17 May 2026
by Aleksandr Podrabinek
Source: Facebook
The internet just threw up an article I wrote exactly 19 years ago in May 2007. A long time ago, and yet how fresh – very current since nothing has changed. At least not for the better. We can’t say we didn’t know or understand what was happening either! It has been staring us in the face.
Stepping on the same rake again
When dissecting the failures of Russia’s pro-democracy movement over the last twenty years, its supporters find various explanations. Some blame the ‘piracy of mass privatisation’; others the fusion of political power and criminality; a third group blame corrupt law enforcement; a fourth – the indifference and subservience of the Russian people; a fifth – the absence of any kind of lustration and the failure to effectively put communism on trial, and so on. Everyone has their own reasons. Maybe each theory has its own truth. Or partial truth. Alas, not many people are interested in looking at themselves and admitting that our chosen path from communism to democracy was the wrong one. Our chosen path was not only not the shortest but has led the country in a completely different direction. Essentially, where we have ended up is the opposite to where we wanted to be.
Today, we can be justifiably dismayed: the civil liberties we won at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, the more or less just laws passed, relatively free elections and the independent press are all being taken away from us by the authorities. But, at the very least, to undo all this and not to lose these gains over again, we need to understand why it happened. We have to consider our experiences and our own mistakes.
Not the only mistake, but the most fatal one was that the democratically minded section of society who condemned communist ideas and practices, entrusted former communists and highly-placed functionaries of the Soviet-era party and state to lead Russia to democracy. At that time hundreds of thousands came out in Moscow to protest against Article 6 of the Brezhnev Constitution which established the leading role of the Communist Party in society. The desire of most people to bid goodbye to the Communist Party and lack of rights under the Soviet system was so great that those in power buckled under the pressure, trembled and surrendered one position after another. But those who believed in Russia’s democratic future and came out in mass demonstrations at the call of the democratic leaders of the day could not remain politically engaged over the long term. Like all normal people in all normal countries, they focused on their everyday problems, the bread-and-butter issues, but were still ready to express their support for change when necessary. At election time or on the street. They left the day-to-day politics to the professional politicians. They trusted those whose writings they devoured, whose speeches they cheered at rallies, whose words they believed in.
Meanwhile, the people they believed in shared the view that that the high-profile communist, Communist Party Central Committee Secretary, Politburo candidate and First Secretary of the Communist Party Moscow City Committee, Boris Yeltsin, could lead democratic reforms. At the Communist Party Plenum in October 1987, he had criticised the Party for indecisiveness in their policies relating to perestroika, for which he became a hero among liberals. Yet at the 1988 19th Party Conference, he expressed regret to the Party for his mistakes and asked to be rehabilitated. Such unattractive episodes did not stop him becoming leader of the Interregional Deputies’ Group and, subsequently, contending for a key role in the process of democratisation. The pro-democracy leaders placed their bets on him and the public, tired of socialism, trusted their leaders. As a result, upon achieving power in August 1991, Yeltsin did not embark on dismantling the communist state: the KGB retained their role and he refused to carry out lustration. He was unable to put an insurmountable barrier in the way of a potential restoration of authoritarianism. The democratic leaders who had supported him soon faded into the background; their places were taken by political profiteers, swindlers, Soviet-era bureaucrats and Communist Party and Komsomol functionaries of the recent past.
To be fair, it must be said Yeltsin achieved a great deal. He liberalised the economy and supported free speech and a multi-party system, took Russia into the Council of Europe and defended the country from the communist revolt of the autumn of 1993. But he was unable to consistently follow the path of democratic reforms. This was not in the nature of a former Central Committee Secretary. This is not to blame him – a man can do no more than he can. But those who laboured to make a democratic leader out of him can be blamed, they either failed to understand the hopelessness of such an endeavour or hoped for the best in the usual Russian manner. But there was no miracle. The country received unprecedented levels of corruption, the Chechen War, and to top it all off – a new president from the KGB that had not been killed off in the events of 1991.
I anticipate the usual rebuff: ‘But if not him, then who?’ It is as if Russia had no decent or intelligent people at all, people untarnished by careers in the Communist Party, the KGB, the Komsomol and other organs of Soviet power. After all they found the writer and dramatist Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia – a small country compared with us. Was Russia really more lacking in decent politicians? Clearly, the question did not lie in lack of people, but in making the right choice.
Of course, ‘the court plays the king,’ and people always choose those similar to themselves. And the problem is not that the king’s inner circle, those who ‘made him,’ suddenly fall out of favour. The problem is that those who trusted the leader turned out to have been deceived. The problem is that many of those who formerly had faith in Yeltsin now treated ‘democrat’ as a dirty word. They see democracy itself as just a means for crafty politicians who chase votes at election time and the support of the politically engaged at protest rallies. That is why democracy-supporting voters did not vote for democratic parties at the recent parliamentary elections, while only hundreds or thousands turn up now at protest rallies where once there were tens and hundreds of thousands.
Meanwhile, the current situation somewhat recalls the late-Soviet era. Rallies are broken up, parties are banned, television channels are under state control, print media are under pressure, there are political prisoners once again – all of this clearly points to a return to the era of an open conflict between the authorities and society. Many today, sensing the creeping restoration of the Soviet model of power, are ready to support a strong opposition and participate in protests. ‘Managed democracy’ reliant on state repression is unacceptable to a huge range of social groups and to people with the most various interests.
Politicians across the world are cynical and prepared to manipulate public moods for personal and party ends. Russia is no exception. The only difference is that politicians in democracies are more wary of reputational risks, and unexpected scandals and exposure of their deceits negatively impact them, but do not put the whole political system at risk. With us, the condition of the state is so precarious and uncertain that the democratic opposition has no moral right to risk its reputation and the voters’ trust. That could be too costly for the country. We learned this 10-20 years ago. Having stepped on the same rakes a second time, it’s safe to say we won’t see a third chance for a breakthrough to democracy any time soon.
17 May 2007, Ezhednevny zhurnal
Translated by Oscar Seecharan
