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THE CHALLENGE FOR RUSSIA’S LIBERALS
By Arthur Adams (aadams51@columbus.rr.com)
Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University

Why do Russian journalists, publicists, scholars, and writers in every walk of life denounce Vladimir Putin, his central government and its branches with degrees of disapproval that range from extremist anger to hatred?

I offer here an attempt to explain why the liberals express their opinions in such extremist hyperbole. In addition, this study offers several suggestions about how the liberals might make a major contribution to saving Russia if they would try to learn how to build an effectively functioning society.

In Vladimir Shlapentokh’s brilliant analysis (Two mutually exclusive pictures of Putin’s Russia): Both of them wrong, JRL, January, 2005), he defines two clear-cut trends of current opinion ­ the view of liberal writers along with some uneasy fellow-travelers on the left, and the “realists” who preach the stability of Putin’s regime.

Specific examples borrowed here from Shlapentokh’s study demonstrate the bitterness of current liberal criticism and its destructiveness.

< “The prominent Moscow journalist Mikhail Rostovskii insists that the authorities have ‘only instincts but no strategies, are involved in ludicrous endeavors, such as the cancellation of the holiday celebrating the October Revolution, meaningless undertakings such as the decision to abandon the election of governors, or even stupid actions, such as the destruction of Yukos.’”

< “Liberal authors vie with each other in their use of dreadful terms to describe Putin’s Russia: ‘a frozen country, the ice period, theater of the absurd, the civilization decline, a country sinking in the swamp, a self-destructive political power.’”

< “The liberal leader, Boris Nemtsov, one of the most known Russian liberals, and the prominent political scientist, Lilia Shevtsova mocked Putin’s administrative innovations . . . and predicted the disintegration of Russia. Others called the government “a Mafia,” the members of government “helpless people,” and continually stressed Putin’s KGB experience and mentality and his reliance upon his former KGB friends the siloviki.

< To the left of the liberals, communists and nationalists “hate Putin: One thoughtful left intellectual contends that the Russian president ‘provokes destructive processes in the country,’ and supposes that ‘he looks at himself in the mirror all day instead of gathering broad and objective information about the world.’ Another well-known leftist predicts “that Putin’s head will be cut off” and asserts that everyone “is against Putin.” Still another declares “that the country is losing its common sense and self-control and is moving toward a period of crazy delirium.”

Why such destructive criticism? Are the liberals and their uneasy friends right that all is lost?

I believe that their attitudes stem from the powerful tradition created and personified by the Russian intelligentsia that was developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century and eventually carried forward by the Bolshevik-Communists and others into the twentieth century. How this came about may best be explained by a brief look at the past.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, there was intense concern for the conditions of the serfs under the rule of the Tsar and the landowners. Over time, public demands for reform (freeing the serfs from what was fundamentally, slavery), became so intense that it led writers and concerned thinkers and students to organize small revolutionary groups determined to compel the Tsar to emancipate the serfs.

The emancipation proclamation, when it came in February 1861, was botched. The “freed serfs” were obligated to pay the landowners for the land, and an onerous redemption system was advantageous for the landowners but condemned the serfs to years of economic bondage. When the shortcomings of the emancipation became clear, educated young people of several classes, fired by daring writers and organizers who condemned the Tsar’s failure, and suffering vicariously the sufferings of the peasants, sought for ways to force through further reforms. They created small secret revolutionary organizations, fantasized about assassinating the Tsar, and conceived the idea that by going out to the people they could help them work and fight for their own liberation. In a brief time “saving the people” became almost an obsessive desire for both concerned well-wishers and fledgling revolutionaries.

Ardent and talented writers added religious fervor to the wish to help, making the primary mission of young thinking men or women who considered themselves “good” to struggle actively for the peasant’s welfare. Since the regime and the society that supported it were guilty of preserving the status quo, and since neither the regime nor the society showed any convincing sign of reforming itself, firebrand publicists declared that cooperation of any sort was useless. They contended that everything smacking of tsardom was evil – the Tsar, his government, the upper levels of society, all generally accepted moral values, and the art, literature and science of the society. Pisarev, a bitter and scathing critic writing in the early 1870’s, advocated that everything existing in Russia should be wiped out. For him, achieving social reform was the only possible aim for anyone who wanted to consider himself a worthy person. Although his writings were brief and his life short, they distilled in virulent form much of the writing and thinking that had preceded him and played an important role in what followed.

The fervor and the ideas of this time epitomized the posture of the intelligentsia, a word that does not mean intellectual as much as it describes “those whose lives are dedicated to serving the cause of social reform for the people.”

These ideas became a kind of credo for the impressionable young people who longed to be of use to their society. They enthusiastically adopted the belief that if one was totally committed to saving the people, one was “a good human being,” a thoroughly moral and useful person. Ultimately, there was, among those who committed themselves to the credo or mystique of the radical intelligentsia, a conviction that their virtuous intentions justified the use of all means of violence up to and including assassination.

Beginning in the early 70’s idealistic and sometimes semi-literate high-school students joined with college students and other young people to go out to the villages, their purpose to save the peasants -- by explaining the political cruelty of the government, teaching them to read and otherwise to live better lives, and teaching them about the need for revolution. In some cases the peasants welcomed them; in others they were rejected, thrown out, beaten, or reported to the police. The government responded brutally, arresting and imprisoning more than a thousand of these young people by the end of 1874.

The failure of the going-to-the-people did not kill the faith of those who held to the credo. Small and secret opposition groups developed bold programs of action designed to accomplish what the going-to-the-people had been unable to do.

As the struggle grew more vicious, destruction of the government became almost literally a sacred duty, and the government responded in kind to defend its own divinely consecrated mission. Terrorism became an approved method of operating. The eighties and nineties were characterized by bombings and assassinations, executions and exiles. Public trials of multiple defenders were held at which courageous young defendants stood up and expanded on the crimes of the regime and the purity of their own aims, spreading their credo through the public. On March 1,1881, Tsar Alexander II, “the Great Liberator” was assassinated.

The writings of the radical intelligentsia drove the young revolutionaries to ever more violence. The famous writer, Alexander Herzen dubbed the most angry writers of the century as “the bilious sect” and the novelist, Turgenev, called them “nihilists.” They were indeed, and it is well worth remembering that Lenin and Trotsky came out of this tradition, grafting their passionate faith to scientific socialism, and turning their version of the credo not just to destruction of the Tsar’s regime but outward toward the evil in the whole world of capitalist exploitation of the masses.

One can only stand in amazement at Lenin and his closest followers for their steel-hard conviction that they were heroes fighting evil, justified by their possession of a moral and social mission to take any action necessary to save the people.

There is no need to extend this brief historical survey further. The role of the credo preserved in Marxist-Leninism and concentrated by the bitterness of the struggle, is obvious in the communist regime’s political, economic and social policies and in its demand that literature, art, history, science, and all citizens must defend or personify the utilitarian social message in order to fight the evil that exists in all established societies.

How can today’s liberal thinkers believe that simply howling imprecations into the wind can help solve Russia’s problems? Such behavior is suicidal. Can these critics be so wedded to an outdated credo and the desire to display their brilliant rhetorical talents that they must go on destroying as long as they live?

The answer, surely, must be a resounding NO.

It is absolutely imperative that Russia’s liberal critics change their ways. The evil they imagine they see is actually the necessary trial-and-error suffering of a nation endeavoring to work out new forms of government and social relationships. The need now is not to foment revolution but to build a better society for all the people by constructive reasoning and effort.

Let the contemporary bilious set attack genuine evils that must be rooted out. Then, and this point cannot be overemphasized, let them proceed with all haste and due diligence to the work of developing and building solutions that can suppress or control the problems of today’s society.

Consider, for example, the problem of corruption in Russia. Everyone in the country knows about it from personal experience. Studies by innumerable learned experts, the Russian government, research groups around the world, and klaxon calls from Russian publicists sound dire (but too often feckless) warnings of the terrible consequences of corruption unless it is somehow diminished, outlawed, cured, or magically caused to vanish by a Putin-Tsarist decree from the Kremlin.

Data for the study of corruption and the means of ameliorating it are everywhere, including village and big city streets and the offices and personnel of central, and regional and local governments.

So, too, the dismal consequences of corruption are everywhere ­ in billions lost abroad, endless shake-downs and extortion techniques that range from the policeman who collects his extra bit from every taxi driver he stops, to the judge who collects a special fee for favorable decisions, to the local official who pays (or demands) a simple bribe, and to convoluted deals between conspiring industries that require the collusion of high officials and businessmen who have their hands in every till available.

Not only is the average citizen aware of the direct and immediate causes of corruption, but he is also aware of the widespread ramifications of its consequences. To mention only a few, there are the disastrous effects upon the nation’s courts and the agencies that are supposed to enforce the law and protect the right of every citizen to justice and equal treatment. Judges dependent upon political authorities, and police forces that are themselves associated with criminals, make it impossible to believe in the majesty of the state and the law. Citizens high and low drone the same cynical and despairing sentences: “This is the way it is. You can’t do anything about it.”

Every thinking person in Russia knows that the leader, Vladimir Putin, cannot wipe out corruption alone, not even if he were to revert successfully to the worst horrors of Stalinism. Many observers believe that corruption is like a disease inflicting a terrible illness upon the whole social system, but others wonder with good reason if corruption is itself the system while the political, economic and social structures are like the empty cells of a honeycomb waiting for the disease to siphon off the honey and kill all the bees.

Destroying corruption is an aim worthy of the talents of Russia’s best critics, but devising effective ways to significantly diminish its consequences is a challenge far beyond the capacity of any single element in Russia. It is glaringly obvious that separate forces – political administrators, economic actors, and the people themselves must combine in a multiple-pronged struggle to fight this plague.

Government and all other elements of society must be awakened at last to the crucial fact that the guilt is almost universal. The deadliness of corruption must become so apparent at all levels of the society and its institutions, and in the minds of its individuals, that they will act in some form of unison to role back the killer disease. The radical intelligentsia of the nineteenth century inspired change after change through the latter half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, but they helped create a revolution that preserved the helplessness of the people. Why not, this time, a struggle for a population that is persuaded to seize the opportunity to reform itself and its government by pragmatically attacking its own shortcomings rather than attacking one or another political-social-economic force that cannot do the job alone?

Every society has its corruption and suffers from it, but many have found and are practicing means of limiting the evil, controlling it enough to permit the larger healthy society to continue. Methods of achieving such limitation are well-known, published by responsible government agencies, international financial and research organizations, academic centers, and many scholars and dedicated people in Russia itself. The means of limitation are known and used in many nations; they can be adapted or adjusted, or perhaps even used as guides for how not to create the culturally-sensitive systems Russia needs.

If the liberal critics are to make any useful contribution, they must take the next step. Revolution against the Tsar is passe, at least partly because the old dream of “Let’s have a great revolution” is not the answer now. The only feasible approach is to use the knowledge presently available or devise new and workable systems that will curb the evils. Devising and making practical improvements is always terribly hard work. Solutions are harder to invent and implement successfully than revolutions. They take intelligence and patience and courage, but unless the effort is made now by Russia’s leaders of opinion, the nation may well be on its way down the drain of history.

A final note: Corruption was selected here as but one example of the serious problems now complicating the building of a better Russia. Any member of today’s liberal critics can identify others and will immediately be aware of their interaction with corruption. It would be wonderful indeed if the liberals would stop playing at being nineteenth-century revolutionary intelligentsia and settle down to devising and working to implement constructive methods for improving the systems Russia has to live with.

This time they might help save the people and the nation too.