|
|
Book Review
Russia's Revolution:
Essays, 1989-2006
by Jo Freeman
|
Russia's Revolution: Essays, 1989-2006
by Leon Aron
Published by the American Enterprise Institute
©2007, 374 pages
Russia's Revolution is a collection of essays written over 28 years which
provide contemporaneous (at that time) commentary on Russia's efforts to
shed its Communist past and join the capitalist and democratic Western
mainstream.
Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington DC,
which published this volume. Aron came to the US as a refugee 30 years ago
when he was 24 and has made his career as a commentator on Soviet and
Russian affairs. Although he is now an American citizen, his heart is still
in Russia, or at least with the Russian people, whom he views as
long-suffering and deserving of a better future than their past.
No fan of the Soviet Union, he does put that regime's rule into the context
of four centuries of Russian "patrimonialism" in which political authority
meant control of the economy and ownership of property. Nonetheless, "Soviet totalitarianism created the most venal Russia that ever existed."
One in which "thievery and bribery were universal."
This left a barren field for the seeds of democracy and capitalism because "the Communist regime delivered to its successor not citizens but wards of
the state" who complied with the laws only when forced to do so.
After the 1991 revolution, Russia became what he calls a "poor democracy,"
one of many in the post- Cold War era. They have the basic attributes of
democratic government — elections, enough political liberty to criticize the
government and organize an opposition, and newspapers free of government
censorship. But they also have deficits in their civic culture and low per
capita GDPs.
In poor democracies the separation of political and economic power is
vestigial and experience at self rule is embryonic. These plus poverty
foster a culture of corruption. Aron acknowledges that corruption is not
absent in the West, or from Western history, but observes that it is not
embedded in governmental institutions as it is in the poor democracies.
Aron admires Yeltsin, whom he portrayed as a true revolutionary in his 2000
biography (Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life) but not Putin, whom he sees as the
restorer of the authoritarian state. In a 1999 chapter he writes that "Yeltsin's is the most open and liberal regime in the country's history," whose policies "are beneficial for the United States and its allies."
One of Yeltsin's quasi successes was changing the very nature of the criminal justice system, from "all-powerful prosecutors, timid and
demoralized judges, decrepit courts, no trial by jury, and a conviction rate
of over 99 percent" to one in which Russians sued the government and
sometimes won, and in which "a Russian environmentalist [was] acquitted of
charges of espionage brought ... by the heir to the KGB" — an historical
first.
From the "creative chaos of the revolution" also emerged a middle class,
though the lack of good economic and survey data make it hard to identify.
It has grown in fits and starts, as the country met various economic crises.
Within this group "income and prestige... were redistributed away from
professionals serving the state to those needed by individuals and private
business." Consequently "the younger one is in Russia today (2000),
the more educated and the closer to a large metropolis, the better one
lives."
Like most poor democracies and all post-revolutionary governments, Russia
has had trouble collecting taxes. Much income is "off the books" and hidden.
A long delayed shift in the economy from manufacturing to services
facilitated keeping wealth "under the radar." It was encouraged by the fact
that full payment of all taxes would exceed the income of most businesses.
Although quite critical of how the newly born market economy is "linked to
the state by myriad crooked ‘deals'," Aron also believes that the "YUKOS
affair" — in which the CEO of Russian's largest private oil company was
arrested, tried and convicted and the company dismantled — is a "scapegoat
for the misdeeds of the 1990s." Despite its troubling origins, YUKOS was the "first Russian megafirm to switch to international accounting standards" and "the most transparent of Russia's largest industrial corporations."
Aron argues that CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was punished by the regime for
daring to challenge Putin in the political arena.
He concludes by describing the many ways in which Putin is recentralizing
the government: choosing the 89 regional governors himself and then having
them choose the members of the upper chamber of the parliament, changing
direct election of the Duma (lower chamber) by the voters to a strict party
list system and curbing judicial independence.
Yet, despite these concerns Aron remains hopeful that "the vertical of power" that Putin espouses will not prevail. While he thinks that things
may get worse before they get better, in the end he says that "having
defended their right to be treated as free and thinking people, the Russians
never surrendered it to a new tyranny" and never will.
Jo Freeman is a political scientist and attorney. Her most recent book is At Berkeley in the Sixties: Education of an Activist (Indiana U. Press 2004).
Her previous book, A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) was reviewed by Emily Mitchell, a Senior Women Web Culture Watch critic.
Jo's other books include: "The Politics of Women's Liberation" (1975), winner of a 1975 prize from the American Political Science Association for the Best Scholarly Book on Women and Politics; five editions of "Women: A Feminist Perspective" (ed.). She has also edited "Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies" (1983), and (with Victoria Johnson) "Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties." She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago (1973) and a J.D. from New York University School of Law (1982). Read more by and about Jo, including her books, at http://www.jofreeman.com and email her with comments and questions at joreen@jofreeman.com
©2007 Jo Freeman for SeniorWomenWeb
|
|
