The People's Will

“The patience of the Russian people was great, and it gave foreigners to believe that the Russian people were slaves at heart. Now the Russian people must show to the whole world that it is a truly free people. After this great turn of events the Russian man must rule himself.”

Nikolai Berdyayev1, from the journal
Narodopravstvo, 1917-1918.

Russia’s June 16
Presidential elections are a unique event in the country’s history. For the first time, Russians are electing a head of state
in one-person, one-vote elections. Russian Life Managing Editor Robert Greenall looks at Russia’s history of popular will and representation, and
asks — will the people be heard this time?

As with many observations about Russian history, these words could just have easily been said today. Berdyayev was writing of the Constituent Assembly, about which popular will was ignored. Russia plunged into the misery of Civil War, dictatorship and brutal repressions lasting several decades.

National democratic institutions have no historic precedent in Russia. Which may make Russia’s current hold on democracy tenuous. Some even fear that history will repeat itself and new cataclysms will follow. While uncertainty reigns in Moscow, it is worth taking the long view – looking at how popular will has impacted political power in Russia over the centuries.

The Veche:
democratic or feudal?

Western progressive influences came early to Russia. In the ancient cities of Kiev and Novgorod, the original Viking rulers invested supreme power in the veche, an assembly of free men of the city. The veche could vote to remove and appoint princes, and to declare war. It controlled a people’s militia, which constituted the city’s main fighting force.

The veche system was crippled by the Mongol invasion in 1237-40. In their two centuries of occupation, the Golden Horde (whose only notable contribution to Russia may have been the word for money, dengi) murdered and enslaved tens of thousands of civilians, razed entire towns. Local princes were subjugated to their Khanates and forced to pay costly tribute.

Not all of Russia fell under the Mongol Yoke, however. The Northern cities of Novgorod and Pskov continued to practice and perfect their rare form of representative government into the 15th century.

A chronicle in 1196 stated: “Novgorod reserves the right to its prince: it may choose whatever prince it wishes.” Each new prince had to take an oath and sign a contract with ‘Lord Novgorod’ or ‘Lord Pskov,’ meaning the veche.

In Novgorod, political life was often stormy – reminiscent of today’s volatility and polarization. Rival factions sometimes came to blows at veche meetings (called to order by the ringing of the veche bell in the center of the town’s Kremlin) and local priests would have to mediate. Powerful, feuding Boyar (i.e. noble, landowning) families were usually behind the disputes, and it is not clear how much independent power ordinary townspeople really had. In fact, many historians today consider the veche to have been nothing more than a feudal assembly.

Fortress Muscovy

Novgorod’s democratic experiment was to last nearly 300 years. It was brought to an end by the increasingly powerful princedom of Muscovy. Its representative traditions lost under the Mongols, Muscovy was an independent but militarized and centralized state. Constantly at war and relying on a fixed, unfree peasant class to maintain its land while absent landlords served in its army, Muscovy grew in strength by swallowing up neighboring Russian princedoms.

Aside from the waning Mongol threat, in the 1400s, Muscovy’s main rival was Lithuania, in the West. Moscow needed the city-state of  Novgorod to countervail this threat and, in 1471, Novgorod surrendered to Ivan III. Seven years later, after Novgorod repeatedly resisted Moscow’s will, Ivan brought down brutal reprisals and, in a symbolic move, had the town’s veche bell removed from its bell tower.

But even Muscovy was not a fully autocratic state. Boyars were always a force to be reckoned with and the prince was required to consult their Duma (Assembly) on issues of state importance. In times of national emergency, he could call the Zemsky Sobor (Assembly of the Land), a body containing members of all classes except the serfs.

Democracy to Autocracy: the Romanovs

The smuta (Time of Troubles) at the beginning of the 17th century provided ample opportunity for the expression of popular will – often capricious and ever a most effective source of power. Pretenders and tsars who appeared as a result of intrigue (Basil Shuisky) or backed by foreign armies (the two ‘False Dmitrys ’) captured the public’s attention and gained some support, but quickly disappeared. Stable and wise rule during this period resulted only from the elections of Tsars Boris Godunov and Michael Romanov by the Zemsky Sobor.

Michael Romanov’s election to the throne (1613) is a particularly interesting case for modern democrats. It came after strenuous discussion, and, although the Zemsky Sobor was sufficiently representative to be considered legitimate in modern terms, it sent emissaries to the regions to gauge the public mood, just in case.

This early ‘election’ is probably the closest the Russian state ever came to a democratic transfer of executive power. But the situation was exceptional — there was a power vacuum to be filled, and Romanov was a 16-year-old with no experience of government, elected not just as a ruler but as the first of a dynasty. Significantly, over the period of its 300-year rule, the Romanov dynasty sought an ever-increasing concentration of power in the hands of the Tsar. While boyars and princes retained significant influence for nearly 200 years, the Zemsky Sobor which brought the Romanovs to power faded to insignificance under Michael’s successor, Tsar Alexis (1645-1676).

Ironically, it was Alexis’ son, the Great Westernizer Peter the Great (1682-1725), who put the final nail in the coffin of early Russian democracy by proclaiming the principle of the Imperator’s (Emperor) unlimited power. In the words of Klyuchevsky, Peter ‘beat all memory’ out of the Zemsky Sobor.

Over the next 200 years, serious plans to reintroduce representation were invariably scotched by that great enemy of democracy, the threat of war. Catherine the Great’s 1766 manifesto, aimed at creating a representative assembly, was dropped because of the war with Turkey. In 1809, reform Prime Minister Mikhail Speransky’s four-tier system of elected Dumas fell foul of the Napoleonic Wars.

Constitutional
Monarchy? The Last Decade of Tsarism

“Genuine popular representation began in the 20th century after the 1905 revolution,” said socialist historian and former dissident Roy Medvedev.

The shock of popular discontent after the Russo-Japanese war pushed an unwilling Nicholas II into creating an elective legislature, one which fell well short of the Western model of constitutional monarchy. The lower house (Duma) was elected by almost universal male suffrage, but through a complex system of congresses weighted towards the upper classes. The State Council, the upper house, was only half elected.

The first two Dumas, despite this electoral bias, were too revolutionary to work with the government. Both were dissolved within a few months by the Tsar, who still had the title ‘autocrat.’ The electoral law was changed to give yet more bias to the upper classes, so finally the Tsar had the docile, cooperative legislature he needed. The third and fourth State Dumas were productive and lasting, if merely rubber stamps.

“Autocracy remained, there was no constitution, all main laws were passed with the approval of the Tsar,” continued Medvedev, “and there were no rights of veto and impeachment as there are now. So all these representative institutions left a very small trace in the national consciousness. It all had a very small influence.”

High Hopes Dashed: Democracy in 1917

With the abdication of Nicholas II in February 1917, the Duma suddenly found itself holding supreme power in the country. It formed a Provisional Government which was unsure of itself, and carelessly delayed the convening of the Constituent Assembly, the revolutionaries’ planned elected body.

Meanwhile, a small radical faction of the Russian Social Democratic movement, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were building a base of power within the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies, set up to rival the Provisional Government. Soviets were organized throughout the country in factories and military units. Being closer to the masses than the Duma, they gained large and loyal followings.

“They [the Soviets] were legal organs because they were elected by popular vote,” explained Medvedev. “Their legitimacy was based on the theory that the people is the source of power.”

For its part, the Provisional Government instituted a series of political reforms, from freedom of speech, religion and the press, to reform of local administrations and labor laws. Unfortunately, it also continued to prosecute the war with Germany, at great cost. Largely due to a lack of sufficient power and authority (and competition with the Soviet), it vacillated on important questions of the day, such as land reform, and proved unable to stop the decline of the economy. Perhaps most tragically, the Provisional Government misjudged the mood of the people.

As Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes in his essay, The Russian Question (1995): “The accumulated, unreleased national fatigue from all the previous Russian wars, for which the people always remained unrewarded, somehow made itself felt in World War I, and to that fatigue was added a distrust of the ruling class, amassed in generation after generation.”

With uncompromising pronouncements for seizure of land and an unconditional end to the war, Lenin, leading the Bolsheviks, tapped directly into this fatigue and distrust. Over 1917, the Bolsheviks would methodically consolidate a majority in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets and, through a palace coup on November 7, become the de facto governors of Russia.

The Constituent Assembly, meanwhile, in free, universal and direct elections, produced a majority of moderate socialists committed to continuing the war with Germany, i.e. at odds with Lenin’s policy of unconditional peace. But by now no one was interested, especially in the fervently pro-Bolshevik capital city, Petrograd. The Assembly quietly opened in January 1918 and was just as quietly dispersed again the next day. According to a classic legend of the Soviet era, a sailor by the name of Zheleznyak, one of the guards outside the Assembly, entered the chamber and complained “the sentries are tired,” at which the delegates meekly went home. Thus Russia’s first experiment in genuine democracy ended with a very feeble whimper.

Soviet Russia’s
Democratic Facade

Election laws were quickly made under the new regime — but any vestiges of real democracy were quickly removed. In 1918, the First Soviet Constitution instituted unequal elective rights — one worker’s vote was equivalent to five peasant votes. There was a complex hierarchy of elections, and any genuine electoral choice and legislative power were suppressed by the Party.

Paradoxically, it was only with the 1936 Stalin Constitution that a system of universal, secret ballots was introduced. Franchise limitations on categories like ‘exploiters,’ non-working people, kulaks, people who used hired labor, and those with private property, were removed. Stalin’s had little to fear in this enfranchisement — after all, such people had already been eliminated. The political value of the rights set forth in this constitution was demonstrated when, one year after its passage, the Stalin regime unleashed its bloodiest purge, sending millions to death and exile.

“By 1936 Stalin’s dictatorship was so strong that it was safe to hold elections,” explained Medvedev. “The nation was totally subdued and voted how it was told. There was no choice because you had to vote for one candidate. And the central and regional electoral commissions always falsified the elections. No one could control the counting of votes.”

Soviet elections became a meaningless ritual — people were forced to cast their vote for a single candidate, elected to a powerless body which met twice a year to rubber stamp whatever laws were thrown its way. They were a pure propaganda exercise, whereby the Party strove for the highest turnout — people were attracted to the ballot stations with scarce goods and an almost festive atmosphere.

“People didn’t have a chance to vote against, because there was a commission sitting and the ballot box was put just in front of it,” explained Roy Medvedev’s brother Zhores, a world-famous biochemist who lost his Soviet citizenship in 1973 because of his dissident views. “So a person like myself would take the ballot paper, on which were the words ‘Please cross out any name except the one for which you have preference.’ But there was only one name so you didn’t need to cross it out anyway. And because the ballot box was just in front of you and the booths in the other direction, the only reason for you to go there would be to cross somebody out. This had a psychological effect, because people were still afraid that if they didn’t follow the official line they might be punished.”

By the 1970s, dissidents were sufficiently fearless to stand up to this, though they considered not turning up to vote at all a more effective means of doing so.

“[The authorities] were much more nervous if I boycotted the elections than if I voted against,” continued Zhores Medvedev. “I usually told them, ‘why should I vote against? You selected a nice person who is a scientist, I like him and have no reasons for preventing him from going to the Supreme Soviet. But I don’t like your system of elections and I don’t want to take part in them.’”

Fragile Traditions

It wasn’t until perestroika that it became possible to breathe life into these atrophied organs. The old monoliths — like one-party rule and single-candidate elections — fell one by one. A Congress of People’s Deputies, made up of a mixture of democratically-elected members and those chosen from ‘public organizations’ (i.e. a means to get seats for unpopular party leaders), first met in 1989. For a time, the nation was riveted to live radio and television broadcasts of Congress sessions.

The last six years have witnessed four genuinely democratic national elections, but still no strong democratic traditions have taken root — on each of the four occasions, a different electoral law was in place.

The first two elections took place in the Soviet era: the Russian Republic’s Congress of People’s Deputies elections of 1990 and the Russian presidential elections of 1991. They produced structures with a considerable overlap of power and provided a political springboard for Boris Yeltsin, first as Congress speaker and then as President. Ultimately, though, the legislature and executive became rival power bases so mutually repugnant that the latter devoured the former in the events of October 1993.

The second two elections, the post-Soviet Duma elections of 1993 and 1995, again produced legislatures unfavorable to the executive, manageable only because their power was so limited.

So it is that the June 1996 presidential elections have not only no tradition but also no precedent. Though elected to head the Russian Federation within the Soviet Union in 1991, and re-approved in a referendum in April 1993, Boris Yeltsin has never contested the position of head of state with any other candidate. In fact, nor has any other Russian or Soviet leader.

Can it really happen?

The lack of a tradition gives many election observers today cause for concern. Will the people really be entrusted to make a choice?

Solzhenitsyn, in The Russian Question, offers the most blunt reply: “...in seventy-year-old totalitarian soil, what democracy can sprout overnight? ...Only in caustic mockery can we term our system of government since 1991 as democratic; that is, as rule by the people. We do not have democracy, if only because a living, unfettered system of local self-government has not been created: it remains under the foot of those same local bosses from local Communist circles; while Moscow lies far out of earshot.”

Roy Medvedev is hardly any more optimistic. “[This] is the first time that a change of regime is being carried out democratically,” he said. “Previously it changed only when the Tsar died, in Soviet times Lenin died, Stalin died, Khrushchev was removed by a plot, Gorbachev was removed by a plot. For that reason I’m not completely sure that these elections will go ahead.”

Some, like Medvedev, believe that Yeltsin and his entourage will do anything to hold onto power, and remain there till his death. Many have not ruled out postponement or annulment, facilitated, for instance, by a deterioration in the Chechen situation. Yeltsin’s powerful chief bodyguard, General Alexander Korzhakov, has made no secret of his desire to put elections off, warning of social unrest if they go ahead.

A joke going the rounds illustrates the situation:

Yeltsin is addressing an election meeting and someone in the crowd shouts out, “What happens if we elect you in June?”

You’ll get a new president,” Yeltsin replies.

“And what happens if we elect Zyuganov?” asks another voice.

“Then you’ll keep the old president,” says Yeltsin.

The application of other methods of keeping power, such as pressure on voters or falsification of results, seems unlikely. In Russia, any candidate’s (not just the President — the communists have considerable influence over regional media) attempt to manipulate voters through the media tends to produce a result opposite to that desired. Because of so much world attention, meanwhile, it would seem that results cannot be drastically doctored.

However, in many areas, electoral literacy is still not very high. Many people vote simply as they are told by people in authority. A spokesman for Kalmyk President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov promised to deliver a 99.9% vote for Yeltsin in his republic (which incidentally provided one of the highest pro-government votes in last December’s Duma elections).

Other fears surround the transfer of power itself, assuming of course that Yeltsin were to lose fairly.

“In the United States there is a ceremony that has been repeated for two hundred years. There are no surprises,” said Darrell Hammer, retired Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. “Here they’ve never replaced a President. When for instance does Yeltsin hand over the keys to the atomic weapons?”

Who can lead Russia,
and where?

Western observers seem to agree that the safest outcome of the June election for Russia, at least in terms of preserving or building democracy, would be a convincing and fair victory for Yeltsin. A few months ago, this seemed no more than an illusion, but a series of policy successes seems to have put him back in the running. Even the democrats who brought him to power, alarmed in recent years by his many political about-turns and heavy-handedness, have mostly returned to his fold.

Also, observers have noticed a change in Yeltsin himself.

Zhores Medvedev believes he received good treatment after his heart attacks and was able to make a full recovery, as did Brezhnev after a little-known heart attack in the 1950s.

Not for the first time, Yeltsin seems to be rising to the occasion. “Political life makes him stronger, rather than weaker,” continued Medvedev. “The election has given him a lot of energy. He likes to fight, this is his lifelong addiction.”

“His rating is rising very fast...,” said Alexei Novikov, former consultant in a presidential electoral analytical center and specialist in electoral geography, “I think he has a much better chance than [Communist leader Gennady] Zyuganov.”

He is helped also by a natural Russian dislike for changing the status quo. Yeltsin’s erratic reforms and overbearing style is ‘the devil we know.’

“There is an ancient Roman rule,” continued Novikov, “if it is possible not to change, it’s necessary not to change.”

Yeltsin is trying to make the most of this advantage. “Never in history has any Russian leader been given the chance to finish reforms,” Yeltsin said at a speech early in his campaign. He asked to be given that chance.

But good health, fighting spirit and the natural advantages of the incumbent may still not be enough. Deep dissatisfaction with reform and unexpected developments in Chechnya could still derail the President’s campaign.

Eighty years ago, in 1917, there was also an unpopular war, economic reforms were being undertaken in a haphazard, halting fashion and political factionalism was at a high point. Then, as now, a communist party was the only organization outside the government with a capability to capitalize on the blackened public mood.

Lesser of two evils?

While the echo of 1917 has more than a few observers worried, there is more to it than that. No one quite seems to know who Gennady Zyuganov really is and where he would lead Russia. Zyuganov regularly presents a moderate face to the West and to critics at home, while feeding his supporters with stories about the ‘Zionist conspiracy.’ He has worried many with his statements to the effect that there have been no repressions in Russia in his lifetime (Indeed, a recent TIME Magazine article quoted Zyuganov as saying just two persons were arrested in his hometown during the purges, whereas the records show the true number to be in the thousands). His ideology seems a strange mix of orthodox communism and paranoid nationalism.

Roy Medvedev, however, who now leads the small Socialist Laborers’ Party, said he will support Zyuganov, whom he considers the lesser of two evils, in a run-off against Yeltsin.

“Yeltsin’s policies are completely destructive,” he said. “I’m not sure that [Zyuganov] will be better, but he doesn’t have this destructive potency that Yeltsin has.”

Medvedev, who suffered greatly under the communist system is strangely willing to turn a blind eye to Zyuganov’s darker side – he said he considers a change of power necessary. His justification is at once troubling and illuminating.

“I doubt that Zyuganov will be any good,” he continued, “but you have to choose sometimes the lesser of two evils. Zyuganov’s party is worse than the [Soviet Communist Party], it’s the most orthodox, dogmatic part of the [old] Party. I don’t think they’ll be in power for long, they’re an interim phenomenon. Zyuganov’s not a fanatic or a dictator, but his ideology is confused... It’s irrational, nationalistic. Of course that’s dangerous, but what else do you propose? Yeltsin is dangerous too... He’ll take up any flag just in order to stay in power.”

Supporters of the incumbent, though, are less sanguine about Zyuganov’s real motives.

“Zyuganov is very dangerous,” said Novikov. “He has inherited the entire institution of lies in the Soviet Union.”

But for Novikov, this also reduces Zyuganov’s chances of being elected: “The only thing that encourages me is that [his entourage] are not serious in their understanding of economics, and what is happening in the world and in Russia. This makes their chances smaller, so they can only count on people who have not really thought things through properly at all.”

Fears of an end to democracy under Zyuganov, begotten by democracy itself, are very real in the Yeltsin camp, and among Western observers too.

“I asked [Zyuganov] if he would keep Playboy in circulation,” said Professor Hammer. “He said, ‘Well, of course we have to look after public morale.’ I think there will be some kind of crackdown, or censorship.”

The presence or absence of Playboy may not be a true barometer of commitment to a free press, but if Zyuganov believes that Brezhnev was not repressive, his definition of the word clearly differs from that of most Western democrats.

The path less traveled

With two main candidates that few people seem to like or understand very much, Russia’s landmark elections would seem to be a case of voting against, rather than for. The problem is that much more is at stake than the political future of two candidates. While much negative can be said about either candidate, it is important to recognize that each represents a very distinctive path of economic and political development.

In the case of Yeltsin, this path would seem to be further reform, but the President’s impulsiveness and often shallow expediency worry even his loyal supporters. As for Zyuganov, no one really seems to know yet what this path is. Russian history, with its sharp turns and cataclysms, interspersed with periods of repressive stability, seems unable to provide guidance here either — except that Russia is plunging, as so many times before, into the unknown.