Even the remote prospect of a hyper-nationalist or proto-fascist Russia is alarming.  Russian nationalist writers often declare that their first priority would be to jettison the non-Russian republics ("to secede from the USSR"), but their nostalgia for the old Russian Empire suggests this promise might be honored in the breach.  With or without the republics, however, a nationalist Russia would be strongly committed to the expansion of its military power and would pose security problems to the West similar to those we have faced since 1945.

Scenario #3: Power is assumed either through a palace coup or via more orderly political processes by left-wing forces determined to hasten the pace of economic and political reform.

Boris Yeltsin, the reform-minded president of the Russian Republic who resigned from the Communist Party in 1990, would be the most likely leader of such a change.  So far, Yeltsin has challenged Gorbachev on specific issues, but has shown no willingness to make a serious bid for power.  More often than not, on crucial votes in the Supreme Soviet he has thrown his support to Gorbachev at the last minute, perhaps mindful of the general secretary's proven capacity to rally a majority in a "parliament" consisting largely of appointed functionaries.  Even in Yeltsin's own Russian Congress of People's Deputies, detailed analyses of voting patterns indicate that in a political showdown his radical reform wing would win only about one-third of the votes.(4)  The odds of his coming to power are further reduced by the likelihood that both the military and the KGB would oppose his accession.  There will be no left-wing coup in Moscow.

In the unlikely event that Yeltsin or some other radical reformer did somehow attain power in the Kremlin, would this set Russia on a course of demilitarization and retreat from world power?  Only if a left-wing government could emasculate the military and dismantle the secret police without triggering a counter-revolution--a dicey proposition at best.  Nor should we assume that a left-wing government would be immune from traditional Russian patterns.  Yeltsin himself has said that the first step of his 500-day economic program will be "the imposition of discipline,"(5) which hardly sounds ringingly Jeffersonian in its implications.

Scenario #4: A popular, democratic revolution.

Might the Soviet Union go the way of Poland and Czechoslovakia, with mass demonstrations and popular resistance bringing on the government's collapse and the establishment of democratic rule?  Alexander Solzhenitsyn has long maintained that democracy will come to Russia only by careful shepherding from above, while Alexander Yakovlev, a close ally of Gorbachev, has opined that it will take generations for Russia to develop democracy.  The two Alexanders reach a similar conclusion from opposite points of view.  Many Western specialists would agree: Russia is not ripe for democracy.  The cultural basis for popular, democratic revolution is simply absent.  Even though many Russian intellectuals and professionals are committed to democratic ideals, for the most part the agrarian population and working classes lack any democratic tradition.  Popular revolutions have historically occurred during or shortly following periods of rising expectations--usually when per capita incomes are increasing, not falling.  The current economic situation in the USSR and profound political apathy of its population does not bode well for a revolution from below.

 This does not mean there is no hope for the future.  Russia's most likely road to democracy would be to abandon Marxism-Leninism (a process well underway), move toward a more conventional authoritarian system, and from there evolve in stages to a genuine liberal democracy.  But this process takes time and probably will come too late to avert the resurgence of Russian military power postulated here.

Scenario #5: A full-scale civil war.

This is the one scenario that would definitely rule out a resurgence of Russian power.  A full-scale civil war in the USSR would be devastating.  Nuclear weapons might even be used.  Various countries on the Soviet periphery--China, Poland, Romania, Iran, possibly some Western powers--might become involved.  The Soviet federation would almost certainly be torn apart and a long period of reconstruction within the Russian heartland would likely follow.  But how likely is such an event?

Though public unrest already exists in some republics, internal conflict will reach catastrophic proportions only if the Russian center itself divides into warring factions.  Nationalist strife may multiply and even cause selective losses of Soviet territory, but it cannot engender full-scale civil war, provided the political center remains intact.  An outright war between outlying republics and the Russian center is a virtual impossibility since no republic could field an effective army without access to the RSFSR's military-industrial might.  Individual republics could at best wage wars of attrition or civil disobedience (Lithuanian-style) against central authority.  More probably, they will only engage in symbolic acts of defiance, while straining to cope with their own internal cleavages, ethnic and otherwise.  All this will vex, but not vitally threaten, the powers-that-be in Moscow.

A sense of historical proportion helps.  In 1716, General-Admiral Apraxin, an enthusiastic supporter of Peter the Great, sent a letter to the czar's personal secretary in which he confided deep foreboding about Russia's future:

Verily, in all affairs we wander like blind men, not knowing what to do; everywhere there is great agitation, we do not know to whom to turn, or what to do about it for the future; there is no money anywhere, and everything will come to a stop.

In fact, everything did not come to a stop.  Peter's reforms, though painful, laid the foundation for Russia's emergence as a great power.  For centuries, visitors to Russia have seen the poverty and squalor of its people and concluded that the Russian state was near collapse, its military power an illusion.  Yet consistently, despite deprivation, revolution, and war, Russia has advanced militarily, fulfilling Dostoyevsky's vision of a "fatal troika dashing on in her headlong flight."

Within the next five to ten years, Russia will resolve many of the internal contradictions now plaguing it, and the world will witness the resurgence of its military and industrial power.  The most probable midwife of that resurgence is the current government, freed of its ideological fetters.  But neither a new regime nor a break-up of the Soviet federation will necessarily alter this outcome.  When it occurs, we will look back with chagrin at today's casual assumptions about Russian decline.  As Winston Churchill said in 1942: "Everybody has always underrated the Russians."

Bruce D. Porter is the Bradley Senior Research Associate of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University.

1.  Official Soviet statements during the first half of 1989 make clear that the decision to abandon Eastern Europe and accept an eventual reunification of Germany was made before the dramatic autumn of 1989.  For a review of those statements, see Hannes Adomeit, "Gorbachev and German Unification: Revision of Thinking, Realignment of Power," Problems of Communism, July-August 1990, pp. 1-23.

2.  The Ogarkov quote is from Vsegda v gotovnosti k zashchite Otechestva ("Always ready for defense of the Fatherland") (Moscow: USSR Ministry of Defense, 1982); the quotation from an unnamed senior Soviet officer is from Ilana Kass and Fred Clark Boli, "The Soviet Military's Transcentury Agenda," Comparative Strategy, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1990, p. 333, footnote 64.

3.  John B. Dunlop, "Moscow Voters Reject Conservative Coalition," Report on the USSR (Vol. 2, No. 16), April 20, 1990.

4.  Regina Smyth, "Ideological vs. Regional Cleavages: Do Radicals Control the RSFSR Parliament?" Journal of Soviet Nationalities, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Fall 1990).

5.  Demokraticheskaya Rossiya, No. 3, 1990, cited in RFE/RL Daily Report, No. 190, October 5, 1990.

Essay Types: Essay