Just because communism has failed in Russia, it does not follow that capitalism will succeed there. Indeed, the prospects of success are not particularly bright. New Delhi should brace itself for the possibility that Russia is in for a long period of uncertainty, confusion and turbulence.
The reign of terror that followed the October ‘revolution’, especially in the wake of the collectivisation of agriculture beginning in 1928, was justified by well-known Marxist intellectuals on the plea that it was an inevitable companion of ‘primitive accumulation of capital’. By the same token, the greatest daylight robbery of the century, now taking place in Russia, can be explained away in terms of the need for a new entrepreneurial class.
Exercise In Evasion
This justification will, however, be as much as of an exercise in evasion as the previous one. Russia is no more ready for transition to capitalism in 1992 than it was for a leap into a socialist utopia in 1917. Russian history, culture, tradition and, above all, the present power realities stand in the path of the proposed change.
Though the disastrous consequences of seizure of power by Lenin and his army of ‘professional, revolutionaries’ are there for anyone to see, many of us are still reluctant to recognise and identify these men for what they were – marginalised men alienated from their society, and messianic adventurers determined to seize and hold power even if that involved wading through rivers of human blood. But that is what they were. They created rivers of blood as no one ever before in history.
If a comparison with the Sicilian Mafia, as drawn by Arkady Vaksberg in The Soviet Mafia in respect of Lenin’s progeny, is not in order, it is primarily because the scale of crime by all mafia ‘families’ put together pales into insignificance against those of the Marxist-Leninist- Stalinist ‘rulers’ of Russia. And, of course, the mafia do not build and control hydrogen bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles, or send millions of men to suffer and die in concentration camps.
The comparison is, however, useful for the purpose of providing us a glimpse into the lives and character of men (and women) who are now out to grab all productive assets in Russia and making us ask the question whether they are the kind of individuals who can preside over the rise of a capitalist economy in Russia. These men (and women) have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and they have obviously not changed overnight. They only swear by different slogans.
The foundations of the mafia structures were clearly laid under Stalin’s brutal dispensation inasmuch as only the unprincipled and the sharp witted ready to betray their associates could rise in the party and government hierarchy. But these could not be consolidated so long as the terror lasted. The consolidation took place under the long reign of Brezhnev who himself revelled in receiving costly gift from his satraps in the republics and bears comparison with Third World dictators.
The structures survived Brezhnev’s successors, including Gorbachov. He too did not dare take on the mafia dons. Indeed, on the eve of resigning as president of the Soviet Union, he sought an assurance from President Yeltsin that he would not be prosecuted on criminal charges.
The Soviet society was corrupt to the core. Everything was on sale. According to Russian investigators, the position of a regional party secretary in Central Asia could, for instance, be purchased for 100,000 roubles and an order of Lenin for 100,000 to 500,000. Vast gold reserves disappeared no one knows where. Western governments are still trying to find out what has happened to billions of dollars given by them or guaranteed by them as loans. Anyone with experience of trading with the former Soviet Union on a substantial scale would know of the payoff system that began at the very top in the Kremlin.
‘Death Grip’
As is well known, communist party apparatchiks remain in power in the administration, factories and farms. They hold on to their properties with a ‘death grip’ and ‘may have to be carried, feet first, from their offices’, to quote an American writer. But who would do the carrying and how? Many of them have already amassed fortunes by all manner of shady deals, including unauthorised ‘export’ of millions of tonnes of oil, enormous qualities of weapons and possibly enriched uranium to be in a position to buy up enterprises as they are put on ‘sale.’
It is tempting to compare these buccaneers with robber barons like the Rockfellers in the United States. But it is a false comparison. The robber barons did not loot the state and they operated in a larger milieu informed by Protestant ethics. Moreover, they did not constitute the American bourgeoisie as such. That class consisted of hundreds of thousands of hard working individuals motivated by a pioneering spirit, on the one hand and love of liberty and equality or the other. Russia has never known such a culture and its elite has always seen itself as being above the people. The Russian intelligentsia call the people seroe bydlo (grey cattle).
Marauders
The still powerful Russian elite can better be compared with marauders from the desert, steppes and highlands who looted settled societies and established kingdoms. And whoever has ever heard of Mongol princes accumulating wealth and investing it for productive purposes? They doubtless accumulated wealth but for the purpose of high living. Our own experience should be useful. After all, our former princes, many of them richer than the biggest Indian industrialist at the time of independence in 1947, have not developed into entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs cannot be made to order and as a rule, power wielders do not make good entrepreneurs. The two temperaments are different.
It is notable that despite their humble origins most communist rulers behaved as if they were successors to imperial princes. Tito, for example, took over all castles and hunting lodges in Yugoslavia for his personal use. Ceausescu built for himself a palace in Bucharest which would have done any emperor proud. He even moved works of art from museums to it. In his autobiography, entitled Against The Grain, President Yeltsin has written that as a member of the party leadership, he lived in a house which had a private movie theatre, a kitchen big enough to feed an army and bathrooms he lost count of. Such men neither make democrats nor entrepreneurs.
It is well known that more wealth has moved out of a number of Third World countries clandestinely than has come in by way of aid and loans from the West and Japan. In this regard, as in many others, Russia belongs to the Third World. It would be realistic to expect this problem to become more acute as profiteers and sharks acquire legal ownership of properties, especially if conditions of instability continue, as they are likely to, since Russia has no party worth the name and President Yeltsin has to struggle hard just to keep afloat.
The Times of India, 22 October 1992