Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 26 – “The events
of 1917 and of the beginning of the 1990s took place according to the same
scenario,” Aleksandr Belyakov and Igor Turuyev say. “Only instead of Tsar
Nicholas there was Mikhail Gorbachev, instead of a world war, a cold one, and
Boris Yeltsin could pretend to the role of Lenin.”
Indeed, the two economists say,
there was even an analogy to the Bolshevik dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly: the destruction of the Russian Federation Supreme Soviet. [And] both the Russian tsar and the Soviet
general secretary by their actions prepared revolutions which destroyed their
regimes and powers (ng.ru/ideas/2017-10-26/5_7103_revolutions.html).
This commonality is no accident,
Belyakov and Turyuyev say. It reflects the instability of Russian society and “the
continuing weakness of its social and political system” and the fact that only
the abdication of the ruler can set in train revolutionary forces. Everything else is in fact secondary in
importance.
This is critically important for
Russians to understand, the two economists continue, because “there is no
absolute social-political stability in [Russia] even today, a quarter of a century
after our last revolution” and “real changes of the social-political system are
possible” only if the regime degrades and collapses rather than as a result of
rising popular discontent.
“The basic cause of social
instability is that there is in Russia a very rickety and immature society,
which lacks established ties and hierarchies which contribute to a stable
society” and at the same time, “there is an insufficient level of material
well-being which is a reliable barrier on the path of revolutions.”
Most Russians in 1917, 1991 and perhaps
in the future display “absolute indifference to the periodic destruction of
traditional national values.” They “do not feel themselves real masters of
their country and fate,” and consequently, they cede to others the power to
make changes, even of the most radical kind.
In the revolutions of 1917 and 1991,
external factors played a role; “but the significance of external factors
shouldn’t be exaggerated. It only created the background for the manifestation of
all the systemic weaknesses of our society and state,” Belyakov and Turuyev
say.
Instead, they argue that the key
events in both years were respectively “the abdication of the tsar from the throne
and the general secretary from the CPSU.”
As a result, “a cascade” of destructive and far-reaching social
developments occurred. Thus, “October 1917 would not have happened without
February and that would not have happened without the abdication.”
“If Russia in 1917 and the USSR in
1991 had been led by more far-seeing and less complex-ridden politicians, and
Russian society had been more mature, there wouldn’t have been any revolutions,
not proletarian or democratic,” the two suggest. And Russia might have been far better off.
“An important logical characteristic
of any revolution is that at first honest political fanatics come to power and
then rogues of all kinds, for whom politics and revolution are only a means for
enriching and strengthening their personal power. These are the true
beneficiaries of a revolution; everyone else suffers losses.”
That is what happened in 1917 and “almost
the same thing” in 1991. “the political system collapsed on its own,” not because
of political opposition at home or even the impact of foreign events. “Soviet was too passive, and the nimbus of
any Russian power too great” for it to be otherwise.
“All this can be applied to the
realities of today,” they write. Popular
discontent and foreign influence will matter some, but only the degradation of
the state and the abdication of its leader will lead to radical change – a reason,
although Belyakov and Turyuyev do not mention it, why so many Russians cling to
Putin because they fear what would happen if he left power.
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