Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

Golovin, in his midthirties, has an arrogance that sometimes borders on condescension, but his arguments are compelling. Five years ago he was a physicist at a research institute. With perestroika, he moved toward government service. He sketches out military, economic, and civil policy; his centrism reminds me more of Swedish socialism than of anything else. “You talk in your country about a stable government that represents the middle class,” he says. “We at Smena are the government of the middle class.”

I ask, “But is there really a Russian middle class? Do people in this country want compromise? Who are your constituents?”

“If we were in power, there would be a middle class, and they would want compromise. If we come to power, we’ll have support everywhere. And we’ll get rid of most of these ruinous economic reforms, to permit the reemergence of a middle class.”

I point out that within democratic systems this is not the usual sequence of events, that you are supposed to have support before you get elected.

“Well,” he says, “there is no freedom of the press in this country. The left-wing press is underwritten by our government; and so is the right-wing press, because fear of the right wing drives support to the left. We don’t get that kind of media play. It’s hard to do dramatic PR for a centrist position; it’s not eye-catching. The radicals, Communists, and fascists used to be in the same party, and they all have a Bolshevik mentality. We’re clean. We were never part of the Soviet bureaucracy. I’m frightened by the movement here toward a sort of Latin American situation, in which power comes from the mob and the government is beholden to illicit special interests.”

Then his expression softens. “This is a great civilization.” He gestures out the window. “We can interact in a civilized fashion. Why should people vote for us? Because we’re intelligent and honorable. Print my photo and my biography next to Yeltsin’s photo and his biography, and ask yourself who has led a good life, with a commitment to public service, and who is an old Communist, steeped in misguided ideology and corruption? We want to establish reasonable laws. In fifteen years, when I am president, Bolshevism, extremism, will be dead.”

Golovin is eloquent and moving, but he evinces a curious disdain for the realities of his own country. He seems not to understand that you cannot impose civility on an entire society. He talks a lot about pragmatism replacing ideology, but fails to recognize the essential ideological basis for his pragmatism, which was designed to create a pragmatic society where one does not now exist. “It will take a long time to de-ideologize this society,” he says, apparently unaware that a program to de-ideologize a society is finally very ideological.

With Golovin’s description of the “radicals” as “Bolsheviks” ringing in my ears, I go to see Aleksandr A. Kiselev, whose ardent belief in democracy is unaffected. But if Kiselev had been active thirty years ago, he would, unquestionably, have defended the cause of Communism with equal conviction; indeed, he was a big wheel in the Komsomol (the youth organization of the Communist Party) when he was an adolescent in Volgograd, and the Communist Party was still the Communist Party. When we meet, Kiselev is wearing a powder-blue suit that, eleven sizes larger, might have belonged to Brezhnev; he looks like “a typical bureaucrat.” He continually answers concrete questions by saying, “We must have democracy in order for the people to be strong” or “We must ask the people in what kind of state they wish to live and build accordingly.”

The Movement for Democratic Reform, which he leads, is the remains of the political machine that propelled Yeltsin into power, and it is as close to a political party as anything gets right now in Russia. Kiselev’s answers to my questions, especially after Golovin’s passionate clarity, feel inauthentic and banal. He batters me with statistics. I ask him whether the majority of the Russian people want democracy at all, of any kind, and he looks puzzled and plunges into the details of last week’s parliamentary debate. He has no impulse toward abstract thinking or large inquiries.

Kiselev is one of the advocates of a new constitution; in fact, a new constitution is really his movement’s raison d’être. “We will impose this democratic constitution on the Parliament and on the people,” says Kiselev. “And then Yeltsin will explain it to the people, and when they hear him explain it, they will understand that it is good.” I comment that this agenda does not accord with existing laws. “Well,” says Kiselev, “criticize Yeltsin for breaking the laws if you want, but in fact everyone breaks them. The current constitution is so bad that most people don’t bother with it.”