You agree that the causes of the constitutional crisis of the fall of 1993 cannot be found only at the political level, but that the conditions for its emergence and escalation were largely created by the catastrophic economic situation that Russia experienced after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which also had a strong impact on everyday life population?
There is a simple answer to that. I agree. Of course, politics is always related to the economy and the social level. They are factors that cannot be separated from each other.
If we were to elaborate, was the economic and social crisis in the first two years of independent post-Soviet Russia extraordinary in the context of modern Russian history?
Certainly not. I think that we cannot fully imagine the degree of ability of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian society to adapt to specific living conditions. This is for Central Europeans terra incognita. I have often come across this, and it is clear from the debates on the Internet and the reactions on social networks, that we are not completely receptive to the fact that the Russian space represents a different cultural and social entity, in which the rules of the game are somewhat different. This, of course, affects the way an ordinary Russian citizen behaves. In this sense, our terminology and words like “catastrophic”, “extraordinary” and the like do not quite fit in Soviet, post-Soviet or Russian conditions, or they are confusing. They can evoke something that does not correspond to the thinking and behavior of an ordinary Russian.
So I would be careful with strong words, because the social situation in Russia was understandably very complicated, but on the same level as the last time in Russia the situation was not complicated for the majority of society. We are talking about a society that, for example, has never in modern history completed the process of forming the middle class, as we know it from Western and Central Europe. So relying on parallels is vexing.
So let’s move on to politics. On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin decided to dissolve the parliament, although the current constitution did not allow such a procedure. But this was preceded by a number of events. As a result of President Yeltsin’s disputes with the parliament, a referendum was held in April, in which almost 60% of participants expressed confidence in Yeltsin, 69% spoke in favor of early parliamentary elections, 54% supported the president’s economic transformation policy, and 51% rejected the calling of a new presidential race. Yeltsin subsequently began to organize work on constitutional changes and the preparation of parliamentary elections. However, Parliament called his procedure unconstitutional and opposed it. What do you consider this to be an imaginary trigger for the crisis itself from the turn of September and October, which also resulted in widespread violence?
It is difficult to give a simple answer to this question, because the mentioned period needs to be understood comprehensively. It is a period in which power uncertainty lasted, it is impossible to speak of a new regime being established. The transitional situation established at least starting with the events of the spring of 1989, or as early as the spring of 1985, when the possibilities for the start of perestroika opened up. Then we could look for the answer anywhere at this time, in the events of August 1991 and the so-called putsch, in the Białystok agreements and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the like. There are many variables in any given situation.
But not to run away from the answer. I think that a certain point of escalation was the events in the summer of 1993, when Yeltsin went on vacation, he was not in Moscow, and the executive generally took a certain time off. In contrast to the parliament, which, on the contrary, began to question some of Yeltsin’s decisions. For example, the parliament passed a law that allowed for an increase in the state budget deficit, which was a problem not only from the point of view of the domestic political situation in Russia, but also from the point of view of agreements on foreign aid to Russia. Here, Yeltsin must have gotten the impression that a certain offensive was beginning to take shape against him. This could have been a catalyst, because subsequently, starting in August 1993, there was already a series of direct clashes between the parliament and the executive power, for example regarding the dismissal of Deputy Prime Minister Ruckoj and First Deputy Prime Minister Šumejko due to corruption. Since the summer, the dynamics of events have simply escalated rapidly.
INTERVIEW: Boris Yeltsin died 15 years ago. He was a power pragmatist, but he offered the Russians an opportunity, says Professor Holzer
You mentioned the need to assess the roots of the crisis in a longer time context. How much of a role was played by the fact that the last parliamentary election that preceded it was that of March 1990? At that time, the Soviet Union still existed, formally the main political force was still the Communist Party, and the situation was undoubtedly different in many ways from 1993. Was this an important factor in the outbreak of a major political crisis in the young post-Soviet Russia?
Certainly yes. The problem is that if we look at political theory, there is no consensus on who the ideal actors are to lead the country through that transition period. The idea that the transition model that a particular country chooses and typically goes through in a not entirely controlled manner should be permanently confirmed by the tools we know from standard democratic governance is not a majority opinion among political scientists. Various models are known, where during the transition actors who do not look back too much at public opinion dominate, and yet this can lead to a democratic outcome, to the establishment of a democratic regime.
Therefore, I dare to say that this was – in retrospect – a naive or slightly idealistic, unfulfilled but certainly logical idea of the West regarding Russia in the years 1991 to 1993. If we look at the Russian political spectrum at the time, the actors who would at least suggest that they want to try that with democracy, there wasn’t much. In addition to the hopes placed in Russia’s democratic perspective, there was also an emphasis on Russia’s socio-economic and territorial stability.
Let’s not forget that the events of 1993 already had a major sub-theme of the relationship between Moscow’s center and the peripheries. Yeltsin maneuvered a lot in this. In his original idea of the new constitution, rather strong transfers of powers from the center to the periphery were incorporated. Then, when he succeeded in defeating the parliament in October 1993, he withdrew these passages from the text because he no longer needed the support of the regions. Two years later, however, he turned to them again very quickly when it came to winning the presidential election. This is classic power politics, the search for ad hoc solutions, in which it is difficult to find any fixed ideological constants and direction, something on which the observer could lean.
This brings me to the question, do you perceive the crisis of the fall of 1993 primarily as a conceptual dispute about the direction of Russia and the form of the political system there, or rather as a power clash, in which the position and future of Boris Yeltsin was at stake?
I confess that in the past I saw it as a conceptual dispute about the direction of Russia. After all, my first two books about Russia at the turn of the nineties and the new millennium followed this idea and wanted to interpret the Russian situation of the nineties with the return of politics and the way in which new and old currents and camps are established. I was looking for their historical roots and had the idea that the events in Russia could be interpreted in this way. Now I would say that it was not entirely successful, and that a more realistic interpretation would point to the fact that it was a purely power struggle, in which individual actors used some ideological slogan or slogan here and there, but basically it was a hard power clash.
Now we have the luxury of knowing how the 1990s turned out in Russia, that there was authoritarianization, the basic feature of which is precisely depoliticization. And the success of this authoritarianization in the following Putin era is proof that that political experiment – and I do not completely exclude that some of the actors at that time had good will and conviction that there should be some ideological fulfillment of Russian politics in a pluralist framework – in the context of how the cards were dealt and what the majority of Russian society preferred, he did not wish for a salon duel of ideas. Today, we have seen the renaissance of the great Russian idea, but in a hard, all-embracing and alternative form. But that is no longer the topic of our debate today.
In the end, the military played a relatively significant role in the crisis. What do you see as the main reason for the fact that, despite an initially neutral stance, she ended up clearly joining Yeltsin’s side in October, when she attacked the parliament building and arrested some of the president’s opponents?
Russian military has never been my main topic, sorry. But I consider one of the robust and realistic explanations to be the fact that under Yeltsin in the period 1993 to 1994 the beginnings of the process of oligarchization of Russian politics were born. And one of the pillars of the oligarchic division of spheres of influence was the so-called military-industrial complex. Here, enormous possibilities simply appeared for the army elites, which, on the other hand, the politics of the parliament did not offer, or in a certain way problematized. Without a deeper knowledge of this issue, I believe that this may have been the decisive aspect, that is, that Yeltsin’s side of the conflict offered a better perspective to the military leaders.
One of the consequences of the crisis was the period when Yeltsin ruled by means of presidential decrees. To what extent do you think this influenced the direction of the Russian political system and the overall perception of politics and democracy by the Russian public?
The phenomenon of decrees is quite typical for Russian politics. In this sense, I do not think that the situation in the nineties was exceptional. The decrees offer what is characteristic of Russian politics and to which there is no reason to turn a blind eye, i.e. that a large part of Russian society prefers an authoritatively implemented political practice to the search for compromises and permanent negotiations, the negotiation of ad hoc majorities that have some ideological background, i.e. , which otherwise makes politics democratic. Of course, it also “drinks people’s blood” in many other places, doesn’t it.
In this direction, Yeltsin offered a model that – as I said before – provided Russian society with a certain type of stability and, for a large part of it, with the prospect of a certain rise after the wild era of the beginning of the decade, when everything really changed. In the decrees, let’s look for a tool that returned predictability to the system, a certain degree of stability, a perspective of calming down. And that really happened.
Some recent historical research shows that the events of 1993 significantly influenced the ideas held in the West about possible developments in Russia and potential deeper strategic post-Cold War cooperation. The dissolution of parliament, Yeltsin’s decision to use force against his domestic opponents, as well as the subsequent electoral success of extremist forces led by the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, are often referred to alongside the wars in Chechnya as the moment that sparked a new wave of fears about post-Soviet Russia in Europe and overseas. Do you agree with such an interpretation?
I’m a little surprised. I respect archive data. However, even after thirty years, it seems to me that throughout the nineties and at least at the beginning of the twenty-first century in the West there really was rather optimism about Russia. It could be – and probably was – conditioned by different considerations, interests and interpretations, but, taken from historical logic, Russia figured in it as an actor whose importance no one doubts and which needs to be tied to the West, even if the price was high. It was based on the assumption that if “Huntingtonian clashes” were to occur, it would be good to have Russia on your side. In this sense, I would rather say that the West passed 1993 in Russia quite gracefully. Yeltsin had obvious support. After all, the year 1996 was similar, when Yeltsin managed to win the June presidential elections from the support of only 6%. Even then, Yeltsin appeared to the West as the best possible solution.
Thus, the West in this era played more on a realistic note, which was that most other scenarios are worse than what is currently happening in Russia. At that time, after all, those ties of an economic nature were emerging, which were advantageous not only for the nascent Russian elite, but also for the West. And that, after all, lasted even after Putin took office. In this sense, it makes no sense to me to make 1993 a milestone. There may be data to support this thesis. But it seems to me that the behavior of the West towards Russia, at least in the next decade, at least until 2005 or 2006, is based on the fact that it is good to have Russia on one’s side, subject to certain concessions and respecting certain deviations. And this was not massively disputed at the time, not even by Russia’s historical opponents, such as Poland. There was always criticism, but they did not claim that geopolitical and, understandably, geoeconomic cooperation should be interrupted. After all, the West also bit through the first Chechen war. The situation began to change only in the second half of the first decade of the twenty-first century. And that’s for another conversation.
Source: eurozpravy.cz
