and Nezavisimaia gazeta 23 April 2004. See also Stephen White and Ian McAllister, ‘The Putin Phenomenon’, and Andrei Rogatchevskii, ‘Putin in Russian Fiction’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 24, 4, 2008, pp. 604–628 and 629–656. On the cult, including its popular manifestations, see Julie A. Cassidy and Emily D. Johnson, ‘Putin, Putiniana and the Question of a Post-Soviet Cult of Personality’, Slavonic and East European Review 88, 4, 2010, pp. 681–707. Sakwa, Russian Politics, 4th edn, p. 93. Miguel Vazquez Linan, ‘Putin’s Propaganda Legacy’, Post-Soviet Affairs 25, 2, 2009, pp. 137–138.

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followers. However, as Julie A. Cassidy and Emily D. Johnson point out, there was another side to this; the state’s lack of total control over the means of cultural production, projection and consumption meant that popular contributions to the cultic image have often been ironic, mocking and reflecting anything but the reverence usually associated with personality cults. But even given this critical popular tone, this remains evidence of the concentration of power in the president; why bother to mock someone who is powerless? While the presidential persona of Vladimir Putin was very different from that of Boris Yeltsin in part because of the different roles they had to play – creator and builder as opposed to stabiliser and consolidator – Putin’s successor as president did not have this change in roles to help him differentiate himself. Dmitrii Medvedev was, like Putin, handchosen by his predecessor, but was for much of his presidency unable to escape the impression that he remained, if not under Putin’s control, then closely aligned with him. Putin was able to carve out a different presidential persona because of the broad dissatisfaction that surrounded Yeltsin by the time he left office. People generally were ready for a change, they knew that the system needed to be tinkered with in various ways, and they knew that there were problems that needed solving. However, as Putin reached the end of his second term, his popularity levels remained high and there was general satisfaction with the way the system was functioning. Liberals may have been critical of the closing down of some of the democratic space that had been present under Yeltsin, but this sentiment does not seem to have been widely shared. Consequently, Medvedev could not manufacture an image greatly at variance with that of his mentor because of the lack of widespread dissatisfaction with that mentor. Rather than being the man of action, Medvedev sought to convey an image of quiet competence. But Medvedev’s problem lay not just in the lack of circumstances which would favour a differentiation from the image of Putin, but in the cold hard reality that Putin remained in high office as prime minister and retained his high levels of popularity. When Putin became president, Yeltsin retired gracefully from the scene and by and large remained out of public life. Accordingly, Putin had a clear run at shaping executive power without the overbearing shadow of his predecessor. However, by nominating Putin as prime minister, President Medvedev ensured that the exercise of supreme power would be seen as shared. Rather than having a free hand to shape the office as he may have wished, Medvedev’s presidency had to accommodate a still powerful Putin. While the precise relationship between them remains a matter for conjecture, the appearance has been one of Medvedev at best sharing power

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and at worst doing only what Putin allowed him to do, an impression reinforced by Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012. The power of the presidency seemed diminished, especially when Prime Minister Putin played a prominent role in spheres of activity constitutionally within the sphere of the president, such as during the armed conflict with Georgia in August 2008, and when both hinted at the possibility of Putin returning to the presidency when Medvedev’s term ran out. This was also the popular perception. When asked whether they approved or disapproved of individual institutions of state, the position of prime minister lagged well below that of president until the election of Medvedev as president and the appointment of Putin as prime minister. In mid 2008 the approval rating of the prime minister doubled to be higher than that of the president, where it has remained.51 Furthermore, Putin insisted on playing a much more activist role as prime minister than any of his predecessors had done. He shared the national policymaking stage as virtually the equal of the president. Particularly important in this regard has been the way he projected an image of the ‘can-do’ leader. Wherever there was a major problem – be it the conflict with Georgia in 2008 or the forest and peat fires in 2010 – Putin appeared as the leader on the ground dealing with the practical problems confronting his people; in contrast, at the time of the fires, Medvedev was shown in his office issuing orders. Putin’s performance at Pikalevo in June 2009, where he publicly confronted an oligarch businessman over a local issue that had actually already been resolved, is indicative of this profile. It was one that clearly squeezed the traditional image of the president. Like Putin (and indeed, as Putin continued to do as prime minister),52 Medvedev often sought to address the people of Russia directly. Like his predecessor, Medvedev made use of the television for direct communication, interviews and press conferences but, reflecting the age, he also established a video blog on the Kremlin website and a site where people could communicate directly with him (or so it was claimed)53 electronically. Indeed, in August 2010 Medvedev even used his blog to announce that, owing to the number of petitions he had received, he had ordered a halt to the construction of a new highway through the Khimki Forest, which had been the focus of considerable local popular mobilisation. He was thereby showing his populist credentials in two ways: 51 52

53

VTsIOM 1 September 2010, wciom.com/novosti/reitingi-gosudarstvennykh-institutov. Putin’s predecessors had not done the same. His first open-line discussion with the populace was in December 2008 and lasted three hours and eighteen minutes; his second in December 2009 lasted four hours: Rossiiskaia gazeta 4 December 2009. These figures are slightly different to those cited by White, Understanding, p. 244. Kommersant 13 January 2009.

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his responsiveness to popular petitions, and his use of his blog to communicate. In November 2010 he also established a blog on the Twitter social networking site. However, it is not clear that these attempts to use modern technology to create a sense of a link with the populace really portray the president as open and accessible. There remains a faceless quality to much of this sort of interaction, the questions he answers have usually been screened, and there is no real sense of accountability. Despite some appearance of erosion of the presidency under Medvedev, within the institutional culture of the Russian political system it remained symbolically the key political institution. Like all institutions, it is only as powerful as its incumbent can make it,54 and this in turn directly affects its symbolic appearance. What was not changed in the symbolic representation of the presidency was that this was a powerful post with few effective means for the populace to have a major impact upon its incumbent. The institution of the presidency thus appeared to confirm a theme with its roots in earlier Russian, including Soviet, history: the country was driven not by institutional rules but by the personal whim of a powerful leader. The rules of the game The initial image of the Constitution proved to be problematic, at least as far as the major political actors were concerned. With the fall of the USSR, Russia was left with a Soviet-era Constitution which had been much amended in the years since its adoption. For many of those who saw the birth of an independent Russia as a new beginning, this holdover from the past needed replacing, a sentiment reinforced by the incoherence the document had gained as a result of its wholesale amendment over time. However, for many of those who regretted the passing of the Soviet Union, this remnant of that era still had some value. These basic positions soon became subsumed within the executive–legislative conflict which culminated in October 1993. In their attempts to rein in the president, the majority in the legislature based its case squarely on the old Constitution and the powers it gave to the legislature vis-a`-vis the presidency. In contrast, the president and his supporters saw the Constitution as an unnecessary restriction on his power and a conservative document more redolant of the past than the present. Accordingly, they sought to sponsor a redrafting of the Constitution in the months 54

This was shown to telling effect by a landmark study of its American counterpart, Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power. The Politics of Leadership (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960).

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before the crisis reached its peak55 and, once the issue had been resolved by the forced closure of the legislature, part of the new settlement introduced by Yeltsin and ratified by the electorate was the introduction of a new Constitution. The legacy this new Constitution inherited did not seem particularly favourable to the chances of that document generating the sort of normative authority that a constitution needs if it is to function as the basic rules of the game. Not only was the Soviet inheritance one in which the written document of the Constitution was effectively a piece of windowdressing with little real relevance for the conduct of politics, but the way the document had been treated in 1993 suggested that it could be disregarded if political considerations so determined. Thus, while the creation of a new Constitution with normative authority was seen by many as essential to the construction of a new, ‘normal’ political system, the immediate past traditions in the country portrayed this as something essentially more ephemeral. In the lead-up to the constitutional referendum in December 1993, those around the president presented the Constitution as an essential source of stability in the country. Counterposed against the recent conflict, the Constitution was portrayed as something which both made clear the rules of the game and acted as the ultimate authority, thereby providing a means for preventing such conflict in the future. But the Constitution was not just about preventing conflict; it was also seen as a positive basis for future success. The stabilisation of political life was seen as essential for the construction of the new Russia, and the new Constitution was seen as the essential underpinning for this. Furthermore, the Constitution was to be an important step on the road to democracy. To the extent that Yeltsin and those around him championed democracy as the antithesis of communism, the Constitution provided the key official basis upon which this could rest. Democracy, normality and modernity were the three keys to the future, and the Constitution was associated with them all. But if the Constitution was to attain normative authority, it had to be recognised as constituting the basic rules of the game, and all presidents made a point of affirming this at various times during their terms of office. This recognition of the provisions of the Constitution as the rules of the game was most important on two occasions. The first was in early 1996 when Yeltsin came under pressure from within the circles surrounding him to postpone the forthcoming presidential election on the 55

For a study of the changing positions on this, see Edward Morgan-Jones, Constitutional Bargaining in Russia 1990–1993. Institutions and Uncertainty (London: Routledge, 2010).

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grounds that he was unlikely to win it.56 After some wavering, Yeltsin affirmed that the election would go ahead as scheduled by the constitutional provisions. The second was in late 2007 and early 2008 when there was significant public speculation that, rather than step down as president at the end of his second consecutive term, as the Constitution mandated, Putin would change the Constitution to enable him to run again. Had either president acted as he was being urged, it would have shown the Constitution to be something that could be put aside for purely partisan reasons, and thereby destroyed the notion of normative authority with which many wished it to be invested. These two decisions were crucial for the symbolic authority of the Constitution and for its status as the basic rules of the political game and the foundation upon which the future was to be built. Symbolically important too was the use of a copy of the Constitution as the document upon which the president took the oath at the time of inauguration; this acknowledged that document as the source of authority within the system. However, this apparent growth in normative authority on the part of the Constitution needs to be seen in the light of what one observer has called ‘para-constitutional’ activity.57 By this Richard Sakwa means a reliance on bureaucratic management to get around the Constitution, and he identifies five institutions Putin introduced to achieve this: the seven (later eight) federal districts which changed the federal system but, being subordinate to the president, did not require constitutional amendment; the advisory State Council which ran in parallel with the upper house of the Federal Assembly; the Presidential Council for the Implementation of National Projects, which worked parallel to the government and undercut the prime minister; the Public Chamber which shadowed the State Duma; and the institution of the so-called tandem in which the prime minister gained increased stature at the expense of the president. These were all ways of altering the way the system functioned compared with the model outlined in the Constitution, without any formal constitutional amendment. There were actually many more ways in which patterns of action by political actors created ways of functioning alternative to that outlined in the Constitution, and some of these are 56

57

For a discussion of this episode, see Baturin et al., Epokha, pp. 555–562, and Colton, Yeltsin, pp. 355–357. Yeltsin discusses this in his memoirs: Boris Yeltsin, Prezidenskii marafon (Moscow: ACT, 2000), pp. 31–33. Perhaps also relevant here were pressures to prolong the life of the State Duma because at the time of its election it was given only a two-year tenure. These arguments were rejected as infringing the Constitution. See Nezavisimaia gazeta 19 and 20 July 1994, 21 December 1994. Richard Sakwa, ‘Putin’s Leadership: Character and Consequences’, Richard Sakwa (ed.), Power and Policy in Putin’s Russia (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 10–12.

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discussed below.58 The more important such informal practices became, the less authority the Constitution seemed to possess; and the less leading political figures felt bound by the laws of the land, the less normative authority those laws had. When a political system has a constitution, it must also have some means of resolving disputes that occur under that constitution. Like most other countries in this situation, Russia had a Constitutional Court to fulfil this function. But like the Soviet-era Constitution, the Constitutional Court got caught up in the conflict between president and legislature. Generally the chair of the Court, Valerii Zorkin, seemed to support the legislature in this clash, both during the course of the conflict when the Court tried to act as a mediator and in September when it declared Yeltsin’s decree suspending the (Soviet-era) Constitution to be illegal. Accordingly, Yeltsin suspended the Court. A new Constitutional Court was established under the 1993 Constitution, with the judges appointed by the Federation Council but nominated by the president. A new law on the Court in July 1994 gave that body a more clearly defined brief and sought to ensure that it did not become politicised. The Court was presented as the independent arbiter, and Yeltsin complied with every ruling it made.59 The view of the Court as an authoritative institution strengthened as it became clear that it was independent and was not acting in a partisan fashion. As a result, the authority of the body grew, and it became seen as one of the cornerstones of the system.60 The symbolism emanating from the rules of the game was thus ambiguous. On some significant issues, the normative authority of the Constitution was recognised and political actors observed its provisions. However, in much of the day-to-day functioning of the Russian polity, a strict reading of constitutional provisions seems to have mattered little as the modus operandi involved the generation of practices at variance with many of those formal provisions. Of course, this is also the situation in many stable, effective polities; some formal constitutional provisions often have a purely dignified or symbolic function, while constitutional conventions emerge to structure in different ways the political activity 58

59 60

For the argument that these practices were actually so extensive as to make Russia a ‘dual state’, see Richard Sakwa, ‘The Dual State in Russia’, Post-Soviet Affairs 26, 3, 2010, pp. 185–206. Sakwa distinguishes between the ‘constitutional state’ and the ‘administrative regime’. See also Richard Sakwa, The Crisis of Russian Democracy. The Dual State, Factionalism and the Medvedev Succession (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Sakwa, Russian Politics, 3rd edn, p. 67. A similarly positive view of the law was not, however, forthcoming. See below.

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formally covered by those provisions. The constitution’s normative authority is undermined in such cases only when the constitution and its conventions have little normative substance for the key interactions and processes in the polity. In the Russian case where constitutional provisions have not so much been broken as circumvented and where conventions are in the early stages of development and have not become embedded, the extent to which the Constitution is seen to embody overriding normative authority is not clear. The supremacy of the Constitution in the institutional culture has thus been ambiguous, and has not contributed to the emergence of a narrative emphasising an institutional rule-based society. Avenues for popular access: elections, legislature and parties Elections were a prominent feature of the Soviet political system but throughout most of the regime’s life they had little except symbolic significance. As exercises in demonstrating popular support, let alone popular control, they were hollow, but this did not stop them from being presented as genuine expressions of democratic action and popular commitment. But despite their fac¸ade-like nature, it was the linkage of the elections with democracy which made them a potentially radical means of regime transformation. This was realised in the last five years of Soviet power. From 1987 when Gorbachev began to press for democratisation, competitive elections were a key component and, although his initial attempts in this regard were largely blocked,61 they came back in 1988–9. The XIX Conference of the CPSU in June–July 1988 introduced wide-ranging changes to the political structure, including the introduction of a new, two-level legislature to be chosen through competitive elections. It was this which opened the door for successive legislative elections which, among other things, brought Yeltsin back into the political limelight and made for republican governments that were to seek an independent course from Moscow. So by the time the USSR fell, elections were associated with democracy, and the sense of fac¸ade that had been present during Soviet times had in part fallen away. 61

His democratisation measures introduced at the January 1987 CC plenum were blocked, but some experiments in competitive elections at low levels were conducted over the following months. For his speech, see M. S. Gorbachev, ‘O perestroike i kadrovoi politike partii’, Pravda 28 January 1987. The plenum resolution of the same name is in Pravda 29 January 1987. For details about such elections, see Partiinaia zhizn’ 11, 1988, p. 15. For the report of one such election, see E. Nikitina, ‘Plenum raikoma izbiraet pervogo sekretaria’, Partiinaia zhizn’ 5, 1987, pp. 32–35.

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The symbolic link between democracy and elections was reaffirmed during the executive–legislative conflict of 1992–3. Both sides rhetorically supported elections as a means of breaking the deadlock – two of the questions in the April 1993 referendum asked whether voters supported early elections for the presidency and the legislature – and after Yeltsin had closed down the legislature, he sought ratification of his action through the ballot box. It was the image of elections as the mode of democratic legitimation that was mobilised as a means of providing retroactive justification for the unconstitutional closure of the legislature. The election of a new legislature and the adoption of the new Constitution by popular vote were the institutional representations that justified Yeltsin’s earlier actions; the election had enabled the democratic will to come through so, even though his actions had been strictly unconstitutional, this formulation enabled his supporters to claim that democracy had prevailed. Another aspect of the image of elections during the Yeltsin era is that each election during this time was cast as a choice between alternative paths of development. In 1993 and 1995/6, elections were presented as a choice between the bright future based on democracy and the oppressive past linked with communism. Each of these elections was presented as a battle for the future, with the wrong choice being potentially catastrophic for the nation. All sides in these electoral contests adopted this sort of imagery, with it being at its starkest in the lead-up to the 1996 presidential poll when Yeltsin supporters saturated the mass media with negative images of communism and the Soviet experience of it. This was cast as a choice between steady, peaceful political development and the violent restoration of communism. What was important about this was that the electoral process was seen as the means whereby a choice vital for the country was to be made, the democratic instrument whereby the future course of the country would be chosen. Elections thus appeared as not just the core of the democratic process, but as the heart of Russian politics. But if this was the symbolic meaning of elections throughout much of the Yeltsin period, this underwent significant change under Putin. The 1999/2000 elections were transitional in this. During Putin’s incumbency of the presidency, national elections were held on schedule, but they were not presented in the same sort of apocalyptic terms as in the first half of the 1990s. They were no longer about having to choose between alternative, and very different, paths of development. The issue was no longer cast starkly in terms of communism vs normalcy, or modernity. Rather, the elections were about choosing particular people. Of course, even in the 1990s the elections were about choosing political

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leaders, but at that time the leaders were effectively symbols of the different paths of development which they espoused. Yeltsin was important because he represented one fork in the road (the rejection of communism), Ziuganov because he supported another (while it was not always actually clear what he stood for, he was painted by the Yeltsin camp as favouring communist recidivism). They were symbols of the major choices to be made. In contrast, beginning with the 1999 legislative election, the choices tended to be presented less in terms of contrasting futures and more in terms of support for Putin and what he represented. The presentation of the party Unity in the 1999 legislative election was a forerunner of this. Unity was formed only months before the poll, and it offered no electoral programme except for support for Vladimir Putin, who by this time had not only been designated by Yeltsin as his successor62 but was also seen, in the way discussed above, as the stabiliser and consolidator. It was this image that he continued to project throughout his tenure of the presidency, and this meant that the electoral process was transformed from a choice between programmes into a referendum on his performance. The election was now less about programme and more about person. The fact that Putin even eschewed campaigning in the 2004 poll reflects how unimportant political programme was now thought to be for the electoral process. The shift of emphasis from programme to person in the projection of what elections were about is marked by the circumstances of all three presidential transitions. In all cases – Yeltsin to Putin, Putin to Medvedev, and Medvedev to Putin – the incumbent chose his successor, who was then presented to the electorate. In the Yeltsin–Putin succession, Yeltsin resigned early, which effectively undercut real competition in the 2000 election; in the words of one observer, because of the early election brought on by the resignation, the outcome ‘was all but predetermined’.63 A similar outcome followed the nominations of Medvedev and Putin by the incumbents in the 2008 and 2012 elections.64 As a result, the election 62

63

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Indeed, in November 1999 Putin had said that he would support Unity ‘as a citizen’ and was a friend of its head, Sergei Shoigu: Lilia Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), p. 46. For his comments in support of United Russia in 2003, see Sakwa, Putin, p. 112, citing www.kremlin.ru 27 November 2003. Vicki L. Hesli, ‘Parliamentary and Presidential Elections in Russia: The Political Landscape in 1999 and 2000’, Vicki L. Hesli and William M. Reisinger (ed.), The 1999 and 2000 Elections in Russia. Their Impact and Legacy (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 7. Immediately after the December 2011 Duma election at which United Russia did worse than it had in 2007 and which was followed by popular demonstrations against what was seen as the fraudulent conduct of the election, some of the popular press argued that

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was less about choosing between alternative candidates and more about ratifying the president’s choice of successor. This, along with official control over the nomination process across the country, reinforced the view that running in an election was a privilege granted by state officials rather than a democratic right, with many seeing elections as having little real significance.65 This focus on ratification of personnel rather than choice of programme was also consistent with the changes to the laws governing parties and their representation, especially those which made it more difficult for local or grass-roots parties to gain representation in the legislature (see below) and those tightening central appointive powers over the filling of regional positions, both of which were widely criticised as being undemocratic. But what they did do was, in the case of parties, suggest that widespread democratic debate should not be untrammelled and, in the case of the strengthening of the ‘power vertical’, that what was important was having people in place who would act as efficient instruments of the centre rather than be democratic representatives of their electors. The image of elections as the central element of the democratic process was also tarnished by the widespread appearance of fraud in all of the elections from 1993. In 1993 there were charges that the electoral turnout had been artificially boosted by authorities in order to ensure that the threshold for the adoption of the Constitution had been achieved66 as well as allegations of manipulation of the vote. Subsequent elections were tarnished by claims about bribery, the illegal use of

65

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these developments reflected popular opposition to (or at least disappointment with) both Putin’s prospective return to the presidency and the covert means whereby this was being brought about. Opinion poll figures on the popularity of Putin and of United Russia, and on the propensity of people to protest, do not support such an interpretation. In no case did the existing trajectory of opinion change significantly after the 24 September 2011 announcement that Putin and Medvedev would swap jobs. On the attitude to Putin and United Russia, see respectively ‘Reiting prem’erministra’ and ‘Reitingi partii’, Fond Obshchestvennoe Mnenie, Dominanty 51, 22 December 2011, pp. 4–5, 7. On the propensity to protest, see ‘‘Uroven’ protestnykh nastroenii’, Fond Obshchestvennoe Mnenie, Dominanty 43, 27 October 2011. Many electors saw elections as serving little positive purpose: only 29% of electors in August 2003 believed that elections were useful, while 40% believed they did more harm than good. See Yuri A. Levada, ‘What the Polls Tell Us’, Journal of Democracy 15, 3, July 2004, p. 45. See also Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy. The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), p. 19, and the interview with Lev Gudkov, the head of the Levada Center, Novaia gazeta 20 October 2010. The post-2011 election demonstrations can be seen as a protest against the fraud that had robbed the election of its real purpose. For some poll figures from 2008 on whether elections facilitate popular influence on government, see Stephen White and Valentina Feklyunina, ‘Russia’s Authoritarian Elections: The View from Below’, Europe-Asia Studies 63, 4, 2011, p. 590. Izvestiia 4 May 1994.

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financial and media resources to influence voters, ballot box stuffing, the redistribution of votes from one party to another, and general electoral fraud; in the 2000s, more important were limitations on who could become a candidate.67 While it is not clear that such activity changed the overall result of any election, it did tarnish the electoral process and suggest that it was acceptable for those in power or with resources to corruptly use those resources to distort the political process. This image of those in power subverting the electoral process for their own ends was evident in the charges about how the design of electoral rules was shaped by concerns to secure partisan advantage,68 and by the difficulties some parties had in gaining registration due to bureaucratic rejection of their applications.69 The general closure of democratic space under Putin was accompanied by a continual emphasis upon the democratic nature of elections. These were still presented as valid expressions of the people’s will, albeit on the identity of their governors rather more than on the content of their programmes. Elections remained a central component of the political system and evidence of its democratic nature. However, under Putin, the nature of democracy itself was refashioned to fit the changing institutional contours of the regime. This is discussed below. Like elections, in Soviet times the legislature had been part of what Walter Bagehot called the ‘dignified’ part of the constitution rather than the ‘efficient’ part. The Supreme Soviet was largely a democratic fac¸ade, with real power resting in the party. However, the changes under perestroika breathed life into the new legislative organs and, as the disintegration of the USSR showed, made them powers in the land. While Yeltsin benefited from their increased power during his struggle against Gorbachev and the Soviet centre, in the first twenty-one months of Russian independence he found that power being directed against himself. During the executive–legislative conflict, the image of the legislature was sharply polarised. Those who supported Yeltsin presented it 67

68

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For example, Moscow Times 9 September 2000; Fish, Democracy Derailed, ch. 3; and Sarah Oates, ‘Television, Voters and the Development of the “Broadcast” Party’, Hesli and Reisinger (eds.), The 1999 and 2000 Elections, pp. 36–37. See also Mikhail Myagkov, Peter C. Ordeshook and Dmitri Shakin, The Forensics of Election Fraud. Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2009). On this, see Bryon Moraski, Elections by Design. Parties and Patronage in Russia’s Regions (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006). The fact that many voters, especially in the 1993 and 1996 elections, failed to gain representation in the Duma through the party list because of the failure of the party they voted for to reach the 5% threshold was seen by some as another instance of bureaucratic manipulation to compromise popular representation. This was usually on the grounds that they lacked the requisite number of valid signatures from the required number of regions.

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as the source of communist opposition, a group of parliamentarians who were either hard-line supporters of the restoration of communist control or had been duped by such people into supporting the attack upon the president and his reforms.70 For those who opposed Yeltsin and/or his reforms, the legislature was the upholder of the Constitution and the only thing standing between them and the destruction of Russia that his reforms seemed to embody. Furthermore, this was an image of the legislature that envisaged a parliamentary democracy rather than a presidential one, a system in which the legislative body rather than the presidency was the chief institution in the system.71 These two images – negative, backward-looking and spoiling compared with propriety, rationality and reasonableness – dominated the conflict and were also projected into the future. The strong communist showings in the elections of 1993 and especially 1995 ensured that the State Duma (adopting the name of the last elected body before the 1917 revolution and thereby reflecting the claim to be going back on to the democratic path of development that the Bolsheviks had blocked) remained a source of opposition in the view of Yeltsin and his circle. While the relationship with the president never broke down again as it had in 1992–3, it was never close and cooperative. The 1993 Constitution had given the president the upper hand in relations with the Duma, although that body retained significant powers especially in the budgetary and confirmation of appointment spheres, but the Duma remained a fractious partner of the president. This is why Yeltsin relied so heavily upon his decree-issuing power to introduce his major measures. Rather than being seen as exercising a responsible measure of control over the president and his actions, the Duma was often seen as being irresponsible; the rejection of the Belovezh Accords in March 1996 and the various attempts at impeachment were seen by many in this light. And certainly these sorts of actions only increased the propensity of Yeltsin and those around him to decry the Duma and its contribution to the course of Russian politics. The image of the legislature as a worthy organ in the Russian political system was further tarnished by two factors relating to its membership. First, the practice of some of those leading figures who headed party lists 70

71

For example, see Yeltsin’s speech to the Congress of People’s Deputies on 10 December 1992, Rossiiskaia gazeta 11 December 1992. On at least one occasion Yeltsin claimed that the legislature was ‘responsible for the hardships associated with reforms’: comments on television First Channel Network, 14 April 1993, FBIS-SOV-93–071, p. 13. For example, see Ruslan Khasbulatov’s comments in Pravda 4 March 1993. This does not mean that the conflict was only over constitutional issues; the parliamentary side acted as a lightning rod for all sorts of groups which opposed the break-up of the USSR and Yeltsin’s reforms.

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in the election to, once elected, give up their seats to lower-ranked members of their parties. This seemed to suggest that, for those with political ambitions, a Duma seat was not worth having. The heading of party lists by prominent people was thus shown on many occasions to be purely a vote-winning strategy, but this was a practice that saw the prestige of the legislature tarnished. Second, until July 2002, members of the legislature had enjoyed immunity from prosecution, and there were cases of potential criminals seeking, and sometimes gaining, election simply in order to acquire that immunity. The Duma’s image as a leading decision-making organ was also called into question by the establishment of the Public Chamber (see below) and the right of its members to become involved in Duma committees even though they were not members of the Duma. But if the Duma appeared fractious under Yeltsin, its image under Putin was much more positive. For a variety of reasons, relations between the new president and the Duma were much more co-operative than they had been under Yeltsin. Putin was able effectively to co-opt the legislature72 and thereby to avoid the frequent tensions that had characterised his predecessor. In this sense, the Duma emerged as a co-operative organ of state rather than a querulous institution and, to the extent that it seemed to act in accord with the popular president, it gained some kudos from this. So by the end of Putin’s second term, the legislature appeared in a very different light from that of the early 1990s; instead of being a troublesome body which sought to block the president at every turn, it had become the handmaiden of the president, co-operating with him in the implementation of his programme. It had become a positive, if secondary to the presidency, component of the institutional culture. To function as a vehicle of popular representation, the Duma relied on political parties but, for many in the late 1980s, the concept of political party had negative connotations. The only party most had had any experience of was the Communist Party, and by this time, for many, that evaluation was profoundly negative.73 However, parties began to emerge in 198874 and, by the time the USSR collapsed, a range of these 72

73 74

His ability effectively to appoint the upper house, the Federation Council, helped in this, although even under Yeltsin this house had not been a major problem for the president. For Putin’s ability to use a majority-building strategy to bring the Federal Assembly under his influence, see Paul Chaisty, ‘Majority Control and Executive Dominance: Parliament– President Relations in Putin’s Russia’, Pravda (ed.), Leading Russia, pp. 119–137. For the argument that CPSU rule had discredited the notion of the political party, see the article by A. Khimenko in Nezavisimaia gazeta 4 March 1993. The first was Democratic Union. For a contemporary view, see Spravochnik po neformal’nym obshchestvennym organizatsiiam i presse (Moscow: SMOT Informatsionnoe agenstvo, 1989), p. 56.

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bodies had appeared on the political scene. For those seeking democratic change, parties were both necessary components of the new political system and evidence that progress was being made in this way. For those who may have been less democratically inclined but saw the way developments seemed to be going and wanted to exercise influence in the new situation or gain political advantage, parties were seen as a means of doing this. In this sense, there was a positive side to the image of parties in the institutional culture. However, there was also a negative side to their image. One aspect of the Soviet legacy of which many approved was the sense of community that it encapsulated. The prevailing myth of Soviet socialism was of a united society marching forward to the promised land under the wise leadership of the people’s vanguard, the party. While much of this was now in tatters, the notion of a united community remained popular. Although battered by the reality of the break-up of the USSR and, accordingly, by sections of that community deciding to go their own ways, there remained a residue of the desire for unity among the inhabitants of independent Russia. In light of this sort of view, parties could appear in a negative light. They were, by definition, representative of only parts of the whole, pressing the interests and concerns of particular sections or groups of the populace, possibly at the expense of the general community. They were partial, fractious and disruptive of unity, and clearly contradicted the ideal for which many pined. This sort of image was only strengthened by the proliferation of parties, including the representation of large numbers of them in the first Duma, such that the establishment of stable majorities seemed impossible, at least until the Putin period. Also strengthening this image were the extremist positions many of the parties adopted. With the opening up of freedom of speech, extremist groups which may have long been keeping their views under wraps, emerged into the light to vociferously press their concerns and, in an environment of economic dislocation, state break-up and political uncertainty, many such opinions gained significant resonance. But the diversity of views that was expressed only served even more to fragment the unity that many sought and thereby to undercut any hopes for achieving a consensus. The profile of parties was also damaged by the way ‘party substitutes’ (usually organisations controlled by the governors or by local business interests) often dominated political life in the regions in the 1990s before they were displaced by United Russia.75 Parties appeared as disruptive not only of idealised unity, but also of good governance. 75

Henry E. Hale, Why Not Parties in Russia? Democracy, Federalism, and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. chs. 4 & 5.

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The image of parties did not improve as the 1990s wore on. This was a period in which the party system was characterised by continual fragmentation and by the emergence and disappearance of numerous individual parties. By the 1999 election, only three of the leading parties in the 1993 election were still represented in the Duma – the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), the small liberal party Yabloko and the Zhirinovskii Bloc (formerly the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, LDPR).76 Conversely, of the six parties that cleared the threshold in the list vote in 1999, three had been formed within the preceding six months (Unity, Fatherland–All Russia and the Union of Right Forces), and together they captured more votes than the other parties which crossed the 5% threshold (KPRF, Zhirinovskii Bloc and Yabloko) and which had been represented in the last Duma (45% to 36%). Parties were often personality-centred and lacked strong programmes, with no party able to offer a coherent vision that could gain broad support.77 Parties seemed to stand for little except the political career of the leader, and only the KPRF was able to develop and retain a mass membership. Most party groups were ephemeral, with one observer emphasising the central role played by the mass media in their creation and success.78 The fragmentation of the party system and the fact that government proceeded in its face seemed to suggest that political parties were not all that important for the government of the new state. However, attempts were made by political elites to stabilise the system. Institutional engineering in the 1993 Constitution, through the imposition of a 5% threshold, was an attempt to limit party fragmentation, but this was clearly a failure. This led Putin to increase the threshold to 7% and to limit the ability of small independent groups to nominate candidates for election and enhance the capacity of centralised party machines to do this.79 Also notable was the effort to structure a so-called presidential party. Each president publicly eschewed becoming a member of any particular political party, declaring that he would rule in the national rather 76 77

78 79

These three plus Women of Russia are the only parties to have contested all three elections in the 1990s. For the argument that the KPRF and the LDPR were able to do this to some degree, see Stephen E. Hanson, Post-Imperial Democracies. Ideology and Party Formation in Third Republic France, Weimar Germany and Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2010). In making this argument, Hanson exaggerates the consistency and coherence in the outlooks of both parties. Oates, ‘Television’, pp. 29–50. For details of these changes under Putin, see Sakwa, Putin, pp. 104–106, 109–111, 117–123, and Hale, Why Not Parties, pp. 231–233. Hale also argues that Putin’s actions in both the sphere of federal relations and bringing business to heel undermined those structures that had acted as substitutes for parties, gubernatorial political machines and corporate structures.

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than partial interest.80 This fact, plus the power of the presidency, effectively depoliticised the parties to a degree; if the leading political actor did not see it necessary directly to associate himself with a party, did this not mean that parties were of little importance? However, all presidents recognised that the stability of their rule would be enhanced if they could ensure a compliant Duma, and the best means of achieving this was through being able to construct a favourable majority in that house. Accordingly, although the president did not himself become a formal member of a party, at each election a party was created which implicitly carried the president’s standard. In 1993 Russia’s Choice, in 1995 Our Home Is Russia,81 in 1999 Unity, and in 2003, 2007 and 2011 United Russia were all parties associated with establishment figures which publicly linked their policies and stances with the president. Called ‘the party of power’,82 each of these campaigned on the basis that they would support the president’s policies,83 with Unity and United Russia and their link with Putin being particularly notable. Indeed, these latter two parties had virtually no programme except support for Putin. Thus, although these parties did bring an element of stability into the party system, with United Russia in particular able to consolidate presidential support in the Duma, their close association with the person of the president reinforced the general view that parties were secondary elements in the political system. The one potential exception to this rule seemed in the 1990s to be the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. This was the only party that was able to draw significant electoral support in all legislative elections and was, during the Yeltsin period, the most consistent 80

81

82

83

Although presidents were often clear in their support for particular parties. A law of 2004 actually forbade a sitting president from being a party member: Hale, Why Not Parties, pp. 4–5. This was initially conceived as part of a two-party bloc, with a centre-left bloc headed by Ivan Rybkin being established but never getting off the ground. The creation of Just Russia to mirror United Russia in 2006 was another attempt to create such a balance. See Sakwa, Putin, pp. 107–108. On the notion of party of power, see Hans Oversloot and Ruben Verheul, ‘The Party of Power in Russian Politics’, Acta Politica 35, Summer 2000, pp. 123–145, and Thomas F. Remington, ‘Patronage and the Party of Power: President–Parliament Relations Under Vladimir Putin’, Europe-Asia Studies 60, 6, 2008, pp. 965–993. On Yeltsin and the attempts to create such parties, see Colton, Yeltsin, pp. 347–351, 408. For Sakwa, the party of power was ‘a political organisation created with the assistance of the executive to participate in elections and the legislative process’: Sakwa, Putin, p. 102. According to Yevgenii Nazdratenko, governor of Primorskii krai and member of Unity, ‘the ideology of Unity is the absence of any ideology whatsoever’: Nezavisimaia gazeta 2 October 1999, cited in Stephen E. Hanson, ‘Instrumental Democracy: The End of Ideology and the Decline of Russian Political Parties’, Hesli and Reisinger (eds.), The 1999 and 2000 Elections, p. 163.

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opposition force to the president. Its leader, Gennadii Ziuganov, was the major challenger to the president in each of the presidential polls. While the party was associated with Ziuganov in the public mind, it was actually a much more substantial organisation than any of its competitors. Stemming from its Soviet forebear, it had a philosophy and a set of policies upon which to draw, and although over time its message has become a melange of nationalist, social democratic and communist themes, it did at least have the virtue of appearing to stand for something. However, in the 1990s its lineage and its consistently oppositionist stance enabled Yeltsin to paint it as backward-looking and obstructive, and thereby to obscure the distinction that actually existed between it and the range of other parties in existence at that time. However, with the shift in imagery sponsored by Putin, and in particular his taking over of a number of policy positions that had been associated with the party, the KPRF lost even the appearance of a consistent oppositionist force. It was turned from a noisy critic into a toothless co-operator. The fate of the KPRF highlights one of the weaknesses that that party shared with all of the others, its inability to construct a credible and coherent narrative that appeared relevant to contemporary conditions. While all of the parties were able to present electoral platforms of varying degrees of detail and sophistication at election time, none could sustain this sort of thing between elections. In part this was because none of the parties held clear ideological positions which would have provided some sense of unity to the stances they took on issues at different times, but it was also because none of the parties really saw it as their task to create a more integrated and coherent story about the fate of Russia and their part in it. They began from general orientations (nationalist, conservative, liberal) but without any clearly formulated sense of how such positions could inform an understanding of the Russian situation. They were more intent on carping criticism than on sustained analysis, and therefore they were unable to add anything meaningful to the search for a narrative relevant to post-Soviet Russia. One of the roles of parties in a political system is to act as a means of recruitment of people into political life. While the Russian electoral system had half of the deputies elected in single-member constituencies and half by party list, parties did not monopolise this function; in theory, independents or people not linked to the national parties could gain election. However, with the change in electoral procedures in May 2005 to eliminate the single-member constituencies, allied to the provision whereby only registered parties (and not independents or blocs of small parties) could contest elections, parties came to monopolise this process. With the increase in the threshold for representation from 5% to 7%

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(even with the later modification giving some representation to those gaining between 5% and 7% of the vote) and the growing consolidation of United Russia as the dominant party, alternative avenues into the legislative system disappeared. As United Russia effectively began to exercise a gate-keeper role, access into the political system became structured in ways it had not been before; only those acceptable to leading circles in United Russia seemed likely to be able to gain entry to the Duma,84 although the 2011 election results may have shaken its ability to continue to perform this role. The relevance of parties for the political system clearly appeared to be problematic. The president was not a party member, when the singlemember district constituencies existed for national elections (prior to 2005) party nominees did not fill more than 50% of the seats until 2003 (and then only 56%), governors rarely ran for election as representatives of major parties (3% of cases 1995–2000), and many regional legislatures contained no party nominees at all (governors’ political machines and corporate structures were often more important).85 While from the mid 1990s there has been general recognition of the individual parties among the populace, feelings of partisanship (or continued attachment to a particular party) have been developing only weakly. Henry Hale86 argues that over time such loyalties have been growing, but his own figures show that the only party for which such loyalty has increased is United Russia. This means that party attachment has expanded only among voters for the ‘state’ or ‘president’s’ party, the ‘party of power’, not for those more normal parties, which all experienced a decline.87 At the turn of the millennium, for just over half of voters the identity of the party leader was central to the decision of whether to vote for the party or not.88 Another aspect of the party system is relevant here: its continued direct shaping by the political authorities in the Kremlin. The role of parties of power has already been noted, but what is important about them in this respect is that they were established with one principal aim 84

85 87

88

For a more general point, expressed in terms of ‘charismatic public politicians’ being replaced by ‘people of the system’, see Ol’ga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, ‘The Sovietization of Russian Politics’, Post-Soviet Affairs 25, 4, 2009, p. 303. 86 Hale, Why Not Parties, pp. 3, 121–122. Hale, Why Not Parties, pp. 95–100. Even with the 2011 election setback, United Russia enjoyed by far the highest level of popular support of any party as reflected in both election returns and public opinion surveys. Hale, Why Not Parties, p. 115. See the nuanced discussion of the role of leaders in voters’ choice of which party to vote for in Timothy J. Colton, ‘Parties, Leaders, and Voters in the Parliamentary Election’, Hesli and Reisinger (eds.), The 1999 and 2000 Elections, pp. 90–117.

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in mind: to stabilise the political rule of those currently in power. They were meant to short-circuit competition by dominating both electoral and legislative politics, something United Russia succeeded in doing. But the other side of the Kremlin’s role has been its fostering of the development of what has been called ‘para-statal opposition’.89 By this is meant political parties which are fostered by the authorities to stand in elections alongside the ruling party, but without either really offering an alternative or having any chance of victory. Such parties are meant to give the appearance of democracy to the system, provide an outlet for criticism and mild opposition (which distinguishes them from so-called pocket parties which lack any oppositional element), co-opt activists and crowd out genuinely independent opposition parties. There was an attempt to create such a party during the Yeltsin years – the so-called Ivan Rybkin Bloc in 1995 – but such efforts did not really come to fruition until the creation of Just Russia in 2006. Like its predecessor, this party was meant to constitute the focus of leftist political activity, thereby displacing the KPRF and stabilising centre-right rule, currently through United Russia. Its role as a means of circumventing real competition was evident to all, adding another layer to the way in which the electoral and party systems were seen to be more about consolidating power than promoting democratic involvement. The weakness of the party system,90 and in particular its personalised nature and the centralisation of organisational resources incumbent upon Putin’s reforms to it, has meant that parties have not appeared to be effective vehicles for popular involvement in politics. With the exception of Unity/United Russia, parties have not been a ladder to political power nor a means of effective entry into the policy debate. Rather than a means of popular mobilisation, they have appeared to be vehicles of elite or, in the case of many, small-group opinion. Nevertheless, a poll in late 2009 suggested that 72% of respondents believed the country needed viable opposition parties that could exert influence on national life,91 although another poll in October 2010 suggested that only 55% believed Russia needed an opposition force.92 Thus, rather than central aspects of a democratic political system, parties have often seemed like

89

90 91 92

Luke March, ‘Managing Opposition in a Hybrid Regime: Just Russia and Parastatal Opposition’, Slavic Review 68, 3, 2009, pp. 504–527. This is the same sort of thing Sakwa referred to as ‘para-constitutional’ (noted above). For a list of explanations scholars have given for the weakness of parties, see Hale, Why Not Parties, pp. 4–5. ‘Russia Votes’, Levada Center, Moscow, russiavotes.org. Interfax 17 November 2010, citing a Levada Center survey from 22–25 October 2010.

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squabbling sideshows while the real action takes place around the presidency. The symbolism emerging from this part of the institutional culture of the political system portrayed the channels for popular involvement in the political process as rich in democratic rhetoric but poor in terms of the reality. Elections, the legislature and political parties were all presented as central to the political system, but the institutional culture arising from the way they functioned in practice suggested that real and effective popular involvement was not a major priority in the system as a whole. The image of the primacy of personalised politics in the form of the presidency was reinforced by this image of parties, the electoral system and the legislature. Rather than building a narrative of the growth of stable democratic institutions, the performance of these parts of the political system consolidated the image of a politics of personality based around the president. Civil society A similar conclusion emerged from the institutional culture of civil society, interpreted largely in terms of the existence of autonomous groups able to pursue their own interests in the public sphere. A multitude of such groups appeared during the perestroika period, and they were widely seen as being the basis for the promotion of democracy, for the involvement of an active citizenry in public life, and as a means of breaking down the monolithic nature of Soviet society. These groups continued into the independence period, making for a raucous and argumentative public culture. However, just as there were reservations about political parties because of the impact they had on notions of social unanimity, similar concerns were held with regard to civil society organisations. While organisation and co-operation at the local level were widely valued for the positive contribution they could make to community life, when organisation occurred at the national level and began to push political concerns, it was often seen as partial and narrow in focus, and thereby as undermining common community interests. This sort of concern was probably fuelled by the process of privatisation and, in particular, the way that small numbers of businessmen were able to benefit corruptly from that process. Furthermore, the power that the so-called oligarchs were believed to possess during much of the Yeltsin period reinforced such an impression. This sort of view, added to the belief that unregulated behaviour on the part of such groups could be disruptive and possibly dangerous to the system, led to attempts by the elite to regulate their activities.

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In line with this view that civil society groups could be more disruptive than positive in their effect, attempts have been made to rein in their activities. Yeltsin sought to ban some groups because of their political views. In the lead-up to the 1993 election, a number of parties were banned,93 while in March 1995 a presidential decree was issued outlawing fascist organisations and their activities.94 The continual prevention of legal protest in central Moscow (at least until the replacement of Moscow mayor Yurii Luzhkov by Sergei Sobyanin in September 2010) by denying the protesters permission to hold a demonstration in the location they had chosen (Triumfalnaia Square) was another action which suggested that the expression of alternative political views was inappropriate. But more important have been the attempts to structure the activity of civil society groups. The first major attempt to structure political activity was Yeltsin’s Charter of Civic Accord, which was signed by 148 political, trade union, religious and public figures in April 1994, and which sought to introduce some basic rules to contemporary politics for the immediate future.95 However, this Accord seemed more important than it was; major oppositionist forces (the KPRF, the Agrarian Party and even Yabloko) did not sign it, and most civil society groups, while it was expected that they would abide by its terms, were not actually partners to it. More significant was the Public Chamber introduced by Putin in 2005. This was a more formal continuation of an earlier Civic Forum of 2001, and was a body that was meant formally to represent the public’s view on major issues, including legislation. Appointed rather than elected, it was widely seen as a means of co-opting leading public figures and thereby blunting the potential opposition and criticism that could stem from civil society,96 even if in practice its members have not always been uncritical of the authorities. Another instrument designed, in part, to bring civil society under control was the generation of organisations designed to support the authorities in what they were doing. The most important of these was Nashi (noted above), which was designed to produce the appearance, and reality, of popular support for President Putin. But it was also designed to mobilise to prevent the sort of ‘colour revolution’ that had occurred in Ukraine and Georgia from seizing the streets in Russia. In this sense, it was an attempt at dominating the potential space that youth 93 95 96

94 Izvestiia 14 October 1993. Rossiiskaia gazeta 5 March 1995. The main terms of the Accord were no early presidential or legislative elections, and no strikes. On this, see Sakwa, Putin, pp. 168–173.

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who sought to criticise the regime could occupy; it was a way of shortcircuiting dissent and closing down independent youth activity. Nashi presented itself as patriotic and defending Russia against those who sought to attack or weaken it,97 but its real purpose was to support the Putin regime. There has also been considerable suspicion about many civil society organisations, especially those engaged in the monitoring or protection of human rights. With the war in Chechnya as the catalyst, a range of organisations grew up to press human rights issues, joining those that had emerged in the late 1980s. Many of these newer organisations received some funding from international sources, and many were constant critics of the authorities, often bringing to light developments which the government would have much preferred to have remained hidden. While the reaction to them among the Russian people as a whole has been mixed – liberals have supported their pro-human rights stance, many others have seen them as getting in the way of the government’s attempts to deal adequately with terrorists – within ruling circles the attitude has been much less benign, especially under the presidency of Vladimir Putin. The measures introduced in 2006 against organisations receiving funds from outside Russia, new registration regulations and measures to increase reporting to the authorities and restructure their internal governance98 constitute a major threat to the autonomy of civil society organisations, and colour them, and indeed all notion of foreign links, with suspicion. In this sort of situation, where the foreign provenance of support (and perhaps even ideas) immediately places an organisation under suspicion, a thriving civil society cannot develop. And yet that is precisely the image that has been created around these groups. Another aspect of civil society is the media. While the media in the early years after the collapse of the USSR was vigorous, scurrilous, critical and immensely amusing, in all of these areas there has been substantial change. Initially one of the virtues of the media was the diversity of ownership, but this been reduced considerably over the years. It went through a phase when many of the major national media outlets were owned by independent businessmen who tended to use 97

98

On Nashi, see Maya Atwal, ‘Evaluating Nashi’s Sustainability: Autonomy, Agency and Activism’, Europe-Asia Studies 61, 5, 2009, pp. 743–758, and Russian Analytical Digest 50, 18 November 2008. On the circumstances of the creation of Nashi, see Robert Horvath, ‘Putin’s “Preventive Counter-Revolution”: Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution’, Europe-Asia Studies 63, 1, 2011, pp. 1–25. On such groups more generally, see Graeme B. Robertson, ‘Managing Society: Protest, Civil Society, and Regime in Putin’s Russia’, Slavic Review 68, 3, 2009, pp. 528–547. Sakwa, Putin, pp. 173–175, and Robertson, ‘Managing Society’.

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those outlets to pursue their own ends. This was especially the case with major newspapers, and contributed to the public decline in both trust in and readership of the print media. But increasingly, especially since 2000, state control over or influence in the media has grown, so that, while criticism and discussion still occur, their scope and scale have been reduced. The national press99 does not appear as the fearless defender of democracy and freedom, but as the mouthpiece of partial interests, including the state.100 Law is the other main bulwark of civil society. Successive presidents have made much of the importance of a law-governed society. However, the appearance seems to differ considerably from this. Throughout the post-Soviet period, one of the strongest perceptions about the way the political system operated was that it was corrupt. Ordinary people often had the experience of having to bribe an official to get that person to do what they wanted, even when that simply involved doing their job. Corruption was felt to have penetrated all aspects of the system and to have made the notion of rule of law little more than a joke. Official spokespeople seemed to confirm this view through their frequent attacks on corruption and calls for the strengthening of law and its enforcement. But it was not only corruption that seemed to call into question the position of law; the blatant lack of observance of virtually all aspects of the law undermined any notion of its having mandatory normative authority. The killing of investigative journalists, and the failure to hold anyone to account, was only the most public instance of this problem, but the lack of justice in the application and enforcement of the law has been a continuing perception throughout the post-Soviet period. The image was thus one of a weak civil society with little opportunity for independent action as the authorities systematically undermined the bases upon which effective popular involvement could potentially have rested. This reflects a fundamental lack of appreciation of the people as having a positive role to play in the polity. While there has been much rhetoric about elections and popular control, in practice this has been systematically undermined by the way political elites have structured political life. This is reinforced by the popular perception of a lack of responsiveness on the part of political institutions to their will (see below). What this amounts to is a view of the populace within the 99

100

Some niche media outlets retain their independence, but they tend to have small circulations/audiences. At regional levels, the main outlets tend to be under the influence of the local authorities. Although, somewhat paradoxically, in late 2010 a majority of Russians believed both that the press was free (63%) and that the authorities did not threaten free speech in any way (56%): Nezavisimaia gazeta 10 December 2010.

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political system as lacking independent agency, as being unable to play a positive and active part in political life. For many within the elite, the populace appear as passive or as supplicants101 while for much of the populace political involvement appears as meaningless or useless.102 The symbolic representation of civil society in the broader institutional culture thus portrays this as a vehicle less for popular participation than for public mobilisation, a symbol less of advancing democracy than of creeping authoritarian rule. The polity The image of the political system over the post-Soviet period saw significant continuities, at least after December 1993, but with some important changes. The presidency continued to appear as the most important institution and, despite the sorts of populist, plebiscitarian appeals launched by Yeltsin at the time of election campaigns, this institution was generally one that was shown as being far removed from the ordinary people, graphically symbolised by the way in which the popular choice of the president was undercut by agreement between those at the top. As befitted a high office of state, it had its share of pomp and ceremony, although the developing dignity of the office was somewhat compromised by some of the arbitrariness of behaviour of its first incumbent. This problem disappeared with the accession of Vladimir Putin and Dmitrii Medvedev, whose serious demeanour and lack of frivolity projected an altogether more dour and dignified persona for the office than it had had before. But even when Yeltsin was in office, after 1993 there was no doubt that this was the most important office in the land, whose incumbent was the chief domestic decision-maker and the representative of the country abroad. The shift from Yeltsin to Putin and then Medvedev accompanied another sort of shift in perception, from that of a system which worked somewhat haphazardly, into that of a regularised and competent structure. The early years of the post-Soviet period, characterised by high levels of economic dislocation and popular hardship about which the authorities seemed to be able to do little and by the conflict between president and legislature, presented the system as unstable and unable to function in a regularised fashion, which contributed to its seeming inability 101 102

Michael Urban, Cultures of Power in Post-Communist Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2010), ch. 3, esp. p. 79. On popular disengagement, see Stephen White and Ian McAllister, ‘Dimensions of Disengagement in Post-Communist Russia’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 20, 1, 2004, pp. 81–97.

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Table 4.1. Popular evaluation of the political system (%) Year 92 Positive 14 Negative 74

93 36 49

94 35 49

95 26 54

96 38 47

98 36 48

00 37 48

01 47 37

03 64 25

04 65 25

05 46 36

07 77 16

08 84 10

09 74 19

Source: ‘Russia Votes’, Levada Center, Moscow, russiavotes.org.

to engage in effective policy-making. Consistent with the leading role of the presidency in the system, this seemed to be symbolised by the personal performance of Boris Yeltsin. However, by the late 1990s the system seemed to be functioning on a more regular basis; the matter of government continued to be handled even in the absence of the sick president. This sense of increased regularity was strengthened with the election of Putin and the different mode of operation he employed. Without periodic outbursts of conflict between president and legislature, without sudden and frequent changes of prime minister, and with the improvement of the economy after 1998 which meant that for many people living standards rose, the whole system seemed to be functioning in a more stable and regular way. This sense was reinforced by the way in which when crises did emerge – the Beslan kidnapping, the Nord-Ost siege, the 2008 currency crisis – they seemed to be handled in a low-key fashion which seemed to suggest a level of competence that formerly had not been evident. This was reflected in popular sentiment (positive/negative) about the nature of the political system. Evaluations changed as shown in Table 4.1. The figures in this table show the growth in strength of positive feelings about the system with a corresponding fall in negative attitudes. This image of increased regularity was evident in many parts of the polity. The fractious nature of the myriad of unstable parties dominated the 1990s, hindering the development of a stable party system, but in the 2000s, with the change in nature of elections, the debate between the parties became more subdued. They appeared to be of less importance because of the personalisation of politics, the enhanced profile of United Russia, and the fact that the basic course for Russia seemed to have been chosen. Accordingly, while in the first half of the 1990s Russian politics could be seen as a cacophony of competing views and arguments, by the 2000s the views of the parties were largely a backdrop to the real business of politics, which was governing. Politics had become less about debate and more about government and administration. Consistent with this was the co-optation by the presidency of the legislature. The drawing of the teeth of the communists, and the mode of operation of the president, drew the legislature into the policy-making

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process in a way that both increased its sense of regularity by blunting possible arguments and undermined its independence. Furthermore, by acting as a means whereby interest groups sought to realise their aims,103 the legislature helped to integrate elements of civil society into the emergent political system. The result of this process has been the development of an institutional culture in which the image is one of a supreme president presiding over a system in which the other elements are integrated into the polity and perform roles which are subordinate to that of the chief executive; or, as one scholar has termed it, state and society are seen as a ‘corporate entity administered by the executive’.104 The degree of independence enjoyed by the different elements of the political system is constrained, with most of them directly controlled from the centre.105 The corollary of this has been the virtual absence from the Russian polity of any notion of legitimate opposition. The measures to co-opt political forces, to regulate independent activity and to undermine autonomous politics have created an image in which serious opposition virtually amounts to treason; it is against the interests of the country. As a result, real opposition to the government, such as has been expressed at times by the KPRF and the democrats, has been undermined. An attempt was made to rationalise this system through a theory which sought to differentiate Russia from the Western experience: ‘sovereign democracy’. Stemming principally from the pen of the deputy head of the presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov, this was essentially a doctrine of guided or tutelary democracy. While not rejecting political pluralism, it did involve the constriction and channelling of that pluralism into paths that neither disrupted nor challenged existing structures. It was a classic statement of the principle that social forces should not be able to challenge political decision-makers even while they should have some freedom to express political views. Sovereign democracy also involved the rejection of foreign dominance and influence, and embraced the view that the country could solve its problems in its own ways. As indicated in Chapter 3, this general position was espoused by Putin, although he was not personally a major advocate of the notion of ‘sovereign democracy’.106 But this view, that Russia needed its own form of democracy, did have popular resonance. Despite the association of democracy in the minds of some with the social and economic difficulties of the 1990s, in the early part of that decade there 103 104 105 106

On this role played by the Duma, see Paul Chaisty, Legislative Politics and Economic Power in Russia (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2006). Pravda, ‘Introduction’, p. 26. This has been central to Wilson’s notion of ‘virtual politics’: Andrew Wilson, Virtual Politics. Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). For Putin’s distancing himself somewhat from this doctrine, see Alfred B. Evans Jr, ‘Putin’s Legacy and Russia’s Identity’, Sakwa (ed.), Power and Policy, p. 22.

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Table 4.2. Does Russia need democracy? (% agreeing)

Russia needs democracy. Democracy is not for Russia.

6/05

12/06

12/07

6/08

6/09

12/09

66 21

55 27

67 17

62 20

57 26

57 23

Source: ‘Russia Votes’, Levada Center, Moscow, russiavotes.org.

had still been broad popular support for the principle of democracy.107 By the second half of the 2000s, Russians still favoured ‘democracy’ as the political form for Russia. One survey asked whether respondents thought Russia needed democracy, and they answered as shown in Table 4.2. However, this needs to be seen in the context of what sort of democracy the people wanted. In response to the question asked in December 2009 ‘What kind of democracy does Russia need?’, people answered as Table 4.3 shows. While it is not clear what in the popular view ‘democracy following national traditions’ would look like,108 and it was clear that most people

107

108

See the discussion in James Gibson, ‘A Mile Wide but an Inch Deep? The Structure of Democratic Commitment in the Former USSR’, American Journal of Political Science 40, 2, 1996, pp. 396–420, and William L. Miller, Stephen White and Paul Heywood, Values and Political Change in Postcommunist Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998). In terms of what democracy means, in 2000 and 2005 people associated it with the following qualities (more than one answer was possible; in %):

Freedom of speech, press and religion Economic prosperity of the country Order and stability Rule of law Direct election of all high state leaders Possibility for everyone to do as they please Empty talk Guarantees for minority rights

2000

2005

37 33 28 29 15 10 10 6

43 32 30 26 13 9 8 6

Source: ‘Russia Votes’. For slightly different figures, see Levada, ‘What the Polls’, p. 45. In 2010, 45% saw it to mean primarily protection of civil liberties, 31% as responsibility of authorities to voters, and 27% equality and fairness: Interfax 12 November citing Levada Center poll. See also Henry E. Hale, ‘The Myth of Mass Russian Support for Autocracy: The Public Opinion Foundations of a Hybrid Regime’, Europe-Asia Studies 63, 8, 2011, pp. 1359–1361. Hale argues that the sort of arrangement most Russians seem to favour was similar to the notion of ‘delegative democracy’ in which the people vote a person into office who is then able to govern however they see fit until the term of office ends: Hale, ‘Myth’, pp. 1367–1371.

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Table 4.3. What kind of democracy for Russia? (% preferring) Like that in developed countries of Europe and America. Like that in the Soviet Union. Russia needs its own unique type of democracy following national traditions. Russia does not need democracy.

23 14 43 7

Source: ‘Russia Votes’, Levada Center, Moscow, russiavotes.org.

Table 4.4. Order or democracy? (% preferring) 9/96 1/97 Order 78 Democracy 9

79 9

8/98 11/99

4/00 6/01

12/04 12/05

11/07

12/09

73 14

81 9

75 13

68 18

59 18

77 14

75 8

69 18

Source: ‘Russia Votes’, Levada Center, Moscow, russiavotes.org.

did not want the restoration of the Soviet system,109 many people did not believe Russia functioned as a democracy; in late 2010, 47% of people believed that Russia did not function democratically, but only 8% saw this as a pressing problem.110 The explanation for this may lie in the views people gave in answer to the question ‘What do you consider is now most important for Russia, order or democracy?’ People responded as shown in Table 4.4.111 While people were supportive of ‘democracy’, this was seen as less important than ‘order’, a perspective that reflects the social basis of Surkov’s ‘sovereign democracy’ and, more importantly, Putin’s paternalistic views about democracy articulated in his presidential addresses.

109 110

111

White, Understanding, p. 226; and also the figures on pp. 229–236. Interfax 12 November 2010, citing a Levada Center poll. The following month, only 41% believed contemporary Russia was a democratic state, although 54% believed themselves to be free: Novaia Gazeta 15 December 2010. According to Hale, ‘Myth’, p. 1361, the percentage of people who classed Russia as a democracy was 35% in 1996, 18% in 1999, 34% in 2003 and 28% in 2008. The association of democracy with order was apparently thought not worth asking. Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber, ‘Soviet Nostalgia: An Impediment to Russian Democratization’, Washington Quarterly 29, 1, 2005–6, pp. 88–89, cite a poll in which 26% thought authoritarian rule was best for Russia while 22% favoured democracy. On Russians’ low evaluation of democracy in practice, see Stephen Whitefield, ‘Russian Citizens and Russian Democracy: Perspectives of State Governance and Democratic Practice, 1993–2007’, Post-Soviet Affairs 25, 2, 2009, pp. 93–117. For other figures which are consistent with this preference, see Hale, ‘Myth’, pp. 1365–1366. But 56% believed Russia could simultaneously be a democracy and have a strong state: Hale, ‘Myth’, p. 1366.

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Table 4.5. Trust in institutions (2001; %)

Churches Armed forces State TV Radio Press Independent TV Government Parliament Parties Internet

Full trust

Some trust

Not much trust

No trust

19 14 13 12 7 7 7 2 2 1

28 36 44 41 40 31 24 14 9 6

26 29 31 26 34 28 46 47 42 6

16 13 8 7 8 12 19 28 37 4

Source: Stephen White, ‘Ten Years On, What Do the Russians Think?’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18, 1, 2002, p. 12.

This is also consistent with the image of the political system emanating from the institutional culture. This is also reflected in popular attitudes to those in power. In the middle of 2005, 83% of people said power in Russia was to be found in the hands of a narrow circle of people outside popular control, while 64% of people believed that those in power were only concerned about their own material and career interests;112 76% of the population saw officials as a special caste with their own interests and distinct way of life.113 In 2001 60% agreed entirely and 26% partly with the view that politicians did not care what people thought, while 63% entirely agreed and 25% partly agreed that Duma deputies had lost touch with the electors.114 The government was believed to take little notice of the people. Perhaps not surprisingly, given this view, Russians’ level of trust in their political institutions was very low. In 2001, figures were as shown in Table 4.5.115 The location of the overtly political institutions (government, parliament and parties) near the bottom of this list with total negative levels (‘not much’ and ‘no’ trust) exceeding total positive levels (‘full’ and 112 113 114 115

Yurii Levada, ‘Paradoksy i smysly reitingov: popytka ponimaniia’, Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia. Dannye. Analiz. Diskussi 4(78), July–August 2005, p. 17. Eugene Huskey, ‘Bureaucracy’, Graeme Gill and James Young (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics and Society (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 176. Stephen White, ‘Ten Years On, What Do the Russians Think?’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18, 1, 2002, p. 46. For some different figures (although the generalisations in the following paragraph still generally hold), see Sakwa, Crisis, p. 15 and White, Understanding, p. 53.

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Table 4.6. Nature of the political system (% agreeing with description)

Criminal and corrupt Remote and alien

1993

2001

2005

63 41

50 34

62 42

Source: Stephen White, ‘Soviet Nostalgia and Russian Politics’, Journal of

Eurasian Studies 1, 2010, p. 5.

‘some’ trust) is stark. So too is the fact that those institutions which involved popular political participation enjoyed much less trust than those like the churches and the military which were not open to such involvement.116 The presidency seemed to fare a little better. In 2005, 43% said they trusted the president, 4% the State Duma and 2% political parties.117 Vladimir Shlapentokh argues that, on a world scale, Russians are more distrusting of virtually all of their political institutions than almost any other national group. They had little attachment to the political system, which many saw as criminal and corrupt, and remote and alien See Table 4.6. Also associated with this lack of trust in institutions was the strongly entrenched view that the formal institutions were less important than informal networks of power, influence and assistance. Alena Ledeneva118 has clearly shown that informal networks are essential, and are seen as such, for people to get along in contemporary Russia. They are also acknowledged as important within the elite.119 The importance of these mechanisms of coping is increased by the lack of

116

117

118 119

This is not an isolated finding. A similar situation applies in many of the former communist countries, as well as in western Europe and the Anglo-American world. On former communist countries, see Kadrie Lu¨histe, ‘Explaining Trust in Political Institutions: Some Illustrations from the Baltic States’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39, 4, 2006, p. 483, and William Mishler and Richard Rose, ‘Trust, Distrust and Skepticism: Popular Evaluations of Civil and Political Institutions in PostCommunist Societies’, Journal of Politics 59, 2, 1997, p. 423. ROMIR survey of February 2005 cited in Vladimir Shlapentokh, ‘Trust in Public Institutions in Russia: The Lowest in the World’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39, 2, 2006, p. 156. For the situation in the early post-Soviet years, see Matthew Wyman, Public Opinion in Postcommunist Russia (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), ch. 4. Not surprisingly, in most cases elites had higher levels of confidence in political institutions than did the population at large: Anton Steen, ‘The Question of Legitimacy: Elites and Political Support in Russia’, Europe-Asia Studies 53, 5, 2001, p. 712. Alena V. Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works. The Informal Practices That Shaped PostSoviet Politics and Business (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). Urban, Cultures of Power, pp. 48–68.

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responsiveness people perceive in the formal institutions. What this does is to compound on itself: the more important the informal mechanisms are seen to be, the less relevant appear the formal structures, and vice versa. This encourages a growing lack of attachment to the formal structures and therefore increasing alienation from the system as a whole. The result is a political system that not only does not embody a view of society that can generate popular approval, but rather appears as something which gets in the way of people living their lives. As the political system developed over the first two decades of post-Soviet Russia, the institutional dynamic that emerged generated an institutional culture that portrayed that system as one in which the ordinary populace played only a secondary role. The primary focus of political life was the president and political elites, with the principal institutions seemingly functioning in ways to consolidate their control. This sort of image was starkly at odds with the democratic rhetoric that surrounded the creation of the system, that was contained in leading documents such as the Constitution, and that was reflected in some of the speeches of Presidents Yeltsin and Medvedev. Although the image was more consonant with the tenor of President Putin’s paternalism, this lack of fit between the symbolism of democracy and that emanating from the system’s modus operandi created a sense of symbolic incoherence. Without a clear and consistent narrative integrating the rhetoric with the institutional culture, the symbolism of that institutional culture remained part of the broader fragmented symbolism of post-Soviet Russia as a whole.

5

Russian identity in the public arena

With no clear narrative prevailing in the discourse represented by the speeches of the country’s leaders, and the symbolism emerging from the institutional culture of the political structure seemingly at odds with the democratic rhetoric that had been so evident at the time of the collapse of the USSR, was there a clearer image in the public culture? Unlike in Soviet times, the authorities did not dominate the public sphere to the exclusion of other forces, so it was here that elements independent of the regime were most likely to influence any emergent symbolic narrative. Accordingly it is in this arena that we see the interaction of the political elite with the discourse of the public culture, composed of the debates and discussion that took place within the public sphere, principally projected through the media but emanating from the variety of groups and individuals which sought to play a part in public life. This sphere was clearly shaped in part by the speeches of political leaders and the dynamics of political life, but it was also defined by the hopes, aspirations and views of those outside the political elite. While much of the public culture did not relate directly to the question of the future of the Russian community and state, elements of it did feed in to this issue. One aspect of this was the question of identity. This was central to the development of any conception of Russia and its future, because where a society went in the future depended in part on where it was coming from and the sort of entity it was at that time. In this sense, if a coherent narrative about Russia was to emerge, it had to deal with this question of history and identity. Identity has widely been seen as a particularly difficult issue for Russia because of the circumstances of the post-Soviet situation. A number of aspects of this are relevant. One is the nature of the role of Russia in the USSR. On the part of many people and throughout much of Soviet history, there was a conceptual blurring of Russia and the Union. In institutional terms this was reflected in the absence of a whole range of official bodies for the RSFSR of the sort enjoyed by the other union republics; for example, there was no specific Russian communist party, 134

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135

nor was there an academy of sciences, with Russian matters in both of these spheres looked after in the corresponding all-union bodies. Thus although the RSFSR was the largest constituent element in the union, its place remained ambiguous. Furthermore, given the generally dominant place in the all-union bodies held by Russians, while the other republics could present the collapse of the USSR as the means of their escaping from Russian control and thereby establishing their own independent sense of identity, a theme which could constitute the heart of a new post-communist narrative, such an interpretation was impossible for Russians. The extension of Russian control from Moscow after 1917 reinforced this sense because it meant that the other republics could blame Russia and the Russians for their plight under communism, while the Russians had no such obvious scapegoat. Thus, while the other republics could define their new status as independence from the rule of others, such a course of action was not open to the Russians. Their association with the Soviet Union was too close and too ambiguous.1 This association of Russia with the Soviet Union was also reinforced by the way in which Russia officially became the continuer state of the USSR as far as international law and the possession of nuclear weapons were concerned. This problem of defining Russian identity was also complicated by the nature of the Soviet Union. The USSR was a civilisational state, in the sense that its raison d’eˆtre was to create a new civilisation, or an alternative type of modernity to that current elsewhere. The underlying rationale of the USSR throughout most of its life was that it was creating the sort of society which had never been seen before, one characterised by principles that would lead to a pattern of living that was very different from its geopolitical and ideological competitors. However, the way this society was conceived drew heavily upon Russian culture,2 with the result that the discrediting of the Soviet cultural project left the situation of Russian culture ambiguous. To what extent was the rejection of Soviet communism also a rejection of Russian messianism? And did Russian culture present viable models of social development that were clearly different from the forms encapsulated within the Soviet project? In this sense, the destruction of the Soviet 1

2

It was the closeness of this relationship that generated the tendency of some in the postSoviet period to equate the dissolution of the USSR (and what some saw in the early 1990s as the potential dissolution of Russia) with the dissolution of the Russian nation and the values it embodied. Serguei Alex. Oushakine, The Patriotism of Despair. Nation, War, and Loss in Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), ch. 2, esp. p. 81. See Graeme Gill, Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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state involved the rejection of the civilisational idea, and thereby left its Russian roots exposed and its status uncertain. The question mark over Russian culture was reinforced by similar uncertainty about what now constituted the Russian community. The loss of both Ukraine and Belarus,3 in the sense that they became states independent of Russia, destroyed the geographical conception of Russia rooted in historical consciousness, while the large proportion of the inhabitants of the Russian Federation who were not ethnically Russian plus the large number of ethnic Russians found outside Russia further complicated this image of the community. If the status of Russian culture was under question, the traditional geographical conception of Russia no longer applied, and Russian society was highly ethnically differentiated, the question of what it meant to be Russia and Russian remained in the post-Soviet period distinctly open. While this problem of identity was sometimes broached in official speeches and documents, it was also evident more generally in the public arena. A long-running theme in the debate about Russian identity concerned its relationship with the West, including the view of this as the principal ‘Other’ against which Russia was to be conceived. In practice what this amounted to was the question of whether Russia should seek to emulate the West in order to develop and better both compete and interact with it, as Peter the Great had believed, or whether Russia should follow its own nativistic traditions (at the risk of undermining its capacity to compete with the West), as the nineteenth-century Slavophiles had believed. Over the centuries, Russian intellectuals had remained torn on this question, with many having a distinctly ambiguous attitude to the West, simultaneously drawn to it and repelled by it.4 At the heart of this dichotomy was the question of whether Russia constituted a unique, sui generis civilisation, or whether it was part of the broader stream of Western civilisation. Prominent in this debate has been the idea of Eurasianism. The notion of Eurasianism arose in the 1920s and was particularly popular among some groups of e´migre´ Russian intellectuals.5 Its essence was that Russia was not a European country but an amalgam of European and Asian peoples with their own identity, cultural traditions and 3 4

5

This is despite the formal establishment of a unitary state between Russia and Belarus in April 1996. The literature on this is enormous. For one study of it during the last years of the Soviet era, see Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West. Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). For a sympathetic treatment of Eurasianism in the twilight of Soviet rule, see Igor Isaev, ‘Evraziistvo: mif ili traditsiia?’, Kommunist 12, 1991, pp. 106–118; and Lidiia Novikova and Irina Sizemskaia, ‘Dva lika Evraziistva’, Svobodnaia mysl’ 7, 1992, pp. 100–110.

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modes of behaviour. It was on the territory of the Russian Empire that a unique civilisation was being built through the coming together of a new national community of Slavic, Turkic, Caucasian, Finno-Ugric and Mongol peoples. The strong European and Asian (meaning mainly Caucasian and Central Asian) components of this meant that Russia was neither a European nor an Asian state, but a sort of bridge between the two. It was unique, with its own civilisation, cultural values and ways of doing things, with a destiny to dominate the Eurasian land mass, and, as a consequence, it could not simply be turned into a clone of the West. Rather than a stream of Western civilisation, Russia was seen as a distinct civilisation of its own, acting as a balance between Europe and Asia.6 But this also meant that its interests were very different from those of the West, and that Russia therefore needed to follow an independent course rather than tying itself too closely to the West. Indeed, there was a strong, even imperialist, view that, rather than seeking to integrate with the West, Russia should seek to dominate Asia. While there are various strands of Eurasianism,7 or ‘neoEurasianism’ as one author prefers to call it,8 all share the sense of Russia as a unique community, different from both East and West. The Eurasianist conception of Russia and its place in the world as it emerged in the 1990s was different to that earlier in the century; in James H. Billington’s words, it was ‘more political and less philosophical than the earlier Eurasianism . . . basically an authoritarian nationalism rooted more in ethnicity than religion, more in geography than in 6

7

8

See Mark Bassin, ‘Russia Between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space’, Slavic Review 50, 1, 1991, pp. 1–17, and Paradorn Rangsimaporn, ‘Interpretations of Eurasianism: Justifying Russia’s Role in East Asia’, Europe-Asia Studies 58, 3, 2006, pp. 371–389. On Aleksandr Dugin, a major ideologist of Eurasianism, see Alan Ingram, ‘Aleksander Dugin: Geo-politics and Neo-fascism in Post-Soviet Russia’, Political Geography 20, 8, 2001, pp. 1029–1051; and Wayne Allensworth, ‘Dugin and the Eurasian Controversy: Is Eurasianism “Patriotic”?’, Marlene Laruelle (ed.), Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion of Russia (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 104–122. For example, Richard Sakwa identifies four: ‘pragmatic Eurasianism that simply reflects the fact that Russia is both a European and an Asian power; neo-Eurasianism with a more imperialist and at times semi-fascist inflection that minimises the East as a substantive force while playing up geopolitical factors and the denigration of the West; an intercivilisational Eurasianism, focusing on Russia’s multi-ethnic identity; and a mystical Eurasianism that sharply distinguishes the mega-region as the spiritual counterpoint to Western degradation’. See Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (London: Routledge, 2008, 4th edn), pp. 379–380. For an argument about interpretations of Eurasianism and their link with foreign policy, see Rangsimaporn, ‘Interpretations’. On myths of the nature of Russia more generally, see Richard Sakwa, ‘Myth and Democratic Identity in Russia’, Alexander Wo¨ll and Harald Wydra (eds.), Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 203–218. Marlene Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism. An Ideology of Empire (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008).

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language or culture’.9 Eurasianism gained public prominence in the early 1990s as Russians pondered their future after communism, but it was also stimulated by the foreign policy pursued in the first years of the Yeltsin presidency. Led by Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, this policy was widely seen as overwhelmingly pro-Western, even to the extent in some people’s views of subordinating Russia’s interests to those of NATO. Believing that continuing close co-operation with the West was a primary goal of Russian foreign policy, Kozyrev emphasised the shared values and aims between the two sides and used this to justify the proWestern orientation. This approach, often called Atlanticism, was significantly modified when Kozyrev was replaced as foreign minister by Yevgenii Primakov in 1996 and disappeared following Putin’s election as president. But its early dominance encouraged opponents to champion a Eurasianist outlook in the policy debate and the community more widely, with Eurasianism acting as a symbolic call for those who wished to reject the West and its culture. These two views, Eurasianism and Atlanticism, both built upon the long-standing division in Russian culture between Slavophiles and Westernisers. The former favoured Russia’s relying upon its own, nativist traditions to create a society which reflected the essential values of Russian culture, the latter a course of borrowing from the West in order to transform Russia into a developed country like those in the West. These two positions resonated strongly through Russian culture and, at times of crisis, often played significant roles in structuring the way issues were resolved. They effectively constituted two different approaches to what sort of community Russia should be, and therefore underpinned much of the debate about the course Russia should follow in the 1990s. Also important in this discussion of the nature of the Russian community has been the distinction between two conceptions encapsulated in the terms ‘russkii’ and ‘rossiiskii’.10 The former involves an ethnic notion of community, emphasising ethnic origin, language, culture and religion (Orthodoxy) as the markers of ethnicity, and is an exclusivist conception: if you are an ethnic Russian you are in; if not, not. The latter 9 10

James H. Billington, Russia in Search of Itself (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), p. 70. Although for an argument that in the 1990s there were actually five main conceptions of the Russian nation – as an imperial people with a mission to create a supranational state; as a nation of all the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians) united by common origin and culture; as a community of Russian speakers regardless of where they lived; as a racial group regardless of where they lived; and as a civil group inhabiting the Russian Federation – see Vera Tolz, ‘Forging the Nation: National Identity and Nation Building in Post-Communist Russia’, Europe-Asia Studies 50, 6, 1998, pp. 993–1022.

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embraced a civic conception of identity, emphasising citizenship and membership of the community by all who dwelt within the borders of the Russian state. These were very different conceptions of community, with each, as represented and expressed by different groups, present in a variety of different permutations in the public arena.11 Although the ‘rossiiskii’ variant generally prevailed in official discourse12 (including the 1993 Constitution) and throughout much of society,13 the ‘russkii’ conception did at times seem to underpin debate, especially among the more extreme nationalist elements; for example, the refrain that was particularly strong in 1992–5 that Russia had a duty to protect the interests of ethnic Russians (or at least those speaking Russian) in the other states of the former USSR. Similarly, discussion about the appropriate borders of the state – ranging through a reconstitution of the USSR, a union of Slavs, inclusion only of ethnic Russians, to the status quo – also saw this conception present.14 However, it has generally been the ‘rossiiskii’ approach that has been dominant within the mainstream public sphere.15 The debate over Russian identity, nativist or Western, was essentially a debate about culture, and whether Russia was distinct or part of a broader Western tradition. But it was also about history, and whether Russia’s past was best seen as part of the broader sweep of European history or as something quite different. However, in the post-Soviet context, this question did not manifest itself in a significant revival of interest in or the symbolism of the tsarist period or representations of it as a viable model for contemporary Russia. While the nostalgia for the Soviet period (see Conclusion) was rooted in part in the personal memories of many Russian citizens and the fact that the physical surroundings remained shaped overwhelmingly by the

11

12

13 14 15

For a discussion of some of these views and the groups which espoused them, see Vera Tolz, ‘A Future Russia: A Nation-State or a Multi-national Federation?’, Wendy Slater and Andrew Wilson (eds.), The Legacy of the Soviet Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 17–38, and Marlene Laruelle, ‘Rethinking Russian Nationalism: Historical Continuity, Political Diversity, and Doctrinal Fragmentation’, Laruelle (ed.) Russian Nationalism, pp. 13–48. Although for an argument that the 1996 Yeltsin-inspired search for the ‘Russian idea’ was in practice heavily laced with a ‘russkii’ conception, see Tolz, ‘A Future Russia’, pp. 25–26. For some opinion poll figures, see Tolz, ‘A Future Russia’, pp. 32–33. On this question, see Vera Tolz, ‘Conflicting “Homeland” Myths and Nation-State Building in Postcommunist Russia’, Slavic Review 57, 2, 1998, pp. 267–294. Although on the real problems with this and other conceptions of the community (civic based on the territory of the Russian Federation; civic based on the territory of the USSR; ethnic Russian; Eastern Slav; and Russian-language speakers), see Oxana Shevel, ‘Russian Nation-Building from Yel’tsin to Medvedev: Ethnic, Civic or Purposefully Ambiguous?’, Europe-Asia Studies 63, 2, 2011, pp. 179–202.

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Soviet experience, that for tsarist Russia was both of a more romantic and inquisitive nature. With the freer discussion of the country’s history beginning in the Gorbachev period, the distorted image of pre-1917 Russia that had emanated from Soviet historiography was counterbalanced by a more positive view. This was enhanced by the very negative images of at least parts of the Soviet experience that prevailed in the lateGorbachev and Yeltsin periods. But the pre-modern (or perhaps better early modern) nature of tsarist Russia meant that except for extreme Slavophiles, this could not really be presented as a viable alternative means of organising society for a community at the turn of the millennium. This does not mean that aspects of that past could not be taken up and treated as having normative significance for Russian development – the revival of the Church and the spiritual values it was thought to embody is a good example of this (see below)16 – but the period as a whole did not occupy the same position in public discourse as the Soviet period did. There was little popular sense of a desire for a return to aspects of tsarist society; there was general indifference about whether the end of the monarchy was good or bad (26% good and 28% bad in a 2007 survey).17 One aspect of the tsarist era that did achieve symbolic significance was the burial of members of the former imperial family in St Petersburg, although the importance of this may also have been partly due to the attitude to the Soviet era since it was the Bolsheviks who had displaced the Russian monarchy and killed the last tsar and his immediate family. The first burial of a member of the former ruling family was on 29 May 1992 when the body of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich was buried in the Grand Ducal chapel in the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul. He had died in the United States, but the funeral service was conducted in St Isaacs Cathedral by the Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Aleksei II. The remains of his parents were transferred to the same place from Germany on 7 March 1995. The remains of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna, daughter of Alexander III and mother of Nicholas II, were repatriated from Denmark and interred in the Cathedral on 28 September 2006. But the most important burial was that of Nicholas II and his family in a special chapel in the Cathedral on 17 August 1998. After their remains had been discovered and exhumed from their resting

16

17

On the Church as the most trusted institution in Russian society, see figures cited in Vladimir Shlapentokh, ‘Trust in Public Institutions in Russia: The Lowest in the World’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39, 2, 2006, pp. 163–166. ‘The February Revolution: Ninety Years Since Monarchy’, Public Opinion Foundation 22 February 2007, bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/rus_im/rus_history/ed070824.

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place near Ekaterinburg and their identity confirmed through DNA testing, they were afforded a funeral attended by Yeltsin and conducted with full state pomp and ceremony.18 Nicholas was canonised as a martyr by the Church in 2000. In October 2007, Nicholas and five of his closest family were formally rehabilitated when the Supreme Court ruled that they had been victims of political repression. While the fate of the royal family had been a question circulating within Russian society for some time,19 it was not a matter of major concern (despite a statue of Nicholas I in Moscow being blown up in 1997 by a member of the so-called Worker–Peasant Red Army) and certainly did not translate into major sentiment in favour of restoring the monarchy. Indeed, the attitude to the former royal family seems indicative of that towards imperial Russia as a whole, interest but without any passion.20 There has also been little public interest in the forces opposing the Bolsheviks during the civil war. The only major symbolic development was the adoption as the national flag of the Russian Federation of the tricolour flag used by these forces, although, as noted above, it formerly had been a state flag of the empire as well as having been formally adopted by the Provisional Government.21 Also notable was the reburial of the remains of one of the civil war White commanders, General Anton Denikin, in the Donskoi Monastery in October 2005; Putin later visited his grave.22 The only pre-Soviet institution that has regained a prominent symbolic position in Russian society has been the Russian Orthodox Church. Despite divisions within the Church around its role during the Soviet period, since 1991 it has been able to restore its fortunes, even if it has not regained the dominance it had enjoyed prior to 1917. With much of the property it had lost during the Soviet era returned to it 18

19

20

21 22

On arrangements for this, including the reservations of the patriarch, see reports in Kommersant 6 February, 12 May and 9 and 10 June 1998. On the ceremony, see Nezavisimaia gazeta 17 and 18 July 1998 and Novye izvestiia 18 July 1998. For one discussion of this, see Wendy Slater, ‘Relics, Remains, and Revisionism: Narratives of Nicholas II in Contemporary Russia’, Rethinking History 9, 1, 2005, pp. 53–70. On recognition of Nicholas’ relatives (other than himself and his immediate family) as victims of political repression, see Vremia novostei 9 June 2009. For Medvedev’s attempt to link his programme of modernisation with the reforms of Alexander II, see his speech to a conference entitled ‘The Great Reform and the Modernisation of Russia’, 3 March 2011, www.kremlin.ru. He declared that, from a historical perspective, Alexander II was right and Nicholas I and Stalin were wrong. For a brief survey of views favouring the re-establishment of a monarchical system, see Billington, Russia, pp. 51–53. V. N. Singaevskii, Voenno-gosudarstvennye simvoly Rossii (Moscow: Poligon, 2007), pp.40–42. Vremia novostei 4 October 2005.

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and with large amounts of money spent on rebuilding and refurbishing lapsed and derelict churches and on building new ones, the Church again became a prominent element in changing urban streetscapes. While regular congregations have been smaller than Church leaders may have hoped, they have been of sufficient size to assist the Church in claiming a place in the society’s collective conscience. Church leaders have not sought to set the Church at odds with the state, generally giving support to the government in those policy areas in which it has taken an interest, in return for its regained property and significant legislative support; the most important area of this has been the limitations placed on the activities of the so-called ‘non-traditional’ religions of Russia. Church and state have promoted each other through the involvement of the Church in the major state ceremonies, and this, plus its presence in many of the national holiday celebrations, projects the Church as a symbolic marker linking back to the Russian past and a reflection of values associated with that past, including strong support for anti-communist themes. A symbolic attempt to promote something from the pre-Soviet past while simultaneously rejecting Soviet symbolism was the creation in 2005 of the Day of National Unity on 4 November. This was designed in part to displace the celebration of the October Revolution from the festival calendar; this had taken place on 7 November and, when the new holiday was introduced, the holiday for the revolution was abolished.23 The new date, 4 November, was chosen because it marked the popular uprising in 1612 led by Dmitrii Pozharskii and Kuzma Minin (who were celebrated in a statue in Red Square that remained throughout the Soviet period) which expelled the Polish–Lithuanian occupiers from Moscow and ended the ‘Time of Troubles’ (although the war did not actually end until 1618).24 This holiday, which has become the occasion for marches by extreme nationalist groups across the country, therefore marked the founding of the regime and dynasty overthrown by the Bolsheviks in 1917. The symbolism was stark: a tsarist foundation myth displaced a Soviet one. Medvedev directly associated himself with this in 2010 by visiting the newly rebuilt tomb of Pozharskii in Suzdal, which had been destroyed in the 1930s, and in 2011 the statue of Minin and Pozharskii in Nizhnii Novgorod. However, many people remain uncertain about the day’s meaning,25 perhaps in part because Yeltsin had

23 24 25

Constitution Day, 12 December, was also abolished. This is also the day that the Orthodox Church honours the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, which was supposed to have assisted the volunteer corps which expelled the invaders. ‘National Unity Day Marked with Nationalist Marches’, www.russiatoday.com 4 November 2010.

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earlier tried to designate this day a ‘Day of Agreement and Reconciliation’, but there had never been clarity about what was to be agreed or who were to be reconciled.26 The new symbolic holidays generally did not enjoy widespread popular recognition. So the pre-Soviet past has not been a major source of either symbolism or enthusiasm in post-Soviet Russian discourse. Certainly the Moscow cityscape has been changed by the restoration of pre-Soviet buildings (see Chapter 6), the Orthodox Church has projected a message emphasising traditional values emanating from the pre-Soviet period, and fringe groups have given voice to various claims about the virtues of aspects of pre-Soviet Russia, but these sorts of symbols have not taken strong root in the public sphere nor have they become struts for a coherent post-Soviet narrative. While it may be an era of general interest, pre-Soviet Russia has not generally been seen as a relevant model or guide for contemporary or future development. Nor has it generally been seen as something that should be avoided or reacted against; the mood was more one of indifference. However, the same cannot be said to have always been the case with regard to the communist era. Communism Any attempt to construct a post-Soviet narrative had to come to grips with the reality of the seventy-four years of communist rule. Not only logic, but also the demographic reality – the fact that most people in Russia had spent much of their lives under Soviet rule – and the physical surroundings which were indelibly marked with reminders of the Soviet era meant that the Soviet period could not simply be ignored. Any attempt to construct a new post-Soviet identity had to encapsulate the Soviet legacy in some way; otherwise it would lack both popular and intellectual credibility. The whole basis of Yeltsin’s political position was rejection of the communist past and, although the clash with the legislature was a high point in this, it was evident throughout. From the first months of post-Soviet rule, Yeltsin was casting the success of his economic reforms as being essential to prevent the rebith of the totalitarian regime.27 And although he argued that it was necessary to judge the party rather than individual communists,28 the anti-communist press continued to link the communists with the Soviet 26

27

Nanci Adler, ‘The Future of the Soviet Past Remains Unpredictable: The Resurrection of Stalinist Symbols Amidst the Exhumation of Mass Graves’, Europe-Asia Studies 57, 8, 2005, p. 1098. 28 Nezavisimaia gazeta 5 February 1992. Nezavisimaia gazeta 28 May 1992.

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regime and the 1991 putsch.29 But, reflecting the ambiguity surrounding the former regime, the reports of the Victory Day celebration had veterans carrying pictures of Stalin and Lenin and criticising Gorbachev and Yeltsin, yet veterans were also reported to have advised Yeltsin not to listen to the communists but to press ahead with reform.30 As indicated in Chapter 3, Yeltsin was consistently critical of the communist past and its legacy to contemporary society. This sort of attitude was directly reflected in the case in the Constitutional Court in 1992. In February 1992 a group of former communist leaders and parliamentary deputies presented a petition to the Court to declare the decrees through which Yeltsin had banned the party and seized its property as unconstitutional. In response, a counter-suit was launched by a group of parliamentarians on the constitutionality of the CPSU and the Communist Party of the RSFSR, claiming that the party had been so intertwined with the Soviet government that it was not really a party and was not therefore deserving of protection under the laws of independent Russia. Two different sorts of cases were thereby placed before the Court: an essentially legal one questioning the legality of Yeltsin’s decrees, and a more political one designed to place the entire record of the CPSU in the dock. When the Court convened in July 1992, Court chairman Valerii Zorkin took a narrow view, concentrating attention on legal issues and limiting the case to the party’s activity since March 1990. This both undercut the ability of the anti-communist side to mount a public ‘trial of communism’ and shifted much of the debate onto the question of the legality of Yeltsin’s actions. When the Court handed down its decision in November, Yeltsin’s ban on the central organs of the party was upheld, but this was declared not to apply to the party’s local organs. The Court declined to rule on the constitutionality question raised by the counter-suit. During the trial, those acting for the anti-communist side presented thirty-six volumes of evidence, much of it gained through ransacking the archives in search of material that would support this cause.31 Despite 29

30 31

For example, see the reports of the May Day and Victory Day celebrations which made explicit reference to the putsch and its instigators. Nezavisimaia gazeta 6 and 13 May 1992. Nezavisimaia gazeta 9 and 13 May 1992. For the trial itself, see Materialy dela o proverke konstitutsionnosti ukazov Prezidenta RF, kasaiushchikhsia deiatel’nosti KPSS i KP RSFSR, a takzhe o proverke konstitutsionnosti KPSS i KP RSFSR, 4 vols. (Moscow: Spark, 1996–7). For an annotated list of the documents, see I. I. Kudriavtsev (comp.), Arkhivy Kremlia i Staroi ploshchadi dokumenty po ‘delu KPSS’. Annotirovannyi spravochnik dokumentov, predstavlennykh v Konstitutsionnyi sud Rossiiskoi federatsii po ‘delu KPSS’ (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 1995).

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the narrow approach of the Court, both sides and the press generally referred to it as ‘the trial of the CPSU’.32 Not surprisingly, the image presented by the communist side was a positive one. They emphasised the party’s popular support, as reflected in victory in the war and the post-war economic revival and Soviet technical achievements (especially space flight), and the way the party was itself undergoing reform and democratisation internally while promoting these in the society more broadly. They acknowledged the abuse of human rights and the deaths under Stalin (although they played down the scale), but praised the party for seeking to come to terms with this and cast it as one of the victims. On the question of usurping state functions, they pointed to Article 6 of the Constitution as providing a formal basis for party activity, but also argued that, although the party may have overstepped the bounds at times, it was generally done in the best interests of the people. They did admit, however, that some leaders (Stalin and Gorbachev were mentioned) could be charged with abuse of position. The party was not collectively responsible for abuses, nor for the 1991 putsch attempt. The party’s defenders thus presented it as, in Smith’s words, ‘self-sacrificing, public-spirited, and reform-minded’.33 The party’s critics emphasised both the party’s routine violation of constitutional norms as well as its more egregious abuses; they argued that throughout its history it had relied on the unconstitutional use of force; they challenged the argument that the party repented for its past because, they claimed, it had never admitted the true nature or extent of its crimes; and they accused its defenders of seeking purely to preserve their own and the party’s formerly privileged place in society. The images the two sides conjured up were starkly opposed in the way one would expect: a party that could do nothing right compared with one which had good intentions and had made mistakes, but whose historical role was generally positive. These images of communism continued to be projected during the first half of the 1990s as political actors sought in an instrumental fashion to use the Soviet era to advance their more contemporary political aims. An important occasion for this was the 1992–3 clash between president and legislature. While this clash was basically about the distribution of power in the political system, a major means of its prosecution by the presidential side was the attempt to associate its legislative

32

33

Kathleen E. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia. Politics and Memory During the Yeltsin Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 17. See also Jane Henderson, ‘The Russian Constitutional Court and the Communist Party Case: Watershed or Whitewash?’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40, 1, 2007, pp. 1–16. Smith, Mythmaking, p. 23.

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enemies with the worst aspects of the communist past. The labelling of them as ‘communists’ and the depiction of them as seeking to stand in the way of the dismantling of the Soviet system were clear attempts to depict their actions as illegitimate and out of step with the development of a new Russia. This conception was strengthened by the fact that, during popular protests in support of the legislative side, some of the protesters carried placards calling for the restoration of the USSR. The charges against the legislature were made not just by those around the president, but also by media sources that were sympathetic to him. When the Supreme Soviet had before it a draft resolution on the news media, its effect was labelled by Izvestiia journalist Vladimir Nadein ‘a colossal propaganda machine comparable in scope to the communist monopoly’.34 Some of Ruslan Khasbulatov’s measures were explicitly compared with Soviet precursors.35 In a speech to workers in December 1992, Yeltsin declared that ‘a majority of deputies were put together straight from the party apparatus’.36 The sort of association Yeltsin sought to draw between his legislative opposition and the former regime was often evoked in the anti-communist mainstream press. Vladimir Shumeiko accused the people’s deputies of seeking to establish Soviet-type full concentration of power in one institution (the Congress), while Viacheslav Kostikov accused the deputies of seeking to concentrate power in the soviets, to turn the communist nomenklatura into an instrument to rule the counry, and to wind back the democratic victories of August 1991.37 Andrei Kozyrev claimed that only ‘Soviet democracy’ would forbid the referendum that Yeltsin had called for and that without Yeltsin the country would be on the verge of the rebirth of ‘Soviet democracy’.38 Kostikov also said that it would be ‘unacceptable’ for the new Constitution, which was to firmly close the door on communism, to have the ‘attributes of the obsolete Soviet system’.39 With the violent closure of the legislature, Yeltsin supporters continued to draw this link. Izvestiia published a picture of the building of the former Moscow city soviet with a sign saying ‘Soviet power has been closed’, while Kozyrev accused Khasbulatov and Aleksandr Rutskoi of wanting to restore the Soviet Union, and Gennadii Burbulis claimed that the nomenklatura was behind the conflict.40 In contrast, Yeltsin’s opponents tried to portray him as someone who had brought a great country, a superpower admired around the world, to 34 36 38 40

35 Izvestiia 10 July 1992. In this case by Otto Latsis, Izvestiia 28 August 1992. 37 Izvestiia 11 December 1992. Izvestiia 27 February and 16 March 1993. 39 Nezavisimaia gazeta 24 March 1993. Nezavisimaia gazeta 6 May 1993. Izvestiia 6, 8 and 15 October 1993.

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its knees. He was shown as the architect of Russia’s destruction, the person who had turned one of the most powerful countries in the world into one characterised by poverty, crime and economic dislocation. At the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the victory at Stalingrad in February 1993 in particular Yeltsin’s opponents sought to draw a contrast between the valour of that episode and the contemporary emiseration, and by implication the deficiencies of Yeltsin as a leader compared with Stalin. For his part, Yeltsin sought to draw on the spirit of Stalingrad to suggest that Russia could overcome its temporary difficulties.41 Following Yeltsin’s victory, references to the former Congress of People’s Deputies and Supreme Soviet waned, but the former Soviet period continued to be a reference point for many people. However, many of those who did not look with favour on that period of Russian history did not take a universally black view of it either. The ambiguity of the attitude to it was starkly reflected by a cartoon on p. 1 of Izvestiia in late February 1994. It shows Yeltsin at the wheel of a ship named Rossiia, steering it bravely forward, against a background of part of the Soviet flag and the figure of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. This picture was based directly on the poster of 1933 by Boris Efimov which shows Stalin at the wheel of a ship named USSR with the Soviet flag in the background. The title of the original poster was ‘The Captain of the Country of Soviets Leads Us from Victory to Victory!’42 The irony of this depiction is unlikely to have been lost on anyone; just as Stalin had introduced great changes and was thereby guiding the country in a new direction, so Yeltsin was doing the same in 1994. Furthermore, in both cases the changes brought substantial hardship and difficulty to the people. The ambiguity of the image of the Soviet period is reflected in the way the mainstream press presented different images of the USSR and Soviet life. There were some aspects that were given a sympathetic, even positive, gloss; the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of Yurii Gagarin evoked Soviet space achievements,43 while anniversaries of Khrushchev’s birth and overthrow gave opportunities to portray the former Soviet leader sympathetically.44 But more often the images evoked were negative. Articles reminded readers about the restrictions on foreign travel imposed on people under the Soviet period, the 41

42

43

For one discussion of this use of the symbol of Stalingrad, see Nurit Schliefman, ‘Moscow’s Victory Park: A Monumental Change’, History and Memory 13, 2, 2001, pp. 19–24. Izvestiia 26 February 1994. For the original, see Aleksandr Snopkov, Pavel Snopkov and Aleksandr Shkliaruk, Shest’sot plakatov (Moscow: Kontakt-Kul’tura, 2004), p. 34. The 1994 version uses the word ‘Vozhd’’, the 1933 ‘Kapitan’. 44 Izvestiia 10 March 1994. Izvestiia 14 April and 13 October 1994.

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‘genocide’ and deportation of small national groups under Stalin, suppression of religion, food shortages, the poverty of life on the kolkhoz, the harassment of intellectuals, the role of parapsychologists in the Kremlin under Brezhnev, destruction of the kulaks as a class, and the invasion of Afghanistan.45 The Soviet period was also used to criticise aspects of contemporary life, sometimes positively (for the image of the Soviet era) – as in a comparison of the deficiencies of the new market mechanism with the old, and the post-Soviet rise of crime46 – but more often negatively; examples are claims that calls for ‘economic security’ revived the spectre of Gosplan (the Soviet planning body) and the Constitution had transformed Yeltsin into the ‘leader of the nomenklatura’, and comparison of the draft agrarian law with collectivisation.47 The view of the Soviet Union as it developed in the public sphere in 1994 was thus mixed, reflecting both a lower political imperative to demonise the communists, and a recognition that this was something upon which a balanced view was needed.48 But it may also reflect the fact that many symbols were inherently ambiguous. For example, in early July Izvestiia published three pictures of people in queues, under the heading ‘The Queue as the Mirror of Our Evolution’. The first was captioned ‘1985 For Vodka’, the second ‘1992 For Bread’ and the third ‘1994 For Shares’.49 Was this a positive image of contemporary Russian reality? In post-Soviet times, it was claimed, the country was on a morally higher plane because people were more concerned with food than alcohol, there was actually food in the shops, and people could own shares. However, at the same time, people still had to queue for food and, given the level of cynicism that was developing around the government’s privatisation programme, it is not clear that the freedom to own shares was seen as an unalloyed benefit. With the approaching prospect of legislative elections in December 1995 and presidential elections in June 1996, the symbol of the USSR continued to be used in a variety of ways, but its projection in a negative light became sharper, especially as 1995 wore on. Although there were

45 46 47 48 49

Respectively Izvestiia 5 March, 26 March, 4 June, 18 July, 6 August, 7, 10, 14 and 15 September (on the intellectuals), 24 September, 9 and 24 December 1994. Izvestiia 19 February and 18 November 1994. Izvestiia 2 and 4 April and 11 June 1994. On this, see the article by the normally strongly anti-communist Otto Latsis, ‘70 let bez Lenina po leninskomu puti’, Izvestiia 15 January 1994. Izvestiia 7 July 1994. On the ambiguity of the queue, see the pictures of the interior of a food shop in winter 1992 when the shelves are empty and summer 1994 with the shelves full: Izvestiia 29 June 1994.

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some items of personal/historical interest on the Soviet period50 and space achievements were again invoked,51 most images were very negative. The Soviet legacy was in some cases directly blamed for contemporary difficulties,52 while the problems of living in Soviet times were again highlighted; food shortages53 and the harassing and repressive actions of the KGB54 were aspects of Soviet life to gain attention. The putsch was given publicity around the time of its anniversary.55 But politically more important in 1995 was the way in which negative aspects of Soviet life were directly associated with what was seen as the main opposition to Yeltsin and reform, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. At the end of June56 Otto Latsis accused the KPRF of taking some of its theses from Stalin’s report of 1937 which he (Latsis) claims brought on mass repressions, and of trying to whitewash Stalin; he also reminded people about the 1933 famine. This sort of reference became much more common later in the year as, in the lead-up to the legislative elections in December, the pro-reform press ran a vigorous anti-communist campaign. In September, an election survey noted the party’s links with the CPSU, and claimed that the KPRF’s three strategic goals were the reestablishment of Soviet power, of socialist ownership and of the USSR.57 Immediately before the voting, it was claimed that a communist victory would lead to the arrest of the ‘Yeltsin band’ in the style of 1937, the rejection of the Belovezh Accords which had formally ended the USSR, amnesty for the putschists, and the rejection of private ownership and the market economy.58 A profile of a region run by a governor who was a former secretary of the CC CPSU (Yegor Stroev) painted a grim picture of tight control by Stroev and his clan,59 while just before the voting photographs were

50

51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59

For example, a discussion of the life of a young girl shown embracing Stalin in 1936 and an interview with one of Stalin’s interpreters: Izvestiia 8 February and 22 September 1995. Izvestiia 12 April 1995. For example, Izvestiia 7 March and 12 April 1995. The former is an article by Leonid Radzikovskii entitled ‘Nomenklatura obmeniala “Kapital” na kapital’, highlighting the role of the former Soviet nomenklatura in privatisation. See the photographs of an empty food shop in 1990 and a well-stocked one in 1995, Izvestiia 30 May 1995. Izvestiia 16 March, 20 and 28 June, 7 and 13 July 1995. Izvestiia 19 August 1995. Otto Latsis, ‘Novye ideologi, starye idei’, Izvestiia 31 May 1995. ‘Tri istochnika sovremennogo natsional-kommunizma: chego zhdat’ ot KPRF, esli ona pridet k vlasti’, Izvestiia 9 September 1995. ‘Esli kommunisty pridut k vlasti . . .’, Izvestiia 2 December 1995. Nikolai Yudin, ‘Orlovskii eksperiment pokazyvaet, chto proiskhodit, kogda u vlasti kommunisty’, Izvestiia 8 December 1995.

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published showing a crowd of people with placards of Lenin and Stalin, and a meeting at which all were dutifully voting in front of the image of a hammer and sickle and a bust of Lenin.60 Alarmist stories were run several times a week about a ‘red revanche’ with many articles in the press linking the KPRF to the USSR and warning about a return to the worst ills of Soviet times; television images of things like labour camps, food shortages and queues rammed home a negative image of the Soviet Union.61 The communists and their allies on the left sought to present a different perspective. They sought to play on the sense of nostalgia for a past that was not characterised by the difficulties people were experiencing as a result of reform. Ziuganov sought to create an image of the party and himself as the heirs to the patriotic aspects of the Soviet period, but also as new political actors and therefore not tainted by association with the negative aspects of that period.62 He also called for the peaceful and ‘voluntary’ revival of the USSR and a number of small leftist groups called for the resurrection of the Soviet Union, but most other parties skirted around this issue.63 The public image of the USSR that emerged from the election campaign was thus overwhelmingly negative, with even Ziuganov’s communists not seeking in a major way to combat this. The mobilisation of the Soviet spectre for electoral purposes became even stronger in the first half of 1996 leading up to the presidential election when, for much of this time, it appeared that Yeltsin might lose to his communist opponent Ziuganov.64 In February Ziuganov was accused of trying to present himself as a social democrat when many of his ideas were the ideas of Lenin, of seeing Brezhnev’s regime as liberal, and of believing that there were more people in camps in 1996 than there had been under Stalin. His party refused to acknowledge the crimes of Stalin, and he believed that former members of the CPSU who were not now with the KPRF were deserters.65 The press played up Ziuganov’s 60 61

62 63 64

65

Izvestiia 15 December 1995. For a short discussion, see Laura Belin and Robert W. Orttung with Ralph S. Clem and Peter R. Craumer, The Russian Parliamentary Elections of 1995. The Battle for the Duma (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), pp. 72–73, 105–106. On Ziuganov, see Belin and Orttung, Russian Parliamentary Elections, p. 75. Belin and Orttung, Russian Parliamentary Elections, p. 80. For the strong press bias in favour of Yeltsin and against Ziuganov, see ‘Report from the Observation of the Russian Presidential Election 16 June and 3 July 1996’ (Norwegian Helsinki Committee, OSCE Review Meeting, 4–22 November 1996, Vienna), §5.2. On the campaign, see Smith, Mythmaking, ch. 7. Otto Latsis, ‘KPRF – partiia antivybora Rossii’, Izvestiia 10 February 1996. For one analysis of the views of Ziuganov and the so-called national patriots, see Wendy Slater, ‘Russia’s Imagined History: Visions of the Soviet Past and the New “Russian Idea”’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 14, 4, 1998, pp. 69–86.

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assertions that there were at that time more victims of repression in the camps than under Stalin and that in his region only two people were arrested under Stalin and they were criminals, using historical material to detail the extent of Stalinist repression.66 Lenin, Stalin and Ziuganov were compared directly with Hitler,67 while much play was made about repression under the Soviet regime.68 In documentaries and feature films, the Soviet Union was portrayed as being characterised by immense suffering and oppression; collectivisation, the purges, the hardship and shortages were all prominently featured, culminating in the screening of Nikita Mikhalkov’s graphically anti-Soviet movie Burnt by the Sun. And the connection was continually made between Ziuganov and the Soviet, especially the Stalinist, period.69 A Yeltsin campaign video detailed crimes of the Soviet era while some of the printed matter emphasised a return to the worst excesses of the Stalin era should Ziuganov be elected.70 The portrayal of the Soviet regime was almost unalterably negative, emphasising the violence, hardship and lack of freedom which were said to be typical of that period. When the election had passed and Yeltsin had won, the unrelentingly negative image of the Soviet Union was moderated somewhat. There was still a focus on negative aspects, such as empty food stores71 and harassment of intellectuals,72 and Khrushchev’s granddaughter was given publicity declaring that Nixon was right and Khrushchev wrong when the latter declared that communism would supersede capitalism.73 But there was also some recognition of positive aspects of the Soviet period; for example, the performance at the Atlanta Olympic Games was seen as a vindication of Soviet sport.74 By the end of 1997, with a call for open-minded examination of Soviet history, there was acknowledgement that the 1930s was not just a time of terror and GULAG camps, but also of selfless enthusiasm on the part of the masses.75 But it was also claimed that the USSR had destroyed 110 million people and that, while the revolution had led to the Soviet Union becoming a superpower, it was ‘Upper Volta with rockets’.76 Thus, while the image of the USSR in the press 66 68 69

70 71 73 76

67 Izvestiia 5 March and 3 April 1996. Izvestiia 26 March and 13 April 1996. For example, see Izvestiia 25 January, 7, 16 March, 17 April and 7 June 1996. See the discussions in Yitzhak M. Brudny, ‘In Pursuit of the Russian Presidency: Why and How Yeltsin Won the 1996 Presidential Election’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 30, 3, 1997, p. 260, and David Remnick, ‘Letter from Russia. The War for the Kremlin’, New Yorker, 22 July 1996, p. 50. Stephen White, Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, How Russia Votes (Chatham House Publishers, 1997), pp. 249–250. 72 Izvestiia 27 September 1996. Izvestiia 6 November 1996. 74 75 Izvestiia 31 July 1996. Izvestiia 31 July 1996. Izvestiia 21 October 1997. Izvestiia 30 October and 5 November 1997.

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and in the rhetoric of government speakers was not as one-dimensional after the 1996 presidential election as it had been before that event, when it was invoked it nevertheless remained overwhelmingly negative in its implications and allusions. In the lead-up to the 1999 legislative and 2000 presidential elections, the Soviet Union was much less of a focus than it had been before; indeed, there was much less negative campaigning in the 2000 election than in any that had gone before, in part because Putin was seen as being so far ahead of his rival that communist victory seemed unlikely. But the reality was that, by now, all accepted that there could be no return to Soviet communism and therefore the invocation of that as a potential electoral weapon was pointless. In addition, although the communists remained the largest party in terms of voter support, with the imminent retirement of Yeltsin and his visceral anti-communism, and his replacement at the end of that year by Putin, the gap between government and communists was significantly narrowed.77 The effect of this was strengthened by the way in which, during its campaign, the KPRF eschewed much of the ideological rhetoric and embraced many policies that were not greatly different from those of the government.78 Thus the KPRF ceased to be an issue in itself in Russian politics, while the USSR also ceased to be a major point of contention. In the decade following Yeltsin’s resignation from the presidency, as a symbol in mainstream political discourse, the USSR was threatened with irrelevancy. Too long ago to be seen as something to which Russia could return and, in the eyes of many, too far distant to be a valid point of comparison for contemporary society, the USSR ceased to be a yardstick which politicians sought to use in discussing the current political scene. Instead of acting as a comparator, the Soviet Union was seen as relevant only insofar as it was a precursor to contemporary Russian society.79 But this in itself raised significant symbolic issues about the relationship between these two periods of Russian history. And this was worked out through debates over certain individual aspects of Soviet history. 77

78 79

Most negative campaigning was directed against what was perceived to be the major threat in the legislative election, Fatherland-All Russia: Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy. The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), p. 114. Colton and McFaul, Popular Choice, pp. 115–117, although see p. 116 for the communists’ use of some of Stalin’s words and symbols from the Great Patriotic War. By 2003, 56% of people did not consider 7 November an important day, although 36% considered it a ‘great holiday’: A. Petrova, ‘What Should We Know About November 7th?’, Public Opinion Foundation 30 October 2003, bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/ eof034206.

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Important here were the figures of the two main Soviet leaders, Lenin and Stalin. In both cases, re-evaluation of these figures and their place in history had been occurring under Gorbachev, but this was given a new fillip with the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the archives. In the case of both figures, the images were more contentious at the elite level and among many intellectuals than they were among the mass of the population as a whole. Both figures generally continued to be embraced by the communists and their allies; even if the KPRF did play down some Soviet-era symbols and expressed much of their policy in terms which did not refer (or even allude) to either leader, their public demonstrations were usually characterised by placards with the faces of Lenin and/or Stalin, and they never came out openly and rejected them. Indeed, as will be shown below, they frequently supported and defended them. However, within the reformist political elite around Yeltsin and among the liberal intelligentsia, these were profoundly negative figures, responsible for the wrong historical turn Russia took in 1917 and for much of the subsequent hardship. In particular, efforts were made to desanctify Lenin by bringing out the link between him and the introduction of terror as a mode of dealing with opposition, and by publishing pictures of him from the year before his death which, instead of the forceful but kindly image that had been projected before 1991, showed him as restricted to a wheelchair with staring, seemingly unseeing eyes. But it is not clear that this remaking of the image of the father of the USSR had great resonance among the populace as a whole; well over half of the Russian population consistently evaluated his role in history as being ‘positive’ and only about one-fifth as negative.80 But the main form in which Lenin was involved symbolically concerned that striking symbol, Lenin’s mummified body in the Mausoleum beneath the Kremlin wall on Red Square. On his death in 1924, Lenin’s body was mummified and placed in a specially built mausoleum.81 Except for its removal to Kuibyshev with the government during the war and regular removal for updating of the mummification process, Lenin’s body lay untouched in the Mausoleum throughout the Soviet period, a site of reverence which always attracted big crowds. Prior to the 80

81

These figures are cited from public opinion polls in Graeme Gill, ‘“Lenin Lives”: Or Does He? Symbols and the Transition from Socialism’, Europe-Asia Studies 60, 2, 2008, p. 182. In April 1999, 65% of respondents considered him to have played a positive role in Russian history and 23% negative; respective figures for April 2003 were 58% and 17%: A. Petrova, ‘We Lived in Abundance Then . . .’, Public Opinion Foundation 17 April 2003, bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/eof031504. On this, see Gill, Symbols, ch. 2, Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), esp. ch. 6.

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collapse of the USSR, in 1989 there were public calls for the removal of his body and its burial, an act justified in part by the claim that Lenin had wanted to be buried near his mother in St Petersburg and that this had been the intention of his wife Nadezhda Krupskaia before being overruled by Stalin and the other leaders.82 The communists opposed this.83 After the fall of the Soviet Union, anti-communist politicians brought this up on a number of occasions: Sobchak soon after the failure of the August putsch,84 Yeltsin in early and mid 1997,85 Boris Nemtsov in January 1998,86 and Yeltsin again in July 1999, although this time he qualified his stance by saying he did not know when.87 Other figures also advocated his burial at different times,88 and at other times there were rumours that the government was going to bring this about. On each occasion when this was raised, what for many would have been the real reason for burying Lenin – the abolition of this potent symbol of the communist past – was not the major reason given for such an act. Usually speakers argued that burial was the appropriate ‘Christian’, ‘Russian’ or ‘normal’ thing to do with the body. On each occasion, too, the communists objected vigorously and, like their opponents, they did not generally do this in terms of protection of a communist icon. They usually said that his location in the Mausoleum was by wish of the people and that only the people could reverse that decision; they argued that he had never said he wanted to be buried near his mother, that his placement in the Mausoleum was at the normal level below the ground for a regular burial and therefore he was effectively buried, and that the awarding by UNESCO of protection to the Red Square area as part of the world’s cultural and natural patrimony forbade any tinkering with it.89 Once the communists were no longer seen as such a political threat following Yeltsin’s resignation, the arguments on both sides became more explicit, with a significant twist compared with the Yeltsin era in 82

83 85 86 88

89

For a discussion, see Gill, ‘“Lenin Lives”’, pp. 178–179. For the call by a member of the Congress of People’s Deputies, see Pervyi s’ezd narodnykh deputatov SSSR. 25 maia–9 iuniia 1989g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Izdanie Verkhovnogo soveta SSSR, 1989), pp. 363–364. For the claim that Lenin had no such desire, see A. Abramov, Pravda i vymysly o kremlevskom nekropole i Mavzolee (Moscow: Eksto & Algoritm, 2005), p. 196. 84 Pravda 27 October 1989. Izvestiia 16 September 1991. Segodnia 21 March 1997 and Kommersant Daily 7 June 1997. 87 Moscow News 22 January 1998. Izvestiia 6 July 1999. For example, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Aleksei, and Vladimir Zhirinovskii: respectively Segodnia 4 November 1993 and Kommersant 25 May, 11 August 1999. The Synod did not commit itself to performing an Orthodox funeral for the deceased. Pravda 14 September, 30 October 1991, and Abramov, Pravda, pp. 194–204.

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Table 5.1. Attitude to the burial of Lenin (%)

Favour Oppose

1/94

3/97

6/97

7/98

4/99

4/02

4/03

4/04

4/06

45 39

48 38

54 32

55 35

53 35

48 38

52 34

56 30

46 29

Source: See bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/rus_im/lenin.v.i.ed021531; bd.english. fom.ru/report/cat/az/L/lenin-v-i/ed041509; bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/rus_im_/ rus_history/ed061616; Moskovskie novosti 24, 15–22 June 1997.

the form of the position taken by President Putin. In July 2001 Putin declared that many people believed that their lives were linked with Lenin’s name and that burying him would suggest that ‘they had devoted themselves to false values and false objectives, that they had lived their lives in vain’.90 He feared that burial would disrupt the social stability and calm that had been achieved. Proponents of burial, while they repeated the arguments made in the 1990s, also sometimes linked this with Lenin’s role in bringing difficult times to the country.91 Different attitudes to burial were also to be found among the people at large, as the figures in Table 5.1 demonstrate. These figures show that, over time, the number of people opposing the burial of Lenin has declined and, with fluctuations, the number favouring burial has slightly increased, but this does not seem to be a matter of visceral importance to the Russian people. This is reflected in the fact that of those who favour burial, only a minute percentage agree with the suggestion that this should be done because he was associated with tragic events in the country’s history while most argue that it would be the moral thing to do. It seems to be a more political issue for opponents of burial when in polls in 1999 and 2002 a quarter of respondents saw him as an important historical figure.92 This sort of division is also reflected in the political affiliations of respondents; those who supported or voted for Ziuganov were much more strongly opposed to burial than those who voted for his opponent (Yeltsin/Putin), and vice versa for Lenin’s remaining in the Mausoleum.93 Thus, while Lenin’s body was a political symbol for some of the elites, especially during the Yeltsin presidency – in 1993 Yeltsin removed the honour guard from 90 91

92 93

Trud 20 July 2001. For example, see Izvestiia 6 October 2005. For a later call for burial, which provoked the normal reactions, see Andy Potts, ‘Lenin Anniversary Marked with Renewed Calls to Empty His Mausoleum’, Moscow News 21 January 2011. For the figures on which this discussion is based, see Gill, ‘“Lenin Lives”’, p. 183. Gill, ‘“Lenin Lives”’, pp. 184–185. This paper contains further analysis of these constituencies.

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the Mausoleum and cut off its state funding – especially for many sections of the elite following the turn of the millennium, this was not a major question. Nor does it seem to have been a burning issue for the populace at large. However, the figure of Stalin was more contentious. During the perestroika period, Stalin had emerged as a major subject of discussion. There were very few people articulating a line either sympathetic to or supportive of a positive image of Stalin, although some did exist, but as time passed and glasnost became more and more radical, the discussion of Stalin in both scholarly publications and, more importantly, the press became both more searching and more critical. As a result, by the time the USSR had fallen, for the emergent liberals and democrats Stalin was solidly entrenched as a negative symbol of the worst aspects of the Soviet past. Among liberals and democrats, both those who supported Yeltsin and those who were critical of him, Stalin was a profoundly negative figure, with reference rarely made to anything positive that could be associated with him. This stance was fuelled by the way in which the opening of some of the archives made much more information available in the public realm than there had ever been before.94 This was further enhanced by the way in which Yeltsin’s supporters had ransacked the archives in the search for incriminating material to use in the case against the CPSU and, in the lead-up to the 1996 presidential elections, which appeared almost as a referendum on the Soviet period, the media gave a prominent place to material critical of the Soviet period and of Stalin and his role. One result of the opening of some of the archives was the outpouring of scholarly, semi-scholarly and popular books on Stalin. This became a real growth industry with monographs rolling off the presses at a great rate. Indeed the ‘B. N. Yeltsin Presidential Centre’ Fund along with the Russian Political Encyclopedia Press (ROSSPEN) foreshadowed a 100-volume project on ‘The History of Stalinism’. While many books were critical of Stalin as a historical figure, many sought to provide a balanced interpretation of Stalin and his role in history. There was also, too, a strand of such publications in which Stalin was presented in a much more positive light.95 The projection of Stalin as a positive figure in Russian history was more evident in the public realm after the fall of the USSR than it had been under perestroika. This – perhaps paradoxical – situation was a 94 95

For example, see the report in Izvestiia 3 April 1998 on the moving of documents on Stalin from the closed presidential archive to make them more publicly available. On the literary representation of Stalin, see Rosalind Marsh, Literature, History and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia, 1991–2006 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), ch. 10. According to Marsh (p. 452), two presses – Eksmo and Algoritm – set out to present a positive image of Stalin.

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function of the way in which the increased press freedom of this period meant that it was easier for forces sympathetic to Stalin to project their views into the public realm. Communist and nationalist forces took advantage of this to present Stalin in a positive light.96 He was directly associated with the building of a strong Russian state, with victory in the war and with creating a society in which people felt safe and happy. Although the KPRF was ambivalent about using the Stalin image, many of its communist supporters and many nationalist groups were less reticent. Demonstrations by these forces were usually characterised by marchers carrying placards with Stalin’s features on them while their publications often extolled the virtues of the former vozhd. The figure of Stalin was thus a symbol of contention in the Yeltsin period as the liberals and democrats depicted him as a malign force whose role was unrelievedly negative while the nationalist and communist opposition saw him as a positive figure. This binary divide became more diffuse following Putin’s accession to the presidency, and especially during his second term. If the principal theme of the Yeltsin presidency was the rejection of communism, that of Putin’s presidency was the strengthening of the state and the revival of Russia’s greatness. Politically, this change of emphasis undercut much of the position of the nationalist and communist opposition, who had been critical of the way Yeltsin had squandered what was seen as Russia’s tradition of greatness and its position as a great power. Putin seemed committed to restoring these, even if his criticism of Yeltsin was more muted than that of the communists and nationalists. This sort of stance opened the way for a more positive view of Stalin than that which had emanated from authoritative circles in the 1990s, although that view normally sought to strike a balance between positive and negative aspects of his role.97 Putin himself vigorously objected to the equation of Stalin with Hitler,98 and said that, while millions of people were repressed, this was less than in some countries and Stalin’s crimes were less than those committed by the United States in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and during the Vietnam War. The attitude that

96

97

98

This was not restricted to communists and nationalists. For example, see the article in 1999 on the anniversary of Stalin’s birth by Nezavisimaia gazeta editor, Vitalii Tret’iakov, ‘Stalin – eto nashe vse: russkoe reformatorstvo kak diktatura’, Nezavisimaia gazeta 22 December 1999. For an interesting case of this, see the report of comments by Speaker of the State Duma and leading figure in United Russia Boris Gryzlov: Ol’ga Tropkina, ‘Lider partii vlasti prizval peresmotret’ otnoshenia k Stalinu’, Izvestiia 22 December 2004. This was on the 125th anniversary of his birth. Komsomol’skaia pravda 7 May 2005.

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characterised official spokesmen was well summarised by a speaker for the Orthodox Church on 5 March 2008, the fifty-fifth anniversary of Stalin’s death.99 He declared that ‘Russian citizens should be aware of what Stalin’s era really was and should not be painting idealistic pictures of the time . . . [Stalin’s era was] a lesson of great historical significance for today’s Russia and for other countries . . . [and] should never return . . . [Under Stalin the country was able] to recover after the civil war, to preserve its unity, to carry out industrialisation, to win the war, and to build its scientific potential . . . But these achievements . . . cannot be justified by the victims of the Soviet regime during the years of Stalin’s rule . . . the same achievements could have been made without sacrificing our own citizens.’ This position, recognising the achievements while deploring the costs, has become virtually the default position for the authorities. This is broadly similar to the view that was projected by many communists and nationalists, although in these cases they were even less likely to acknowledge the extent of the costs than more official spokespeople.100 For example, KPRF leader Ziuganov argued that it was wrong to see Soviet history and Stalin’s role solely through the ‘two or three years of Soviet history’ characterised by mass repressions,101 and in 2009 he published a book lauding Stalin’s role in Soviet history.102 The KPRF ostentatiously celebrated the 130th anniversary of Stalin’s birth in 2009 by laying flowers on his grave in Red Square and holding a gala concert in the evening at which they awarded commemorative medals to veterans of the war.103 However, there were still some who projected the unambiguously favourable view of Stalin; in October 2009, the editor of the nationalist newspaper Zavtra Aleksandr Prokhanov declared that ‘for Russia Stalin means a great past, victory in 1945, and the hope that Russia will escape the nightmares’ it has experienced since 1991.104 For such people, Stalin was not just a symbol of past glories, but a figure with continuing relevance for contemporary Russian society. One indication of this was the publication in 2010 of a volume of extracts from Stalin’s writings, designed to convey in a pithy way his views on a range of issues,105 and the publication of successive volumes

99 100

101 102 103 105

Interfax, Moscow 5 March 2008. For a discussion of different positions on Stalin, see Vladimir Shlapentokh and Vera Bondartsova, ‘Stalin in Russian Ideology and Public Opinion: Caught in a Conflict Between Imperial and Liberal Elements’, Russian History 36, 2, 2009, pp. 302–325. Interfax, Moscow 31 October 2009. Gennadii Ziuganov, Stalin i sovremennost’ (Moscow: Molodaiai gvardiia, 2009). 104 Itar-Tass 21 December 2009. BBC Monitoring, NTV Mir 26 October 2009. L. G. Konovalov and A. P. Kozlov (comps.), Stalin. Tsitatnik (Moscow: RIF MAKHAON, 2010, ed. I. V. Lar’kina).

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of his Collected Works that had not been published in his lifetime. Also statues were erected to him in some parts of the country – Cheliabinsk, Kaliningrad, Ishim (in Tiumen) and Mirny (in Yakutia).106 The image of Stalin and his role was raised as an issue of debate explicitly by three episodes in Soviet history: repression and the Terror, the Katyn massacre, and the Great Patriotic War. The Terror had been a major issue during perestroika, with the establishment of Memorial,107 an unofficial organisation designed to promote and commemorate the memory of the victims of the Soviet repression, and the 1990 creation of a monument to the repressed on Lubianka Square in front of the headquarters of the former KGB. And it was principally in the form of remembering the victims that the issue of repression was framed in the post-Soviet period. Although there were instances of people disputing Stalin’s responsibility for the repressions108 or arguing that it was something forced on him by the presence of hostile forces inside the Soviet Union in the context of a developing external threat,109 the dominant image was one which acknowledged the widespread nature of repression, although not all agreed with the description by Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin of this as ‘genocide’.110 As indicated in Chapter 3, President Putin did refer to the repression in harsh terms (tragedy, extermination, torture)111 and he visited a memorial to honour the victims in 2007,112 but his successor was more forthright in this respect. As also shown in Chapter 3, in late 2009 on Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression, Medvedev remembered the ‘millions of people [who] died as a result of terror and false accusations’. He argued that, although some still claimed that those victims were justified by 106 107 108 109

110 111

112

Izvestiia 11 May 2005. See Kathleen E. Smith, Remembering Stalin’s Victims. Popular Memory and the End of the USSR (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). For example, see the report of the appeal by the Orel city Soviet for a revision of society’s attitude to Stalin, Izvestiia 14 April 2005. Leonid Patkevich, ‘Po povodu “oshibok” Stalina’, Sovetskaia Rossiia 14 September 2000, cited in Thomas Sherlock, Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia. Destroying the Settled Past, Creating an Unsettled Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 163. Shlapentokh and Bondartsova; ‘Stalin in Russian Ideology’, identify four different positions among those seeking to mitigate the connection between Stalin and mass repression: deny the repressions occurred, downplay or ignore them (e.g. argue they have been much exaggerated), argue they were necessary, admit they were wrong but they were not Stalin’s fault: pp. 305–313. For differences among liberals, see pp. 320–323. Rossiiskaia gazeta 4 May 2005. Vremia novostei 13 October 2007. Putin’s ambivalence is reflected in the fact that within weeks of becoming president he inaugurated a plaque to honour Yurii Andropov in the Lubianka and placed flowers on the grave of Andrei Sakharov. ‘Russia’s Medvedev Honors Victims of Stalin Purges’, Reuters 24 September 2008.

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some higher national purpose, ‘no national progress, successes or ambitions can develop at the price of human misery and loss’. Although, he argued, Stalin’s ‘crimes’ could not diminish the heroic deeds of the Soviet people, the struggle against ‘the revisionist falsification of our history’ must not ‘sanction, under the guise of restoring historical justice, any justification of those who destroyed our people’.113 But despite such sentiments, the prevailing attitude to the Terror and repression has remained ambiguous. There has been no major symbolic attempt on the part of the authorities to come to grips with this question. While successive leaders have acknowledged the atrocity of the Terror and repression, none has sought to stimulate a national reckoning with this; even Yeltsin, who in December 1997 on the eightieth anniversary of the creation of the security apparatus suggested that ‘the expose´s on the crimes of the security services may have just gone too far’,114 pulled back from pressing this issue. This will be discussed further in the Conclusion. The fate of the repressed115 has also had direct symbolic expression. Perhaps the most powerful has been the annual commemoration on 30 October of the Day of Soviet Political Prisoners. Marked annually since 1991 (although it was first commemorated in 1974), this often sees the staging of a mass rally in central Moscow, generally near the Lubianka memorial to the repressed. Organised by the civil rights group Memorial, this often sees the reading out of the names of people who perished during Stalin’s rule. There seems to be significant public support for this; in 2001 many believed mass repression in the USSR could not be justified in any way (61% compared to the 15% who believed it could be justified) while 73% favoured observance of a memorial day for the victims of political repression.116 This view received material public content with moves to establish memorials to the repressed in various parts of the country. More than 800 memorials commemorating the Terror have been established across the country, mostly by the .

113 114

115 116

See www.kremlin.ru 30 October 2009. Rossiiskie vesti 20 December 1997. In 1995 he decreed that 20 December would be the ‘Day of Secret Service Workers’. Nanci Adler, ‘In Search of Identity: The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Recreation of Russia’, Alexandra Barahona De Brito, Carmen Gonzalez Enriquez and Paloma Aguilar (eds.), The Politics of Memory and Democratization (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 294. A number of measures were introduced under Yeltsin providing for the rehabilitation of the repressed. For a discussion, see Adler, ‘In Search’, pp. 288–289. ‘Repression in the USSR’, Public Opinion Foundation 22 November 2001, bd.english. fom.ru/report/map/ed014429. However, in 2001, only 11% of respondents believed that the oppression of human rights was one of the worst features of communist rule: cited in Stephen White, ‘Ten Years On, What Do the Russians Think?’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18, 1, 2002, p. 37.

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community or local administration, and most on the outskirts rather than in the centre of cities.117 They tend to focus on the victims with rarely a mention of crime or criminals, and therefore are really about remembering those gone rather than highlighting those responsible. Many are on the mass graves of those repressed.118 Another prod to memory has been the decision to make Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago required reading for secondary school students; in late 2010 an abridged version, edited by Solzhenitsyn’s widow, was ready for introduction into the curriculum.119 The issues of the Terror and the war merged with the question of Katyn. The Katyn issue, which focused on who ordered the killing of Polish officers and others at Katyn in 1940, had been a matter of debate since the time of perestroika. It had been acknowledged under Gorbachev that, contrary to what had been claimed by the Soviet authorities, the murder of these people was the responsibility of Soviet forces, not the Germans, and this was confirmed by the publication of documents in 1992.120 But many had continued to dispute this. The issue became bound up with claims emanating from Moscow that Russia’s neighbours were seeking to revise the history of the war in such a way as to tarnish the image of the war experience that was developing in Russia and which was a factor in the creation by Medvedev of the historical commission (see below). The honourable intentions of the USSR were clearly cast into doubt if it was responsible for the killing of these people. In this light, Putin’s visit to Poland to deliver a commemorative address on the anniversary of the outbreak of the war in 2009 was a clear Russian concession to Polish sensibilities, even if he did confirm opposition to what he saw as the ‘rewriting’ of history. Putin’s comments were not the unambiguous statement of regret many had hoped for. He criticised the policy of Stalin in the lead-up to the war. Claiming the moral high ground by noting that more than half of those killed during the war were Soviet citizens, Putin declared, ‘The attempts to pacify the Nazi, which were made from 1934 through 1939, were morally impermissible and politically senseless and dangerous. The mistakes must be admitted. Our country has done that.

117

118 119 120

For a call to remember the victims by the Historical Memory Working Group of the Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights, see Rossiiskaia gazeta 8 April 2011. See Adler, ‘Future’, pp. 1106–1108. For the decision, see Vremia novostei 10 September 2009. See Izvestiia 15 October 1992; also Tass statement 13 April 1990, and reports in Moscow News 2 August 1989, 25 March 1990, and Izvestiia 24 June 1994. Notwithstanding this, on 12 February 2010 a KPRF member of the State Duma claimed that it was the Germans who were responsible: kprf.ru/dep/75724.html.

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The State Duma condemned the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and we have the right to expect other countries to follow suit with political decisions rather than declarations of political leaders . . . We must think what pushed the world to the fatal threshold seventy years ago. That was political cowardice, the wish to ensure one’s security at the expense of neighbours and hush-hush intrigues and conspiracies.’121 He declared that, ‘The people of Russia, whose lives were crippled by a totalitarian regime, also understand the Poles’ sensitivity about Katyn, where thousands of Polish officers lie. Together we must keep alive the memory of the victims of that crime.’ He went on to say that the Katyn memorial, along with the Mednoe memorial to Russian soldiers who died in Polish captivity in the 1920 war, should become ‘symbols of shared sorrow and mutual forgiveness’. He described the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as ‘immoral’, but he urged that other historical facts should not be forgotten, citing specifically Polish involvement in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.122 Thus, while his attitude to Katyn may have been welcome, his attempt to broaden the historical context was not. More important in burying this as an issue was the sympathetic Russian reaction to the plane crash which killed among others the Polish president Lech Kaczynski as he was travelling to a joint commemorative event on the site of Katyn on 10 April 2010. Russian acceptance of responsibility was consolidated when, on 28 April 2010, archival documents concerning Katyn (including one that contained Stalin’s signature approving the killing) which had originally been made public by Yeltsin in 1992 were made available on the internet. There was, however, no opening of the archives to reveal the names of those responsible for the killings, except for Stalin. The Great Patriotic War was the most important of these three issues because of the place this event held in the legitimation of the Soviet regime, the association of victory with Stalin’s leadership, and the attempt by the Russian authorities to appropriate this into the symbolism of the new regime. Initially the Yeltsin regime adopted a low-key approach, abandoning the 9 May military march in favour of placing a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier and then mixing with veterans. However, Yeltsin’s opponents took this opportunity to sponsor marches in honour of the war victory, and thereby seek to shape the myth of the war in ways that suited them politically. It was not until 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of victory, that the Yeltsin administration restored official military parades;123 the formal celebration of the fifty-fifth anniversary 121 122 123

Itar-Tass 1 September 2009. Cited in Vremia novostei 1 September 2009; also Itar-Tass 1 September 2009. Smith, Mythmaking, pp. 85–91.

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in 2000 was even more elaborate, while from 2008 military hardware took part in the parade as in Soviet times.124 The war’s importance is reflected in the fact that when Medvedev established a commission ‘to counter attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russian interests’ in May 2009,125 much of its attention had to be devoted to interpretations of Soviet actions in the war, and in particular the way in which in neighbouring countries the history of the war was being rewritten to downplay or even deny the Soviet role in the defeat of Germany.126 In this, Medvedev was building on the position espoused earlier by Putin. In 2005 at a commemorative meeting to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Putin asserted that ‘any attempts to rewrite history, to put victims and executioners, liberators and occupiers on the same level, are immoral and incompatible with the thinking of people who consider themselves Europeans’.127 But the question for many was whether Stalin as war leader had played a positive part in the victory, or whether his actions leading up to the war (purging of the officer corps, patent unreadiness for the German attack despite warnings) had actually hindered the war effort. This was an issue not just for the historians, but one which had significant resonance among sections of the populace, especially war veterans. The salience of this issue was reflected in the public debate that erupted around the 2010 Victory Day celebrations when it became known that the Moscow city authorities planned to include billboards referring to Stalin’s 124

125

126

127

Also interesting was the holding of a gala parade on Red Square on 7 November 2011, the seventieth anniversary of the famous 1941 parade when the troops marched straight from the parade celebrating the October Revolution to the front: Itar-Tass 7 November 2011. Presidential Ukaz No. 2541, 15 May 2009, ‘O Komissii pri Prezidente Rossiiskoi federatsii po protivodeistviiu popytkam fal’sifikatsii istorii v ushcherb interesam Rossii’, Sobranie zakonodatel’stva Rossiiskoi federatsii, 2009, 21, p. 6823. See the critical editorial in Vedomosti 19 May 2009. For Medvedev’s view about the importance of defending the truth about the war, see his blog entry, ‘On the Great Patriotic War, Historical Truth and Our Memory’, www. kremlin.ru 7 May 2009. On the use of the myth of the war and Nashi, see Ivo Mijnssen, ‘The Victory Myth and Russia’s Identity’, Russian Analytical Digest 72, 9 February 2010, pp. 6–9. For a report on the commission’s first meeting where attempts to rewrite the history of the war in neighbouring countries were clearly identified as a major concern of the commission, see Gazeta 31 August 2009 gzt.ru. The issue of the war and its historical treatment have been a frequent source of tension and disagreement with Russia’s neighbours, especially the Baltic states and Poland. On tension over the moving of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn, Estonia, see Vremia novostei 28 April 2007. On historical differences with Ukraine, see Serhi Plokhy, ‘The Ghosts of Pereyaslav: Russo-Ukrainian Historical Debates in the Post-Soviet Era’, Europe-Asia Studies 53, 3, 2001, pp. 489–505. See www.kremlin.ru 27 January 2005.

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wartime achievements in the decorations for the celebration.128 Also subject of some controversy was the participation in the 2010 Victory Day parade of forces from the wartime allies, Britain, the United States, France and Poland.129 This was controversial because some saw this event as a celebration of Russian statehood and the glorious victory over the fascist aggressor, and therefore something not to be shared with (and even tarnished by) the involvement of foreign forces. This was consistent with the projection of the war as a clear indication of the strength of purpose and power of the historical Russian state, something which thereby linked the contemporary community with the history of Russian statehood dating back to pre-Soviet times.130 The issue also became prominent in 2007131 with the publication of a guide for school teachers by A. V. Filippov132 which was accused by some of whitewashing Stalin and seeking to present to future generations a sanitised image of the former leader. The book covers the period from 1945, including ‘the tragic disintegration’ of the USSR, up to the time of publication, and therefore does not explicitly cover the repressions of the 1930s that were such a feature of the discussion of Stalin during the perestroika period. The book acknowledges that Stalin was one of the most contradictory figures in Russian history, being for some the hero and organiser of victory in the Great Patriotic War and the moderniser of Russia, while for others he was the embodiment of evil and a 128

129

130

131

132

For Mayor Yurii Luzhkov’s undertaking that such billboards would be placed at ten sites, including Poklonnaia Gora and in front of the Bolshoi Theatre, see RIA Novosti 9 March 2010. According to Luzhkov, only 10 of 2,000 decorations would be devoted to Stalin: Izvestiia 7 April 2010. On his being forced to abandon this idea by Medvedev, see the report in Vedomosti 29 April 2010. On some posters going up in Moscow and St Petersburg, see ‘Moscow Government Puts Up Stalin Posters Despite Outcry’, Reuters 5 May 2010, and ‘Russian Communists Observe Demand for Stalin Posters Among Public’, Interfax 6 May 2010. For the report, see Vremia novostei 12 May 2010. There were also troops from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine. This was also reflected in the way in which in 2010 the Patriarchate of Moscow and AllRussia directed all churches to hold a Victory Day liturgy based on that developed for the victory over Napoleon. For earlier complaints about inadequate treatment of the repressions in school textbooks, see Adler, ‘Future’, p.1102. In 2003 at a meeting with history scholars, Putin had called for the rewriting of school history textbooks to emphasise patriotic themes: Marsh, Literature, p. 454. For some scholarly studies of the GULAG at this time, see Adler, ‘Future’, p. 1102 n. 52. For discussion of some textbooks, including the winner of a 2002 competition for the best textbook, see Sherlock, Historical Narratives, pp. 168–178; also Shlapentokh and Bondartsova, ‘Stalin in Russian Ideology’, p. 320. A. V. Filippov, Noveishaia istoriia Rossii 1945–2006gg. Kniga dlia uchitelia (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 2007). Stalin is discussed in ch. 1, especially pp. 81–94.

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bloody tyrant. However, the book argues, it is important to see the significant continuities running through Russian history, one of the chief of which was the concentration of power in a single centre and the strict centralisation of the administrative system. This was a function of the long-standing international hostility to the Russian state, a situation which not only encouraged such centralisation but also the coming to power of people best able to achieve such a concentration. However, such centralisation was inevitably accompanied by deformation, chiefly in the shape of the transformation of the real need for strong authority into a habit for its own sake and going beyond the bounds of what was necessary. Stalin was an instance of this. But what this means is that excessive centralisation was embedded in the geopolitical circumstances of Russia’s international location and, although the personality of individual leaders could have an influence on the forms and processes of central power, it would be a mistake to search for the origins of such power in the personalities of individual leaders. Filippov argued that Stalin’s aim was essentially ‘the political and territorial restoration of the Russian empire’ (p. 83),133 and that the centralisation that occurred under him was a function of the inevitability of war with Germany in the 1930s, the war itself, and the accelerated tempo of post-war reconstruction. Arguing that all countries see a shift towards stricter forms of organisation and restriction of rights when faced with serious threats (and he cites the United States after 11 September 2001 as an instance), he sees Russia’s situation in the Soviet period as no different to that of its imperial Russian forebears. While Stalin’s personality – especially his black–white view of the world, perception of a hostile environment, cruelty and drive to dominate – certainly affected the form this took, the centralisation was triggered by the need to modernise Russia in the face of external challenge. Stalin’s psychological peculiarities were secondary to the objective conditions; ‘The realisation of accelerated modernisation of the country demanded a corresponding system of power and the formation of an administrative apparatus able to realise this course’ (p. 86). As many observers (and Filippov cites Leon Trotsky, Georgii Fedotov, Stephen Cohen and Robert Tucker) argued, this was central to Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’, which in essence repeated the political experience of the Petrine transformation – the development of industry and the military, the gaining of imperial status, the attraction of all groups of the population to state service, and ensuring meritocratic criteria in the formation of the administrative echelon.

133

Page numbers over the next four paragraphs refer to Filippov Noveishaia.

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Filippov went on to argue that the ‘control measures’ undertaken with regard to the ruling nomenklatura were designed to mobilise the administrative apparatus in order to guarantee its effectiveness during industrialisation and post-war reconstruction. Political repression was part of this; ‘The attempt to ensure maximum effectiveness of the administrative apparatus explains why one of the objects of repression was the higher and middle echelons of the administration’ (p. 88). The ‘great purge’ of the late 1930s and the post-war repression were directed primarily against the ruling stratum and were designed to increase its effectiveness as an instrument of social change. ‘The result of Stalin’s purges was the formation of a new administrative class, adequate to the tasks of modernisation in conditions of a deficit of resources – unconditionally loyal to the supreme authorities and irreproachable from the point of view of executive discipline’ (p. 90). The Terror thus became, for Filippov, a state-building instrument justified by the situation the Soviet Union found itself in.134 Filippov went on to argue that the cult of Stalin’s personality was a clear manifestation of the high concentration of power and, although Stalin was initially irritated by the cult, he later became accustomed to it. Filippov cites the aphorism that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and declares that there were many examples from Russian history of a degraded personality holding on to power for a long time, citing as examples Peter I and Catherine II. He then cites a poll from February 2006 asking whether, as a whole, Stalin played a positive or negative role, with 29% of respondents saying negative, 47% positive and 24% unknown. Filippov ends his discussion of the place of Stalin in debates by seeking to draw a balance of the contradictory views that prevail. ‘On one side, he is regarded as the most successful leader of the USSR’ (p. 93). During his rule, the territory of the country was enlarged to reach (and in some places exceed) the boundaries of the former Russian Empire, victory was achieved in the Great Patriotic War, the economy industrialised and a cultural revolution carried out that led to sharp growth in the number of people with a higher education and the creation of the best education system in the world; the USSR became one of the most advanced states in the field of scientific development, and unemployment was practically eliminated. However, there was another side to Stalin’s rule. Successes were achieved through cruel exploitation of the people. There were several waves of repression, and Stalin was the initiator and theorist of these. Whole social classes – landed peasants, 134

This has echoes of the views of Aleksandr Prokhanov, who saw the repression as necessary. His views are reflected in the pages of the newspaper Zavtra.

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urban petty bourgeoisie, the priesthood and the old intelligentsia – were eliminated. Many loyal people suffered from the harsh laws, and one could hardly speak about security of life in the Stalin years. Living standards remained low, especially in the countryside, while these sorts of developments did not strengthen the moral climate in the country. The image of Stalin presented in this guide for teachers, and it is important to recognise that this was neither a mandatory official guide nor the only one available,135 was thus one that sought to acknowledge Stalin’s responsibility for both the positive aspects of the Soviet legacy as well as some of the more negative aspects. However, this responsibility had to be seen in the context of the continuing geopolitical pressures to which Russia had historically been subjected. This approach clearly downplayed the extent of the suffering under Stalin; for example, the only figure given for victims of repression is one of 2.6 million people in the GULAG in 1950 (p. 31). There is no real sense in this book of how widespread repression was, the effects (either moral or practical) of this on society, or the question of whether there was a need for the community to have some sort of public reckoning with it. While Stalin was not completely absolved from guilt for the repression, the book did seek to balance that against his positive achievements.136 A slightly different approach is evident in some school textbooks published about the same time.137 The two volumes by A. S. Orlov et al. and V. I. Moriakov et al. are overwhelmingly descriptive rather than analytical, with explanations limited to brief comments scattered throughout the text. In contrast, the V. A. Shestakov volume, which gives much more attention to the Soviet period than either of the other two,138 is much more analytical in its discussion, especially of the postStalin period. All three volumes seem intent on providing a survey of 135

136

137

138

In 2007, twenty-seven different textbooks were in use in schools in the Russian Federation: David Brandenberger, ‘A New Short Course? A. V. Filippov and the Russian State’s Search for a “Usable Past”’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, 4, 2009, p. 825. For criticisms of mistakes, gaps and shortcomings in the book, see Brandenberger, ‘New Short Course’, pp. 826–828. For a less negative view followed by two criticisms of the Filippov book and the teaching materials that go with it, see Vladimir Solonari, ‘Normalizing Russia, Legitimizing Putin’, Boris N. Mironov, ‘The Fruits of a Bourgeois Education’ and Elena Zubkova, ‘The Filippov Syndrome’, all in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, 4, 2009, pp. 835–868. A. S. Orlov, V. A. Georgiev, N. G. Georgieva and T. A. Sivokhina, Istoriia Rossii. Uchebnik (Moscow: Prospekt, 2008); V. I. Moriakov, B. A. Fedorov and Yu. A. Shchetinov, Osnovy kursa istorii Rossii. Uchebnik (Moscow: Prospekt, 2008); and V. A. Shestakov, Noveishaia istoriia Rossii. Uchebnik dlia vuzov (Moscow: AST, 2008). Shestakov covers the period from the end of the nineteenth century to Putin while both Orlov et al. and Moriakov et al. begin around the ninth century and end with Putin.

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Russian history that presents this as a normal path of development. Rather than the Soviet Union being seen as having an exceptional, or unusual, historical trajectory, by presenting much of it in a simple, matter-of-fact form, the texts projected Russian history as a largely unexceptional chronicle. This does not mean that unsavoury aspects of the past were airbrushed from the narrative, but they were often presented in a way which mitigated their negativity, either by stating them in anodyne language or placing them in a broader and more positive context.139 Examples include the discussions of:
agricultural collectivisation, which, while acknowledging the great cost, tend not to provide casualty figures;
only the Shestakov et al. volume discusses the repressions of the 1930s in any depth, and this is within a broader context of the claim that the repressions under Stalin had blocked the nomenklatura from privatising their power and turning it into ownership;140 while the other volumes refer to the repression and arrests, they do not give an adequate sense of the scale;
incorporation of the Baltic states was depicted as being at popular request with little hint of any manipulation of or opposition to this process;
while all three volumes discuss the post-war Stalinist repressions, Shestakov et al. refers to them as ‘black hundred action’,141 and all acknowledge the falsity of the charges with the implication that they were instigated by Stalin and/or Beria;
the post-war economic revival is lauded, although Moriakov et al. acknowledge the role of the ‘army of many millions’ in the GULAG and Shestakov et al. refer to the despatch of former POWs to the camps upon their return to the USSR.142 The treatment of Stalin is consistent with this approach, but here the different books need to be distinguished. The Orlov et al. volume spends very little time discussing the leadership conflicts at the top of the party in the two decades following the revolution. Accordingly, Stalin does not appear as a major figure. The discussion of collectivisation, the 1936 Constitution, the purges of 139

140 142

And in this regard they differed from the treatment in Igor Dolutskii’s National History, Twentieth Century, which was withdrawn from use in 2003 and was, in the words of Mendelson and Gerber, ‘widely hailed for its thorough and meticulous discussion of Stalin’s repressions and his role in World War II’: Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber, ‘Failing the Stalin Test’, Foreign Affairs 85, 1, 2006, p. 6. 141 Shestakov, Noveishaia, p. 365. Shestakov, Noveishaia, p. 313. Moriakov et al., Osnovy, p. 391, and Shestakov, Noveishaia, p. 308.

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the 1930s and late 1940s–1950s, and the war are all discussed with barely a mention of Stalin. However, his role in the structuring of Soviet development is noted. The repression and struggle with divergent views of the early 1930s is said to have occurred parallel to ‘the formation of a regime of personal power of I. V. Stalin’, there was said to be opposition to his course of gathering unlimited power into his hands in the 1930s, the cult of Stalin was said to have rested on a series of structural characteristics of the society (the weakness of democratic traditions, monarchist psychology among the masses, the illusion of wisdom and infallibility of the leader, the atmosphere of fear in the conditions of repression, and the successes of socialist construction), and his cult was said to have contributed to the early setbacks in the war.143 Similarly, Moriakov et al. discuss collectivisation with barely a reference to Stalin (although some of his speeches and articles are referred to and his differences in 1929 with Nikolai Bukharin later purged, noted), and the other main events prior to his death rarely are discussed in terms of his role in them. But this text does note that the leadership conflicts of the 1920s led to the consolidation of ‘a regime of personal power of I. V. Stalin’, that the ‘old guard’ made a last attempt to limit Stalin at the XVII Congress in 1934, that the death of Sergei Kirov (a prominent Leningrad politician who was seen as a rival to Stalin) unbound Stalin’s hands and led to the Terror which was part of the establishment of Stalin’s personal power, leading to a regime of a personal dictator in the late 1930s. At the time of Stalin’s death, Moriakov et al. argue, the ‘Soviet model of totalitarian state socialism’ could not compete with the West.144 Stalin is a more substantial figure in Shestakov’s account, in part because this text seeks rather more to explain the dynamics of development during the first three and a half decades of the Soviet period than does either of the other two texts. Shestakov’s argument, which is developed in slightly different ways in different parts of the text, sees Stalin’s ability to appoint supporters (mainly poorly educated) to key positions as central to the development of the system. But, for Shestakov, this occurred within the context of the development of the nomenklatura as a means of total control; the nomenklatura emerged as the ‘owners of power’.145 By the mid 1930s, a ‘special form of totalitarianism, resting on traditional elements of Russian political culture’, had been constructed. In less than twenty years, through internal logic, the dictatorship of the proletariat had been turned initially into the 143 144 145

Orlov et al., Istoriia, pp. 503, 506–507, 536. Moriakov et al., Osnovy, pp. 344, 360, 364, 395–396. Shestakov, Noveishaia, pp. 172–173.

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dictatorship of the ruling Communist Party, and then into the dictatorship of one man. This was characterised by hyper-centralisation, command-repressive methods of functioning of the state mechanism, a single-party system, the intertwining of party and state organs, and the statisation of public organisations.146 Stalin was directly behind both collectivisation and the Terror of 1937, which was to strengthen his regime of personal power, just as he was also responsible for the catastrophes at the beginning of the war. Thus, in Shestakov’s account, Stalin is a major figure, but it is within the context of the internal developmental logic of the regime itself. While he must bear some of the blame for what happened during his rule, his personal role was subject to deeper forces of development within the regime as a whole. This position thus had the effect of mitigating Stalin’s personal responsibility for what happened. This emphasis upon the regime’s internal dynamic is reflected too in the discussion of the post-Stalin period. All three books paint Khrushchev as the unsuccessful reformer, being opposed by many of those within the apparatus of power, the nomenklatura. While none attributes his failure solely to such opposition, this is clearly seen as an integral part of it. Similarly, Brezhnev is seen as the representative of this force, in the terms used by Moriakov et al. an expression of the collective will of the nomenklatura,147 blunting the shift in the direction of liberalisation in favour of a return to more conservative methods and to an attitude which, when crisis beset the Soviet system in the late 1960s and early 1970s, rendered the leadership unable to respond. When a response was forthcoming under Gorbachev, it did not succeed, again in part due to the levels of opposition. What this approach suggests is a history of Soviet development within which key leaders such as Stalin have a role to play, but in which fundamental forces shape the direction of developments. The result is something of a humdrum history in which Stalin, while important, is not exceptional. Nor is he the figure against whom either substantial praise or blame is directed. These books reflect an attempt to ‘normalise’ Soviet history, to present this era as one of positive achievement, albeit with some dark sides, and as one of which the Russian people could be proud.148 The effect of this has been to exaggerate the positives – industrial development, victory in the war, creation of a modern society – and downplay the 146 148

147 Shestakov, Noveishaia, pp. 202–203. Moriakov et al., Osnovy, p. 411. There are other books which go much further in justifying Stalin’s repression. See, for example, Aleksandr Barenkov and Aleksandr Vdovin, Istoriia Rossii, 1917–2009 (Moscow: 2010), mentioned by AFP 26 September 2010.

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negatives, with the result that the depiction of Soviet history is distorted. The nature, scope and psychological impact of the repression remain largely undiscussed, the underlying coercive nature of Soviet federalism remains obscured by the image of the voluntary union of happy peoples, and the extent of popular suffering remains largely unremarked upon. Furthermore, in this image of the positive and uplifting Soviet era, there is often a tendency to attribute setbacks to the machinations of outside enemies, especially the West. It is the West that is overwhelmingly responsible for the Cold War, while domestically less-than-optimal performance was seen as reflecting the impact of Western influences of one sort or another. This sort of attitude feeds in to a widespread tendency to give credence to conspiracy theories in contemporary Russian society. It also means that history is being used for political purposes, just as it was in the Soviet era. This is also evident in Filippov’s basic argument: Stalin built a strong state and his successors squandered it until Putin came along to restore Russian strength. The theme of the book is clearly a strongly patriotic one. Stalin has also remained a symbol at the popular level. On the anniversaries of his birth and death, flowers are always placed on his grave behind the Mausoleum on Red Square and his supporters held meetings in his honour. At times there have been calls to erect monuments in his memory149 (but no such development has occurred in any of the major cities; see Chapter 6 for a fuller discussion of statuary), sometimes calls were made to restore the name Stalingrad to Volgograd, in 2004 the name Stalingrad replaced Volgograd on the block of stone commemorating the hero cities in the war memorial outside the Kremlin near the eternal flame, and there were moves to open a Iosif V. Stalin Museum as part of the commemorations at the war memorial on Mamaev Kurgan in Volgograd.150 At opposition demonstrations people frequently carried placards bearing Stalin’s portrait, with Stalin appearing to be a much more popular subject for this than Lenin, while many wore medals bearing Stalin’s image. Official validation of this seemed to be given when in May 2000 silver coins bearing Stalin’s likeness were issued to commemorate the fifty-fifth anniversary of victory in the war.151 At the time of the 125th anniversary of his birth, 2004, a series of television 149

150 151

For example, Rossiiskaia gazeta 4 May 2005, Izvestiia 14 April and 11 May 2005, and Pravda.ru 20 January 2005. According to a Levada poll, 36% were in favour of the idea of creating monuments to Stalin while 53% opposed it: Interfax 23 April 2005. As indicated above (p. 159), statues were erected in some places. See the report in Brian Bonner, ‘As Museum Prepares to Open, Russians Debate Stalin’s Legacy’, Knight Ridder Newspapers 8 May 2006. Sherlock, Historical Narratives, p. 163.

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programmes explored his role in history.152 Stalin has also been a major subject of popular publishing activity in Russia. The major bookshops contain a very large number of books on Stalin and the Stalin era (although probably not as many as on the Great Patriotic War). Many of these are quality historical studies, often sponsored by various archives, but many are also populist and in the conspiracy theory vein.153 But presumably there is a market for these given their ubiquity. Similarly, there is a large amount of Stalin kitsch around – for example, pictures, busts, posters, crockery and playing cards with his image – and although much of this is not original and in part is directed at the tourist market, it adds to the impression that Stalin retains a symbolic presence in Russian society. This is also reflected in public opinion polls. The attitude to Stalin has been a continuing feature of polling activity in Russia, and such polls have always shown a residue of popular support for him, but the picture is not unambiguous. Table 5.2 shows poll results that give an indication of this. All of the figures in this poll, both for the positive and negative evaluations of Stalin, represent clear minorities of the Russian people, meaning that most, if they have any view at all, seem to have a basically ambiguous attitude to the former leader. The lack of a single clear attitude to Stalin is also reflected in the results of a poll of 2,000 16–29-year-old Russians taken in June 2005 (see Table 5.3).154 With regard to the war, 28% believed that Stalin did not deserve credit for victory in the war (the figure for those who believed that he did deserve credit is not given).155 However, in another reported poll in 2005, 58% of those surveyed believed Stalin played a ‘significant’ role in the country’s victory, while 40% approved of his performance during the war.156 The figures in Table 5.3 do not match those in Table 5.2 and, 152 153

154

155

156

Gennadii Bordiugov, Oktiabr’. Stalin. Pobeda. Kul’t iubileev v prostranstve pamiati (Moscow: AIRO-XXI, 2010), pp. 153–154. One popular such view is that Stalin defended the Soviet Union against a Jewish conspiracy. Conspiracy theories have been a prominent feature of post-Soviet Russian consciousness, ranging from explanations for the collapse of the USSR, through the economic difficulties of the 1990s, to the apartment bombings of 1999, the Kursk sinking of 2000, and the terrorist acts later that decade. For discussion, see Oushakine, Patriotism of Despair, ch. 1, esp. pp. 71–76, and Robert Horvath, ‘Putin’s “Preventive Counter-Revolution”: Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution’, Europe-Asia Studies 63, 1, 2011. See also Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber, ‘Soviet Nostalgia: An Impediment to Russian Democratization’, Washington Quarterly 29, 1, 2005–6, pp. 86–87. Mendelson and Gerber, ‘Failing’. For Medvedev’s view that the war was won by the people, not Stalin, see Alexander Odynova, ‘Winds of Change Can’t Blow Stalin Away’, Moscow News 18 May 2010. S. Klimova, ‘Victory in World War II: Does It Belong to Stalin or to Us?’, Public Opinion Foundation 15 July 2005, bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/egur050404.

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Table 5.2. Popular attitude to Stalin (% of respondents agreeing with the statement)

Stalin was a cruel and inhumane tyrant who caused the death of millions of innocent people. Regardless of his mistakes and flaws, the most important thing is that under his leadership our people were victorious in the Great Patriotic War. We do not know the entire truth about Stalin and his actions. Stalin was a wise leader who led the USSR to power and prosperity. Stalin’s purge of the officer corps and collusion with Hitler made the country unprepared for war in 1941. Only a cruel leader could maintain order under conditions of acute class struggle and external threat. Our people will never manage without a leader such as Stalin; sooner or later such a leader will come and establish order. Stalin distorted the ideas of Lenin and created a system far from the true ideals of socialism. Stalin continued the work begun by Lenin and other Bolshevik revolutionaries. Stalin is maliciously reviled by people to whom the interests of the Russian people and state are alien.

1998

1999

2009

28

29

35

31

34

35

28 16

32 20

26 21

16

18

17

15

22

15

13

18

11

11

9

8

6

7

6

3

5

4

Source and note: The polls were conducted by VTsIOM, wciom.ru/novosti/press-vypusk/ single/12945.html, cited in ‘Russian Attitudes Towards Stalin’, Russian Analytical Digest 72, 9 February 2010, p. 13. In 2010, only 49% of people were able to name Stalin as commander-in-chief of the Soviet armed forces during the war. VTsIOM, wciom.ru/index. php?id¼459&vid¼13446.

Table 5.3. Youth attitude to Stalin (% of respondents agreeing with the statement)

Stalin was a wise leader. Stalin did more good than bad. Stalin’s role in the repressions has been exaggerated. Stalin was a cruel tyrant.

Agree

Disagree

51 56 42 43

39 33 37 47

Source: Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber, ‘Failing the Stalin Test’, Foreign Affairs 85, 1, 2006, pp. 2–8.

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Table 5.4. Feelings for Stalin (%) 2001

2009

POSITIVE Respect Sympathy Admiration

27 7 4

26 8 3

NEGATIVE Contempt and annoyance Fear Disgust and hate Indifference Difficult to say

18 16 10 13 5

13 6 5 28 11

Source: ‘Russian Attitudes Towards Stalin’, Russian Analytical Digest 72, 9 February 2010, p. 12.

if Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore P. Gerber are correct and their young respondents are less likely to support Stalin than older people, the source of this discrepancy is not clear. A poll in 2006 reported that 47% of people believed Stalin played a positive role in Russian history and 29% a negative one.157 People also seem polarised on their personal attitude to Stalin (see Table 5.4). But they seem more positive about his leadership abilities and capability to govern. When asked to rate these, they responded as shown in Table 5.5. A majority rated Stalin’s abilities in this regard as higher than average, a finding that is consistent with the image of him portrayed in some textbooks as an effective manager, and interesting in the light of Medvedev’s emphasis upon modernisation. But what is clear is that, at least for some people, Stalin remains a positive figure. Perhaps the clearest indication of this is that in a poll entitled ‘The Name of Russia’ which sought to identify the most important figure in Russian history conducted in 2008, Stalin came in third after Aleksandr Nevskii and Petr Stolypin.158 At the time of this poll, 157

158

‘Attitudes Toward Joseph Stalin’, Public Opinion Foundation, bd.english.fom.ru/ report/cat/societas/rus_im/rus_history/ed060–810. See also figures in Adler, ‘Future’, pp. 1099–1100, and Wendy Slater, ‘Conclusions: Stalin’s Death 50 Years On’, Slater and Wilson (eds.), Legacy, which cited a VTsIOM poll in 2003 which showed 53% said he played a positive role in the country’s history, 33% negative and 14% unable to answer. ‘Imia Rossii: istoricheskii vybor 2008’, www.nameofrussia.ru. The nine names following Stalin are Aleksandr Pushkin, Peter I, Vladimir Lenin, Fedor Dostoevskii, Aleksandr Suvorov, Dmitrii Mendeleev, Ivan IV (the terrible), Catherine II and Aleksandr II. The poll was conducted by telephone, internet and SMS, and was run

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Table 5.5. Evaluation of Stalin’s leadership ability (%)

Very low Lower than average Average Higher than average Very high Difficult to say

2000

2009

5 7 19 28 33 10

4 4 25 30 24 12

Source: ‘Russian Attitudes Towards Stalin’, Russian Analytical Digest 72, 9 February 2010, p. 12.

Table 5.6. Attitude to breakdown of USSR, 1 (%)

Regret Don’t regret

12/92

1/97

1/99

3/01

12/01

69 31

84 15

85 11

79 15

76 15

Source: A. Petrova, ‘Dynamics of Russians’ Attitudes on the USSR’s Collapse’, the Public Opinion Foundation 6 December 2001, bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/rus_im/ collapse FSU/eof014603.

there was an extended discussion of Stalin occurring in the popular media, especially television, film and internet/electronic sites, but also in publications, especially books.159 While the precise source of Stalin’s popularity may be debated, for many it is part of the general nostalgia for the Soviet period that characterises Russian society. One reflection of this has been the continuing popular sense of regret at the loss of the USSR. Tables 5.6 and 5.7 show the response in two different polls to the question ‘Do you regret the breakdown of the USSR?’ A survey from 2008 found that 57% ‘largely or entirely agreed’ that the fall of the USSR had been a disaster.160 There was also a positive view of the role played by the CPSU; in 2006 51% thought it had done more good than harm to the nation, with only 15% holding the

159 160

by the television channel Rossiia, the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, and the Public Opinion Foundation. Bordiuga, Oktiabr’, p. 157. Stephen White, ‘Soviet Nostalgia and Russian Politics’, Journal of Eurasian Studies 1, 2010, p. 3.

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Table 5.7. Attitude to breakdown of USSR, 2 (%)

Regret Don’t regret

12/00

12/01 12/02 12/04 11/05 11/06 11/07 11/08 11/09 11/10

75 19

72 21

68 25

68 26

65 25

61 30

55 36

60 30

60 28

55 30

Source: Levada Tsentr, www.levada.ru/press/2011041103.html.

alternative opinion.161 At the end of 2005 45% of respondents agreed that it would have been better had everything remained as it was before 1985 while 33% disagreed.162 Many continued to see various aspects of Soviet life (mainly those concerning security, both personal and employment) in a positive light.163 This sentiment was also reflected in the March 1996 Duma vote to repeal the Belovezh Accords which broke the Soviet Union up. In part this is a reflection of the difficulties and uncertainties of the postSoviet period, a belief that conditions were much better in the Soviet era than they were after 1991. The economic hardship and collapse of social services, the prevalence of crime and corruption, and Russia’s loss of superpower status were all seen by many as sharp contrasts with the situation that had prevailed in Soviet times, especially in late Stalinism. Whether this image was accurate or not (and in many respects it was not) was irrelevant; what was important was that in the minds of many it had validity. And in this context the image of Stalin loomed large because he seemed so central to the creation of the USSR in the form in which these people perceived it. Unlike his major successors as Soviet leaders, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev, who all seemed to have played a part in pulling down the Soviet edifice, Stalin’s name was ineluctably associated with the creation of the USSR and its rise to superpower status. Accordingly, as people sought to make sense of their history and to use that history to shape their future, Stalin appeared as a major figure within it. This is the basis upon which so many in the West have looked at Russian developments and bemoaned a presumed ‘rehabilitation’ of Stalin.164 This, plus the

161 162 163 164

‘Views of the CPSU’s Role’, Public Opinion Foundation 4 August 2006, english.fom. ru. Boris Dubin, ‘Sobytiia avgusta 1991g v obshchestvennom mnenii Rossii’, Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia. Dannye. Analiz. Diskussi 6(80) 2005, p. 58. Stephen White, Understanding Russian Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 231. For example, see Nina Khrushcheva, ‘“Rehabilitating” Stalin’, World Policy Journal 22, 2, 2005, pp. 67–73.

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contradictory nature of his historical role, is also the reason that his figure will continue to loom large as Russia continues to come to grips with its past. The continued inability to reach a stable conclusion on the role of the Soviet experience generally and Stalin in particular has undermined all prospect of generating a narrative of post-Soviet Russia that could gain normative authority. Thus, in the public sphere the discourse that emerged remained partial and incomplete in the sense that it lacked a clear and consistent perspective on the country’s past and accordingly how it had reached its current state, and therefore did not constitute a coherent post-Soviet narrative. Particularly ambiguous in this was the place of the USSR and Stalin. The repeated failure of the public discourse adequately to address the Soviet experience matched that official discourse emanating from the presidential office, and ensured that public discourse would be fragmentary and unconsolidated. As such, it was unable to contribute to a coherent narrative about Russian society or to project a clear image of what it was and where it was going; the message remained mixed and lacking coherence. Its failure to deal with society’s past meant it could not provide a guide to its future. The same result has been reflected in the material sphere of urban development.

6

Moscow: a material basis for post-Soviet identity?

Cities are not ahistorical constructs, but sites upon which successive historical eras leave their imprint.1 Symbolic and material referents to the past abound in the urban cityscape as each generation modifies and extends the urban profile it inherits. Urban development thus creates a historical narrative which can be read and interpreted by the observer. In the absence of the complete razing of a city, this narrative will comprise a range of layers dating from many phases of urban development, and where a city has been (like Moscow) involved in tumultuous political events, many of those layers and the elements of which they consist may not sit easily together. While a city like this has multiple heritages, urban development may privilege one heritage (and therefore layer) over another; or it could follow a completely new path, seeking to avoid all of those that have gone before. The reconstruction of destroyed buildings or monuments from former eras is a way of emphasising a particular heritage and relating it to contemporary reality and policy. Even when an attempt is made to follow a new path different from the heritages embedded in the urban environment, this will have direct implications for the capacity of those heritages to continue to shape the urban environment and life within it. While memorials tend to freeze history, change and development can bring new significance and meaning to them. But the new urban identities that are created cannot completely transcend the past, with the result that the character of the city remains a product of its historical course of development.2 Through the material 1

2

On Moscow as a site of Russian memory, see Gueorgui Ne´fe´dev, ‘Moscou’, Georges Nivat (ed.), Les sites de la mémoire russe, Vol. I, Géographie de la mémoire russe (Paris: Fayard, 2007), pp. 82–90. For St Petersburg, see Wladimir Berelowitch, ‘Saint-Petersbourg’, Nivat (ed.) Les sites, pp. 91–97. See the essays in John Czaplicka, Nida Gelazis and Blair A. Ruble (eds.), Cities After the Fall of Communism. Reshaping Cultural Landscapes and European Identity (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009). For the role of the myth of Novgorod in that city’s post-Soviet development, see Nicolai N. Petro, Crafting Democracy. How Novgorod Has Coped with Rapid Social Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004). On St Petersburg, see Helen Goscilo and Stephen M. Norris (eds.), Preserving Petersburg. History, Memory, Nostalgia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

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representation of the past, the city therefore constitutes a symbolic arena of memory within which the city’s inhabitants live. As one scholar has noted, ‘capitals across the globe embody national identity and historical consciousness’,3 while for Anatoly Khazanov, ‘The cultural language of urban space and place can never be reduced to aesthetics; it always has political implications.’4 This is particularly the case in Moscow which had been invested with so much symbolic capital by the Soviet regime that any changes to the urban fabric involved interaction with the symbolism of the past. During the course of a city’s development, decisions are made about the shape and form of its infrastructure which, as well as involving choices about concrete items such as buildings, monuments and streetscapes, also involve issues about cultural capital and cultural dominance. When a city’s past has been turbulent, like Moscow’s, the problematic nature of parts of that infrastructure will be increased. In such circumstances, scholars have identified three possible reactions:5 co-optation, where the item of urban infrastructure is accepted by the new decisionmakers but often with a revised meaning poured into it; contestation where different groups battle it out over the meaning and significance of the particular item; or disavowal when that item is rejected. In those situations where elites are not completely unified (and this is the overwhelming majority of situations), these three positions will be adopted by different elite groups during the course of political conflict. In this sense, the physical infrastructure of a city can be a battleground for different political forces, with that contest played out through debate over aspects of the urban environment. From the time the Bolsheviks moved the capital to Moscow in March 1918, they sought to reshape the city from its position as the seat of ‘barbarous Russian capitalism’6 into the representative of the shining new socialist order. Initial moves were modest, and it was not until the adoption of a General Plan for the Development of Moscow in 19357 that a clear blueprint for the development of the capital attained elite 3 4 5

6 7

Michael Z. Wise, Capital Dilemma. Germany’s Search for a New Architecture of Democracy (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), p. 11. Anatoly M. Khazanov, ‘Post-Communist Moscow: Re-Building the Third Rome in the Country of Missed Opportunities?’, City and Society 10, 1, 1998, p. 288. This follows Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, ‘Unraveling the Threads of History: Soviet Era Monuments and Post-Soviet National Identity in Moscow’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92, 3, 2002, pp. 524–547. There is actually a fourth possible stance – ignoring the particular item. ‘O general’nom plane rekonstruktsii goroda Moskvy’, Pravda 11 July 1935. General’nyi plan rekonstruktsii goroda Moskvy (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1936). For a discussion, see Graeme Gill, Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 127–132.

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consensus. There were two main thrusts of the plan. The first was the rebuilding of much of the centre of the city, pushing wide boulevards through the city’s old central districts and replacing many of the buildings from the nineteenth-century and earlier with new, often very large official buildings. The centre was to be transformed from a cramped low-rise nineteenth-century city into an administrative centre of impressive dimensions. The second main thrust of the plan was the provision of housing and services. While some of this housing was to be located in the old centre, for example, along Tverskaia (known as Ulitsa Gorkogo in Soviet times), much of it was to be found further out on the periphery of the centre. In addition, there were to be major construction works on river embankments, canals and roads and the provision of services such as sewerage and telephone. The aim was thus not just to create a new administrative hub for the socialist state, but to improve the living standards of its people as well. Although not all of the details of the plan were realised in practice, significant changes were introduced. The centre was fundamentally transformed. While some major structures remained, like the Kremlin, St Basil’s Cathedral, the GUM building, the Moscow Duma building, the Manezh and large parts of Kitai Gorod, much of the rest of the centre was rebuilt. Roads were widened, new buildings erected and new streetscapes created. The scale was important; although many of the buildings were not particularly high, they were all solid and of sufficient height to manifest a real presence on the streetscape. And the roads were very wide. So there was a sense of monumentalism about the centre, one which stemmed from the ensemble which central Moscow comprised rather than from any one structure in particular. This sense of monumentalism was reinforced by the post-war Stalinist construction of seven skyscrapers dotted at key points of the city: the Ukraina Hotel on Dorogomilovskaia Embankment and an apartment building on Kotelnicheskaia Embankment (both on the waterfront), Leningradskaia Hotel on the city’s main transport hub at Kalanchevskaia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Smolenskaia, apartment buildings on Vosstaniia Square and Krasnaia Vorota (both on high points of the Garden Ring) and the Moscow State University building on Lenin Hills. These buildings, which visually dominated the city, were a major statement of socialist monumentalism. They were built in the straitened economic circumstances of the early post-war period when the need for housing was extreme, and by soaring skywards they symbolised the aspirations and reach of socialism. But if Stalinist socialism was associated with soaring ideals and monumental structures, that which followed it was much more humdrum and

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prosaic. Rather than building an exciting new future characterised by a new way of life and a new style of society, socialism was presented by the regime as much more about improving the living standards of the people.8 What went with this in terms of the architectural design of Moscow was that the construction of iconic buildings was eschewed9 and major efforts were put into the construction of housing. As the population mounted, the vacant areas inside the outer ring road which marked the boundary of Moscow (the MKAD) were increasingly filled with high-rise, relatively low-quality housing. Despite the claims surrounding the 1971 plan for Moscow’s development,10 the image of the city was no longer one of the harbinger of the bright new future; it was instead the home of seven million people with all of the problems that providing for that many people involved. In this sense the city had become desacralised, its symbolic importance eroded and replaced by a sense of the ordinary. When the emphasis was on meeting the material needs of the people rather than building a bright, new, distinctive future, there was little to distinguish Moscow from any other city in the world. There was no longer anything definably socialist about the city as a physical entity. This does not mean that there were not socialist elements to the city’s architecture.11 Many buildings were adorned with the symbols of the socialist regime: the Soviet coat of arms, the red star, and the hammer and sickle were on the faces of many buildings across all parts of the city, while slogans (often neon-lit) were to be found on the walls and roofs of buildings. Names redolent of the Soviet period were attached to streets and Metro stops, suburbs and regions, institutions and buildings. Historic plaques existed on various structures marking particular events in the life of the Soviet regime, especially Lenin’s presence in particular buildings at particular times. Statues of leading Soviet figures, most particularly Lenin, were scattered around the city. At the symbolic heart of the city, on Red Square, stood Lenin’s Mausoleum and behind it busts over the graves of various Soviet leaders with other regime notables buried in the ground in front of the Kremlin wall. All of these denoted 8 9

10 11

For this shift in regime symbolism, see Gill, Symbols, ch. 4. This is not completely true. In 1961 the Palace of Congresses was built in the Kremlin but, reflective of the age, it was recessed into the ground so that it would not dominate the Kremlin physically and visually. For example, see the discussion in the articles in Stroitel’stvo i arkhitektura Moskvy 7–8, July–August 1971. This is not to mention the way its services were constructed. The massive state subsidies on all aspects of personal life, including accommodation costs, transport, food and power charges, education costs and goods in the shops – all reflect the socialist ethos as understood by the regime.

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the city’s Soviet past but, robbed of the ideological substance that had been implicit in the highly mobilisational Stalinist style of socialism, they were insufficient to vest in the city a sense of a socialist metropolis distinctly different from large cities elsewhere. Nevertheless, the Soviet legacy remained evident in the material fabric of the city. This desacralisation of socialist Moscow, the robbing of the city of a distinctly socialist character, meant that, when the Soviet regime fell, its successor did not face significant ideological pressure to recast the city’s face. Initially there was not strong pressure to make the city a representation of post-Soviet reality, at least for national-level elites. Even Boris Yeltsin, whose post-1990 political career was built upon vigorous rejection of the Soviet regime, did not seek the wholesale remaking of the city’s face. Especially in the difficult economic circumstances of the 1990s, this was not only not seen by leading national politicians as a priority, but it was not even seen as being needed. This does not mean that leading politicians were not interested in the fate of the city’s urban fabric; when particular issues came up, national politicians would often take a stance on them. But they did not see the development of Moscow as a major concern. However, this view was not that of one leading politician, Yurii Luzhkov.12 Luzhkov had been elected deputy mayor of Moscow in 1991 and, when the mayor Gavriil Popov stood down in 1992, Luzhkov took over. He was re-elected at each subsequent election until he was forced from office in September 2010. Luzhkov was a major force for the remaking of the city, personally sponsoring many of the development projects that took place in Moscow in the subsequent two decades. With his effective control over the planning13 and approval process, plus the fact that his wife Elena Baturina came to run the biggest construction company in the city, Luzhkov was in a strategically crucial position to shape the course of Moscow’s development. But Luzhkov was 12

13

For a discussion of Luzhkov’s role, see Roi Medvedev, Moskovskaia model’ Yuriia Luzhkova (Moscow: Vremia, 2005), and the updated version, Roi Medvedev, Yurii Luzhkov i Moskva (Moscow: Vremia, 2008). See also Aleksei Mukhin, Yurii Luzhkov i sistema Moskovskikh oligarkhov (Moscow: Algoritm, 2005). For Luzhkov’s own views, see Yurii Luzhkov, My deti tvoi, Moskva (Moscow: Vagrius, 1996), and his Taina Gostinogo dvora. O gorode, o mire, o sebe (Moscow: OLMA Media Grupp, 2006). On his part in the Manezh, Christ the Saviour and Moscow-Citi developments, see Thanos Pagonis and Andy Thornley, ‘Urban Development Projects in Moscow: Market/State Relations in the New Russia’, European Planning Studies 8, 6, 2000, pp. 751–766. On draft basic directions for urban planning, see Stroitel’naia gazeta 32 (94), 11 August 1992. For the 2002 plan, see General’nyi plan razvitiia Moskvy do 2020g i ego realizatsiia (Moscow: 2002); for discussion of it, see Marina Dmitrieva, ‘Moscow Architecture Between Stalinism and Modernism’, International Review of Sociology 16, 2, 2006, pp. 427–450. For a subsequent plan extending until 2025, see Proekt aktualizirovannogo general’nogo plana goroda Moskvy na period do 2025 goda (Moscow: 2009).

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acting in a pluralistic environment in which a diversity of actors – commercial, religious, civic – pursuing their own interests and with often very different views also sought to shape Moscow’s development. The result of this diversity of forces acting on the fabric of Moscow has been the lack of a single clear conception of what post-Soviet Moscow stands for in the wake of the disappearance of its role as a socialist model. Two principal considerations were instrumental in the architectural, and therefore symbolic, reshaping of the city. The first was ideological, what to do about the symbolic markers of the Soviet regime. The second was commercial, and related to the way in which decisions about land (and building) use would now need to take commercial concerns about cost into account in ways which had not been relevant in Soviet times. These two considerations, although different in nature and operating in different ways, intersected frequently in specific instances of urban development, and often in unexpected ways. Treatment of Soviet symbols One of the first means of dealing with Soviet symbols actually began before the regime fell, the removal of Soviet-era names. Throughout the country, many placenames evocative of the Soviet era were replaced, usually with their pre-Soviet name (if they had one); for example, Molotov became Perm, Sverdlovsk Ekaterinburg, Gorky Tver and Kuibyshev Samara. Within Moscow, many Soviet-era street, place- and Metro stop names were changed.14 Placenames are significant15 because of the role they play in helping people orient themselves. Such names are central to the way people determine their physical location in space and find their way through the urban maze. It is how they get their bearings, define their physical trajectory and establish the point they want to reach. They constitute the semiotic environment within which people function and are symbolic markers of the boundary between the past and the present, temporal borders in the shared collective memory. 14

15

For some details, see Graeme Gill, ‘Changing Symbols: The Renovation of Moscow Place-Names’, Russian Review 64, 3, 2005, pp. 480–503. For a decision of the Moscow government, see ‘O vozvrashenii istoricheskikh naimenovanii, prisvoenii novykh naimenovanii i pereimenovaniiakh Moskovskikh ulits’, 25 October 1994, Vestnik merii Moskvy 24 (1278), 1994, pp. 14–19. See also M. V. Gorbanevskii and M. I. Yemel’ianova, Ulitsy staroi Russy. Istoriia v nazvaniiakh (Moscow: 2004) russa.narod.ru, N. K. Yefremov, Moskovskikh ulits imena (Moscow: Veche, 2006), and Vladimir Murav’ev, Moskovskie ulitsy. Sekrety pereimenovanii (Moscow: Algoritm, 2006). For an illustration of this perceived significance, see the report about the proposal to change Leningradskii mainline station to its pre-1917 name, Nikolaevskii, in Moscow News 14 July 2009.

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Placenames suggest how the past is selectively constructed16 and link a view of the past with the constructed reality of the present.17 Placenames are a means for giving identity to public space and thereby potentially structuring a landscape through the legitimating myths and symbols of the regime.18 Accordingly, where such names are invested with ideological symbolism or significance, this means that people’s lives are being shaped and defined in part by that ideology. If guidance is provided by the symbols of the regime, it invests the regime with an existential significance for its people. This is why the changing of such placenames is seen as establishing a cultural boundary between two ways of imagining the world, between two ideological conceptions which help to define reality for those who are exposed to them. The effect of this is weakened when only a small number of names are changed but, when it occurs on a wholesale basis, it can represent a shift in the ideational paradigm of the city.19 Change in Moscow street names was brought about overwhelmingly in the early 1990s, was propelled by local authorities and represents a wide-ranging rejection of Soviet symbolism. Looking at the pattern of renaming, in general terms the closer to the centre of the city, the greater the changes, and the further out, the less extensive those changes. This pattern may reflect the dominance of central Moscow at this time by more radical anti-Soviet forces while the outer regions continued to be run by communists.20 Generally, but not always, when streets were renamed, if they existed before 1917 their former names were restored; this was particularly the case in central Moscow, around the Kremlin. However, following the remaking of central Moscow in the 1930s and in the areas outside the centre which were not part of the city before the revolution, new names had to be found. Most of these new names seem to reflect local factors, with no discernible ideological pattern to them. If the replacement of Soviet names by their predecessors was meant to do away with names that had an objectionable resonance, there was 16

17 18

19 20

See the discussion in Maoz Azaryahu, ‘The Purge of Bismarck and Saladin. The Renaming of Streets in East Berlin and Haifa: a Comparative Study’, Poetics Today 13, 1992, pp. 353–354. Maoz Azaryahu, ‘The Power of Commemorative Street Names’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, 3, 1996, pp. 311–312. For a discussion of how landscapes can be manipulated to further political interests, see D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (eds.), The Iconography of Landscape. Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Although the immediate practical effect of this is ameliorated by the fact that people often continue to use the former name despite the official change. Gill, ‘Changing Symbols’. In Novgorod such changes were more complete: Petro, Crafting, p. 150.

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often a lag in this because of the way in which former names often live on in the cultural memory through their continuing use colloquially. Throughout the Soviet period, Gorky Street continued informally to be referred to as Tverskaia, while Leningrad was called Piter. Similarly the building that housed the KGB, the premises of a former insurance company, and the square on which it stood continued to be referred to as Lubianka. This was a name that from the late 1930s was ineluctably linked with Stalin’s Terror. Accordingly, the term had a dual resonance: pre-revolutionary and purges. This is illustrative of the fundamental cultural ambiguity that can attach to names. Although there was significant renaming of streets to eliminate the Soviet name, sometimes the Soviet-era name was retained. In some cases this was because, although the name did have Soviet provenance, its actual meaning either had more general significance in Russian history – for example, Vosstaniia (Uprising) Square, Enthusiasts’ Avenue, Chkalov Street and Barricade Street – or it had no real connection with the Soviet regime; examples of this include Scientists’ Street and Garibaldi Street. However, there were also cases when streets with names that were directly associated with the regime retained those names. This was most common in outer Moscow; in Zelenograd (which is actually located outside the MKAD but is administratively part of Moscow) there were no name changes. However, it also occurred closer in to the centre; for example, Andropov Prospekt, Kosygin Street and Fiftieth Anniversary of the 1917 Revolution Street all retained their Soviet-era names when others with a Soviet resonance lost theirs. At the regional level within Moscow, there was no such liberality with Soviet-era names. The ten new regions resulting from the consolidation of existing regions were all given geographical names – North, Northwest, West, Southwest, South, Southeast, East, Northeast, Central and Zelenograd. These replaced many names explicitly Soviet in nature: for example, regions which in 1985 were named after Sverdlov, Kirov, Dzerzhinskii, Bauman, Kuibyshev, Kalinin, Zhdanov, Lenin, Voroshilov, Frunze, 1st May, Red Guards, Soviet and October now disappeared. In the Moscow Metro there was also some name changing, but again with some that one might have thought would have been changed left in place. The same pattern as with streets applied, in that the extent of the changes is significantly greater the closer to the centre of the city the station is. In the case of the Metro, the stations did not predate Soviet times, so there were no original names that could be restored. Many of the new names referred to the geographical part of the city in which they were found, usually using the pre-Soviet names of those regions; for example, Aleksandrovskii Sad, Okhotnyi Riad, Kitai Gorod, Teatralnaia

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and Chistye Prudi. Most retained their Soviet-era name because they had more general associations than simply with the regime (for example, Kropotkinskaia, Arbatskaia, Park Kultury), while others related to the mainline stations they were near; for example, Belorusskaia, Kurskaia, Kievskaia. Some stations which were changed had originally been named after figures or phenomena associated with the Soviet regime; for example, Prospekt Marksa, Kolkhoznaia, Lenino, Leninskie Gory, Gorkovskaia, Dzerzhinskaia, Kalininskaia, Kirovskaia, Ploshchad Nogina, Ploshchad Sverdlova and Shcherbakovskaia (they became respectively Okhotnyi Riad, Sukharevskaia, Tsaritsyno, Vorobevy Gory, Tverskaia, Lubianka, Aleksandrovskii Sad, Chistye Prudi, Kitai Gorod, Teatralnaia and Alekseevskaia). But not all stations thus associated were renamed. Stations retaining their Soviet-era name despite its clear association with the former regime21 include Leninskii Prospekt, Ploshchad Ilicha, Baumanskaia, Frunzenskaia, Marksistskaia, Oktiabrskaia, Oktiabrskoe Pole, Pervomaiskaia, Komsomolskaia, Krasnogvardeiskaia and Pionerskaia. One curious case of this is the station that serves the Russian National Library. This was formerly called the State Lenin Library of the USSR and the station which serves it went by a shortened form of the same name – Biblioteka imeni Lenina. Despite the renaming of the library, the Metro stop has retained its original name. Similarly on many of the station buildings, the Soviet name, the Lenin Metro – for example, ‘Metropoliten imeni V. I. Lenina stantsii Universitet’ – remains in place.22 Another type of visual symbol of the old regime which came under challenge was statuary. On the eve of the collapse of the USSR, there were many statues and busts of Soviet figures scattered throughout all the cities and towns of the country, including Moscow. The largest number of these was of Lenin, but there were many of lesser figures as well; no national leader following Lenin (Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko or Gorbachev) was celebrated in the same way as he was. The most striking case of the removal of a statue was that of Feliks Dzerzhinskii, standing in the middle of Dzerzhinskii Square, which became Lubianka Square with the collapse of the putsch in August 1991.23 The statue was being pulled down by an angry crowd, when it was arranged for a crane to come and lift the statue onto a truck 21

22 23

St Petersburg stations retaining names which one might have thought would be changed include Ploshchad Lenina, Prospekt Bolshevikov, Ulitsa Dybenko, Proletarskaia, Leninskii Prospekt, Kirovskii Zavod and Pionerskaia. This is in contrast to inside the carriages where the map of the Metro lines is headed ‘Skhema linii skorostnogo transporta Moskvy’. Nearby statues of Sverdlov and Kalinin were removed at the same time.

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which took it away. But in this Moscow was actually lagging behind some other parts of the country. In some towns in 1990 and 1991, statues of Lenin disappeared overnight as local proponents of change took it into their minds to remove this symbol of the communist regime. However, it is also true that in many areas such moves did not emerge, with Soviet-era statues remaining in place well after the fall of the Soviet state.24 The removal of statues is a common development during revolutionary change. The statue is seen as symbolising the power and stolidity of the old regime; just as the statue firmly stands in place, towering over the people, so the regime is powerfully embedded in its position of dominance. It is a symbol of the regime’s enduring power and position. Accordingly, to overthrow the statue is metaphorically to reject the regime; this is one reason why people often like to stand and even dance on fallen statues. What this represents is a transformation of the meaning of the statue. From an enduring symbol of the regime’s power and purpose, it becomes a symbol of its weakness and its fall. It may also come to represent the country’s years of suffering and trial under the former regime, thereby being transformed from a symbol of power and purpose into one of suffering and remembering. Dignity is taken from the statue and shame put in its place.25 Furthermore, if the statue is then put into a museum, it is transformed from something which represented power into a curiosity, something to be looked at with interest but certainly not with awe and fear. In Moscow, most statues of Soviet leaders were removed from their positions. Many of them were relocated into a garden near the New Tretiakov Gallery opposite Gorky Park, thereby undergoing both rejection in terms of their removal, and co-optation through the new meaning they gained in such a setting. This park became known colloquially as the ‘Park of Fallen Monuments’, although a number of other titles (formally the Park of Arts) were also used, and the exhibition opened on 10 November 1998.26 Here were placed statues of a number of Soviet leaders: Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev, (the famous) Dzerzhinskii, Sverdlov, Kalinin and 24

25

26

For example, in Barnaul ten years after the fall of the USSR, the three statues of Lenin in the main street (Lenin Street) remained in place: Serguei Alex. Oushakine, The Patriotism of Despair. Nation, War, and Loss in Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 2. For a discussion of some of these issues, see Laura Mulvey, ‘Reflections on Disgraced Monuments’, Neil Leach (ed.), Architecture and Revolution. Contemporary Perspectives on Central and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 219–227. On broader questions of reaction to monuments, see Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, ‘Monumental Politics: Regime Type and Public Memory in Post-Communist States’, Post-Soviet Affairs 27, 3, 2011, pp. 269–288. For one discussion, see Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), pp. 83–88.

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Kosygin; Marx was also there. The Stalin statue is one of the famous ones by Sergei Merkurov. A backdrop of skulls behind barbed wire has been placed behind the Stalin statue, and smaller statues of tormented people surround it in a poignant expression of honour to those who died in the Stalinist repressions. This is also a graphic repoliticisation of the statue, but this time in a negative sense instead of the positive sense it had had when first erected. The statues are in a park which, in the Russian fashion, is left unmanicured and appears somewhat unkempt. It is also open and windswept, with the result that there is a sense of desolation about it. There is also a sense that their time is past; by placing them in a museum like this, they have been depowered and rendered virtually irrelevant. Even those who look back to the Soviet period nostalgically do not seem to consider this a place of pilgrimage or somewhere to leave flowers. In 1998 and 2000 the communists unsuccessfully spearheaded moves in the Duma to restore the Dzerzhinskii statue to Lubianka Square.27 These moves, plus the 2002 suggestion by Yurii Luzhkov that the statue could be returned were blocked, seemingly by the strength of the negative response by opponents.28 Most statues of Soviet figures were removed, although city authorities decided that seven of the sixty-eight large statues and busts of Lenin and nineteen of the forty-eight major Soviet figures would stay in place.29 Lenin has remained in monumental form in Oktiabrskaia and in smaller versions just off Tverskaia Ploshchad (formerly Soviet Square) on Ulitsa 27

28

The voting in 1998 was 256 for, 102 against, and in 2002 (there were two votes) 196 for, 83 against, and 193 for, 91 against. On moves to restore it, see Benjamin Forest, Juliet Johnson and Karen Till, ‘Post-Totalitarian National Identity: Public Memory in Germany and Russia’, Social and Cultural Geography 5, 3, 2004, p. 370. Nanci Adler, ‘The Future of the Soviet Past Remains Unpredictable: The Resurrection of Stalinist Symbols Amidst the Exhumation of Mass Graves’, Europe-Asia Studies 57, 8, 2005, pp. 1095–1096. The proposal did have significant popular support around this time. In answer to the question ‘Do you personally support the idea of returning the monument of Felix Dzerzhinsky to Lubianka Square in Moscow?’, respondents replied (in %): Yes No Hard to answer

29

12/98 45 36 19

6/00 60 21 19

9/02 56 14 30

See A. Petrova, ‘Russians Support Returning Felix Dzerzhinsky Monument to Lubyanka Square’, 26 September 2002, Public Opinion Foundation bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/ societas/rus im/dzerjinsky/eof023603. For an argument by an LDPR Duma deputy that the breakdown of the militia and consequent crime wave began with the removal of the Dzerzhinskii statue, see Izvestiia 18 November 1994. The statue symbolised law and order for some. Formally, Luzhkov did not have the authority to return the statue because the federal government had taken away his power over public space of ‘federal significance’: Forest and Johnson, ‘Unraveling’, p. 545. Timothy J. Colton, Moscow. Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1995), p. 734.

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Tverskaia and in the park near Ulitsa 1905 Goda Metro stop. Statues or busts of some Soviet-era figures are to be found in Metro stations; for example, Frunze in Frunzenskaia, Nogin in Kitai Gorod and Lenin in Ploshchad Revoliutsii (where heroic revolutionary figures remain a prominent feature in the main hall), while the mosaic of Lenin’s head remains visible in the Biblioteka imeni Lenina stop. Frunze remains outside the Military Academy that bears his name, while Marx is still to be found in front of the Bolshoi Theatre. But the greatest concentration of these outside the Park of the Fallen Monuments is on Red Square just behind the Lenin Mausoleum. During the Soviet period busts were erected over the graves of twelve leading figures of the Communist Party who were buried here: Stalin, Chernenko, Andropov, Brezhnev, Kalinin, Suslov, Sverdlov, Frunze, Dzerzhinskii, Zhdanov, Voroshilov and Budennyi. These not only still stand, but act as a kind of shrine for people nostalgic for the Soviet times; there are normally fresh flowers on Stalin’s grave30 and often on some of the others too, with the KPRF regularly holding commemorative meetings here. So, like name changes, the removal of Soviet-era statues has been distinctly patchy; it has also been more contested than the changing of names. Similarly the Soviet coat of arms has been removed from many buildings, often to be replaced by the symbol of the new Russian state, the double-headed eagle.31 However, the Soviet coat of arms remains in evidence on many buildings, including those of an official nature; for example, the Lubianka, the main building of Moscow State University on Vorobevy (formerly Lenin) Hills and on some of the other Stalinist skyscrapers. Similarly the red star is still visible on the gates of the Kremlin and can be found on some other buildings as well, while the red star and hammer and sickle remained on the side of the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin until 2010.32 In the vestibule of Smolenskaia Metro station, the emblem of the hammer and sickle inside a star is shown on the ceiling, and the frieze around the wall evoking the military victories of 1812 and 1945 remains. On the building of the State Duma (formerly the Gosplan building), the Russian double-headed eagle appears on the lintel above the door while the Soviet coat of arms remained on the top of the fac¸ade in mid-2011. The plaques on 30

31 32

On 22 June 2011, the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, Stalin’s grave was heaped with fresh flowers, in stark contrast to the other eleven graves and significantly more than on his in preceding days. Moscow also gained a new coat of arms, flag (showing St George and the dragon) and hymn, with the first two coming to adorn city buildings. By the middle of 2011, the actual emblems seem to have been removed, but they have left outlines on the wall of the building which remain clearly visible.

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buildings scattered around Moscow commemorating Lenin’s activity in that particular building remain in place. An especially striking example is the Bolshoi Theatre, which has been completely renovated, but the plaques marking the creation of the USSR and Lenin’s participation in meetings there have remained in place. So too does much of the decoration in the Metro stations; the statuary and Soviet emblems in Ploshchad Revoliutsii and the mosaics in Kievskaia remain as striking as they ever were. The Russian National Library still bears its former name above the main door (Gosudarstvennaia Biblioteka SSSR imeni Lenina), while the Old Building of the University on Ulitsa Mokhovaia still bears the title ‘Order of Lenin Moscow State Lomonosov University’ (Moskovskii Ordena Lenina Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni M. V. Lomonosov). All of these are cases of the removal or retention of Soviet-era symbols. One site that is different is Kurskaia Metro station, where the entry vestibule (newly reopened on 26 August 2009) has been restored to the state it was in when it was first opened in 1950, with a single exception: the bust of Stalin that was originally there has not been restored, the area where it stood being left symbolically empty.33 The vestibule comprises an octagonal dome supported by eight pillars, with a square entrance. Standing on each pillar is a statue, four military figures and four civilians, all holding what look like laurel leaves; two of the civilians also hold sheafs of wheat and two hold books. On either side of the entrance is a large vertical sword on a laurel wreath, while a red star in lights is at the entrance. The hammer and sickle and star figure prominently in the decorative motif. The military ethos of the vestibule is clearly evident, but what is most remarkable about it is that the original words from the Soviet national anthem at the time which were found around the pediment just below the roof have been reinstated. They say: ‘The sun of freedom and the great Lenin have cheered us through storms, Stalin raised us to be true to the people, inspired us to labour and heroic deeds!’ This is not just the retention of something from the past; it is the restoration of a hymn lauding the first two leaders of the Soviet state, neither of whom has fared well in the pages of post-Soviet Russian historiography. Similarly in the (Ulitsa Nikolskaia) entry hall of Ploshchad Revoliutsii Metro station, the following inscriptions remain: ‘Great Rus united forever the unbreakable union of free republics’; ‘Our glorious free fatherland is the people’s excellent, reliable fortress’; ‘The Soviet banner is the people’s banner that leads from victory to victory.’ 33

For Luzhkov’s statement that a bust of Stalin would not be placed there, see Moscow Times 29 October 2009. For a discussion of Stalin images that once existed in the Metro but are now gone, see Komsomol’skaia pravda 27 October 2009.

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So, in terms of the post-Soviet development of Moscow, there has been patchy treatment of the symbols of the Soviet era. While much has been removed, a significant amount has been retained, some of highly symbolic significance. But this needs to be seen in the context of the wider development of the city. The transformation of Moscow The transformation of central Moscow began under late perestroika but really accelerated following the fall of communism. Two decades after the USSR collapsed, while the basic organisational substructure of Moscow remained intact, its face had become largely transformed.34 New buildings, renovated buildings, new uses for old buildings, much more colour in the form of window displays and the proliferation of advertising, including the widespread use of non-Russian names often spelled out in the Latin alphabet rather than Cyrillic, and much more evidence of private commerce were the markers of the changed environment. The principal driver of these was commercial activity.35 Soviet Moscow was not attuned to the needs of commerce; the potential premises were often far too large (a factor exaggerated by the usual paucity of items for sale), were organised in such a way that did not serve a commercial purpose, or were used for other types of activities. It is not surprising that the earliest shoots of independent commercial activity were to be found in street stalls, kiosks and sometimes barely changed private apartments rather than in commercial premises of mortar and brick. However, once ideological restraints were removed from commercial activity and, importantly, once foreign firms entered the market with the capital to be able to undertake some of the physical alteration and renovation of premises that were necessary, we have seen the transformation of Moscow’s retail precincts. Areas like GUM and Tverskaia, once the dowdy foci of Soviet shopping in the capital, came to sparkle with new shops displaying an array of goods previously unimaginable for the Moscow shopper. Many of these shops were parts of international chains – Gucci, Armani, Zara – but, after the crisis of 1998 made Russian-manufactured goods competitive, local shops also began to become more prominent. While the growth of this retail sector involved some casualties among classic Soviet retail outlets – Voentorg 34 35

For a survey of many of the new buildings, see Nikolai Malinin, Arkhitektura Moskvy 1989–2009. Putevoditel’ (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Ulei’, 2009). For the central role of Mayor Yurii Luzhkov in this, including his links with the construction industry, see Roi Medvedev, Moskovskaia model’, ch. 2.

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and Detskii Mir being two prominent examples – its main feature was simply the expansion of retail opportunities and the transformation of the streetscape. Associated with this was the proliferation of places to eat. These were not simply expansions of the old-style Soviet cafe, but a transplanting of Western-style fast food outlets into Moscow. The first was of course McDonald’s which opened its first outlet in 1990, but following 1991 it was joined by a host of others. Even Russian chains – ¨ lki Polki – adopted Western the most important were Russkoe Bistro and E styles. There has also been the demolition of old and construction of new hotels; for example, the Hotel Intourist (built 1965–8) on Tverskaia was knocked down and replaced by a new Ritz Carlton, modelled in part on the turn-of-the-twentieth-century National Hotel next door, a design which makes the new hotel look more like a heavily renovated old building than a new one (some other hotels are noted below). Another aspect of this development has been the emergence of shopping malls. In contrast to their Western precursors, these often comprise a large number of small, often speciality shops without big emporia selling a vast range of goods. Sometimes established in small, specially built buildings on vacant land near Metro stops (for example, the centre at Universitetskaia), they offer an array of goods and services in one place. The most striking case of this is the Manezh shopping centre, opened in 1997 and sponsored by Luzhkov. This is an underground shopping mall built under Manezh Square, with a wide range of shops selling a diverse array of products. The square itself was remodelled, with part of it raised and a large dome put in to bring light to the multiple floors of retail outlets below, thereby destroying the traditional vista across the square. Furthermore, the placement of bronze statues of beasts from Russian fairy tales around the water feature between the raised area of the square and Aleksandrovskii Garden completely transformed this part of the square and its usage, effectively making it a recreation area for children.36 The Manezh offers itself as a high-class retail outlet but, by including a fast food section, it draws in people of all persuasions, and is therefore a more popular space than the official function it had performed during Soviet times as an assembly point for Red Square marchers. What is important about this is that, principally as a result of commercial development, the whole nature of the streetscape changed for the citizens of Moscow. During the Soviet period, space within the city had been defined by the state.37 Not only did the state lay down the 36 37

These were designed by Zurab Tsereteli. This argument follows Robert Argenbright, ‘Remaking Moscow: New Places, New Selves’, Geographical Review 89, 1, 1999, pp. 1–22.

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rules governing behaviour in the public parts of the city, but through its control it also shaped the physical dimensions of that space and, in the form of public propaganda, how it was presented. With the collapse of the regime, that space became overwhelmingly shaped by commercial imperatives.38 Instead of the somewhat bare landscape of the Soviet period, albeit one coloured by propaganda, the streets were now awash with the evidence of commercial activity. People could get takeaway food and coffee, they could window-shop where there was something to see, and they could keep up with high fashion or low grunge if that was their preference. The streets had become much more consumer-friendly, at least in external appearance. In practice, of course, for much of this time, many people could not afford the prices in the shops, but at least now distribution was being decided on commercial grounds rather than by state direction, and this of necessity meant the overt display of what was available. The contrast between the straitened circumstances that seemed to be symbolised by the late Soviet-era Moscow street and the cornucopia of consumer goods reflected in that same street two decades after the fall was stark. And it conveyed a whole different sense of the city and its nature. One significant consequence of the growth of commercial development powered by independent commercial considerations is that the essential unity of public space in Soviet times now became fragmented. As different commercial establishments sought to attract custom, they transformed their particular parts of the streetscape so that the former unity was disrupted. Formerly familiar places became associated with new and different phenomena, sometimes historical or geographical, but often commercial and Western. The use of non-Russian language and lettering to signify different stores accentuated this change. This sort of fragmentation of the streetscape therefore involved a breaking up of the Soviet mould and its replacement by an ethos that was considerably at variance with what it replaced. But it is important not to exaggerate this. While this sort of development was characteristic of the central parts of Moscow, it was replicated to some degree in many other parts of the city. However, there were large areas where such development was limited. Certainly some firms sought premises that were larger than they were able to acquire economically in the centre by moving to more outlying areas – Ikea is one example – but in many parts of the city new retail outlets were much less common and, where they did emerge, they were rarely non-Russian. Much of this new 38

For a discussion of the same process in Barnaul, see Oushakine, Patriotism of Despair, pp. 15–20.

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retail activity was in kiosk-style establishments, although new shops in permanent premises also developed. However, it was often but a pale reflection of the development in the centre. This contrast says as much about the nature of the symbolism of transformation as does a concentration purely on central Moscow. Another aspect of the commercial redevelopment of central Moscow has been the construction of new office blocks.39 Companies often preferred to make a statement about their worthiness by building flash new premises rather than taking over existing buildings; Lukoil and Gazprom40 are prime cases of this. Many of these new buildings are of modern design and scale, concrete and glass, reaching to the sky. They have fundamentally changed the Moscow skyline; if Soviet-era apartment blocks and Stalinist skyscrapers transcended the traditional Moscow of shining domes, these new commercial buildings have in turn put the Soviet structures almost literally in the shade. While this trend has largely been self-propelling, with individual companies making decisions about where they would be located and the type of building they would have, this process has also been fuelled by official decision. Luzhkov’s support was essential for the development of what has been called ‘Moscow International Business Centre’ (or ‘Moscow-Citi’) on Krasnopresnenskaia Embankment, a project involving the building of high-rise commercial and residential tower blocks as well as hotels, exhibition centres and a recreation area on the bank of the Moscow River a short distance from the Kremlin, serviced by its own Metro stop, Mezhdunarodnaia; plans include the highest building in Europe.41 Office space, and its expansion throughout central Moscow, reflects the strength of the commercial imperative in shaping Moscow’s development and sharply distinguishes the post-Soviet period from its predecessor. The operation of the commercial imperative has also been reflected in the housing sphere. The growth of private accommodation has been one of the features of the last twenty years, not simply in terms of the transferring of title of existing premises into private hands, but in the 39 40

41

Many of these are featured in Malinin, Arkhitektura Moskvy. Perhaps the most egregious case of this was not in Moscow but in St Petersburg, where Gazprom sought to move its headquarters into a new multi-storey building that, its critics claimed, would destroy the world heritage listed centre of the city. It was opposed by city authorities and, while making its way through the courts, seemed to lose presidential approval as well. Elisabeth Essaian, Moscou. Portrait de ville (Paris: 2009), p. 46. See the discussion in Katharina Feuer, Moscow. Architecture and design (Berlin: teNeues, 2007), pp. 92–97, and Sabine I. Go¨lz, ‘Moscow for Flaneurs: Pedestrian Bridges, Europe Square, and Moskva-City’, Public Culture 18, 3, 2006, pp. 573–605.

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construction of new premises.42 Much of this new accommodation was built in the outer parts of Moscow, enabling many families to significantly improve the quality of their housing compared with Soviet times; the construction of new housing often involved the demolition of apartment buildings erected under Khrushchev, many of which were dilapidated and in a poor state.43 The transfer of title on existing premises, which has often been accompanied by considerable conflict,44 has been an important factor in the growth of very expensive accommodation near the centre of the city. In Soviet times this was the location of many communal apartments, some housed in the large apartments that formerly had belonged to the wealthy during the tsarist period and others in Stalin-era buildings. Where those apartments still existed, agents bought out sitting tenants, offering them single accommodation closer to the periphery, knocked them back into single apartments and thereby massively increased their value. The construction of new premises has been particularly marked in the dacha belt, where the construction of private ‘kottedzhi’ has gone apace,45 and often brought a new ugliness to the Russian countryside. But this has also been a feature in the centre of Moscow.46 The construction of new apartment buildings has proceeded apace. Styles differ, with many evoking aspects of the modernist style of the early years of the twentieth century, while some others follow what 42

43 44

45

46

For some crude figures on the construction of housing, see Roi Medvedev, Moskovskaia model’, pp. 65–66. For a survey of early legislation on the privatisation of housing and for conflicts between different authorities in Moscow over this, see Blair A. Ruble, Money Sings. The Changing Politics of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Yaroslavl (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995), pp. 41–47. On plans for a ring of high-rise apartment buildings, see Roi Medvedev, Moskovskaia model’, pp. 94–101. Principally as a result of vague laws and regulations, different interests of residents (e.g. some opposed to privatisation, others supporting it), problematic valuations, and the varied interests of developers, municipal authorities and Soviet-era owners (mainly enterprises and local authorities). For one study, see Caroline Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life. Everyday Economics After Socialism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), ch. 9. See also Mikhail Blinnikov, Andrey Shanin, Nikolay Sobolev and Lyudmila Volkova, ‘Gated Communities of the Moscow Green Belt: Newly Segregated Landscapes and the Suburban Russian Environment’, Geojournal 66, 1–2, 2006, pp. 65–81; and Yasushi Toda and Nadezhda N. Nozdrina, ‘The Cottages in Suburban Moscow: A New Lifestyle for the Wealthy’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 23, 3, 2008, pp. 444–455. On gentrification in central Moscow, see Anna Badyina and Oleg Golubchikov, ‘Gentrification in Central Moscow – a Market Process or a Deliberate Policy? Money, Power and People in Housing Regeneration in Ostozhenka’, Geografiska Annales 87B, 2005, pp. 113–129, and James H. Bates, ‘Market Reforms and the Central City: Moscow and St Petersburg’, Henk van Dijk (ed.), The European Metropolis 1920–2000 (proceedings of a conference at the Centre of Comparative European History, Berlin, 2002).

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has been called ‘Soviet Empire style’.47 Some contain symbolic throwbacks to the Soviet period or earlier; for example, the new housing block at Patriarshie Prudy has a stylised model of Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International on top.48 But these are often conglomerations of different styles combined in a way that produces a building that does not fit the historical site; as one critic declared of a new luxury apartment block on Ostozhenka, it ‘incorporates historicist references, here to Art Nouveau, but again ill-digested and used as mere surface trimmings . . . it is crass and insensitively scaled for its historic surroundings’.49 The replacement of old apartment buildings with new is in part driven by the fact that old buildings generally cannot easily accommodate the sorts of luxuries rich Muscovites now demand. What most of these share, in the central city equivalent of the gated communities in which the kottedzhi are often found, is that access to the building is restricted to those who know the PIN, possess the card or can contact a resident within. This was, of course, also a feature of standard Soviet housing, but in the new buildings the security measures are far more extensive. Underground garages now protect residents’ vehicles and security lights and sometimes armed guards protect the building as a whole. The effect is much more of a fortress than was ever conveyed by the security measures in Soviet housing. The point about this accommodation is that it is not for the poor.50 Only those with significant capital behind them are likely to be able to buy into one of these new housing establishments51 and, while emergent and aspirant middle-class members may be in a position to do this, it is 47

48 49

50

51

The so-called Moscow style is an eclectic melange of elements from late nineteenthcentury and early twentieth-century Russian architecture which, rather than representing a coherent style, is a discordant mish-mash of diverse elements which creates an ahistorical structure. For a brief discussion of the so-called Moscow or eclectic style, see Malinin, Arkhitektura Moskvy, pp. 11–12, and Khazanov, ‘PostCommunist Moscow’, p. 287. For a picture, see Feuer, Moscow, pp. 32–33. Edmund Kharris, ‘Postsovetskaia arkhitektura’, Edmund Kharris et al. (eds.), Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe nasledie. Tochka nevozvrata, vyp. 2 (Moscow: MAPS, 2009), p. 106. For pictures of new developments that dominate older streetscapes, see Malinin, Arkhitektura Moskvy, pp. 47, 160, 176, 178, 277 and 304. The housing shortage and how it was to be met were a matter of major concern in the main construction journal in the early 1990s, called Novaia stroitel’naia gazeta until June 1992, Stroitel’naia gazeta thereafter. On the marketing of housing for the rich, see Martina Kolosova, ‘Vystavki: dom millionera’, Novaia stroitel’naia gazeta 20 (82), 19 May 1992, p. 16. On housing prices, See Liudmila Kiriushina and Marina Kosolapova, ‘Rynok zhil’iai vy khotite zhit’ v Moskve?’, Novaia stroitel’naia gazeta 21 (83), 26 May 1992, p. 3. This was representative of the completely new style of living widely available in Moscow compared with the Soviet era: Khazanov, ‘Post-Communist Moscow’, pp. 270–274.

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not something that is likely to be within reach of many of those living in Soviet-stock housing outside the Garden Ring. But this is emblematic of central Moscow as a whole. This is an area that is visually dominated by expensive shops, new office blocks and high-price apartments; one author has referred to the ‘golden triangle’, the area between the Arbat and Tverskaia where luxury accommodation is to be found.52 Of course, there are many Soviet- and earlier-era buildings which ameliorate this image somewhat (see below), and once one leaves the immediate centre (e.g. beyond Ulitsa Petrovka and Kuznetskii Most, or across the river into Zamoskvoreche, retail outlets can be much less exclusive and expensive) the impression of ample wealth dissipates, but it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the very centre of the city is a place where serious money is to be found. In this sense, the ethos of central Moscow is very different from what it was throughout much of the Soviet period, when the emphasis on the proletarian, on labour in the factory and on commitment to the Motherland was dominant. Of course, in practice there was some social polarisation in Soviet times too,53 but both the levels of spatial segregation and the social ethos were very different from what they are now. Such values now seem pale compared with the glitzy side of contemporary Moscow, with its focus on consumer goods, money and status. Moscow still the same? While the creation of the new Moscow has been partly at the expense of the destruction of the old (this is discussed further below), this is too simplistic a view. Much of the building fabric of central Moscow predates 1991.54 For example, standing in Manezh Square with one’s back to the Kremlin, the buildings facing onto Ulitsa Mokhovaia and Ulitsa Okhotnyi Riad are all either pre-Soviet or Soviet in provenance: Pashkov House (1784–6, reconstructed after 1812 fire), the Lenin Library (1940s), what was the reception for the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Mikhail Kalinin and is now the reception for the Federal Assembly (nineteenth century), the University (eighteenth/ nineteenth century), the Vernadskii State Geological Museum (1918), 52 53

54

Essaian, Moscou, p. 51. On stratification reflected in Soviet-era housing patterns in Moscow, see Ellen Hamilton, ‘Social Areas Under State Socialism: The Case of Moscow’, Susan Gross Solomon (ed.), Beyond Sovietology: Essays in Politics and History (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), p. 219. For a discussion and list of Soviet-era buildings, see Maria Kiernan, Moscow. A Guide to Soviet and Post-Soviet Architecture (London: Ellipsis, 1998).

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the Mokhovaia House which was the headquarters of Intourist (1934), the National Hotel (1903), the Duma building (formerly Gosplan, 1930s) and the House of the Unions (eighteenth century, reworked in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). A similar picture could be drawn in many of the other streets of Moscow. Indeed, the new retail outlets along Tverskaia and in GUM are not in new buildings, but in coopted renovated buildings dating from, respectively, the 1930s–40s and the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, much of old Moscow has been lost in the redevelopment of the 1990s–2000s. The loss of old Moscow has been widely criticised. Although the general plan for the development of Moscow included provision for the protection of the historic patrimony, both architectural and natural, this seems to have posed little barrier to development. Neither has the official system of preservation55 nor appeals like those of the Shchusev Museum of Architecture on 13 April 2004, which produced a letter with nearly 500 signatories denouncing the destruction of Moscow’s architectural patrimony.56 Much of old Moscow has been lost as buildings from the pre-Soviet era have been knocked down and replaced with new structures; in the five years prior to 2005, Moscow was said to have lost more than 1,000 buildings, 200 of which were either listed or about to be listed as historic monuments.57 Often with the new buildings there was no attempt to reproduce the historicity of the buildings they replaced, but on many occasions historical elements have been introduced into the design, but frequently with the same effect as noted above with regard to apartment buildings. What has also been common has been the erection of sham replicas (see below). Many buildings of the Soviet era and earlier remain central to the urban fabric of Moscow;58 indeed, one study noted, ‘Buildings from the 1930s to 1950s are very rarely demolished to make way for new units, but in the majority of cases they are not considered suitable for restoration, and are repaired in a rough and ready fashion.’59 Many still fulfil

55 56 57

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There are three levels in the country – national, regional and local – and the international through UNESCO. Izvestiia 16 April 2004. Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe nasledie. Tochka nevozvrata, vyp. 1 (Moscow: MAPS, 2007), p. 99. For different figures, see Izvestiia 29 September 2010. Many other buildings, including many examples of Constructivist architecture, are also under threat. On losses, see Edmund Kharris, ‘Utraty’, Kharris et al. (eds.), Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe (2009), pp. 145–153; Kharris et al. (eds.), Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe (2009), pp. 99–112; and K. Mikhailov et al., Khronika unichtozheniia staroi Moskvy. 1990–2006 (Moscow: 2006). On survivals of the Stalin era, see O. A. Zinov’eva, Simvoly stalinskoi Moskvy (Moscow: Izdatel’skii dom TONCHU, 2009). Kalder Lot and Anna Bronovitskaia, ‘Stalinskaia arkhitektura’, Kharris et al. (eds.), Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe (2009), p. 84.

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basically the same functions they had performed earlier. For example, the House on the Embankment, built to house the elite, remains an apartment house, some of it commercially let. This does not mean that such buildings have not been changed. For example, two of Stalin’s seven skyscrapers – the Ukraina and Leningradskaia Hotels – are still hotels, but both have been extensively redeveloped internally, cleaned up externally and renamed respectively the Radisson Royal and the Hilton Leningradskaia. The buildings on New Square that housed the Communist Party Central Committee apparatus now house the Presidential Administration, while the nineteenth-century Lubianka building (originally an insurance company) which housed the KGB is now the home of the FSB, the Russian security service. The party and government apparatus that had been located in the Kremlin during Soviet times has now been replaced by the Russian presidency. Other buildings took on new functions. The State Duma meets in the monumental former Gosplan building. The New Arbat, designed and built in the 1960s, has been retained with some modifications despite suggestions that it be pulled down,60 while two other post-Stalin buildings in central Moscow, the above-mentioned Intourist Hotel and the Rossiia Hotel, have both been demolished, with the former replaced with another hotel and the latter, as of 2011, still a vacant block. Unsympathetic restoration has been undertaken on some classic buildings, including the only Le Corbusier-designed building in Moscow, Tsentrosoiuz, Detskii Mir and VDNKh (the Soviet Exhibition of Economic Achievements), while others like the Narkomfin building and the Northern Rivers Station remain under threat. In the process of development, Moscow has seen many Soviet-era and earlier buildings refurbished in their existing style, at least in terms of their street frontage.61 The gutting of an old building, and redesign of its internal space, while retaining the fac¸ade intact has been a common practice internationally. This has taken place in Moscow too. What has not been so evident on the international scene is the practice, which has been commonplace in Moscow and promoted by Luzhkov, of knocking down an old building and then erecting a replica or near-replica in its place.62 This is officially referred to as ‘construction anew of a historic building’. This replication of the fac¸ade of both pre-Soviet and Soviet buildings has been a common practice, with the result that, on looking at

60 61 62

Anna Bronovitskaia, ‘Modernizm vtoroi volny’, Kharris (eds.), Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe (2009), pp. 94–96. For a study of battles over preservation in a regional city, see Ruble, Money, ch. 3. This has occurred not only in Moscow. For an example from Yaroslavl, see Ruble, Money, p. 92.

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a contemporary streetscape, it is not always easy to tell what is an original building and what a replica. One example of this in central Moscow is the Hotel Moskva, fronting on to Manezh Square. This was built in the 1930s, with a distinctive fac¸ade that incorporated two styles. In effect, it looked like two different buildings joined together. In 2004–5 this was demolished and in its place a replica hotel has been erected. However, like many such replicas, it was not exact. Not only was the interior completely redesigned, but the external fac¸ades were altered, sometimes significantly, and it has been painted a cream colour it never was in the past.63 This practice retained something of the streetscape, although the way in which faux replicas were often enlarged much beyond the original means that they often came to dominate the skyline and vicinity as their predecessors had not done (this also applies to many new buildings), and probably also gained in the functionality of the building (in that its internal design was changed to make it work better), but it meant that the building lost its integrity. Does this matter? In terms of the streetscape and therefore of affecting the ethos of the urban space, probably not. But it does raise the issue of the ultimate integrity of both the building and the whole process of urban development and what it is producing. This may be a metaphor for the whole process of symbolic construction in the post-Soviet era. The most extraordinary case of this, and one which raises the position of the Church in this whole process, is that of Christ the Saviour Cathedral.64 The pre-Soviet past in the city The original Christ the Saviour Cathedral was finished in 1880 in honour of Alexander I’s victory over Napoleon. It was widely seen as the national church and, standing on the river bank near the Kremlin, 63

64

See the pictures in Nataliia Dushkina, ‘Istoricheskaia podlinnost’, Kharris et al. (eds.) Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe (2009), p. 225. A similar fate has befallen the classic Manezh (designed in 1817 and partly destroyed by fire, which many believe was arson) in March 2004 when the new version had a completely different ceiling structure, and Voentorg (the military department store built in 1912–14) which was knocked down and replaced in 2008 with a building that was both internally and externally different from the one it replaced. See respectively Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe (2007), p. 99 and Edmund Kharris, ‘Muliazhi’, Kharris et al. (eds), Moskovskoe arkhitekturnoe (2009), p. 231. For studies, see Andrew Gentes, ‘The Life, Death and Resurrection of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow’, History Workshop Journal 46, 1998, pp. 63–95; Dmitri Sidorov, ‘National Monumentalization and the Politics of Scale: The Resurrections of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90, 3, 2000, pp. 548–572; and Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorij Kozlov, with Sylvia Hochfield, The Holy Place. Architecture, Ideology and History in Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

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visually dominated central Moscow. The church was destroyed on Stalin’s orders in 1931 to make way for the proposed construction of the Palace of Soviets.65 This was to be an iconic building housing the Soviet government and symbolically representing the advance into the bright future. The building was never completed, construction being abandoned in 1941 due principally to the unsatisfactory nature of the subsoil, which was unable to support the foundations for the sort of massive structure envisaged. The site remained derelict until 1961 when Khrushchev built a heated outdoor swimming pool there. Things were unchanged until the early 1990s when Luzhkov, with the enthusiastic support of the Church and the more reluctant support of the federal government, proceeded with plans to rebuild the original Cathedral. Although it was claimed that it was funded by public subscription (certainly businesses working in Moscow were pressed to make donations), it was financed principally by the federal government. It was finished late in 1999 and opened to the public on 1 January 2000, a concrete and plastic replica of the cathedral which had stood there until 1931, and again a dominant feature on the Moscow skyline.66 Symbolically the Cathedral was of immense importance. Not only did it represent the taking back by the Church of what at one time had been seen as iconic space by the Soviet regime, but it also reflected the Church’s claim to a central place in contemporary Russian life. This claim was given vibrancy by the fact that it was in Christ the Saviour that political leaders came to mark leading religious days,67 and it was here that Yeltsin’s body lay in state when he died. This claim was reinforced by the fact that numerous properties that had been taken from the Church during the Soviet period were returned to it, often with state funds being put into the restoration and renovation of these sites. Between 1992 and 1998, at least ten Orthodox churches were built in Moscow, while between 2000 and 2004 a further ten were built in regions of newly constructed housing.68 According to a map published under the imprint of Christ the Saviour Cathedral in 2006, there were 436 churches in Moscow plus 12 monasteries. A symbolic representation of the Church’s return is also

65 66

67 68

On the Palace, see Sona Stephan Hoisington, ‘“Ever Higher”: The Evolution of the Project for the Palace of Soviets’, Slavic Review 62, 1, 2003, pp. 41–68. Beneath the veneer, there were considerable differences, including the basic type of construction (concrete and marble instead of bricks) and the placement of plastic figures of saints on the walls, and the new cathedral had underground car parking and office facilities that the earlier one lacked. For Putin attending the first Christmas service here, see Nezavisimaia gazeta 11 January 2000. Roi Medvedev, Moskovskaia model’, p. 62.

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evident on Red Square. The re-erection of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, which was opened in 1993, on the site where it had originally stood and where prisoners building the Metro had been kept in the 1930s, reflected the Church’s increased prominence. So too did the re-creation of the Iverskaia Chapel and Voskresenskie Vorota (Resurrection Gate – built in the 1680s and rebuilt in 1994–5)69 at the entrance to Red Square. Orthodox churches, monasteries and seminaries were restored and sprang back into life, albeit often following bitter conflict between the Church and various cultural bodies such as museums that had enjoyed the use of these buildings during the Soviet period; the view over the city from the lookout near the University starkly showed this through the golden domes that now shone in the sun which had been almost invisible (or in some cases invisible because they were not there) in Soviet times. In many places in central Moscow where churches had been destroyed, small chapels were erected or commemorative plaques set in place. And in August 2010 the Saviour of Smolensk icon was restored to its place over the Spassky Gate in the Kremlin. The return of the Church was the most obvious representation of the pre-Soviet past to become prominent in Moscow, but it was not the only one. Significant numbers of buildings from the pre-Soviet era were renovated and refurbished, sometimes in the course of redevelopment, sometimes (like the former Manezh riding school, which mysteriously caught on fire) as a result of happenstance. And, as indicated above, some buildings were destroyed and replicas built. The result of these two processes was that sections of Moscow displayed a streetscape that had significant apparent pre-Soviet elements to it, albeit mixed in with those of a later vintage. Major renovation was also carried out in the Kremlin where, despite the financial constraints of the 1990s, President Yeltsin sponsored the restoration of parts of the complex to its pre-Soviet state. The renewal of the outside of the Faceted Palace and the restoration of the Andreevskii and Aleksandrovskii Halls in the Great Kremlin Palace, which had been knocked into one under Stalin, were major developments. The installation of the insignia of the Russian state, the two-headed eagle, on many official buildings also constituted the restoration of the tsarist insignia. There has not been much reintroduction of pre-Soviet statuary, presumably because much of it will have been destroyed, but nor is there much evidence of the erection of new statues to the country’s former leaders. In the Kremlin, the statue of Lenin has been replaced by one of Alexander II.70 The statue of Alexander III that had stood before Christ

69

For a report, see Izvestiia 30 November 1994.

70

Mulvey, ‘Reflections’, p. 225.

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the Saviour was not replaced, but a statue of Alexander II was erected near the Cathedral in 2005. The most dominant piece of statuary in the city is the large statue of Peter the Great standing near the prow of a ship, designed by Luzhkov’s friend and favourite sculptor, Zurab Tsereteli, inaugurated in 1997 on the tercentenary of the foundation of the Russian fleet.71 This statue, standing just down river from the Kremlin on Krymskaia Embankment and, along with Christ the Saviour, dominating the skyline at that point, has attracted much comment, a lot of it critical.72 But it certainly injects a representation of the imperial period into the Moscow landscape.73 By also commemorating the foundation of the fleet, this is a statement of Russian great-power aspirations. Another post-Soviet statue which embodies a sense of power is that of General Georgii Zhukov on horseback, erected in Manezh Square in 1995. The statue marks the leading role played by Zhukov in the Great Patriotic War and, while embodying a sense of military energy and power, this is in effect a recognition of the victory achieved by the Soviet state in that conflict. It also has a distinct socialist realist resonance, thereby again evoking the Soviet era. While the representation of pre-Soviet times constitutes a reference to notions of memory, this is also reflected in the symbolic centres of memory in the city. Centres of memory Moscow had lacked a real memorial to the Great Patriotic War during Soviet times. When the memory of the war again became a major focus of regime symbolic activity in the mid-1960s,74 there was discussion of the need to rectify this situation. It was not that there were no memorials 71

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Essaian, Moscou, p. 46. For one discussion of this monument, and the argument that Tsereteli’s work (especially the figures from Russian folklore in the Aleksandrovskii Garden) was designed to deflect attention from the Soviet past and the Stalinist legacy back to a childlike era of innocence, see Bruce Grant, ‘New Moscow Monuments, or Statues of Innocence’, American Ethnologist 28, 2, 2001, pp. 332–362. Following Luzhkov’s sacking on 28 September 2010, there was talk of moving this statue: ‘Luzhkov-era architecture under attack’, www.russiatoday.com 4 October 2010. Similarly there has been criticism of the statue of Peter the Great erected in 1991 in the grounds of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. It seems out of proportion, with Peter having a large body and small head. In 2011 Putin called for the erection of a statue to Petr Stolypin, the conservative reformer assassinated in 1911. He even called on state employees to contribute to its cost. On this see Gill, Symbols, pp. 198–201. On the history of Poklonnaia Gora, see Nurit Schleifman, ‘Moscow’s Victory Park: A Monumental Change’, History and Memory 13, 2, 2001, pp. 5–34, and Pamiatnik pobedy. Istoriia sooruzheniia memorial’nogo kompleksa pobedy na Poklonnoi gore v Moskve. Sbornik dokumentov 1943–1991gg (Moscow: 2004).

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elsewhere in the country, but that there was none in Moscow. The closest approximation to such a memorial was the tomb of the unknown soldier in Aleksandrovskii Garden below the Kremlin walls (but around the corner from Lenin’s Mausoleum and therefore not a visual rival for symbolic primacy), and it was here too that there were carved blocks containing earth from and commemorating the ‘hero cities’ during the war.75 But there was no major memorial centre. Little progress was made on this until the perestroika period, when it was decided to begin construction on a site called Poklonnaia Gora, the hill from which Napoleon had stopped to survey Moscow before entering the city in 1812. The memorial, called Victory Park, was not opened until 9 May 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, and additions and modifications are being made to it continually. The result is an impressive, even overwhelming, site. The main part of the complex is approached via a very large forecourt, upon which is an avenue lined by fountains and monuments to war-time battles within the Soviet Union. In the middle of the avenue is a series of blocks, one for each year of the conflict, so that as you approach the focal point, you proceed chronologically through the war. Off to the left is a Russian Orthodox chapel, the Church of St George; buildings for other ‘traditional’ religions, a mosque (1997) and a synagogue (1998) are to be found out of sight down past the site’s focal point. That focal point comprises two parts. First is a column 141.8 metres high (representing the 1418 days’ duration of the war) on a stepped plinth with a sculpture of St George and the dragon at its base, bas-reliefs of military events on the column itself, and Nike the goddess of victory near the top. This was designed by Tsereteli and clearly evokes the glory of victory rather than the sorrow of sacrifice. Behind the column is a crescent-shaped building, much of it raised from the ground on which it sits on pillars so that there is a line of sight through it. Internally the building has four levels. At the lowest level is the hall of remembrance, where glass cases contain books from the regions of the Soviet Union containing the names of people from those regions who died during the war. A major feature is a sculpture seemingly of cut glass which 75

The ‘hero cities’ were Leningrad, Stalingrad, Odessa, Moscow, Kiev, Brest Fortress, Kerch, Novorossiisk, Minsk, Tula, Murmansk and Smolensk. The names of thirty-three ‘cities of military glory’ were also etched on stone beside the hero cities: Belgorod, Kursk, Orel, Vladikavkaz, Malgobek, Rzhev, Elnia, Elets, Voronezh, Luga, Polianyi, Rostov-na-Donu, Tuapse, Velikie Luki, Velikii Novgorod, Dmitrov, Viazma, Kronstadt, Naro-Fominsk, Pskov, Kozelsk, Arkhangelsk, Volokolamsk, Briansk, Nalchik, Vyborg, Kaluch-na-Donu, Vladivostok, Tikhvin, Tver, Anapa, Kolpino, Staryi Oskol, Kovrov, Lomonosov, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii and Taganrog.

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conveys the impression of tears, and, instead of an eternal flame, a woman (pieta`) mourning over a dead soldier. Around this hall are dioramas depicting major battles from the war. The main stairs from this level lead the visitor into what is effectively an atrium which contains battle standards from the war (in 2010 ten of the twenty wartime banners had explicit Soviet-era symbols) and busts of major military figures with accompanying inscriptions. There is a bust of Stalin here, and the inscription reads: Stalin (Dzhugashvili) Iosif Vissarionovich (1879–1953) I. V. Stalin was born in Gori (Georgia). He took an active part in revolutionary activities. From 1922 until 1953 I. V. Stalin was general secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), then the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At the same time, in 1941 he became chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR. In the course of the Great Patriotic War I. V. Stalin was chairman of the State Defence Committee, supreme commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the USSR. After the war I. V. Stalin was in charge of restoring and developing the USSR’s national economy. The cult of I. V. Stalin’s personality and the linked violations of the law, ungrounded repression against millions of people, and crude political mistakes – all these facts told heavily upon the life of Soviet society. Hero of Socialist Labour (1939) Hero of the Soviet Union (1945) Marshal of the Soviet Union (1943) Generalissimo of the Soviet Union (1945) Twice decorated with the USSR’s highest military Order of Victory (1944, 1945).

The next level contains two parts. Around the perimeter is a museum of the war, beginning in the late 1930s and ending with the taking of Berlin. The exhibits are a mixture of artefacts, photographs and recordings, much of it obviously with a Soviet flavour. As one would expect, Stalin is a common feature in many of these displays. At the centre is a domed, circular hall. In the middle of it is an enormous statue of a man with raised sword, flanked by two flags. In front of the statue is a ceremonial sword. On the ceiling are bas-reliefs of the hero cities, and Soviet emblems, especially the red star, are common; in the centre of the domed ceiling is the Soviet Order of Victory.

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The walls are covered with the names of Heroes of the Soviet Union, including that of Generalissimo Stalin. The final level contains an art gallery, mainly with pictures depicting some aspect of the conflict. The combined effect of the sombreness of the hall of remembrance, the monumentality of the central hall, and the detail of the conflict contained in the displays is to impress upon the visitor the scale of the conflict and its impact on the country. This in turn suggests the strength of the Russian state and the people, an affirmation of the unity of the two and the power that emanates from it. And, of course, it is also a commendation of the Soviet period, no matter how much gainsayers may now wish to dispute that. And here lies the heart of contestation about the site: does it commemorate a Soviet achievement (as the communists are quick to claim) or a Russian one, which seems to have been the position of Yeltsin and Luzhkov?76 The main mode of travelling to the site is by Metro (there being no car parking facilities nearby), with the stop called Victory Park. The Metro stop is new, finished in polished stone, and bears two mosaics, one referring to the war with Napoleon and the other to the Great Patriotic War, thereby linking the two conflicts. Another such link which has been projected is a new Federal Military Memorial Cemetery which, in 2008, was being built in northwest Moscow. The plans suggested that it would be monumental in scale and designed to reflect the glory of Russia. The opening of the Victory Park memorial complex outside the very centre of the city has created an alternative possible site for regime and other commemorations. The Victory Day march is still held in Red Square, but it is not unusual for those who wish to mount an alternative event on that day to hold it at Poklonnaia Gora. But the establishment of this as a centre of official memory placed in stark outline the continued existence of the symbolic heart of the Soviet regime in Moscow, the ensemble around Lenin’s Mausoleum on Red Square. The issue of the fate of Lenin’s body, and by extension of those other Bolsheviks buried here, has already been discussed in Chapter 5, but there have at times also been questions about the fate of the Mausoleum itself. While proponents of its removal have tied it to the need to bury Lenin and, in some cases, the desirability of removing a symbolic focus of communist activity, both of which are motives linked to the rejection of the former regime, others have argued that it represents a genuine part of the country’s history (for good or ill), it is now an essential part of the architectural profile of Red Square, and it is part of the UNESCO-designated world heritage area and 76

In this sense the site is a contested one, although it can also be seen as a co-opted one in that much of the planning was done for a Soviet monument, and this was simply taken over after 1991: Forest and Johnson, ‘Unraveling’, pp. 530–532.

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therefore cannot be touched. Arguments about the Mausoleum are an episodic rather than a continuing phenomenon, coming up during the Yeltsin period mainly at times when the communists were deemed to be a political threat. The fate of the Mausoleum does not appear to be a pressing issue for anyone but, while it remains where it is, it will be a continuing symbol of the Soviet era, despite Yeltsin’s attempts to desacralise it by removing the ceremonial guard Post No 1 from the Mausoleum’s doorway in October 1993. The symbolic significance of this was underlined by the simultaneous posting of a permanent guard at the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Another slant on the Soviet era relates to memorialising those who suffered under the Soviet regime and, although this has been done to some degree, consistent with the general approach to this question, there has been little material effort either to remember or to right the wrongs of this past. This became a major issue during perestroika with the emergence of Memorial, a non-government organisation dedicated to cataloguing and remembering those repressed under Stalin’s rule. It was due in part to pressure from this organisation that a memorial to the repressed was established in 1990 in Lubianka Square near the former KGB headquarters. The monument is a simple block of stone from the site of the first labour camp established at Solovetskii Islands and, apart from a period in the middle of the 2000s when its site was occupied by a construction camp for work being done nearby, it has stood there ever since. At times, it has been defaced with graffiti. It is a simple, stark monument which expresses eloquently the horror of the fate of so many people. But what is interesting is that, as a site, this has not been elaborated; it has been retained in the simple form it originally had. Similarly, in St Petersburg, its counterpart is to be found in Trinity Square near the Peter and Paul Fortress. It is a rock on a plinth, with a carved inscription on each side of the plinth: ‘To the prisoners of the GULAG’; ‘To the fighters for freedom’; ‘To the victims of communist terror’; and a quote from oppositionist poet Anna Akhmatova ‘I would like to call you all by name.’ This sort of monument is not the only way in which the repressed are remembered; there are also museums. While there is no national museum on the Terror, and in 2009 fewer than ten local museums, more than 300 museums had exhibits, displays or projects on the GULAG.77 There is the State Museum on the History of the GULAG which opened in Moscow on Ulitsa Petrovka in 2004, but like the 77

Arseny Roginsky, ‘Romanticising Stalin’, Open Democracy News Analysis, www. opendemocracy.net. See also Adler, ‘Future’, p. 1097.

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majority of such museums this is small and, although funded by the city, remains little known or visited. In the main official history museum in the city concerned with twentieth-century Russian history,78 the Museum of Contemporary History (formerly the Museum of the Revolution), the fate of the repressed receives little attention. The museum is organised chronologically, beginning with the pre-1917 years and continuing through the Soviet period, until its final display concerns the Gorbachev era and its fall. Each room covers a particular theme or period. The main display concerning the repressed is in the room which concentrates on the 1930s, and the principal theme here is industrialisation and the enthusiastic building of socialism. There is much attention to industrialisation, to the new Soviet Constitution and to the building of a new life. The display on the labour camps and the repressed is a very minor aspect of this. There is little detail and no sense of the scope or horror of the Terror. Nor is there any real analysis of any of the trials of opposition during this period. The Museum seems stuck in its Soviet bed, and that bed seems to date from the pre-1985 period. This sort of minimalist, fragmented treatment of the Terror, seeing it as a minor part of industrialisation, is characteristic of the treatment it receives in most museums.79 That this is not the way it needs to be is shown by a museum in St Petersburg, the State Museum of the Political History of Russia.80 While this museum also concentrates mainly on the twentieth century, and has a distinctly Leningrad/St Petersburg focus, in 2010 it had a display entitled ‘The Soviet Era: Between Utopia and Reality’. The main part of this display was on the Stalin era’s suppression of opposition and the repression, and included a detailed section on the camps and what life was like in them. The accompanying descriptions provided graphic details of the extent of the repression. The Great Terror was said to have been aimed mainly at the common people (a charge which automatically cast it as a regime war against its people, in sharp contrast to the attitude taken by the Soviet regime). It was said that in 1937–8 1,575,000 people were arrested by the NKVD, 1,345,000 (85.4%) were convicted, of whom 681,692 (50.7%) were 78

79 80

This does not therefore count more specialist museums like that of the Red Army or those dealing with pre-Soviet times. The Central Lenin Museum in the prerevolutionary city hall was closed in November 1993. In 2003 the Museum of Contemporary History mounted an exhibition entitled ‘Stalin: Man and Symbol’: Gennadii Bordiugov, Oktiabr’. Stalin. Pobeda. Kul’t iubileev v prostranstve pamiati (Moscow: AIRO-XXI, 2010), p. 153. Roginsky, ‘Romanticising’. For a short history of this, which does not mention the exhibition on the repressed, see Ioulia Kantor, ‘Le muse´e de l’Histoire politique a` Saint Petersbourg’, Nivat (ed.), Les sites, pp. 200–207.

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shot. By 1938 27,114 wives and 36,795 children of ‘enemies of the people’ had been repressed. By 1941 2.3 million people were convicts in camps or colonies. In 1940 the GULAG included 53 camps, 425 colonies, 50 colonies for minors and 90 baby’s homes; there were also prisons and commandants’ special camps. It would be difficult for people looking at the displays and reading this sort of detail to avoid a sense of the massive scale of the repressions and the excessive cruelty and hardship they involved. In addition, the museum had displays on both the use of psychiatric means against dissidents and the camps during the Brezhnev period. There are many sites of memory dedicated to the repressed around the country. Many sites of former camps, places where people were executed, the points from which arrestees travelled to their final destination, and the material infrastructure they helped to build, have commemorative plaques or displays marking their fate. When the leaders travel around the country they sometimes stop at these sites to pay tribute. Many of these sites are unofficial, established and maintained by volunteers, but others have been created by local and regional authorities. They represent an attempt in the country at large to come to grips with the story of the repressed in a material fashion. It is therefore a little surprising that the physical infrastructure to sustain this memory in the capital should be so restricted. Similarly, little attention has been given to memorialising the deaths of the royal family, killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. A large section of the museum under the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour is devoted to this, but there seems to be no purpose-built premises similarly dedicated. The main site for commemoration is, as indicated in Chapter 5, in St Petersburg. Nor has there been an attempt to create a major site of memory for the current, post-Soviet regime. In one sense this is not surprising because of the relatively peaceful passage from the Soviet Union but also, as this book demonstrates, because of the lack of a clear conception about what the regime represents. There was, initially, one possible site for the development of such a place, the White House. It was here that Yeltsin stood up to the 1991 putsch plotters, and where victory set in train the string of events that led to the fall of the USSR and the birth of independent Russia. However, the potential for sacralisation of this site was undermined in part by the continued ambiguity of the popular attitude to the USSR and, more importantly, by the fact that this was also the site of bloody conflict in 1993. It would have been difficult to invoke the 1991 events without triggering memories of 1993. As a result this could not become a symbol of the birth of ‘new Russia’, and no such symbolic site has emerged.

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Similarly, there has been no symbolic site created around the memory of those soldiers who lost their lives in military conflict after 1991. While Russian forces have been involved in a number of conflicts outside Russia – Moldova, Tajikistan, Georgia – the most extensive and costly military action has been in Chechnya. No attempt has been made at the central level to mark their sacrifice. This is consistent with the state’s treatment of returned and injured soldiers from this conflict. The authorities have made little real effort either to cater for the needs of veterans and their families or to accord them the recognition they feel is their right. Their problems, including their deaths both in service and after, have been seen as basically personal and family matters, rather than a state concern. This is why NGOs such as the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers have been so prominent in pursuing their interests and memorialising their sacrifice.81 The state’s refusal to memorialise the sacrifice of those who fell in the Chechen wars reflects its inability to construct a coherent and convincing narrative about the Chechen conflict. The distinctly ambiguous nature of the conflict – reasons for conflict, the way it was conducted, its mode of conclusion – made construction of a coherent narrative difficult, but it also made it more important. Unless the authorities could construct such a narrative, no monument was likely. The same problem applied to those other cases of armed conflict after 1991 (as, indeed, it did to the Soviet war in Afghanistan) and to the terrorist incidents in 1999 and the early years of the 2000s. A narrative like that for the Great Patriotic War, where the story line could relatively easily be established (notwithstanding some parts that did not fit, e.g. Ukrainian peasants’ welcome of German forces, the anti-Soviet partisan movement), could not easily be constructed for Chechnya, and therefore no state monument could be built. If during the Soviet period the development of Moscow reflected the changing ethos of Soviet socialism,82 what are we to make of post-Soviet Moscow? As one would expect in a city where formally the planning powers possessed by urban authorities are permissive rather than directive as they were in Soviet times, and there was a multiplicity of actors involved in questions of urban development – federal government, Moscow government, local councils, commercial interests, the Church, interest groups, and citizens’ and residents’ groups – development has gone in a profusion of directions. There is no single ‘Moscow style’ and 81 82

Oushakine, Patriotism of Despair, chs. 3 and 4. On this, see Graeme Gill, ‘Building the Communist Future: Legitimation and the Soviet City’, Stephen Fortescue (ed.), Russian Politics from Lenin to Putin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 76–100.

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there is no single face of the city that is emerging. In this profusion of the new, the renovated and the old, the striving force of released capitalism is clear for all to see. The commercial tone of much of the city speaks of the power of money in the post-Soviet environment and marks a clear contrast with its Soviet predecessor. It is flashy, confident, ostentatious and a direct rejection of the Soviet past. But that past has not gone away. Despite the attempt to remove the conception of Soviet-defined space through the wholesale changing of placenames, the Soviet era remains embedded in the fabric of the city. The faded grandeur of the former Exhibition of Economic Achievements (now the Russian Exhibition Centre), the tawdry appearance of many Soviet-era buildings, especially housing, the evocative aura of the Lenin Mausoleum and its immediate surrounds, and the stillsoaring gigantism of Stalin’s skyscrapers give the city a tangible sense of Sovietness which cannot be eliminated. And this architectural imagining of the Soviet era may continue to be strengthened through the retention/ reproduction of Soviet-era fac¸ades as buildings are renovated and if the so-called Soviet Empire style continues to catch on in decorating circles. In this sense, Moscow will continue to express through its fabric the symbolism of the new Russia. And, as in the other areas discussed in earlier chapters, this symbolism does not express a single clear theme. The material representation of past and present will therefore continue to feed memory with both Soviet and non-Soviet symbols, vastly complicating the discourse of the Russian future embodied in this symbolic arena of memory, the streetscapes of the capital.

Conclusion: The difficulties of a post-Soviet narrative

The collapse of the Soviet metanarrative along with the regime that it had helped to sustain created a vacuum around the new regime which posed a potential threat to its longer-term legitimation. While the ideocratic nature of the Soviet system exaggerated the absence of a coherent and consistent narrative of post-Soviet Russia, the fact that such a narrative failed to gain a dominant position reflected the complexities of Russian society in its post-Soviet phase. The inability of a coherent narrative to emerge was clear in all aspects of Russian public life, but it was particularly evident in the activity of those who were expected to be the prime movers and to shape such a narrative, the national leaders. Throughout the first two decades of independent Russia’s life, its presidents have been unable to articulate a consistent narrative embodying a vision of either Russia’s future or of how it was to be constituted. This was not unique to the presidents, but was shared by all political actors on the national stage. However, the presidential failing was more substantial because not only did their institutional position of leadership mean that they were the acknowledged leaders who should give such guidance, but in the case of both Vladimir Putin and especially Boris Yeltsin, they sought to chart a new future different from that which had preceded them. But no presidential vision has become embedded in the public lore of the society. Yeltsin had seemed to be the best placed to articulate a vision of the new Russia, being the leader who led the country out of the USSR into independence, and during 1991 in the struggle with Mikhail Gorbachev he appeared to have worked out a set of themes which could have constituted the intellectual infrastructure for such a vision. There were three such themes, all of which underwent a process of development into 1993: (1) The independence of Russia. Initially projected in terms of escaping the malign effects of being part of the USSR, once this was achieved, the dominant tone of this theme was the restoration of Russian greatness, especially through its enactment of a major role on the 212

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international stage. He also envisaged a strong Russian state, reflected not only in its enhanced international role, but also in its capacity to provide a fitting standard of living for its people. (2) The freedom of Russia’s people. Again seen within the frame of the constricting effects of Soviet membership, this was cast principally in terms of the establishment of a democratic political system which, through a law-based state, would realise and protect the human rights of its members. Developed civil society was also part of this formula. (3) The prosperity of Russia’s people. Cast against the backdrop of the increasing economic difficulties in the last years of the Soviet era, the essence of this was the creation of a market economy (not referred to as capitalism, perhaps reflecting the negative implications that term had, stemming from Soviet ideology), which was seen as the means of unleashing the creative potential of the Russian people and enabling them to create a society in which prosperity would be the hallmark. For Yeltsin, these themes, and especially democracy and the market, were central to the project of turning Russia into a ‘normal’ or ‘civilised’ society. These terms, in common usage in the last years of the Soviet Union, had the generalised meaning of a society that was structured and worked along lines that were more in accord with the major countries of the West than with the extraordinary reality of the Soviet experience. In this conception, the USSR was an aberration, or a deviation from the mainstream of Western history, and its fall marked the country’s return to that mainstream as a ‘normal’ or ‘civilised’ country. Yeltsin’s view was thus one which saw Russia as integrally part of Western democratic development, but as having been torn from that course by the Bolsheviks whose collapse in 1991 left the way clear for Russia’s restoration to its historical trajectory. This conception thus saw Russia as returning to the West and being judged on the basis of the sorts of universalist principles (recognition of human rights, adherence to democracy, creation of a market economy) which were held to apply in the West. He also acknowledged the specificities of Russia’s past, but generally conceived of the country’s trajectory as nevertheless within the broad developmental path of Western civilisation. However, this emergent vision soon collapsed under the impact of economic dislocation and political conflict. The widespread economic difficulties stemming from the Soviet inheritance and the radical economic reforms introduced in 1992 effectively destroyed any prospect of widespread prosperity in the short term and discredited the notion of a market economy in the eyes of many people. Indeed, for many, it seemed

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to prove the claims that had been made by Soviet ideologists about the nature of capitalism. This economic dislocation fuelled the political conflict that was already underway between president and legislature, a conflict which among other things denied the appropriateness of either becoming part of the West or using Western standards to judge Russian development. This conflict drove Yeltsin to reduce the emphasis on democracy and the market in favour of the projection of a negative, anti-communist image. Rather than defining the future in terms of positive notions of what it might be like, this meant a definition in more negative terms of what they needed to escape. The image he constructed of the Soviet era was almost wholly critical. While this anti-communist message was more muted during Yeltsin’s second presidential term, it remained a central element clouding a potentially more positive vision embedded in the principles of powerful state, democracy and market. As Putin set out to define a vision for the post-Yeltsin future, he addressed the same three themes that had been central to Yeltsin’s discourse, but in doing so he gave each of them a new twist. The primary theme for Putin was the strengthening of the state and, although like Yeltsin he saw this as being reflected in the foreign policy sphere (where his conjuring up of images of threats from without was very different to the approach evinced by Yeltsin), his primary emphasis was an expanded role for the state at home. While acknowledging the role of law in the functioning of a strong state, Putin’s principal theme was the consolidation of state power through the centralisation of state functions, the expansion of the state’s role in the economy, and the destruction, limitation and channelling of all oppositional political activity. Putin’s vision of the strong state, and its centrality to his outlook, raised the issue of the Soviet past in a much more decisive fashion than had been the case for Yeltsin. In reaction to what he saw to be the hypertrophy of the Soviet state, Yeltsin’s basic view was that, in domestic matters, the state needed to be restrained. For Putin, such restraint was not a major concern, so the parallel with the Soviet experience seemed more pressing. And, in this, Putin’s position was ambiguous. He referred to the USSR as both a blind alley and a dead end, while also declaring the fall of the USSR to be the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.1 He lauded many of the positive achievements of the Soviet Union while criticising, sometimes in trenchant terms, some of its failings, and by treating it this way sought to reintegrate it into his notion of Russian traditions. It was in this that his focus on patriotism, seen as loyalty to the state rather than 1

Although it is important to recognise that he described this in terms of the consequences of the collapse rather than the intrinsic merits of the USSR itself.

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society, was grounded. But he never gave a considered, overall evaluation of the Soviet system, and therefore his notion of the strong Russian state always lacked a historical dimension. This lack of a historical dimension and its importance will be discussed below. The second theme Putin picked up was that of democracy. Putin rejected outright any notion of Russia’s being judged by the West or according to Western values. He strongly emphasised the idea of Russia’s own particular path of development, including an emphasis upon the development of native Russian democracy. Any notion of the transplantation of Western models into Russia was inappropriate as Russia had to develop in conformity with its own values and historical traditions. This meant that the democracy that was right for Russia was not the same as that present in the West. One reflection of this was the way that he saw a developed civil society as being important less for its own sake than for the strengthening of the state. Putin was able to couple his notion of democracy with rhetoric about the unanimity, even moral unity, of Russian society, a unanimity which left little room for organised dissident activity or opinion. His democracy was almost epiphenomenal, emerging from a sense of the organic unity between people and state, with the latter representing the considered will of the former, and it was within this context that his comments about democracy, freedom, legal guarantees and civil society sat. Democracy was thus the tie between state and people but, rather than embodying a sense of continuing popular control, it was an expression of the fundamental unity of state and society, and was thus consistent with Russian tradition as he saw it. The third theme, the market economy, was also shaped in terms of the notion of the strong state. Putin did not accept that a market economy could exist or prosper without a significant role being played by the state. As he railed against crime and corruption, which he saw as often being a product of the market economy, he presented the state as the answer to these problems. Only a strong state could protect the people against such things and could guarantee that the social consequences of the market were not adverse for the Russian people. Only through the involvement of the state in the economy, and the consequent improved economic performance and growth, could the people achieve sufficiency. Thus central to the Putinite vision was the powerful state. This represented both the will of the people (and was therefore democratic) and the historical traditions of the country. It was central to the achievement of economic well-being and civil, political and economic freedoms, and it was essential to the recovery of Russia’s greatness stemming from its unique past. And this was a past to which the Soviet era contributed positive elements. This was a very different sort of image to that

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projected by Yeltsin. It was also different to that which emerged from Putin’s temporary successor. As president, Dmitrii Medvedev gave his own twists to the three themes at the heart of the conceptions of both Putin and Yeltsin. The powerful state remained a central component of Medvedev’s outlook, but this was conceived in a way different from the primary focus of Putin. Reflecting his background in the law, Medvedev emphasised the centrality of the rule of law and the importance of achieving its regularisation as the means through which the state was to function. He did not openly eschew much of the centralisation that had been a part of Putin’s conception, nor did he dismiss the Soviet experience in the way that Yeltsin had done, but these were much less evident in his outlook than they had been under his predecessor. Furthermore, his emphasis upon the positive role that was played by the interaction of state and civil society meant that his attitude to the latter appeared much less instrumental and less focused on consolidating the power of the state than had been evident before. In this conception, the powerful state was much more embedded within a vibrant civil society and dependent upon that civil society for its ability to carry out its tasks. This sort of conception was associated with a notion of democracy that was more open and expansive than its predecessor had been. Medvedev saw democracy not as an expression of the unity of state and society, nor as a means of strengthening the state, although he believed a strong state could not come about without democracy, but as a mechanism for exercising popular control.2 To this end he advocated political competition and stronger political parties, and emphasised the importance of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It was through the harmonisation of interests that progress was to be achieved, and this was the function of both state and civil society. While acknowledging that democracy did not take the same form everywhere and that Russian historical traditions were important, he seems to have placed less emphasis upon Russia’s unique path and the implications that had for its future, and to have accepted the validity of the application of international standards to Russia’s development. Turning to the third theme, Medvedev argued that economic development and prosperity, and a strong state, would stem from the implementation of a process of modernisation. This was a technocratic notion which focused principally on economic innovation and development, and saw society’s prosperity as a direct result of this. While acknowledging

2

Which is not to mean that he introduced major changes designed to bring this about.

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that the state had a role to play in this, for Medvedev it was to be less active in the economy than it was for Putin. Rejecting what he termed the ‘cult of the state’, the state was to have a regulating role and perhaps in some limited number of sectors a direct productive/managerial role, but this was to be much more limited in scope than in the vision of Putin. The market, operating under state regulation, and democracy were the key to modernisation and thereby to economic well-being. So Medvedev’s vision, while not denying the main elements of the Putin vision, reworked them to make for a less centralised, more democratic conception. With less emphasis upon the role of Russia’s past, and less effort to integrate the Soviet experiment into the contemporary vision, Medvedev’s view had discernible differences from that of his predecessor. This is reflected in a snapshot comparison of the four ‘primordial traditional values of Russians’ which Putin outlined at the end of 1999 just prior to becoming president, and the Russian values identified by Medvedev in November 2008 not long after becoming president. For Putin,3 they were patriotism, the greatness of Russia, statism and social solidarity; for Medvedev,4 justice, personal individual freedom, welfare and the dignity of human life, and patriotism. Rather than the state being the driver of development, it was democracy and the creative capacities of the people that played this role in the Medvedev vision. However, the return of Putin to the presidency is likely to see this once again displaced by the more paternalistic vision. The successive Russian presidents have thus each offered definably different visions of the Russian future. The differences lie not so much in the individual elements of the different visions, because at various times all three presidents have talked about the same elements, but in the nuances, emphases and meanings that stem from the various ways these elements have been envisaged and put together. This is not only the case in the Yeltsin/Putin comparison, but also in the Putin/Medvedev tandem. There is almost nothing of a programmatic nature that Medvedev has said that Putin did not also say, but the difference lies in the tenor and emphasis; Putin’s emphasis has clearly lain on the powerful state, Medvedev’s on the legal and democratic processes that create room for the people’s creativity to come to the fore. But what this means is that, over the life of post-Soviet Russia, there has not been a single, clearly articulated vision of where the society is going and what 3 4

Vladimir Putin, ‘Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii’, Nezavismaia gazeta 30 December 1999. Dmitrii Medvedev, ‘Address to Federal Assembly’, 5 November 2008, president. kremlin.ru/text/appears/2008/11/208749.shtml.

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values underpin it, no consistent discourse providing an integrated view that could unite the community and give it definition and direction, no coherent narrative that could provide symbolic unity in the country. Each president has offered a different image and, within each, there can be discerned differences of emphasis and contradictions. The result is general regime programmatic incoherence, reflecting both a more paternalistic and a more democratic vision of the future of the Russian community. No narrative explaining the fate of Russia has emanated from the leaders. A similar situation applies in the other areas of symbolic discourse analysed in this book. Within the political system, the institutional culture has since 2000 been consistent with the ‘managed democracy’5 of the Putin and Medvedev eras, with both the image and the reality of the structures and processes of that system shifting significantly in this direction and away from the democratic rhetoric of the Yeltsin era. The institutional culture of the political system has become, and been seen to become, more paternalist and less open and accepting of opposition and dissent over the years, and therefore more in accord with the sort of vision enunciated by Putin where democracy rests in the unanimity of state and society. This means that the institutional culture of the polity does not sit easily with either the more democratic vision enunciated by Medvedev (or, indeed, by Yeltsin) or the aspirations of some political actors. In this sphere the discourse is therefore fractured such that the symbolism of the political system jars with the rhetoric of two of the three presidents, although it has been more congruent with Putin’s paternalistic approach. In the public sphere, where the issue of Russia’s identity has been a prominent element, there has also been a general lack of consensus in the discourse. While most political actors have adopted a civic version of nationalism, many small and marginal groups (and some not so marginal) remain committed to an ethnic view of nationalism. Western identities and Eurasian identities remain unresolved, not just in the policy sphere but in the region of popular perception as well. More importantly, the overriding issue of the Soviet inheritance, which is discussed below, remains unresolved. Accordingly, the imagery of the public sphere remains unsettled as pre-Soviet Russian, Soviet and

5

The term many used to describe the emergent system under Putin. For example, see Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy. The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003). See also the influential Harley Balzer, ‘Managed Pluralism: Vladimir Putin’s Emerging Regime’, Post-Soviet Affairs 19, 3, 2003.

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international symbols jostle for primacy in the public domain. While a syncretism of pre-Soviet Russian and Soviet themes has been gaining strength in the discourse in that domain, particularly under Putin and principally through the moderating role played by Russian nationalism, the discourse in the public sphere retains a considerable degree of incoherence, thereby failing to provide an effective stimulus to the emergence of a new, coherent narrative. Similarly, in the field of urban renewal, there has been a lack of consensus about what sort of a city Moscow should be and how the Soviet inheritance should be handled. The sort of pastiche that Moscow has become reflects an absence of direction which has enabled both a diversity of styles to emerge and a penchant for faux historical reconstruction to take place. Uncertainty about the removal or retention of Soviet-era symbols, most importantly Lenin’s body, and about the reintroduction of symbols of the tsarist period reflects the general confusion. The continuing, even refurbished, presence of Soviet style on the streetscapes of the capital provides continuing material reinforcement of Soviet memory beside the gaudy, glitzy atmosphere of the ‘new’ Russia. Incoherence of the material environment is the result. Developments in these different arenas were linked in a complex interactive relationship. None existed in isolation; all were affected by what went on elsewhere. Presidential visions both helped to shape and reacted to the symbolism of debate in the public sphere, the institutional culture of the political system, and the contours of public debate, and each of these reacted in like manner to each of the others. Even the urban infrastructure was affected by developments in these other spheres. But, unlike in Soviet times, these interactions did not constitute part of a coherent narrative; the symbols in each arena may have overlapped and shadowed one another, but they did not combine in a coherent, mutually reinforcing fashion. Does it matter that there has been no clearly articulated discourse embodying a vision of Russia’s future that has been able to generate consensus and provide the basis for the emergence of a coherent narrative that could underpin the post-Soviet regime? After all, when we look at the major Western countries, we do not expect political leaders to articulate such a narrative, although many do seek to do this at election times. However, if we look at countries which are newly born, they often do emerge with a relatively clear programme for the future. Perhaps the best case of this is the USA, whose birth was accompanied by a vigorous debate and working through of the principles which were to govern the new polity. Revolutionary France, Nazi Germany, many of the colonies newly liberated after the Second World War, and the Chinese People’s

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Republic are other examples of new states embodying such a vision. So too, closer to home, was the Soviet Union. Counter-examples would be most of the former republics of the USSR which are closer to the current Russian model, although, strikingly, this is less the case with the former communist states of eastern Europe which were able to put together an image of liberation from foreign rule with a ‘return to Europe’ to generate a narrative which gave a sense of legitimacy to post-communist political arrangements. Such new regimes have a heightened need for legitimacy and, unless a sense of this can be created, the enduring bases of the regime may be problematic. With the generation of a new narrative a prominent way of seeking to do this, the growth of such a narrative under new regimes should not be surprising. But in Russia’s case, emerging from a state in which such a vision encapsulated in a metanarrative was so central and given the circumstances of regime change outlined in Chapter 1, the absence of such a narrative has been striking. The question is why Russia has been unable to generate a narrative embodying such a vision that would displace the symbolic incoherence that has prevailed, and the answer lies in history. The visions outlined by successive presidents and the images dominant in both the intellectual and material spheres of the public domain were all characterised by one thing: they lacked a true historical dimension, and because of this they could not generate a coherent and credible narrative. This does not mean that they did not refer to the past, because they clearly did. However, when they made reference to the Russian past, they mostly did so in cultural rather than historical terms. Reference was often made to the cultural values, traditions and beliefs of the Russians and to particular people and episodes in Russian history, but there was little attempt systematically to invoke Russian history or to investigate what it means for the present. This was particularly marked in general discussions of identity, where reliance was often had upon the summoning up of a conception of some mystical ‘Russian idea’. The appeal to cultural values had the advantage of flexibility in that many ideas that were actually in tension could simultaneously be held and included in the corpus because of the porous and indeterminate nature of the boundaries of a culture as well as the amorphousness of the discussion of values in any culture. Such values could also be expressed in vague terms which not only enhanced their attraction to many people, but thereby also expanded the potential constituency to which appeal was being made. And with an appeal to values, there was no need for a speaker to have close knowledge of historical events. In those cases when reference was made to the national history rather than to values, this was almost invariably a reference to a particular

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person or event taken out of the broader historical context. Such a practice does not matter if there is a consensus among speaker and listeners about the basic historical narrative within which such persons or events are located, about their importance and what they mean. However, in the post-Soviet case, there was no such consensus, and no leader sought to create one. While, as indicated in Chapter 5, the attempt to normalise Russian history began in the mid-2000s, this has not yet taken hold in such a way as to create a consensual understanding of the narrative of Russian history. The result is that the attempts to articulate a national vision for the future lack any historical grounding. They are not rooted in a narrative of the past which explains how society reached its current point and therefore why the particular vision should be seen as an appropriate guide to future development. The discourse, in both its official and public forms, remains only loosely connected with the country’s history. But it is only through such a historical lens that the discourse and the vision it embodies can gain real meaning, verisimilitude and a sense of rootedness in society. Without such historical grounding, discourse becomes merely a set of statements of theoretical principles with few roots in national reality or consciousness. Without such historical grounding in a national narrative, there is nothing to distinguish the principles from those dominant in other societies. So, if the search is on for principles that reflect, at least to some degree, historical traditions, it needs to be demonstrated that the principles are grounded in the historical narrative. This way they will appear genuine. This raises the question: why have post-Soviet leaders not been able to embed their visions in a national narrative?6 During the Yeltsin period, a major reason why an integrated narrative could not emerge is that the content of any such narrative would have been a matter of political contention. Yeltsin’s inclination was to adopt a combative posture of anti-communism, for the most part denying any positive value from or contribution to the Russian experience on the part of the Soviet era. A narrative based upon this was bound to be opposed by significant sections of Russian society, especially among those politically active sections who sought to present a much more benign image of the 6

A practical illustration of the reluctance to do this occurred when Medvedev addressed a session of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and the Rights of Man. In the following question-and-answer period, speakers pressed Medvedev on the need for national reconciliation and the perpetuation of the memory of the victims of political repression. Medvedev was equivocal and, rather than going into the issues involved, changed the subject to the problems of children and families: ‘Stenograficheskii otchet o zasedanii Soveta po razvitiiu grazhdanskogo obshchestva i pravam cheloveka’, 1 February 2011 kremlin.ru/transcripts/10194.

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Soviet period than the president did. And, given that this was linked to the struggle over political power, there was no way that these positions could be bridged. This political problem disappeared with the Putin succession, the associated decline of communism as a political force and the different attitude taken to the Soviet period by the president. But even though the political problem disappeared, the appearance of a coherent narrative remained blocked by a problem which had existed since 1991 and which the Yeltsin era had experienced in an extreme form: how to integrate the Soviet era into a meaningful narrative? There could be no such narrative, and therefore no intellectual legitimation of the post-Soviet system, without an explanation of the recent past and its relationship to the present, and this obviously involved grappling with the place of the USSR in the course of Russian development. This basic problem of intellectual coherence remained after the immediate political problem had been removed, and it has remained unresolved. Why has this been so difficult? The problem of the Soviet past The integration of the Soviet experience into a coherent national narrative has been complicated by a combination of two things, the nature of that experience and the ascribed meaning of the collapse of the USSR. The Soviet experience was clearly a complicated and multidimensional phenomenon. A time when revolutionary change was brought to Russia, leading to the creation of a new style of political regime and a new civilisation, the Soviet period was one of massive achievement and significant suffering. The transformation of an agricultural peasant society into a technological and industrial superpower, fast-paced urbanisation, the establishment of universal literacy and a high-quality education system, victory in the war against fascism, the early conquest of space, and the projection of Soviet power to all corners of the globe were all achievements of significant merit and a matter of considerable pride to most of the Soviet population. But set against this impressive list of achievements was an equally impressive list of costs. The destruction of millions of lives – in the civil war and famine of the early 1920s, agricultural collectivisation, the ‘Great Terror’ of the 1930s, the early setbacks in the war, the deportations of national groups in the early 1940s, and the famine and purges at the end of the 1940s – the repression and denial of freedom, the economic hardship during many phases of Soviet history, censorship and the suppression of dissident thought and activity, and the massive environmental degradation were all significant costs to pay for the advances made. This balance sheet of

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pluses and minuses meant that any evaluation of the Soviet experience was bound to be contentious, especially while many who had grown up under that regime were still alive. This is discussed below. Whenever such a judgement is contentious, its integration into a national narrative will be problematic and subject to intense debate. The other factor complicating the integration of the Soviet experience into a national narrative is the sort of meaning attached to the fall of the Soviet Union. Like any evaluation of the Soviet period, this was a matter of debate. On one side was the communist position that the Soviet Union was a glorious creation that was destroyed by traitors, while on the other were those who argued that the USSR was unsustainable because of its own internal contradictions. Was the collapse of the USSR a return to the basic path of Russia’s historical development, and if so did this path lead through a Western-style experience or was it rooted in the specificities of a uniquely Russian path, or a wrench out of the course of its historical trajectory into something quite new? Did its collapse represent the unfortunate loss of empire, or was it a liberating event freeing Russia from being held back by the other areas of the USSR? Most importantly, those around Yeltsin interpreted the creation of the Russian republic as an unambiguous rejection of the Soviet Union and what it stood for. And given the vigour with which the president and his supporters promoted this view during the 1990s, including the virtual rejection of anything good about the Soviet experience, the integration of that experience into a national narrative was rendered difficult. This remained the case for Yeltsin’s successors because, even without the unremittingly negative image of the Soviet experience projected by Yeltsin, the conflicted evaluation of Soviet reality remained apparent. Relevant to this issue was the personal experience of the Russian people, both the elite and the masses. The events of 1991 were not the overthrow of an in-group by an out-group, but the displacement of sections of the Soviet elite by other members of that elite (supported by sections of society more broadly) who sought legitimation through nationalist appeals in the different republics. In this way the Russian elite that found itself in power in January 1992 had a strong Soviet lineage; all members had spent their working lives within Soviet institutions and therefore had invested in the USSR a considerable amount of personal capital. Of course, as Yeltsin and his closest supporters showed, this does not mean that they were unable to break with many of their Soviet-era values, perspectives, assumptions and practices. But not all former Soviet officials were able to make the sort of radical break that Yeltsin had made, and even those who did make such a break were not scoured clean of all Soviet influence. For everyone, both within the elite and the population

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more generally, there were aspects of the Soviet experience that remained positive. For some, rejection of the Soviet Union in total would have represented the rejection of much of what they had spent their lives building. For those who did not feel this way, as well as for those who did, the positive feelings of their formative years were encased within the Soviet carapace and, while all aspects of that carapace may not have been positive, nor would all aspects of their personal experience of it have been negative. This raises the issue of the nature of political memory. Political memory mediates between the past and the present,7 preserving and reconstructing the past and providing a basis for judgements about both that past and that present. There are two dimensions to memory:8 first, the memory of individuals which stems from direct, personal experience, and second, the collective memory, which consists of the images that circulate in the public domain and are often projected (or at least influenced) by the authorities.9 Such collective memories are likely to be taken up by individuals when they have no direct personal memory of the subject of that collective memory, and even when such personal memory does exist, it can be modified by collective memory. Memory can be highly contested, in that it can reflect different interpretations and understandings of the past as selective forgetting and remembering occurs and different meanings and importance are assigned to the same events. Such differences can manifest themselves between the dimensions of memory noted above, the individual and the collective, but also within those dimensions; individuals’ memories can be very different because of their different experiences and the reactions these evoke, and this can also affect the contours of collective memory. Central to this process of memory is that of forgetting, so that both the societal and individual negotiation of memory is about where to draw the boundary between what to forget and what to remember.10 This question of what to remember and what to forget is complicated by the

7

8

9

10

On this see M. Killingsworth, M. Klatt and S. Auer, ‘Where Does Poland Fit in Europe? How Political Memory Influences Polish MEPs’ Perceptions of Poland’s Place in Europe’, Perspectives on European Politics and Society 11, 4, 2010, p. 361. Compared with Joakim Ekman and Jonas Linde, ‘Communist Nostalgia and the Consolidation of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 21, 3, 2005, p. 367, who talk about three ‘layers’. But there appears to be little difference between their second and third layers, which are encapsulated in my second dimension. On public memory being a function of the interactions of all parts of society, see Benjamin Forest, Juliet Johnson and Karen Till, ‘Post-Totalitarian National Identity: Public Memory in Germany and Russia’, Social and Cultural Geography 5, 3, 2004, p. 358. See Smita A. Rahman, ‘The Presence of the Past: Negotiating the Politics of Collective Memory’, Contemporary Political Theory 9, 1, 2010, pp. 59–76.

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variety of histories people experienced;11 what may have been a matter of forgetting for some could be a focus of remembering for others, both because of different personal experiences and because of multiple layers of perception and recollection. Memory is essentially emotional rather than intellectual, a result of experience and feeling rather than reasoning, and therefore highly individualistic in nature. It is also not linear and continuous, but episodic and selective; people will have memory of pieces rather than the whole. As a result, memory is often neither wholly positive nor entirely negative, with both sorts of sentiments often present at the same time; people can remember some aspects positively, others negatively. Given the nature of the Soviet period, with its mixture of grandiose achievement and massive suffering, the boundary between memory and forgetting is highly salient to the capacity to generate a coherent narrative because such a narrative needed a usable past. All of this means that, while the political memory of the Soviet Union remains strong in Russian society, it is neither monolithic nor unidimensional. It is fractured, perhaps even kaleidoscopic. Positive memory gives rise to the frequently noted phenomenon of nostalgia for the Soviet period.12 Levels of nostalgia have been rising in Russian society, so that by the mid-2000s more than two-thirds of Russian citizens had a positive attitude to the Soviet regime, with these levels higher the older people were (and therefore the greater experience they had had of the USSR).13 Sustained by the presence of large numbers of (both authentic and false) Soviet material artefacts in Russian society,14 by the televising of (often remastered) Soviet television programmes,15 and by the continuing material representation of the Soviet past as reflected in the course of urban redevelopment, such nostalgia has become a prominent theme in Russian public life. While this does not mean that there is strong public support for a return to the Soviet Union or a replacement of the current system by a renewed USSR,16 it does complicate any attempt to integrate the Soviet 11 12

13 14 15 16

Alexander Etkind, ‘Post-Soviet Hauntology: Cultural Memory of the Soviet Terror’, Constellations 16, 1, 2009, pp. 182–200. On this generally, see Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001). For a discussion of nostalgia in terms of ‘retrofitting’ pre-Soviet art, see Serguei Alex Oushakine, ‘“We’re Nostalgic But We’re Not Crazy”: Retrofitting the Past in Russia’, Russian Review 66, 3, 2007, pp. 451–482. Neil Munro, ‘Russia’s Persistent Communist Legacy: Nostalgia, Reaction, and Reactionary Expectations’, Post-Soviet Affairs 22, 4, 2006, pp. 291–293 and 295. Such as flags and banners, busts and statuettes, posters and paintings, embossed crockery, clothing, and party cards. For example, see Oushakine, ‘“We’re Nostalgic”’, pp. 454–455. This is strongly argued in Munro, ‘Russia’s’, esp. pp. 290, 293. See also Chapter 4 above.

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experience into a national narrative both because of differences over what that Soviet experience meant, and because such positive feelings would be in tension with any narrative that emphasised the negative aspects of Soviet rule. Of course, it depends on the nature of nostalgia – invoking a return to a mythical past or simply regretting the displacement of that past without a desire to return to it – and what that nostalgia was for. Many Russians have looked with longing back to the Brezhnev era as a time of well-being and certainty.17 While stimulated by the playing of television shows and movies from that period, this was also the time most citizens would have experienced. This sort of focus for nostalgia, the late 1960s and 1970s, was clearly different from the experience of the Stalin period, and may therefore have been immune to the erosive effects on positive feelings towards the USSR which the discussion of the Stalin era may have produced. To the extent that it was ‘Brezhnev nostalgia’, this may not have been discredited by the criticism of the Stalin period. However, for those whose nostalgia took the form of a longing for firm leadership and the glorious past, the most relevant period appeared to be that of Stalin, which inevitably involved some of the more negative aspects of the Soviet past. But, because of the central role played by Stalin in the construction of the USSR, the negative aspects of the Soviet past were the reverse side of the coin of many of the positive achievements of the Soviet era. The latter could not be fully accepted without coming to terms with the former. Yet it has been the coming to terms with those negative aspects that has been the real sticking point in the generation of a new narrative. Chief among those negative aspects have been widely considered to be the Terror and repression. Some have argued that cultural and moral renewal in Russia requires the unflinching recognition of the crimes of Stalin.18 As indicated in Chapters 3 and 5, all three presidents have actually acknowledged the enormity of those crimes, although at times (especially in relation to Katyn) Putin appears to have been somewhat less forthright than either Yeltsin or Medvedev. Nevertheless, all have acknowledged Stalin’s crimes and the damage that they did. Given this, the question is: what still needs to be done to render a full reckoning on this question? Critics have pointed to five things:

17

18

On positive attitudes to the Brezhnev era, see Jan Teorell, ‘Political Culture and Democracy in Post-Communist Russia: A Tale of Three Regions’ (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, Contemporary Europe Research Centre Working Paper Series, 1, 2002), p.17. Orlando Figes, ‘Putin vs the Truth’, New York Review of Books 30 April 2009, p. 26.

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 Erection in the centre of Moscow and other major cities in Russia of official memorials to those repressed.  Treatment of the Terror and repression in their own right rather than as a subtheme in the overarching narrative of revolutionary development in the 1930s, i.e. acknowledgement that they were not a chance byproduct of social and economic transformation.  Full examination of how and why Stalin came to power and how and why the Terror came about.  Removal of the bust of Stalin currently in Red Square.  Revelation of the identity of those people who were directly implicated in the repression. Memory, and the nature of memory in contemporary Russia, poses a significant complication for any substantive coming to grips with this question of the sort that would be involved in dealing with these five issues. For the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens, memory of the Terror and repression is collective and derived rather than personal and direct. Most people today did not have direct experience of the repression and know about it only second-hand, from parents, relatives and friends, from the education system or from public discussion. The intensity of their feeling about it, and the importance of it for them, is clearly much less than for many of those who experienced it personally, especially if they were victims, or have become active in such groups as Memorial which seek to discover and make public the full truth behind the repression. For many, then, the figure of Stalin may be less associated with terror and repression than with building up the Russian state, something which for most people was a positive achievement. Many people have noted the importance of Russian nationalism in contemporary society, but few have seen that its real role has been to mobilise the Soviet experience behind contemporary efforts to enhance the power of the Russian state, an enterprise conducive to portraying Stalin the state-builder in a favourable light. In this sort of perspective, the negative aspects of the symbol of Stalin are outweighed by his positive state-building achievements. Such views are often reinforced by the image of the Soviet Union under Stalin as a time of order and progress, in stark contrast to people’s experiences of the 1990s. With the absence of any social consensus on the attitude to the Soviet period, and with Stalin directly associated in the eyes of many with both victory in the war and a period of order, stability, advance and prosperity for the country, any perceived attack on Stalin is likely not to carry significant sections of the Russian populace with it. For those who believe the main positive achievements of the

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Soviet Union were due to Stalin’s leadership, attacks upon that leadership are likely to be inflammatory. Alongside that section of the Russian population for whom Stalin remains a positive figure, there are also those whose memories, both individual and collective, of him and his era are negative. For those who suffered under his rule or who inherited the experience of suffering of their relatives, friends or fellow members of subgroups (for example, the nationalities deported in the war), the Terror and repression are likely to be the dominant images in the memories they carry of the Stalin era. Politically buttressed by those, mainly liberal intellectuals, who believe that the health of the future society depends upon a full and honest accounting of the past,19 and given material representation by groups like Memorial, it is this sort of memory that stands in the way of any attempt to rehabilitate Stalin as an unambiguously positive symbol by contemporary political actors. But perhaps more important in explaining the problem posed by Stalin is the issue that is brought to the surface by the question ‘Who is responsible?’ and the demand for names. At one level, of course, there has been acknowledgement that Stalin is to blame because he ordered the repression. However, as everybody recognises, his will was carried out (and perhaps exceeded) by those who worked in the coercive structures and organised and carried out the arrests, executions and imprisonments, as well as by those ordinary citizens who, through informing, helped to feed the Terror machine. The post-Soviet authorities eschewed lustration, and Yeltsin explicitly forbade the taking of reprisals against individual communists. This did not silence the call for names but, as in the case of Katyn when the Polish authorities complained because the Russian side did not release the names of those who carried out the killing, Russian authorities have steadfastly refused to shift the focus from the victims of the Terror to the perpetrators. One reason for this may be that they have not wanted to open the door to the possibility of social strife. While many of those who were active in the Terror and the repression are dead, some will still be alive, and in any case members of their families will still be around. The identification of those directly responsible could lead to calls for legal retribution or to direct action to wreak vengeance. In either event, the disruption to society would be likely to be immense and the impact potentially erosive of that which holds the society together. But also important is the argument that the line between victims and perpetrators is not clear. It 19

For example, see Sergei Karaganov in Rossiiskaia gazeta 8 April 2011. The position is also often espoused in the West, although sometimes for narrowly political ends.

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is not just that some of those active in the Terror apparatus were later caught up in it themselves and perished, but there is also the suspicion that many people who were not formally in that apparatus actually helped it achieve its aims, principally through the denunciation of claimed enemies. And of course others simply sat by and let it all unfold before them, even if it is not immediately clear what they could have done to stop it. The point is that this sort of approach leads to the conclusion that it may be that the whole of the society was collectively responsible. This is the point that Vaclav Havel20 was making when he said that the line of culpability ran not between people, but through them. It was also the point of the aphorism about speaking the truth rather than living the lie as the only honourable response to tyranny. If there is this sense of collective responsibility because of the failure of the people to ‘speak the truth’, this would be a powerful social deterrent to delving into the question of who was responsible. It would also make what some people see as a clear black–white issue considerably more ambiguous. It may also be a deterrent to a fuller accounting of those other points that would constitute a full reckoning, but its power is less marked here. An objective history of the Soviet period, warts and all, could ultimately strengthen the Russian polity. Presented in the right way, the projection of a new national narrative, while not gaining universal approval, could provide a basis for society to move forward. A full understanding of its past is essential if a society is to understand how it got to where it currently is and if it is to avoid some of the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a popular groundswell in favour of this. Liberal intellectuals are the only ones who seem to be consistently raising this general issue.21 It is sometimes raised in the course of political debate, but in such a context there is little prospect of a meaningful accounting of the Soviet period. The dynamics of political debate virtually ensure the impossibility of consensus and the

20

21

Vaclav Havel, ‘The Power of the Powerless’, John Keane (ed.), The Power of the Powerless. Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe (London: Hutchinson, 1985). This also underpins the typology of four responses to ‘past complicity in unprecedented evil’ identified by James Billington: removal of the problem from public discourse, transfer of the burden of evil to others, evasion of the problem by ascribing a noble personal philosophy to the elite, and overcoming evil by accepting the redemptive power of innocent suffering. All of these are psychological fixes rather than an adequate addressing of the issue. See James H. Billington, Russia in Search of Itself (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 2004), pp. 158–166. On popular fatigue with revelations about the Soviet past, see Boym, The Future, p. 91. For an argument that, for many, the past is seen in terms of trauma at both the individual and national levels, see Serguei Alex. Oushakine, The Patriotism of Despair. Nation, War, and Loss in Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).

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use of historical material purely for political point-scoring. The secret to enduring change is the education of succeeding generations, but for this to happen the ‘normalisation’ of Russian history will have to be replaced by a history which investigates all aspects of the Soviet past, regardless of how difficult they may be. The mass of the populace seems apathetic and uninterested. It may be that the struggles of the 1990s have exhausted them, and that what is required is the emergence of a new, post-Soviet generation which has few emotional strings to the past. But, until this happens, it is meaningless to criticise Russian society for not having ‘fully broken from its Soviet relics’.22 Under such circumstances, the ambiguous social attitude to the USSR and the country’s past will continue to constitute a secure base for the symbolic syncretism that has been so evident in the regime’s outlook, policies and symbols. And, accordingly, the prevailing discourse will continue to lack coherence, to be torn between more paternalistic and more democratic visions, to remain only shallowly rooted in the society as a whole, and unable to generate a meaningful and coherent narrative that could provide a long-term basis for legitimation for post-Soviet Russia.

22

Masha Lipman, ‘Moving Lenin’s Body Won’t Cut Russia’s Ties to Its Soviet Past’, Washington Post 7 February 2011.

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Index

Alexander II, 33, 76, 141, 202 Alexander III, 140, 202 Andreeva, Nina, 18, 19 Belovezh Accords, 24, 25, 42, 114, 149, 176 Beslan, 56, 57, 101, 127 Brezhnev, Leonid, 12, 74, 148, 150, 170, 176, 186, 187, 189, 209, 226 Catherine II, 166, 174 Charter of Civic Accord, 123 Chechnya, 44, 97, 98, 102, 124, 210 Christ the Saviour, 96, 200, 201, 203, 209 Church, Russian Orthodox, 64, 86, 140, 141, 142, 143, 154, 158, 200, 201, 202, 204, 210 civil society, 18, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 44, 45, 50, 51, 53, 55, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 70, 77, 122, 123, 124, 125, 128, 213, 215, 216 commercial development, 55, 58, 75, 183, 191, 192, 193, 194, 210 communism, 2, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 26, 30, 48, 50, 80, 99, 106, 110, 135, 138, 144, 145, 146, 151, 152, 157, 191, 221 Communist Party, 16, 19, 80, 89, 115, 134, 170 Constitution, 16, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 43, 45, 60, 64, 65, 84, 85, 86, 87, 94, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114, 117, 133, 139, 142, 145, 146, 148, 168, 208 Constitutional Court, 85, 86, 108, 144, 145 CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), 24, 29, 30, 31, 89, 109, 115, 144, 145, 149, 150, 156, 175, 176

democracy, 18, 20, 29, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38, 41, 44, 45, 49, 65, 66, 72–6, 78, 80, 106, 110, 114, 121, 122, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 133, 146, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218 Gorbachev on democracy: 14, 25, 26, 109, 110 Medvedev on democracy: 65–7, 70, 72–6, 78, 216, 218 Putin on democracy: 49–51, 55, 57, 61, 77–8, 113, 215, 218 Russian vs Western: 28–9, 33, 48–9, 57, 60, 61, 67, 73, 76, 77, 130, 136–9, 213, 214, 215 Yeltsin on democracy: 21, 22, 24, 25, 29, 33, 34, 36, 37, 40, 110–11, 128–9, 212–14 democratisation, 13, 14, 21, 38, 39, 109, 145 Denikin, Anton, 141 destalinisation, 12 Dubrovka/Nord-Ost, 100 Duma, State, 38, 42, 55, 76, 81, 82, 86, 93, 107, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 128, 131, 150, 157, 161, 162, 176, 180, 188, 189, 198, 199 elections, 14, 15, 34, 38, 39, 45, 71, 89, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 148, 152, 156 Eurasianism, 136, 137 Filippov, A. V., 164, 165, 166, 171 Gagarin, Yurii, 52, 147 glasnost, 13, 14, 26, 39, 156 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 11–15, 17, 21, 23, 25, 82, 83, 85, 89, 90, 91, 93, 109, 113, 136, 140, 144, 145, 153, 161, 170, 176, 186, 208, 212

243

244

Index

Great Patriotic War, 4, 12, 60, 67, 68, 72, 85, 152, 159, 162, 163, 164, 166, 172, 173, 203, 205, 206, 210 GUM, 180, 191, 198 hero cities, 171, 204, 205 history, 2, 3, 4, 14, 16, 36, 41, 43, 46, 47, 49, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 68, 71, 82, 84, 86, 105, 134, 139, 140, 145, 147, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161, 163, 164, 166, 168, 170, 172, 174, 176, 178, 185, 203, 206, 208, 213, 220, 222, 229 pre-Soviet: 32–3, 34, 66–7, 76, 136–41, 142–3, 166 Soviet: 29, 30, 32, 37, 38–40, 45–8, 52–3, 56–7, 66, 67, 68–70, 71–2, 143–77, 179–81, 213, 214, 222–30 Gorbachev and history: 14–15, 17 Medvedev and history: 63–4, 66, 68–70, 71–2, 142, 159–60, 226 Putin and history: 48, 52–3, 56–7, 58, 60, 61–2, 157, 159, 161–2, 214 Yeltsin and history: 29, 30, 32–3, 38–40, 41–2, 42–3, 45–8, 156–7, 160, 213 Hitler, Adolf, 58, 151, 157, 173 housing, 59, 180, 194, 195, 196, 197, 201, 211 identity, 4, 30, 59, 77, 113, 120, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 184, 218, 220, 227 inauguration, presidential, 23, 63, 84, 85, 94, 107 institutional culture, 9, 10, 79, 80, 105, 109, 115, 116, 122, 126, 128, 131, 133, 134, 218, 219 Katyn, 159, 161, 226, 228 Khrushchev, Nikita, 12, 39, 147, 151, 170, 176, 186, 195, 201 Kitai Gorod, 180, 185, 189 KPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), 83, 92, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 128, 149, 150, 152, 153, 157, 158, 161, 189 law, 15, 18, 22, 23, 24, 28, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 63, 64, 67, 70, 73, 75, 76, 77, 84, 94, 108, 118, 125, 129, 135, 148, 188, 205, 213, 214, 216 legislature, 15, 28, 40, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 90, 92, 100, 105, 108, 109, 110, 112,

113, 114, 115, 122, 126, 127, 143, 145, 146, 214 legitimation, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 15, 26, 110, 162, 212, 222, 223, 230 Lenin, Vladimir, vi, 17, 53, 84, 102, 150, 153, 154, 155, 171, 173, 174, 180, 181, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 197, 202, 204, 206, 208, 210, 211, 219, 230 Gorbachev on Lenin: 15, 17, 26 Putin on Lenin: 53, 155 Yeltsin on Lenin: 154–6 Leninism, 13, 15, 16, 17 Luzhkov, Yurii, 123, 164, 182, 188, 190, 191, 192, 194, 199, 201, 203, 206 Manezh, 180, 192, 197, 200, 202, 203 market, 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 40, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 52, 53, 62, 73, 78, 148, 149, 172, 191, 213, 215, 217 Marxism-Leninism, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19 Mausoleum, Lenin, 153, 154, 155, 171, 181, 189, 204, 206, 207, 211 media, 5, 15, 50, 51, 74, 110, 113, 117, 124, 125, 134, 146, 156, 175 Medvedev, Dmitrii, 77, 62, 63–77, 83, 85, 96, 103, 104, 105, 108, 111, 112, 126, 131, 133, 139, 141, 142, 159, 161, 163, 164, 172, 174, 191, 195, 201, 216, 217, 218, 221, 226 memory, 6, 46, 51, 59, 61, 69, 72, 159, 161, 162, 171, 178, 179, 183, 185, 188, 203, 206, 209, 210, 211, 219, 224, 225, 227, 228 metanarrative, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 26, 28, 30, 47, 78, 212, 220 Minin, Kuzma, 142 modernisation, 39, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 141, 165, 174, 216 Moriakov, V. I., 167, 168, 169, 170 Moscow, i, v, vii, 5, 9, 10, 13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 33, 60, 71, 81, 83, 85, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 96, 107, 109, 113, 115, 121, 123, 135, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 154, 155, 158, 160, 161, 163, 178–211, 219, 226 museums, 171, 187, 188, 205, 207, 208, 209 myths, 2, 3, 4, 8, 47, 137, 184

Index names, 68, 160, 162, 174, 183, 184, 185, 186, 189, 191, 204, 206, 228 narrative, i, vii, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 27, 28, 35, 40, 47, 62, 68, 69, 77, 79, 109, 119, 122, 133, 134, 135, 143, 168, 177, 178, 210, 212, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 229 Nashi, 101, 102, 123, 124, 163 national identity, 1, 59, 80, 179, 188, 224 nationalism, 23, 30, 137, 139, 218, 227 Nevskii, Aleksandr, 174 Nicholas I, 141 Nicholas II, 46, 140, 141 nomenklatura, 29, 32, 39, 42, 89, 146, 148, 149, 166, 168, 169, 170 nostalgia, 132, 139, 150, 175, 225 October Revolution, 4, 12, 13, 14, 21, 24, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 42, 44, 54, 60, 68, 77, 84, 87, 92, 93, 95, 96, 105, 112, 118, 121, 141, 142, 146, 147, 151, 152, 154, 155, 158, 159, 160, 161, 183, 185, 190, 203, 207 Orlov, A. S., 167, 168, 169 parties, 16, 21, 38, 51, 62, 65, 67, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 127, 131, 150, 216 patriotism, 54, 64, 214, 217 perestroika, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, 39, 43, 81, 113, 122, 156, 159, 161, 164, 191, 204, 207 Peter I, the Great, 33, 66, 136, 203 populism, 31, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94 Pozharskii, Dmitrii, 142 presidency, 21, 23, 24, 48, 55, 62, 76, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 114, 115, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 132, 138, 152, 155, 157, 199, 217 prime minister, 62, 68, 85, 86, 96, 97, 99, 103, 104, 107, 127 Provisional Government, 32, 81, 141 Public Chamber, 107, 115, 123 purges, 60, 151, 166, 168, 185, 222 Putin, Vladimir, , 48–63, 65, 68, 74, 76, 77, 78, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 130, 133, 138, 141, 152, 155, 157, 159, 161, 163, 164, 167, 171,

245 172, 201, 203, 210, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 222, 226 regime change, 1, 8, 220 Russian idea, 43, 49, 50, 139, 220 Russian values, 50, 59, 61, 64, 217 security apparatus, 46, 97, 100, 160 Shestakov, V. A., 167, 168, 169, 170 socialism, 4, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 41, 116, 169, 173, 180, 182, 208, 210 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 161 Soviet era, i, v, vii, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11–16, 20, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 52, 56, 57, 60, 62, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 100, 102, 105, 108, 109, 110, 113, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 126, 128, 130, 132, 133, 135, 137, 139, 143–77, 179–91, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 222–30 Gorbachev on Soviet era: 15, 17, 26 Medvedev on Soviet era: 66, 68–70, 71–2, 159–60 Putin on Soviet era: 48, 52, 56–7, 58, 60, 61–2, 77, 157 Yeltsin on Soviet era: 29, 30, 32, 33, 38–40, 41–2, 45–8, 143–51, 156–7 Soviet Union, 2, 7, 16, 20, 25, 42, 48, 53, 56, 69, 72, 73, 77, 91, 105, 130, 135, 139, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 154, 159, 160, 166, 168, 172, 176, 204, 205, 206, 209, 213, 214, 220, 223, 224, 225, 227 Stalin, Joseph, i, vi, 9, 12, 19, 52, 58, 61, 141, 144, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171–4, 175, 176, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 195, 198, 199, 201, 202, 205, 206, 207, 208, 211, 226, 227, 228 Medvedev on Stalin: 68–9, 72, 159–60 Putin on Stalin: 58, 61–2, 77, 157 Yeltsin on Stalin: 156–7 Stalingrad, 147, 171, 204

246

Index

state, i, 3, 4, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 68, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 88, 92, 94, 95, 97, 101, 102, 104, 108, 112, 115, 116, 117, 120, 125, 126, 128, 130, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 145, 156, 157, 164, 165, 169, 170, 173, 177, 180, 181, 187, 189, 190, 192, 195, 201, 202, 203, 206, 210, 215, 216, 217, 218, 220, 227 emblems of: 2, 52, 81–2, 84, 85, 96, 142 strong state: 20, 31, 36, 37, 44, 45, 49, 50–6, 61, 63, 65, 68, 214–16, 217 Medvedev on the state: 63, 65, 68, 70, 71, 76, 216, 217 Putin on the state: 49, 50–6, 61, 63, 68, 76, 214–16 Yeltsin on the state: 23, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 44, 45 Stolypin, Petr, 174, 203 symbols, vii, 1, 3, 5, 11, 135, 143, 153, 179, 183, 184, 188, 203 Terror, the, 37, 68, 69, 151, 153, 159, 160, 161, 166, 169, 170, 185, 207, 222, 226, 227, 228 Medvedev on the Terror: 68–9, 72, 159–60, 226

Putin on the Terror: 60–1, 77, 159, 161–2, 226 Yeltsin on the Terror: 36–8, 160, 226 tomb of unknown soldier, 162, 204 Tsereteli, Zurab, 192, 203, 204 Tverskaia, ulitsa, 180, 185, 186, 188, 191, 197, 198 universal values, 19, 30, 31, 34, 49, 60 Victory Day, 71, 82, 86, 144, 163, 164, 206 Victory Park, 147, 203, 204, 206 Yeltsin, Boris, 8, 9, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28–48, 51, 57, 60, 61, 69, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 118, 121, 122, 123, 126, 133, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160, 162, 182, 201, 202, 206, 207, 209, 212, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218, 221, 223, 226, 228 Zhirinovskii, Vladimir, 23, 117, 154 Ziuganov, Gennadii, 83, 111, 119, 150, 151, 155, 158 Zorkin, Valerii, 108, 144