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Pipes' basic assumption is that over the course of Russian history, a unique, distinctly non-Western form of society has emerged in this country with a singular political culture that has changed little over time and now poses an obstacle to democratization.
In applying this theory to recent events, Pipes relies on the results of opinion polls that reveal the lack of confidence that a majority of Russians have in democratic mechanisms and in the political system. Pipes does not identify the polls that he refers to, but judging by the results that he refers to, I assume that he is using data collected in 2003 and 2004 by the polling agencies VTsIOM-A, Romir Monitoring and the Public Opinion Foundation. Pipes neglects to mention, however, that these recent poll results differ markedly from data collected by the same polling agencies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, on the basis of which many Western researchers concluded that most Russians' views differed little from those of other Europeans.
Russians' opinions about democracy and Western values have soured as economic and political reforms that were presented as part of the process of building democracy and a market economy gradually resulted in economic collapse and the impoverishment of much of the population. The current "anti-democratic" mood in the country should therefore not be regarded as the consequence of centuries of Russian history, which by the end of the Soviet period had resulted in the widespread embrace of Western values, but rather as a reaction to the experience of the last decade.
The poll results cited by Pipes bear this out. Consider three representative statements from his article:
?€? "Altogether Russians feel they have no influence over government, whether national or local."
?€? "Russians hold the judiciary system in contempt, believing that the courts are thoroughly corrupt. They refer to court proceedings as auctions in which the highest bidder wins out."
?€? "Nor are Russians more positive about capitalism. Eighty-four percent of respondents in a poll published in January asserted that in their country wealth could be acquired only by illegal means, mainly by exploiting the right connections. ... They prefer financial security to wealth: 6 percent are prepared to accept the risks attendant on private enterprise, whereas 60 percent would opt for a small but assured income."
All of which begs the question: What does ancient history have to do with any of this? Each of these points is little more than a not entirely adequate reflection of contemporary Russian life. They testify simply to the realistic attitudes of average Russians.
Russians' opinions of democratic institutions today are also more nuanced than Pipes allows. Leaving aside the term "democracy" itself, which has been tarnished by the policies conducted in its name, recent polls indicate that many democratic institutions and values remain popular.
According to a nationwide poll conducted by VTsIOM-A in July and August 2003, 49 percent of Russians believed that freedom of speech and the press does more good than harm, while 33 percent held the opposite view. Respondents came out in favor of free enterprise (63 percent to 19), the freedom to travel abroad (61 percent to 18), the right to strike (41 percent to 24) and closer ties with the West (55 percent to 22). Skeptics outweighed the optimists (40 percent to 29) only on the issue of multiparty elections, a result that most likely owes to the fact that Russia does not yet have a fully functioning multiparty political system.
"When asked to list the greatest men in history they rank them, in this order, Peter I, Lenin and Stalin, who have in common that they enhanced Russia's place in the world," Pipes writes. But are Russians really any different in this regard than the citizens of any major power, such as the Americans, for example? Americans regard Andrew Jackson, who subjugated (some would say destroyed) the native population of the United States, as a great president, after all. They hold Theodore Roosevelt (who aggressively pursued an imperialist foreign policy), John F. Kennedy (who started the senseless war in Vietnam) and Ronald Reagan (who ordered the invasion of the sovereign state of Grenada) in the same high esteem. And Americans' strong initial support of George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq hardly speaks to a belief that their country must be law-abiding at all times.
Whatever you think of a nation's striving for "great-power status," to use Pipes' term, such striving does not necessarily exclude the existence of democracy, as Pipes implies. The history of the United States is a case in point. And it was the liberal Provisional Government that sought to implement some of the most imperialist policies in Russian history. Russia's deep respect for past leaders who sought to achieve "great-power status" is also expressed by today's Communist Party leaders in their silence about the repressions carried out by Stalin, whose portrait still hangs in many of their offices.
Toward the end of his op-ed, Pipes serves up his thinking about Russian history in a nutshell. His claims are so general as to be practically meaningless. But a number of obvious inaccuracies and strained interpretations can be found even in such broad remarks. "Throughout the 700 years of its existence as an organized state, Russia has had to administer too vast a territory with too limited resources to indulge in democracy, such as is possible in small and wealthy countries. It relied on the police and bureaucracy," Pipes writes.
Democracy obviously exists not only in small and wealthy countries, but in the large and poor, such as India. Moreover, the Russian state has not "relied on the police and bureaucracy" throughout the 700 (why 700, by the way?) years of its history. A rudimentary bureaucracy appeared in Russia only in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and did not acquire real power until much later. For much of its history Russia lagged well behind most European countries, notably France, in the number and power of its bureaucrats. What could properly be called "the police" appeared in Russia even later, following the reforms of Peter the Great.
"The population at large, alienated from the state, which extracted manpower and taxes but gave nothing in return, relied mainly on its own resources. It became exceedingly privatized, lacking in the sense of social and political belonging," Pipes maintains. Yet scholars of ancient Russian literature long ago proved that the sense of belonging to a unified state existed in Kievan Rus. The assertion that such a sense of belonging was absent at an even later period simply has no basis in historical fact.
The conclusion to Pipes' article contains an internal contradiction. "The Communist regime, during its 70-year reign, reinforced these traditional attitudes," Pipes writes. "If Russia is given several decades of peace and stability, it may well develop different attitudes." But if 70 years of Communist rule merely strengthened "traditional" anti-democratic attitudes, why would a couple of decades of Putin-style authoritarianism produce the opposite result? Then again, members of the far right in the United States might not notice this contradiction. They value stability in Russia for geopolitical reasons.
On the whole, specialists on Russia both here and abroad would do well to avoid sweeping generalizations about history and the current situation until they have made a thorough study of the facts. Without such careful preparation, their conclusions contain little of merit.
Alexander Lukin, an independent political analyst, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.
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