The Coming Resurgence of Russia
Mini Teaser: Let us begin by recalling one of the most celebrated predictions in political literature.
Let us begin by recalling one of the most celebrated predictions in political literature. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville published the first volume of Democracy in America. The book concluded with a short, persuasive analysis of why America was fated to become the greatest power in the world. Among the factors Tocqueville cited were its immense geographical size, abundant natural resources, vibrant national character, and growing population. The French nobleman then added, almost as a footnote, that one other nation was destined for similar greatness, and for many of the same reasons: Imperial Russia. While conceding the stark political differences between America and Russia, Tocqueville closed with a sentence destined to become famous: "Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe."
At a time when many pundits have already relegated Russia to the rank of a second-class power and regard its decline as final and irreversible, Tocqueville's wise comments about the essential ingredients of state power over the long run provide a much needed corrective, for these ingredients ultimately matter more than economic fluctuations, political crises, or near-term shifts in the military balance. When measured by such "objective factors," to purloin a Leninist phrase, the future of the Russian state--quite apart from its empire--does not appear nearly so bleak. In fact, the most likely prognosis for Russia's future is not its retreat from the world scene, but its resurgence both as a global power and as a continuing obstacle to Western interests.
Tocqueville's prediction, made more than a decade before The Communist Manifesto was published and eighty-two years before the Bolsheviks seized power, does not hinge on the Soviet state. He did not presuppose the existence of an ideological force that would fuel Russian expansionism, nor did his conclusion require the existence of a Soviet Union or a Warsaw Pact. The USSR might evolve into a wholly new system, or even dissolve into its constituent parts, without affecting the validity of Tocqueville's observation. For regardless of what happens to the Soviet Union, Russia will remain and--because it possesses those essential ingredients--will continue to carry great weight in world affairs.
This point was recently acknowledged by another Frenchman, then-Minister of Defense Jean-Pierre Chev[gra]enement, in a memorandum to senior military officers. "Russia does not need to be an empire to be the strongest military power in Europe," he wrote. "The Russian population itself is more than 150 million, which is easily the largest population on the continent. Russia's territory is 30 times as large as the next largest country in Europe, which is France." Though Chev[gra]enement's views go against the grain of strategic thinking elsewhere in Western Europe, where Soviet power is now largely discounted, they appropriately echo the thinking of his great fellow countryman.
One of Gorbachev's unheralded accomplishments has been a sharp rise in the casualty rate of Western predictions about Russia's future. But at least one forecast is quite safe: By the turn of the century, Moscow will still be the seat of some kind of government. That government--whether communist, democratic, fascist, nationalist, autocratic--will control at least the current territory of the Russian Republic (three-fourths of present Soviet territory) and probably the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Kazakhstan (a Central Asian republic where the largest ethnic group is Russian). If it succeeds in holding together this "Slavic core," it will have inherited nearly 92 percent of the territory and over 80 percent of the population of today's Soviet Union. It will also be in possession of most of the USSR's current military capacity, including the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and the biggest, best equipped army in Europe. Even though arms control measures may lead to reductions in absolute numbers, they will not greatly change the relative balance between Russia and the West. Moreover, some 85 percent of the USSR's military industry and 90 percent of its military R & D facilities are located in Slavic republics, percentages that will only increase if efforts are made to transfer the most mobile assets.
For these reasons the proposition that Russia will remain a great power ought to be a truism. Yet it receives scant recognition in the current strategic debate in the West. I will go further: By the year 2000 we are likely to witness a significant resurgence of Russian military power in both relative and actual terms. For the regime that governs Russia at the turn of the century will not merely inherit the existing Soviet military establishment, it will actively build on that foundation to ensure Russia's place as the predominant power in Europe and the military equal of the United States. In doing so, Russia will simply be pursuing the logic that has impelled Russian statecraft since Peter the Great.
Geography, Culture, and Autocracy
For centuries, Russia's foreign policy has been shaped by three main factors: geography (the absence of natural frontiers, open plains that are difficult to defend, and the quest for warm-water ports); culture (an inferiority complex vis-[gra]a-vis the West, an idealistic sense of national mission, and a pervasive xenophobia); and autocracy (reinforced by deeply ingrained feelings of political insecurity). These factors in turn have created powerful tendencies toward territorial expansion, high levels of military spending, and dictatorial government propped up by military and police power. More than seventy years of Soviet rule have only reinforced these tendencies, and they are likely to persist whatever the fate of communism and the multinational Soviet Empire.
Throughout history, new city walls have been built on the foundations of earlier ramparts. Similarly, if there is a regime change in Moscow, the new government will be built on the foundations laid by both czarist and Soviet rule. The two strongest elements of political continuity in any such transition will be the professional military and the secret police. This is because neither the present regime nor any probable successor could survive politically without support from these two institutions. They are entrenched, powerful bureaucracies with stable personnel systems: most Russian officers who are under age fifty-five will still be serving in the year 2000, regardless of what government issues their orders.
The military and the secret police are always portrayed as "conservative" in the Western press, and rightly so. But their conservatism is based less on ideological devotion than on deeply held institutional values and Russian traditions whose antecedents predate the October 1917 Revolution. Just as a majority of the czarist army and secret police readily adapted to Bolshevik rule, so could the Soviet officer corps and KGB accept, and perhaps even support, the demise of the current regime. But they would only do so provided that the successor government (whether communist or not) was committed to high levels of military spending and to maintaining political controls at home. Since the new regime could not survive without Soviet military and secret police support, it would have to be so committed. That is the unavoidable bargain the future holds, and its elements are already becoming increasingly evident in Gorbachev's transitional regime.
Thus, our hypothetical government of Russia in the year 2000 is likely to remain a political rival and potential military adversary of the West. It is likely to pursue policies of weapons acquisition, force structure, and arms control not dissimilar from those now advocated by the Soviet General Staff (including its predilection for large strategic nuclear forces). The only two future scenarios that definitely would not lead to such an outcome would be the establishment of a genuine Russian democracy or a devastating civil war. For reasons that I shall discuss, neither outcome seems likely.
The good news is that a future resurgence of Russian power does not automatically imply a return to the stark Russian-American rivalry of the Cold War. Marxism-Leninism is so thoroughly discredited that any future Russian government will almost certainly be less ideologically driven than past Soviet regimes, even if it retains a notional commitment to an undefined "socialism." Russia's relations with the West, though still adversarial, are likely to be characterized by greater realism and calmer rhetoric than during the Cold War. In the Third World, prospects for Russian-American confrontation should be drastically reduced, as Moscow ceases its automatic support of anti-Western regimes and Washington sheds some of its own anxiety about Russian intentions. We are already witnessing this effect in many regions of the Third World, including southern Africa, Indochina, and--most dramatically--the Persian Gulf.
The bad news is that Marxist-Leninist ideology will be replaced by Russian nationalism. For over half a century, the Western world has regarded ideological regimes, both fascist and communist, as the ultimate threat to peace. We have tended to forget that from the French Revolution to World War I, nationalism was the principal source of conflict among nations. Zbigniew Brzezinski and others have recently argued that "post-Communist nationalism" is today emerging as a dominant force in international affairs. Certainly nationalism is on the rise throughout the USSR, in Russia as much as in the non-Russian republics. It suggests a future relationship between Russia and the West resembling that which prevailed between Imperial Germany and the rest of Europe for several decades after 1870. In short, while the Cold War will be over, the necessity of maintaining a balance of power will remain.
Clausewitz observed that it is human nature to exaggerate the strength of an opponent. Certainly that tendency prevailed throughout most of the Cold War and not least in the early 1980s, when concern about "the window of vulnerability" and the shifting military balance precipitated the largest peacetime build-up in American history. Evidence of a crisis in the USSR--infant mortality rising, male life expectancy plummeting, economic growth stagnating--was mounting in the late Brezhnev years. But the signposts were largely discounted as Washington coped with the invasion of Afghanistan, the INF challenge, and sundry Third World trouble spots. Today we have gone to the opposite extreme and greatly underestimate the potential strength of the Soviet Union. We are like the drunken man that Martin Luther once saw trying to mount a horse: first he fell off one side, then, leaping back on and overcorrecting, he fell off the other.
The news reports from Moscow are of little help in correcting our balance. Invariably written in the style of weather reports, they are at best barometers of Gorbachev's personal standing, revealing little about the underlying forces that will shape Russia's future. The impression in the West that Russia has entered into permanent decline is based on three assumptions: First, the Soviet economy is in such bad shape that it will take years to recover and will never again provide an adequate base for a military threat to the West. Second, the loss of Eastern Europe confirms the USSR's decline and greatly reduces its influence in Europe as a whole. Third, rising nationalist strife inexorably will pull the Soviet Union apart, leaving Russia a mere rump of its former empire. All three assumptions deserve scrutiny, for they ignore critical reserves of Soviet economic, political, and military strength.
The Economy and the Military
That the Soviet economy is in very bad shape is beyond dispute. But the picture of utter disaster that is now routinely drawn is exaggerated. Glasnost, the need to make the case for reform, and the wish to attract Western aid all combine to produce horror stories disproportionate to the actual decline. The inordinate publicity given to Soviet food shortages is a case in point. Such shortages are a perennial fact of Soviet life, but despite the much freer access they now enjoy, Western diplomats and journalists have been unable to find any evidence of starvation or severe deprivation in Gorbachev's Soviet Union. The fact that the 1990 grain harvest was the largest in Soviet history makes the point that much of the trouble stems from the deterioration of the Soviet transport system, a non-systemic problem susceptible to remedy by targeting investment.
Second, Moscow has certain substantial economic assets that make it absurd to treat it as one of the world's out-and-out basket cases, and make the outpouring of official and charitable food aid from the West--and even India!--seem strange. These assets include massive diamond and gold reserves, the latter alone being estimated by the CIA as around $34 billion. Combined with a relatively low level of hard currency debt (some $54 billion), these assets give Moscow considerable borrowing potential in international credit markets. Further, the USSR has the world's largest natural gas reserves, and produces nearly as much crude oil as the United States and Saudi Arabia combined. The recent jump in oil prices and the decision to put oil deliveries to Eastern Europe on a dollar basis will strengthen Moscow's hard currency position significantly.
Third, the Soviet Union has always had two substantially separate economies--the consumer and the military-industrial. The latter is in much better shape than the former, enjoying first claim on both human and material resources. The Kremlin asserts it has cut defense spending by 10 percent a year for the past two years. U.S. intelligence agencies concede there had been a decline, but believe it is far smaller, perhaps 4-5 percent at most. Given the changing security outlook and other pressing needs of the Soviet Union, it would be logical to expect some reduction. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that such reductions, even if they continue, must result in the comparative military weakening of the Soviet Union. For one thing, the rate of defense spending in most Western countries is dropping as fast or faster (the U.S. defense budget declined by 4.5 percent in real terms in 1990). For another, the Soviet Union started its cuts from a much higher level than its Western rivals. Thus, even after cutting its output of tanks by half, the USSR still produces twice as many battle tanks annually as all NATO countries combined. And in 1989 it easily outproduced the United States in a range of important categories: ICBMs, 140 to 9; SLBMs, 100 to 21; SLCMs, 1300 to 600; artillery pieces, over 1500 to 100; fighters and fighter-bomber aircraft, 625 to 470; military helicopters, 400 to 280; armored fighting vehicles, 5,700 to 650. Soviet strategic weapons testing and modernization programs, as well as its research and development of ASAT and ABM systems, are accelerating, not declining. Despite Moscow's announced intention to convert military to civilian production, not a single major weapons facility has yet been converted. In short, the Soviet military-industrial economy remains intact, and retains the potential for rapid expansion of output.
Whether the Soviet economy can be reformed successfully in the next few years remains an open question. But whatever Gorbachev's shortcomings, he has already accomplished one important thing: the Soviet economic debate has been de-ideologized and is currently being conducted in more rational economic terms than in the past. It is now widely accepted that the only workable economic system, at least in the consumer sector, is a market economy. The small businesses or cooperatives legalized under Gorbachev have flourished and now engage over five million employees. Their rapid growth suggests that the rest of the Soviet economy, free of its ideological straightjacket, can grow rapidly. But it is important to stress that the Soviet leadership need not achieve a Western-style consumer cornucopia in order for economic recovery to take place. The number of Soviet-produced luxury sedans, VCRs, microwaves, and upscale fashions will be no measure of prowess in the military arena. The USSR need only improve its consumer economy enough to maintain the modicum of public support necessary for internal stability. It appears increasingly evident that Gorbachev and his political allies intend to couple a liberalized consumer economy with an authoritarian political system and a command economy in the military-industrial arena. From their vantage point, this is the ideal formula for a resurgent Russia.
Abandoning Eastern Europe
Even more than Soviet economic problems, the loss of Eastern Europe has been widely interpreted as a portent of Russia's decline. Yet the political, economic, and strategic benefits that Moscow gained by leaving Eastern Europe and consenting to a reunified Germany have far outweighed the region's value as a buffer zone against a Western invasion that was never going to happen. Soviet diplomatic stature in Europe has increased, not diminished, as a result of the withdrawal, and Moscow has gained access to vital Western credit, economic aid, and high technology. By settling in one stroke its most long-standing issues with the West, the USSR enhanced its own security--a point Soviet defenders of the withdrawal make again and again. Shevardnadze put it bluntly in July, 1990: "What is best, to be facing a half million soldiers from the Bundeswehr or, let us say, an army of half that size in a united Germany?"
Even by 1980, when labor strikes in Gdansk gave birth to Solidarity, Eastern Europe had lost its economic utility to the USSR and become a diplomatic albatross. Illegitimate governments propped up by the threat of Soviet intervention faced unruly populations and deepening economic troubles. To preserve regional stability, Moscow was forced to subsidize the Eastern European economies, particularly in the energy sector. Despite these costs, the Brezhnevite leadership, suspicious of any change, clung to its security blanket. It took a younger leadership to recognize the advantages of a European settlement and abandon the region in 1989-90 with hardly a whimper.(1)
Throughout the postwar period, the Soviet Union has had three long-standing policy objectives in Europe: 1) American military withdrawal from Europe; 2) the dissolution of NATO; and 3) the neutralization of Germany. Ironically, by yielding Eastern Europe, the USSR is closer than ever to obtaining all three objectives. The level of American troops in Europe is declining already, with few likely left by the end of the decade. The recent European settlement undermines the raison d'[cir]etre of NATO, whose vitality will surely diminish as the decade proceeds. As for Germany, though not yet neutral, its relations with Moscow have become exceptionally warm, reminiscent of the diplomatic pattern created by the Rapallo Treaty in 1922.
The Soviet loss of Eastern Europe has also contributed to the current decline in Western defense spending, which, as already noted, is keeping pace with the reduction in Soviet military spending. Barring drastic and disproportionate unilateral defense cuts by Moscow, which seem entirely unlikely, Russia in the year 2000 will remain the dominant power on the Continent even if resurgence never occurs. From this perspective, the retreat of Soviet troops from 3 percent of the territory controlled by Moscow since 1945 does not appear quite so consequential.
Pandora's Nationalities
The most critical problem facing Gorbachev's government is the Pandora's box of nationalist strife unleashed by glasnost. Western scholars such as Alexander Bennigsen and H[acu]el[gra]ene Carr[gra]ere d'Encause have long argued that the USSR cannot be the only multinational empire in modern history immune to nationalism's centrifugal forces, that rising national sentiment would ultimately strain and perhaps tear the empire apart. The scholars certainly had foresight: ethnic strife has claimed several hundred lives and created as many as 500,000 internal refugees. Many of these refugees live in squalid conditions in tent cities or other temporary shelters in Central Asia and the Caucasus; others have flooded into Moscow, straining the capital city's already overburdened housing and social facilities.
Despite the fury with which "post-Communist nationalism" has struck, there is no reason to believe that the disintegration of the Soviet federation is either inevitable or even likely to occur quickly. A recent multi-disciplinary study at Harvard University concluded that most large empires have fallen apart only in response to some massive external blow. Moreover, unlike most multinational empires in history, the Russian Empire is territorially contiguous, a more "natural" political entity than past overseas empires hammered together by Atlantic sea powers. A fairer comparison could be made with the Ottoman Empire; but, unlike "the sick man of Europe," which relied on diverse types of government in different geographical areas, the USSR employs a uniform administrative system across its entire territory. It is thus closer to being a true nation-state than most empires. It is also worth recalling that most Soviet territory was part of the Russian Empire for more than a century prior to the 1917 revolution. This familiarity may not have led to affinity, but it did forge political, social, and economic bonds that paper resolutions alone will not dissolve.
Gorbachev is the first Soviet leader since Lenin never to have served in the provinces. From the early months of his tenure, he grossly underestimated the depth of national feeling in certain republics and failed to anticipate how glasnost and a relaxation of totalitarian controls would fan it. The senior officer corps had fewer illusions, however, and is known to support preservation of the federation strongly and by all means necessary. There is much evidence to suggest that Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov, Chief of General Staff Sergei Akhromeyev, and General Boris Gromov (popular hero of the war in Afghanistan) lobbied for months prior to the January 1991 crackdown in Lithuania for precisely such a show of force. That Gorbachev went along indicates his realization that the Baltic states cannot be freed without setting a bad precedent for other restless republics, despite the attraction of settling the last major political issue with the West. The events of January have left little doubt that the Kremlin is prepared to fight for union, as it was not prepared to fight for Eastern Europe.
In that fight, the Soviet leadership has several points of leverage. Virtually all republics depend heavily on the RSFSR for various raw materials and commodities, and most Soviet republics have large, extremely loyal Russian populations. Moreover, outside the Baltic states the most virulent nationalist enmity has not been directed at these Russians, but has flared up between smaller ethnic groups who harbor deep-seeded historical grievances. The Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute is the most extreme example, but communal violence has also resulted between Meskhetians and Georgians; Tadjiks and Uzbeks; Kirgiz and Uzbeks; Caucasians and Kazakhs; Abkhazians and Georgians; Ossetians and Ingush. Tribal violence of this nature dramatizes to the public the advantages of union and centrally enforced political order: for most republics, independence would only be a prelude to serious bloodshed.
Public opinion polls conducted by Soviet institutes show that a majority of Soviet citizens now consider the re-establishment of order a higher priority than economic or political reform. This is especially true in the Russian Republic, where there is a traditional fear of chaos and a proclivity for an "iron hand" at the center. Such sentiments favor the Kremlin and will bolster public support when force is used to ensure the union's survival. Though events could yet force Moscow to yield autonomy or independence to certain republics, the odds seem to favor its retaining most of the present federation.
Regime Scenarios
Given the tumult of the past five years, it would be foolhardy to rule out almost any scenario of Russia's future. Let us consider the five most frequently mentioned ones, their likelihood, and the consequences of each for the future of Russian military power.
Scenario #1: A palace or military coup by conservative, "old guard" forces bent on restoring the pre-Gorbachev status.
Such forces presumably would seek to reimpose Brezhnevite political controls and censorship; crush nationalist movements; and perhaps reassert Russian control over portions of Eastern Europe. A conservative leadership would inevitably mean increased military spending and at least a short-term resurgence of Russian power. Ironically, the long-term prospects for Russian power would probably be worse under old guard leadership than under the present regime. A conservative regime could undermine all that Soviet diplomacy in Europe has recently accomplished, galvanize Western defense spending, and repudiate the reforms essential to sustaining military strength over the long run.
The idea of a conservative takeover has been a constant theme of both Western and Soviet speculation for some five years now. Gorbachev's nemesis was presumed first to be Yegor Ligachev and then Ivan Polozkov, the new first secretary of the Russian Republic. There is, however, almost no evidence of an organized right-wing coalition forming around either man. Though the old-line apparatchiks bear grievances against Gorbachev, and hard-line speeches sometimes win spirited applause in the Supreme Soviet, Gorbachev consistently prevails over his right-wing opponents in actual votes, usually by healthy margins.
Because any such coup would require the support of the military, this scenario is highly unlikely. Though the military press is rife with grumbling these days, most criticism is aimed not at Gorbachev, but at various liberal-minded institutions and publications (such as Komsomolskaya Pravda and Ogonyok). The military is unhappy with its declining prestige and obviously would prefer that its budget were not shrinking; but the top officer corps, many of them hand-picked by Gorbachev, understand that internal reforms are essential to Russia's capacity to compete technologically with the West. The word perestroika, in fact, may first have been used in a political context by Marshal Ogarkov in 1982, when he wrote of the importance of restructuring "the entire economy, [as well as] political, social, scientific, and other institutions" in order to enhance Soviet military preparedness. As for the Soviet military's own painful perestroika, one senior officer has declared pointedly, "We've never reorganized anything to make it weaker."(2)
One sobering footnote: Since at least the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress in July 1990, Gorbachev has been moving to the right. Last November he granted local military commanders expanded power for maintaining public order; in December he reorganized the Interior Ministry (responsible for internal security) under two well-known hard-liners; also in December, Shevardnadze resigned and warned against the threat of a new dictatorship; in January he invoked additional emergency powers and began a military crackdown in Lithuania, Latvia, Moldavia, and other republics. It appears that the Soviet president may himself become godfather of a "creeping coup" against reform communism, just as General Jaruzelski declared martial law in Warsaw in order to save his own regime in 1981. This would make a right-wing coup quite redundant.
Scenario #2: Extreme Russian nationalist forces take power.
There has long been an extreme variety of Russian nationalism that manifests all the characteristic features of an ideology. Often neo-fascist and anti-Semitic, always chauvinist, this form of Russian nationalism appeals to many elements in the military and has outspoken advocates in the Supreme Soviet. Several widely circulated newspapers such as Sovetskaya Rossiya, Literaturnaya Rossiya, Molodaya Gvardiya, and Nash Sovremennik espouse stridently nationalist views, as do numerous political organizations of this persuasion. Of these, the notoriously reactionary Pamyat is most prominent. The "United Council of Russia," an umbrella organization set up with the help of conservative officials in 1989, unites many of these groups.
Despite such organization, however, Russian nationalist groups have not fared well in the few democratic elections held in the USSR. In the March 1990 elections to the RSFSR Congress of People's Deputies, a coalition of Russian nationalist and neo-Stalinist groups called the "Bloc of Russian Public-Patriotic Movements" failed to capture any seats in the first round of voting, qualified for only 16 run-off races out of 65 contested, and captured only about 10 percent of the total vote.(3) In view of such numbers, the chances of a Russian nationalist takeover by legitimate means are quite small. There are, however, numerous and growing links between Russian nationalist groups and the old guard in both the party and the military. These suggest the possibility of a conservative-nationalist putsch, combining features of scenario one and two. The odds of such an eventuality are small now, but could increase if the present regime missteps badly.
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.
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