Lively Read Asks, Does Not Answer

In August 1991, Russia's democratic leadership faced down an attempt to throw the country back in time and won a free hand to recreate the country in the image they saw fit.


By mid-1994, Russia's leaders had split and fought a conflict that was far bloodier than 1991 had been. While the country was free of the repression associated with the Soviet era, its citizens were now even more terrorized by crime, more vulnerable to corrupt government, and had even fewer guarantees that any improvements in their lives were permanent.


The grand task that will face the next bright generation of Russian historians will be to explain how and why Russia went the way it did.


This is the objective John Kampfner sets for himself in the preface of "Inside Yeltsin's Russia," set for release this month, when he promises to answer the following: "How did it all go wrong? Could it have been any different? Was the revolution destined to be hijacked? Was there a revolution at all? Does Russia now have the worst of both worlds?"


Actually, Kampfner's book does not attempt to answer these questions. Skip the preface, then, and enjoy this book for what it is -- a readable, faithful and often very entertaining account of what happened, infused with the insights, anecdotes and attention to detail of a shrewd observer who heard and saw much during two postings as a correspondent in Moscow, the latest one from 1991 until the beginning of 1994 with The Daily Telegraph.


The reason Kampfner falls short of his stated task is because it would require more historical detachment than the author is willing or able to invest in his subject. The problem is not with his descriptions of what he sees. Those are on the mark -- take, for example, Kampfner's Russia, mid-1994:


"Three years after the collapse of the old, Russia was an unloving and unlovable place. There was a meanness about the streets, a sense of ever-present danger. Old habits, such as visiting friend's houses in the evenings, became more difficult ... It was too expensive, and guests would want to leave early for fear of the journey home. Prices for most goods outstripped those in the West."


The problem is that in his interpretation of what this means, Kampfner hints that today's Russia of mafia bosses, frightened, aloof people, and increasingly irrelevant political leaders is only a mid-point in the development to something better. The mob will hopefully see that its profits are "ploughed back into the country from their Swiss bank accounts." Boris Yeltsin's on-again, off-again rule will be seen as the glue that held the country together during this precarious initial stage.


Why not wait a few years before deciding whether this was the first part of something better or the initial turn down the road to something worse? Kampfner suggests he does not know better than any of us do when he waves away his questions in the preface with one sentence: "What is needed now is a sense of civic responsibility, compassion and moderation."


When has Russia ever had that? And when has the nation not needed it?


Within Kampfner's attempt to get at the reasons for Russia's evolution is a largely successful account of the political and social developments between 1991 and 1994, told in both accurate recountings of the main events and allegorical episodes.


If you did not witness Russia's recent upheavals firsthand, it is all here and worth reading to get a sense of what it was like at the Congress when deputies tried to check Yeltsin's breath for alcohol, or to feel the mood inside the White House last Oct. 3 when the rebels thought they had won.


If you witnessed the period described in Kampfner's book, you will find the allegories more interesting. In the beginning of the book, Kampfner traces Dmitry Yakubovsky's climb from a self-serving adventurer who forges connections with the Soviet military brass to a man who could bring down either the Kremlin leadership or its enemies, and is hunted for his knowledge.


At the end, Kampfner describes a similar rise to the very threshold of Yeltsin's Kremlin court by doomed mobster Otar Kvantrishvili, whose fate the author subtly contrasts to that of arms inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov. Kvantrishvili represented everything the new Russia had become -- self-promoting, dangerous, amoral, fatal.


Kalashnikov was everything Russia had been -- "a microcosm of the tragedy of Soviet industry," Kampfner writes. "For all his inventions, for all his patriotism, he had little to show for his decades of toil."


Old, tired, disdainful of politicians and power, Kalashnikov is shown haplessly adapting to the new realities forced on him, urging defense industry bigwigs to face the challenges of selling their wares in the post-Cold War world and sounding like a brush salesman in the process: "We've got to get out there and sell the stuff."





"Inside Yeltsin's Russia" by John Kampfner, Cassell, London, 234 pages, ?17.99.