I'm a bit suprised to see Paul Nixon and Alexandre Bougakov calling for
sociologists to express themselves in something like politically correct
language language. I actually thought that Alexandre was being ironic in
his original message. When he described that
>small place near the Historical
>Museum (former Museum of Lenin) where different kinds of psychos -
>communists, nationalists are meeting, selling their literature etc - it is
>the great place for sociologists who study subcultural groups, deviant
>behaviour and so on (and for psychiatrists, of course). Such groups can be
>found in each country, only the words they speak are different.
>Those people in Moscow speak about "horrible regime of Yeltsin" ....
I mistakenly thought he was satirising common attitudes to these fringe
groups!
So it is worth asking why a lot of other people think that the Yeltsin
regime was horrible and consider the kind of language they use.
Given below an summary by a journalist who characterised Yeltsin as a
'lethal fool'. Members of the list who don't like politically incorrect
language need not read this summary. There may a few innacuracies and
exaggerations, but it seems to me that is a fair summary and interpretation
of the Yeltsin era including a few illuminating insights. There is also
some understatement. Bob Ellis's bit of polemic does not dwell on the
catastrophic increase in death rates. Nor does it point out that Yeltsin
started *two* wars against Chechnya.
I would be interested to learn what parts of this summary Paul and Alexandre
think are unreasonable, and for their identification of *any* positive
achievement that can be attributed to Yeltsin's rule.
Contrary to the Paul's view I would argue that this piece by Bob Ellis is
the kind of document that *should* be submitted bodies such as the IMF.
The IMF is complicit in supporting the Yeltsin regime and should take into
account a range of interpretations that help explain its widely acknowledged
failures.
Ray Thomas, Social Sciences, Open University
Tel: 01908 679081 Fax 01908 550401
Email: [log in to unmask]
35 Passmore, Milton Keynes MK6 3DY
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The Melbourne Age
Worse than a lethal fool
By BOB ELLIS
Tuesday 4 January 2000
BORIS YELTSIN will be shown by history to be worse than a stumbling, drunken
blowhard. Worse than a ham-fisted mangler of immortal opportunities. Worse
than a clubfooted public nuisance who stayed too long. Worse than an amiable
buffoon: he was not that amiable. Worse than a lethal fool.
For what he interrupted when he stood up swaying on his famous tank, and a
few days later when he bullied the frayed and traumatised Gorbachev (just
back from being kidnapped) into unjust and thankless oblivion, was the only
process that could have steered the fractious, plaintive Soviet peoples into
the orderly embrace of other nations.
This was its cautious, gradual corralling into the dull and kindly
traditions of European social democracy, of the German, Dutch and Swedish
kind. This was where it was heading under Gorbachev's weary, passionate
guidance. This was where it should have gone.
I lived for short periods in the Soviet Union in 1988, 1989 and 1990, and it
was OK.
Everybody had a job, everybody had a roof, and an income equivalent to that
of a kindergarten teacher in Murwillumbah.
Everybody had (for the only five years of their history) complete freedom of
speech. Fearless investigative reporters each night grilled cowering
ministers on television.
The parks, the public transport, the circuses, operas, ballets and live
theatres were the best in the world. The streets were safe. There were no
beggars anywhere, though many street hawkers.
The divorce and abortion rates, on the other hand, were abominable. The
accommodation was cramped and mostly insufferable, the cuisine dreary.
Alcoholism was a national plague; education an international triumph. Many,
many wives worked part-time as prostitutes. The black economy was rife.
Half the currency was forged. Bureaucrats were on the take. Corruption was
deep in the system.
It was, in short, like a lot of other countries, if in different
proportions. It had good and bad. People felt frustrated, especially the
men, but they ate, made love, threw parties. They had a life.
Then Yeltsin managed his flat-footed coup (the kidnappers tried to get him,
too, but couldn't discover which early opener he was in) and levels of
calamity not yet admitted ensued.
Free enterprise was declared overnight, and global economics: just like
that. People lost their jobs, their flats, their sense of self-worth.
For the first time since Tsarist times, families slept in the railway
stations, begged in the snow. Inflation soared to 1000per cent. A life's
savings were needed to buy a week's groceries.
Government departments were sold off cheaply to criminals, gangsters,
forgers - the new elites.
Gunfire in the streets between new rival Mafiosi scared off tourism. The
Bolshoi Ballet began to starve. The Moscow Circus was reduced; forced
endlessly to tour.
America was pleased with all this. For Yeltsin, the former Communist
apparatchik, was anti-Communist now - flagrantly capitalist, in fact - so
had to be sustained.
When his legally constituted Parliament defied him, he besieged it with
machineguns and mortars, burnt it down, killed more than 100 of its duly
elected members.
Though Russia's highest court declared his actions illegal, he was applauded
as a muscular reformist, and the duly elected corpses in the burnt
Parliament were branded "hard-liners".
They weren't; they were Gorbachevites. They wanted slower rates of
transition, and they were right; and they were dead.
Gorbachev stood against Yeltsin in the next presidential elections, but
Boris, in charge of the airwaves, made sure Gorbachev's face was never seen.
Like any Third World dictator, like any Marcos or Suharto, this apostle of
democratic freedom called the tune.
He broke up the Soviet Union because it suited him to be head of Russia,
deranging forever the economies of Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Georgia,
Azerbaijan and so on.
When, however, Chechnya chose to leave Russia - much like East Timor leaving
Indonesia - he answered with fire and vengeance, rocket bombings, aerial
strikes, street-by-street fighting, killing tens of thousands.
No one wants to invest in Russia any more. Why would they? Many of its
employees haven't been paid for three years and might prove a fractious
workforce. Not paid for three years? Think about that.
He sacked three cabinets with imperial petulance and also a procession of
his prime ministers, abruptly, overnight.
He survived crippling heart attacks and massive alcoholic binges, made an
international fool of himself and refused to resign - having devised a
constitution that meant he couldn't be voted out.
His present ploy is to get his man up as his successor in the next elections
and so ensure - like Nixon - that he does not go to jail.
What a catastrophe this man has been. Not an unusual kind of Russian, of
course. Provincial officials for centuries have been like this - capricious,
drunk, self-serving, corrupt, impulsive, terminally ill and mad. The tragedy
is he ran a continent, and ran it into ruin.
His legacy is absolutely predictable. His successor, appalled at the debts
he has run up, will repudiate them, and pull out of the world economy, and
smaller nations will follow - in Africa, in South America.
There will be depressions, revolutions, and poverty everywhere. And plagues,
and civil wars, and runs on currency, and pogroms. He has not done as much
wilful harm as Stalin, but the harm is great.
Worst of all, he has turned a brave, romantic, patriotic and brilliant
people into a den of squabbling thieves. He has badly bruised if not
mortally wounded one of the great artistic and literary cultures with
spontaneous vulgarities and cruelties worthy of Idi Amin.
He has wrecked that great unwreckable - Russian pride. May his latter days
go hard with him.
Bob Ellis is a writer and commentator. E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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