US urges Yeltsin to become dictator
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW, Dec. 4 — If Boris Yeltsin has so far resisted the temptation to shut down the Russian parliament and install himself as dictator, it's not because of warnings from across the Atlantic. On the contrary, the message from the US establishment has come loud and clear: "Go right ahead! We'll wring our hands, but we'll do our damndest to make sure you get away with it."
Take, for example, this recent editorial from the Chicago Tribune, reprinted in the Moscow press:
"Boris Yeltsin has something of the Tsar about him, and his autocratic streak surfaced at the end of October. He outlawed two political opposition groups and threatened severe measures against anyone calling for his removal.
"If Yeltsin's behaviour sometimes seems undemocratic, the West should be concerned by this, but should not be too angry. Trying to lead his country out of 70 years of tyranny... he is acting without a 'road map' or a historical compass."
The Moscow newspaper We, published jointly by Izvestiya and the American-based Hearst Corporation, paraphrased high-placed US officials as stating that a declaration of presidential rule in Russia "would be perceived in Washington as undemocratic, and as illegal and in breach of the Constitution, but the government of the US would be forced, albeit unwillingly, to accept it if it were the only way in which Yeltsin could save his bold economic reforms".
A political consultant to President George Bush was more blunt:
"If Yeltsin declares presidential rule, we'll be faced with a difficult problem, but instinct tells us we should support the president, since he's the only person leading the country in the right direction. The other leaders don't want to go in the necessary direction."
Now we know, as if we didn't already: the volumes uttered by Bush administration spokespeople about democracy in the former Soviet Union are bunkum. The US government's real concern in Russia is to promote "reform" — the neo-liberal code word for shutting down the industries of a potential competitor, and driving the mass of the people into semi-starvation in order to restore capitalism as quickly as possible. If democracy gets in the way — too bad.
This set of priorities is not exclusive to the Bush administration, but is clearly the norm in US political life. As the Hearst Corporation's We observed:
"The most important thing so far as American politicians are concerned is retaining the program of reform in its original shape. Of course, official figures in Washington will not be pleased if Yeltsin declares himself a virtual dictator, but this variant is much better the reform program."
As US spokespeople contort themselves in order to make excuses for Yeltsin, their statements are proving a rich vein of black humour. An official US representative quoted in We described the Front for National Salvation, banned by Yeltsin on October 28, as "a pure fascist grouping, which includes former communists". The same official damned the Russian parliament as "a return to the past", since more than 80% of the deputies had belonged to the Communist Party.
One wonders where US leaders think Yeltsin, his ministers, and his top aides sprang from. For the record, Boris Yeltsin throughout most of the 1980s was the hard-driving, autocratic Communist Party boss of Sverdlovsk in the Urals. Acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar was working his way up through the Communist Party ranks to become a senior economic commentator for the Central Committee's paper Pravda. State Secretary Gennady Burbulis was — wait for it — a teacher of "Marxism-Leninism".