The new Russia: a work in progress.

The problems in Russia which the media have focused on (mostly since the events of August) are serious, especially in areas of finance. Russia's inability to pay its debts (it owed 109 billion rubles in short-term notes and could repay only 37 billion rubles) resulted in effectual devaluation, inflation (consumer prices rose 38 percent in September), and shortages. Thirty percent of the population is reported to be living in poverty - rates are higher in the countryside than in the cities - and the figure is growing. Gross Domestic Product fell 10 percent in September following an 8 percent drop in August, and the grain harvest is about 50 percent below last year's. The financial crisis had immediate political repercussions. Yeltsin fired his government and engaged in prolonged political warfare with parliament before appointing a new administration. Reports in the media suggest that Russia is on the verge of collapse and that a return to Soviet communism is a cause for Western concern. How accurate is this picture?

We need to put these difficulties, serious as they are, in a larger context. Specifically, we need to see Russia as a work in progress, a society in transition. To help do this, it may be useful to compare Russia in 1998, politically and economically, with Russia before 1990, a scant eight years ago. Soviet Russia had no free and fair elections; since 1990 there have been two presidential elections, two for parliament, and local elections for legislatures and for governors. All were competitive and largely free and fair. Soviet Russia was a one-party system; Russia today is a multiparty system reflecting a true contestation of political ideas. In Soviet Russia there was a rubber-stamp parliament that voted unanimously for everything put before it; today's parliament agrees unanimously on nothing, engaging in agenda setting, debate, and oversight. Today's Russia is characterized by the principle of judicial review and is guided by the principle, if not always practiced, of equality before the law. Soviet Russia was an unfree society lacking basic civil rights; today's Russia acknowledges in law, and - to a much greater extent than before - in practice, freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, and of assembly, including demonstrations. On the economic side, whatever problems there are, state ownership has been largely replaced by private ownership; economic decisions are no longer made by the state planning agency, GOSPLAN, but (however imperfectly) by the marketplace; in place of a fixed exchange rate, the ruble is convertible and remains so, despite the current crisis.

Let me put all of this in a personal context. Since 1990, I have been conducting field research in Yaroslavl, Russia, an ancient provincial capital located about two hundred miles northeast of Moscow on the Volga River. In the first years, there was nothing in the stores. I got up to stand in a thirty-minute line at 6 A.M. to buy milk in zero-degree weather. No restaurants, no retail sales, no beer; I brought my food and supplies with me from Moscow, where there were foreign currency stores. Transportation was on foot or on overflowing, crumbling buses. The city still felt the heavy hand of the local party nomeklatura and permission was required for everything.

Contrast this state of affairs with my last visit in June 1998. Stores were full. I had breakfast at McDonalds. I drank beer with my friend, Sasha, in a brightly decorated outdoor cafe, and with other Russian friends at a lovely underground restaurant in the university. Imported cars scattered people like chickens in the streets; everywhere there was construction, and reconstruction. A democratically elected mayor presided competently over the city and met regularly with a democratically elected city council. I have traveled to Yaroslavl every year from 1990 to 1998, and in June 1998 Yaroslavl never looked lovelier or worked better, although my friends there tell me they, too, have been adversely affected by the recent events. The point of all this is not that everything in Russia is fine; it obviously isn't. Rather it is to remind us that Russia has come a very long way in a short period of time.

What of the future? The crisis, I believe, is a temporary one reflecting the vulnerability of an emerging market and a transitional society in a period of global recession. I see no return to the authoritarian party-state communism of the Soviet period (Leninism), because there is no real constituency for it. Not even the main supporters of the present-day Communist Party of the Russian Federation, namely the pensioners who make up the large majority of those you see on TV demonstrating against the government in Red square, want to go back to Stalinism. What they want is more of a safety net, something akin to the democratic socialist variant one finds in Europe. In any case, to calculate harshly, it is the older generation that supports Communist leaders; as a result of inevitable demographic change, their numbers will decline. The 1996 presidential election can be seen as a referendum of sorts on a return to Soviet communism. The 40-percent vote for the Communist party standard-bearer, Gennadi Ziuganov, is probably as much as it will ever get.

There has been a good deal of journalistic hand wringing about a rising "red tide" in Russia's new government. Not only has the new prime minister, Evegeni Primakov, made present and former Communists part of his government, but he has talked about the need for greater government regulation of the economy. He wants to restore Russian national interests to the forefront of foreign policy. Despite these worries, if he is able to restore the state's authority, Primakov may actually be what Russia needs right now.

How does he propose to do this? Some early indications are apparent. They include cracking down on tax cheats and collecting revenues, regulating banks, putting teeth into a Russian SEC and insuring transparency in the Russian stock market, ensuring law and order, temporarily monopolizing certain sectors of the economy such as alcohol production, making regional elites comply with federal law and the Constitution. If Primakov moves decisively, he may succeed in reestablishing a state system that can make laws and ensure compliance, minimal standards of state capacity. This may come as hard medicine for advocates of a pure free market, but I wouldn't be surprised if Primakov looks a lot better to them in six months to a year than he does now.

One poll after another has shown that Russians want "a strong leader." Many have interpreted this to mean that Russians want to return to an authoritarian system. I disagree. If I were a Russian, I would want a strong leader in this environment, someone who, within the framework of a limited government, can get the job done.

Jeffrey W. Hahn is a member of the political science department at Villanova University.