Crisis of democratic values in Russia?
August 19, 2005
Moscow. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vasily Kononenko) --I was among the defenders of the Russian White House and for me August 19 will always remain the Day of the Revolution.
Despite heavy rain on the night of August 19-20 thousands upon thousands of people of different ages were coming to the White House that was at that time a stronghold of democracy. Overwhelmed by indignation, they were protesting against the attempt to restore the communist regime. I feel sad that now fewer and fewer people perceive the events of 14 years ago as a victory of democracy.
Sociological polls conducted by VTsIOM (All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center) on the eve of August 19 show that almost half of those polled (47 percent) view the events that led to the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. not as a clash between the old Soviet nomenclature and young Russian democracy but as an episode in the struggle for power between different groups of the top leadership.
Moreover, the number of those who would prefer to support the State of Emergency Committee (GKChP - Russian acronym) has gone up from 13% to 18% as compared with the last year. More than a third of those polled said that they did not sympathize either with the GKChP or with their opponent ex-President Boris Yeltsin.
Not only August 19 is less and less remembered as the Day of the Revolution. The general attitude of Russians to democratic values has been obviously cooling off from one year to another, as shown by sociological polls.
VTsIOM experts believe that this is a consequence of the current political situation in Russia. Head of VTsIOM analytical department Leontiy Byzov recalled that the polls conducted in the early 1990s painted a completely different picture. Many more people supported Yeltsin. But later on Russians got disappointed in him and are now embarrassed to admit that they had sided with him in 1991. His colleague Dmitry Polikanov mentioned an interesting fact in an interview with a RIA Novosti correspondent: people are more and more nostalgic for the great power, the U.S.S.R., because of appalling social differentiation. In the years since the putsch the majority of people have become impoverished, whereas a few nonentities, as Mikhail Khodorkovsky admitted, have acquired fabulous fortunes.
For all that virtually all participants in sociological polls admitted, both recently and years ago, that there is no return to the past. It appears that their minds are split: rationally people accept that there is no alternative to the current way of life and to the social system, but emotionally many would like to return what has disappeared with the Soviet system. Many Russians sympathize with the GKChP for lack of knowledge since the goals they proclaimed were rather vague.
Democracy, just as revolution, should be able to defend itself. The reforms of some 15 years ago were not carried out in the name of man, although they were accompanied by democratic slogans...
The public attitudes will not change unless the suggested values and models of development bear fruit. Ministers Gref and Kudrin promise that in 2007 the incomes of the population will be comparable to those in 1990. The slogan about doubling GDP is still an abstraction, but if it is implemented to the benefit of millions, the public attitudes are bound to change dramatically.