Chechnya: Yeltsin's Fall From Grace

Things have come to a pretty pass when the only politicians prepared to express unstinting support for the president's Chechnya policy are Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and Alexander Barkashov, who heads the avowedly racist Movement for Russian National Unity.


For more than three years, supporters of the reform process in Russia have pegged its success to the political survival of Boris Yeltsin. Throughout this period, the greatest threat to democracy in Russia appeared to come from hardline nationalists and communists capitalizing on widespread popular discontent with the country's economic woes. Liberal politicians were not always happy with Yeltsin, frequently criticizing his tendency to take shortcuts through the democratic process, to ignore his legislature and bypass the constitution. Nonetheless, he was perceived to be on the side of the angels.


Consequently, when Yeltsin finally lost patience with his rebellious parliament and sent tanks to shell the White House in October 1993, the reformers stayed behind him. Uncomfortable as they were with the notion of using force to crush a legitimate institution, they regarded it as preferable to stopping the reform process.


This year, too, there have been alarm bells. The replacement of radical reformers such as Yegor Gaidar and Boris Fyodorov from the government to make way for figures adjudged more acceptable to the hardliners appeared initially to be a setback. But, as the Russia's Choice faction itself forlornly acknowledged, while the faces changed, the policies stayed more or less the same.


There was more serious concern, however, over Yeltsin's June 14 decree on crime, increasing police powers to search, arrest and detain without charge. But the outcry over the human rights abuses that this decree invited was tempered by a general acceptance that something had to be done about the rising tide of crime.


Perhaps the first clear indication that something was seriously amiss was given at the end of September by the president's own chief spokesman, Vyacheslav Kostikov, who said a struggle was going on over Yeltsin's commitment to democracy.


Now Kostikov is gone, exiled to the Vatican; Russian planes are bombing Chechnya; and Yeltsin's democratic supporters have deserted him in droves. Gaidar formally withdrew his support Wednesday, while some members of his faction have openly called for the president's impeachment. The complexities of the impeachment procedure are such that, even if the process were started, it is highly unlikely that Yeltsin would succumb. It is not Yeltsin's survival that is now in jeopardy, but that of reform and democracy in Russia.