History itself, it would seem, has put the expression "Russian democracy" in quotation marks. The phenomenon which we have labelled with this term, simply for lack of any other, has long had little in common with real democracy. The authoritarian regime legitimized by the 1993 Constitution can in no way be considered an embodiment of democracy.


And it is precisely those political forces in Russia that we call "democratic" that are most responsible for the way that regime has evolved. They were the ones who came up with, and propagandized the idea that authoritarianism was the best way to move Russia toward market reform and a democratic society. Thanks to the splits within their ranks and their own self-serving attitudes, no real democratic alternative either to authoritarianism or to a possible nationalist/communist revival could form.


As long as Yegor Gaidar, Boris Fyodorov and others of the "democratic" school were in power themselves, they weren't much concerned about the growing authoritarianism of the regime. They only began to see clearly after they had been edged out of the corridors of power. Chechnya has produced a sharp division between the pseudo-democratic government and its pseudo-democratic supporters in society. And the illusory nature of Russian democracy has finally become absolutely clear.


Both the government and politicians of all stripes have seen the events in Chechnya as the beginning of the upcoming parliamentary and presidential election campaigns. President Boris Yeltsin and his entourage were counting on a quick victory to revive the president's chronically falling popularity ratings. The democrats have been using the criticism of the unpopular war both to distance themselves from the government and, simultaneously, to exert pressure on their competitors in the power ministries. For the government and for the opposition -- both the democratic and the communist opposition -- political considerations have taken precedence over the interests of the state.


We must proceed from the acknowledgment that Chechnya had truly become a problem that the government had to resolve. It had become both onerous and dangerous to continue allowing this independent pirate republic to exist on the territory of the Russian Federation. The situation had undermined Russia's strategic interests in the trans-Caucasus region and had eroded the government's authority in its own North Caucasus territories.


Dzhokhar Dudayev's regime, having destroyed the republic's economy and done nothing to establish anything resembling law and order, had assembled considerable military potential, the effects of which had begun to be felt beyond Chechnya's borders in Abkhazia, Ingushetia and elsewhere. Dudayev considered Chechnya the center of a North Caucasus community of mountain peoples.


In terms of the way a solution was decided upon and the way that it was carried out, the government conducted itself in a purely authoritarian manner -- in complete accord with its basic nature. However, the behavior of the democratic critics also clearly revealed their true nature: a tiny group of intellectuals divided by the ambitions of its leaders, thirsting to return to power, without any set ideals or logical strategy and with a catastrophic lack of concern and responsibility for the fate of the nation.


Having decided to tangle with the authorities over Chechnya, the democratic movement acted exactly like the Bolsheviks during World War I. The lack of constructive alternatives to official policy and the limiting position of "peace at any cost" meant that the democrats were deeply interested in the military defeat of their own country.


In their haste to express justified disgust over the barbaric bombing of Grozny, critics somehow completely forgot about the more than 200,000 refugees who were forced to flee Chechnya since Dudayev took power. Opposition calls for negotiations with Dudayev both in the wake of the early setbacks suffered by the Russian Army and, later, after the army began to regroup can only be explained by an attitude fundamentally hostile to Russia's interests.


Russia is not strong enough to allow itself to appear weak in the Caucasus and particularly in Chechnya. The conflicts in Nagorny Karabakh, Southern Osetia and Abkhazia show that strength is the only way to settle these problems. Likewise, the crisis in Yugoslavia has shown beyond a doubt that force can only be countered by force. When one tries to answer force with negotiations -- especially from a position of weakness -- force wins every time. The government's actions in Chechnya, for all their monstrous cruelty, do much more for the country's interests than the knee-jerk pacifism of its opponents. This itself, it seems to me, disqualifies all of them for future leadership positions.


Nonetheless, despite the political, professional and even moral bankruptcy of the democratic opposition, they have still not managed to completely squander the truly democratic potential of Russian society. The pacifist mood of the majority of Russians is a mistake that stems from the fact that they do not understand the seriousness of the threat to Russia's territorial integrity. However, that mood does indicate that those in or near power who advocate even more aggressive policies cannot count on broad support. The army has shown great reluctance to get involved in domestic political matters and, it would seem, is even less likely to take on an independent political role. Likewise, the press -- despite its one-sided coverage of the crisis -- has demonstrated that it is capable of standing up to government attempts to control it.


Unfortunately, our pseudo democrats are incapable of constructively harnessing that democratic potential in the next elections. Chechnya is only one of many pitfalls on the difficult road to Russian democracy (without quotation marks).





Pavel Kandel is an expert at the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Europe. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.