The monument to heroes of the 1905 Russian Revolution in front of the Russian government headquarters
Photo: Pavel Smertin
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Immature Russia
// The Kremlin assumes that society is unable to form political institutions
Speaking on the occasion of Russia's taking over the chairmanship of the Council of Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Ivanov called on European politicians not to tie all countries to a single model of democracy. “The rates and content of the realization of the democratic choice should correspond with the demands of social development and the preparedness of society for changes,” he explained. Otherwise, he continued, democracy will not work and may even bring defeat. Russian president Vladimir Putin has made similar statements before Ivanov, as has the ideologue of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov. Without denying the need for and desirability of democracy, the Putin administration has assumed that society is not ready for it, which means that the executive power control political, social and economic processes during the period of maturation. But is the almost authoritarian rule in Russia capable of paternally ushering society toward democracy? Putin's political and historical fate depends on this question.
Scared by the Storm
The idea of that immaturity did not come from the presidential administration. Oleg Kharkhordin of the European University in St. Petersburg explained that there are two points of view on democracy. One point of view is that democracy is primary and a basic condition for the formation of a legal medium and for economic growth based on free competition. The other point of view is that the order supported by the state is primary. It provides the predictability necessary for economic growth and thus lays the ground for competition and self-balancing groups of elites, that is, for the transition to democracy.
The second approach has been frequently taken in the post-revolutionary era, when the excesses and upheaval spawned by it disappointed the elites in the ability of society to organize itself. The classic apologia for this view is found in American political scientist Samuel Huntington's 1968 book Political Order in Changing Societies about democracy in countries of the “third wave.” With the end of colonialism or the emergence from dictatorship, the majority of developing countries were unable to establish democracies and moved either toward socialism or anarchy. The state is endangered, Huntington concluded, if the political mobilization of the masses increases faster than the permanent institutions of democratic society form. “Loosening control in any authoritarian political system can lead to an explosion, as a result of which the process goes out of the control of those who initiated it,” Huntington writes elsewhere. To avoid that, Huntington suggests a “decompression” strategy, a gradual, controlled transition to democracy allowing the likelihood of excessive political polarization and upheaval to be minimized. Thus the democratization process must be carried out under strong state control with “two steps forward and one back,” as Lenin observed.
Decompression
South Korea is an example of that process in action. Political instability and the increasing leftist orientation of students and workers brought the military to power there in 1961. Gen. Park Chung Hee rejected “the Western system of democracy” as inapplicable to “crisis situations,” and suggested “Korean democracy” in its place, with emphasis on social harmony and effectiveness. He was the creator of the Korean “economic miracle” based on a directed economy and the chaebol.
There is another example. Huntington himself was a consultant to the military regime of Gen. Emilio Medici in Brazil in 1972. The decompression strategy was developed for him. In 1988, Huntington called Brazil an example of a “brilliant” transition, a military dictatorship in 1973 and a democracy in 1985.
The creator of the South Korean miracle was not able to solve the problem of handing over power in the military regime. He was killed by his own colleagues in 1979. That country's transition to democracy cannot be called planned or controlled. There were coups, student uprisings and martial law. The late 19802 and early 1990s were a period of permanent political crisis, upheaval and hyperinflation (2567 percent in 1993) in Brazil as well.
Importantly, neither South Korea nor Brazil was able to create permanent political institutions during the rule of the authoritarian regimes, and they were followed by short-lived administrations and constitutional manipulation. Political parties also failed to form. The political classes of all stripes were corrupt and compromised by collaboration with the regimes.
A Ticking Bomb
The elite's mistrust of the masses' ability in Russia to form civil institutions has a long history. After the end of the 18th century, the enlightened Russian monarchy and the bureaucracy that supported it assumed that the state should shield society from the impulses originating within it and premature changes, while preparing the ground for them at the same time. Russian monarchies beginning with Catherine II and their best advisors considered the abolition of serfdom unavoidable in the long term. Chief of the Nikolaev secret police Benkendorf gained fame for his comparison of serfdom to a ticking bomb, the explosion of which could bring down the empire. But fear of an uncontrollable burst of social energy with the freeing of the serfs led the rulers to delay that step.
Russia in the 19th century was a clear example of “controlled” modernization. Serfdom was abolished in 1861, which seriously impeded the development of industry. The state struggled for the whole century to prevent the creation of political and social institutions in society and, as a result, Russia began the 20th century still without political institutions or a political class that might have adapted to the new urban, capitalist order. That resulted in the Revolution of 1905, defeat in World War I, the overthrow of the monarchy, the collapse of the multinational empire and the October Revolution.
All the Article in Russian as of May 31, 2006
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