In more than three years covering Russian politics some of my strongest impressions have been of the things that did not happen as much as those that did.
Just over three years ago, in my sixth week in Moscow, I happened to be in the crowd outside the television center at Ostankino on Oct. 3 that was fired upon. That cannonade came, as it turned out, from a few dozen frightened spetznaz troops who had been left to defend the television center on their own. When most of the crowd had fled, it was up to these troops to defend the building for at least five hours until the first pro-government armored personnel carriers arrived on the scene.
What was striking was how few attackers there were. The inaccurately named "parliamentary revolt" that was written about later was in fact the work of a handful of people equipped with a few grenades.
Things would have been quite different if there had been genuine popular support for the dissolved Supreme Soviet and a crowd of thousands had converged on Ostankino. In that case I doubt if the soldiers inside would have withstood the attack, and the television station would have fallen to the attackers. Boris Yeltsin would have been faced with a much more serious situation.
A year and two months later I was no longer surprised, but I was depressed by the lack of public reaction to the beginning of the war in Chechnya. Many people were horrified watching Russia's first television war in the safety of their homes.
But again the number of people who actually came out on to the streets and demonstrated was extremely low, not enough, in fact, to fill Pushkin Square. Covering three election campaigns I got used to the cynicism of a large group of voters who said "Why vote?" or "They're all scoundrels," and I could sympathize with them.
I have also tried to give advice to refugees from the Chechen war trying to breach the implacable wall of Russian bureaucracy to get a little relief and seen how the contempt with which the authorities treat their most defenseless citizens.
All this speaks of the wide gulf that still exists in Russia between the rulers and the ruled. As the old saying goes "God is high up, and the tsar is far away."
The popular movements of 1991 seem to have been a fleeting exception to the bigger processes of Russian history.
You could say this apathy and distrust of politicians has its good side because it has helped give Russia a certain stability. Another thing that has not happened in the last three years is a much-predicted "social explosion."
The economic situation for the mass of the population outside Moscow is not much better, and millions of people are not getting their pensions and salaries on time, but there have been no bread riots. Very probably people are afraid of a "time of troubles" when popular uprising leads only to chaos.
Above all there has not been the "civil war" that gloomy members of the Russian intelligentsia have been predicting since about 1989. That bloody showdown in 1993 was proof that there is no appetite either in the army or the mainstream opposition for fighting on the streets. The war in Chechnya, horrific as it has been, is something else, a colonial conflict coming on the coat-tails of the collapse of empire.
But there is no need to point out that the gap of trust carries a lot of dangers. Two of the most powerful politicians in the country, who are regarded in the West as "guarantors of democracy," Viktor Chernomyrdin and Anatoly Chubais, are unelected.
There are still no political parties as such in Russia and no local assemblies with more than a couple of years' experience behind them. And the most popular man in Russian politics at the moment, Alexander Lebed, is a completely unknown quantity who could come to power without ordinary people knowing the slightest bit of information about his policies.
Russia in the fall of 1996 is more stable than it was in the fall of 1993. But the kind of civil society that is forming in post-communist eastern Europe is still a long way off. As at the end of Pushkin's "Boris Godunov," the people are still silent, and that silence is a very troubling one.
This is Thomas de Waal's last column for The Moscow Times.
Just over three years ago, in my sixth week in Moscow, I happened to be in the crowd outside the television center at Ostankino on Oct. 3 that was fired upon. That cannonade came, as it turned out, from a few dozen frightened spetznaz troops who had been left to defend the television center on their own. When most of the crowd had fled, it was up to these troops to defend the building for at least five hours until the first pro-government armored personnel carriers arrived on the scene.
What was striking was how few attackers there were. The inaccurately named "parliamentary revolt" that was written about later was in fact the work of a handful of people equipped with a few grenades.
Things would have been quite different if there had been genuine popular support for the dissolved Supreme Soviet and a crowd of thousands had converged on Ostankino. In that case I doubt if the soldiers inside would have withstood the attack, and the television station would have fallen to the attackers. Boris Yeltsin would have been faced with a much more serious situation.
A year and two months later I was no longer surprised, but I was depressed by the lack of public reaction to the beginning of the war in Chechnya. Many people were horrified watching Russia's first television war in the safety of their homes.
But again the number of people who actually came out on to the streets and demonstrated was extremely low, not enough, in fact, to fill Pushkin Square. Covering three election campaigns I got used to the cynicism of a large group of voters who said "Why vote?" or "They're all scoundrels," and I could sympathize with them.
I have also tried to give advice to refugees from the Chechen war trying to breach the implacable wall of Russian bureaucracy to get a little relief and seen how the contempt with which the authorities treat their most defenseless citizens.
All this speaks of the wide gulf that still exists in Russia between the rulers and the ruled. As the old saying goes "God is high up, and the tsar is far away."
The popular movements of 1991 seem to have been a fleeting exception to the bigger processes of Russian history.
You could say this apathy and distrust of politicians has its good side because it has helped give Russia a certain stability. Another thing that has not happened in the last three years is a much-predicted "social explosion."
The economic situation for the mass of the population outside Moscow is not much better, and millions of people are not getting their pensions and salaries on time, but there have been no bread riots. Very probably people are afraid of a "time of troubles" when popular uprising leads only to chaos.
Above all there has not been the "civil war" that gloomy members of the Russian intelligentsia have been predicting since about 1989. That bloody showdown in 1993 was proof that there is no appetite either in the army or the mainstream opposition for fighting on the streets. The war in Chechnya, horrific as it has been, is something else, a colonial conflict coming on the coat-tails of the collapse of empire.
But there is no need to point out that the gap of trust carries a lot of dangers. Two of the most powerful politicians in the country, who are regarded in the West as "guarantors of democracy," Viktor Chernomyrdin and Anatoly Chubais, are unelected.
There are still no political parties as such in Russia and no local assemblies with more than a couple of years' experience behind them. And the most popular man in Russian politics at the moment, Alexander Lebed, is a completely unknown quantity who could come to power without ordinary people knowing the slightest bit of information about his policies.
Russia in the fall of 1996 is more stable than it was in the fall of 1993. But the kind of civil society that is forming in post-communist eastern Europe is still a long way off. As at the end of Pushkin's "Boris Godunov," the people are still silent, and that silence is a very troubling one.
This is Thomas de Waal's last column for The Moscow Times.
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