Letters to the Editor

To the Editors:

I have been a reader of Russian Life for many years. I love your magazine a lot, however I do have one observation. I have an impression that you are forgetting that Russia is a FEDERATION. There are many nationalities living in this vast country, many of them much longer than the Russians themselves. I do admit that you had an article about Mari El and that you mentioned the Karelians, but those references were few and far between.

I still hope to see a piece about the Komies, Chuvash, Mokshans, Erzians or Udmurts and other minorities. Their languages, histories and cultures are really fascinating.

Sincerely,

Paul Matusewicz

Seattle, WA

To the Editors:

While I respect the attempt by Leon Aron in The Yeltsin Legacy [Mar/Apr 2000] to put Boris Yeltsin’s case, I think he has been far too generous.

I wouldn’t wish to negate Yeltsin’s achievements, which are huge, or indeed his vision or leadership skills, but I don’t believe the author has shown us the whole picture.

First, he has completely failed to mention both Yeltsin’s predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor Vladimir Putin, both of whom in different ways put the Yeltsin era into perspective.

No one can deny that Yeltsin was the author of Russia’s economic revolution. But it was Gorbachev, not Yeltsin, who started the political revolution that Aron talks about, and as someone with a keen sense of the popular mood, Yeltsin had little choice but to continue it. Equally, the “anti-imperial revolution” was begun by Gorbachev. It was his attempts to create a looser confederation of Soviet republics which prompted the August 1991 coup. Again, Yeltsin and the other Belovezh leaders had little choice but to accept that the USSR was collapsing and arrange its final demise in December the same year.

Why does Aron fail to mention Putin? The whole question of when Yeltsin chose to depart is surely linked to succession more than whether or not the country was vulnerable. The fact is that in August 1998 Yeltsin had no successor in mind, otherwise even then he would have jumped at the chance of leaving office. By then he was quite ill and frequently off sick, and generally perceived to be unfit to run the country. A year later, he had Putin, and that was enough. As for the 19th December elections, the reformers’ successes were almost certainly down to Putin, and not to Yeltsin, whose poll ratings had been in single figures since the crisis.

As for what seems to be the main point of the article, that militarism, brutality, corruption, xenophobia and authoritarianism have been all but extinguished, I simply can’t let this stand.

How can anyone seriously say that brutality has been reduced under Yeltsin? Few would say that the Chechen conflict (another glaring omission, incidentally) has been any less brutal than, say, the Afghan war. And can anyone seriously suggest that there was less corruption under Yeltsin than, say, Andropov? Is rampant racism against “persons of Caucasian nationality” any less widespread than the anti-semitism of previous years? And can someone who bombed his own parliament (however legitimate the reasons for doing so) seriously be described as anything other than authoritarian?

And as for whether these phenomena will reappear? Whatever you think about Putin—he may be better than some fear—no one can deny that there are serious concerns about the direction he is taking Russia, to some extent justified by recent events in Chechnya. And surely this is an indication of how fragile Yeltsin’s legacy is. Russia depends far more on its leaders than we in the West would like to think, and Putin, for all Yeltsin’s admiration of him, has very different priorities.

Robert Greenall

London, UK

To the Editors:

I am a reader of your magazine and its predecessor, and have greatly enjoyed both. But I am stunned by your decision to run Leon Aron’s article on Yeltsin (March/April 2000). He astoundingly states: “[Yeltsin]...led the country...without abrogating human rights and political liberties.”

Why are we continuing to ignore the mass murders of those protesting at the White House in 1993? This horrible event ordered by Yeltsin was not covered by mainstream American media (and has anyone yet answered the questions as to why and how that was?) but I was in Russia at the time and it was well known there. The protesters were lined up and shot in a sports stadium and later their bodies were seen being barged down the Moscow River. I think Yeltsin stayed in power only because the long-enslaved Russian people were unable to adjust quickly to freedom.

Yeltsin and the false promises of “free enterprise” (a euphemism for former Communist bosses becoming millionaire Mafiosi) cut all the social safety nets. I personally found dead pensioners in a vacant lot in Khabarovsk and the railroad station in Chitah, and saw starving young children in Ulan Ude, and homeless people and beggars widely. Many Mafiosi are well known and sometimes even accessible, from a timber boss in Lesosibirsk to a vice-mayor of Vladivostok. Do not admire them; they are ruthless criminals and much of Russian life is controlled by such types today, definitely a Yeltsin legacy.

If you are going to run writers of Aron’s ilk, in the interests of objectivity please caution your readers that he is an ultra-right-wing gladiator for American capital interests, not someone more ethical.

Thank you for the courage to publish this harsher but much more real picture of Russia under Yeltsin.

Robert Sutherland

Redway, CA