HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

This is the general background picture. So what about Russia? How does all this reflect on the country’s prospects? As always, Russia is also taken up by this trend, but here it’s rather more confused, because where the left and the right align there’s not so much a dislike of immigrants as there is, firstly, a nostalgia for socialism, that’s confused with the idea of a welfare state; and secondly, some real remnants of socialism, that are burnt into the class nature of Russian society.

Society holds that the USSR represented a country in which there was no inequality. This is so; but also, not so. If you look at the overall figures, then they show that the difference between an ordinary worker and a member of the Politburo wasn’t so great, particularly if you compare it to today’s situation. But in relative terms, the differences in the strata of Soviet society were enormous and constantly grew. For ideological reasons, this growth was hidden by a lack of conspicuous consumption or publicity, and wasn’t apparent right up until the last moment. But when Communism died, the situation got out of hand, and Russia looked like a country with one of the highest levels of inequality. But it’s wrong to say that inequality arose in the ’nineties. Because it was handled badly, the issue of inequality came into the open only in the ’nineties and destroyed the truce that then existed in society.

In the twenty-first century, Russia has been shown to be a country with one of the highest inequality indices in the world (similar to the USA). The gap in earnings and the standard of living of the different strata of society became even more unacceptable when compared to the long-established Soviet habit where people thought of themselves as equal – outwardly, at least. This meant that at the start of the century it was virtually impossible for right-wing ideas to be promoted in any democratic way in Russia. Against the background of the increasingly sharp stratification of society and with nostalgia for the Soviet past clearly growing, any idea that justified the further stratification of society directly or indirectly would simply have been rejected.

People were presented with a difficult choice: accept either the ideas of the right, under which banner the post-Soviet economic reforms were carried out, including the return of the right to private property; or go for the introduction of democracy, which was the purpose of the political reforms. At that particular moment of Russia’s historical development, the ideas of the right and democracy couldn’t be linked together.

It was at that point, finding ourselves in a position where we could re-think many of the old stereotypes, and unexpectedly realising that we were able to look at things from a different point of view, that I suggested to the reformers and the democrats – basically, all those who were ready to look to the future rather than the past, and who could see Russia as a contemporary, modernised state – to make an unambiguous choice in favour of democracy, and to change the banner. My point was that society would no longer accept the ideas of the right (even though the idea hadn’t been discredited in Russia, and the work that was worth doing under this banner was far from completed), and that this had led me to call for “the turn to the left”.

In proposing to make this significant change of direction, I did not, however, become a supporter of Communist or left-wing ideas. I had in mind something different. I understood that the stratification of society had reached dangerous levels, which wouldn’t be considered acceptable. In a country like Russia, adhering to purely libertarian views when carrying out reforms was seen as utopian. The government could no longer be simply a bystander, and would have to take economic and political measures to try to level out the emerging social imbalance. This meant eventually that we would have to part from the dream of seeing “the small state” in Russia, and would have to learn how to govern and control a normal state in a normal way.

Unfortunately, many of those to whom I addressed my plea didn’t listen. Then, for reasons beyond my control, I was unable to participate actively in this discussion, and could merely observe from the sidelines. The backbone of the forces that were resisting the creeping authoritarianism and neo-totalitarianism refused to compromise with the regime. They were brave, sometimes desperate, people, who continued the ideological and political struggle for human rights, against despotism and in favour of democratic values. These people held onto their right-wing, even libertarian, positions, speaking out for the free market, the advantages of capitalism, and the joys of the “small state”. Maybe this was justified, but in that situation it was hardly appropriate or practical.