When It All Went to Hell in Russia

~ Clarissa

And now let me tell you when Russians doomed their project of establishing democracy to failure. If you are not from the FSU, you don’t know this stuff. Nobody writes about this, there is no interesting analysis anywhere. Only the fortunate readers of Clarissa’s Blog have access to this information.

In 1996, a crucial election was taking place in Russia. Yeltsin was running for president but it was becoming increasingly obvious that he would lose. The majority of people in Russia hated capitalism, hated the new society, couldn’t adapt to the market economy, and wanted to go back to what they had before 1991.

Yeltsin’s opponent was the leader of Russia’s Communist Party. All of the progressives (called Democrats because they stood for democracy) in the country were terrified he would win and then take the country back to the Soviet model. The very existence of democracy was at stake. So what was there to do? Well, the answer seemed obvious: falsify the elections.

This was a very paradoxical situation: democracy had to be saved by trampling on the most basic principle of democracy. Everybody knew that this was wrong, but then it was for such a great cause!

“Just this once!” people said, argued, whispered, thought. “We will do it just once but after we repel the threat of a Communist rising to power we will forever and ever uphold the principles of democracy.”

The election was falsified, Yeltsin won. The falsification was very obvious, blatant, and public. But the purpose was achieved, democracy’s survival was guaranteed, and the people of Russia could from now on dedicate themselves to conducting honest and clean elections. Right?

Wrong.

There is a price to pay for everything. And a tiny act of cheating today – even for a very good cause – will bring major consequences in its stead that you will be dealing with for a long time to come.

Russia’s Democrats who falsified the elections back in 1996 didn’t manage to save democracy. Just the opposite. Yeltsin lost his legitimacy and his power and just a couple of years later was forced to step down and appoint as his successor an ugly little KGB agent whose name nobody in Russia even knew.

Today, of course, we all know this KGB agent. His falsified elections have become famous world over. But many people don’t know that the horrible mess Russia is now began with a single act of dishonesty committed for a very, very noble purpose.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Clarissa

13 thoughts on “When It All Went to Hell in Russia”

  4. I remember that and thought it was completely obvious that those elections were faked (and that Elcin’s “reisignation” was a very polite coup on the part of Putin).

    Whenever I mentioned either to people the reaction was roughly “Hey, Russians gonna Russian”.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Russian Democrats started discussing the issue of how they caused their own downfall back on 2011 when the Duma elections were so openly and blatantly faked. Today the things I wrote here are widely accepted.

      Back in 1996, not a single person – including me – was against falsifying the elections for a good cause.

      Like

      Reply

      1. I don’t remember my particular opinion on the utility of electoral fraud (Russia was mostly pretty far out of my concerns at that time). But the fact that it was rigged seemed extraordinarily obvious.

        In general, I tend to take the line that democracies get what they (on the whole) deserve. The main question for me would have been “how much damage could Zjuganov actually do?” All in all (in glorious hindsight) I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have been worse than Elcin/Putin and could have helped finally once and for all discredit communism (hopeless dreamer I am).

        I’m very sure I didn’t regard anything connected with Elcin to be “a good cause” since I always thought of him as a drunken, incompetent fraud.

        Like

        Reply

Leave a reply to Clarissa Cancel reply