Democratic Governing

Democratic Governing

Two major events this week have highlighted the special skill that is required for democratic governing.

First, Mikhail Gorbachev died, and there has been a debate about his legacy. My view on his legacy is perhaps contrary to others. His most significant legacy is bringing democratic institutions to the Soviet Union and other post-Soviet states. The usual talk is that he ended the Cold War, but I think it more accurate to say that he offered peace at the end of the Cold War, and America decided to loot and pillage the Soviet Union through an undeclared Cold War. His greatest achievement was to commence the perestroika of the Soviet Union, to bring glasnost and a democratic constitution to the Soviet Union.

The paradox though was that Gorbachev introduced democratic government to the Soviet Union but was not a successful pratictioner of the art of democratic governing. His political skill was the closed door politics of committees, and the passionate discussion of possibilities with intellectuals. He was not good at democratic politics - and was undermined by the nationalist, populist and opportunist leaders of Ukraine, Russia, and Belorussia, and the faithless leaders of the Global American Empire who abused his gestures of peace.

In 1990 and 1991 Gorbachev's skills as a political leader - in a democracy, not a communist one-party state - slipped from his hands. He reported to colleagues and other national leaders that he was exhausted having lived "two lifetimes in four years". He changed, one observer said, from being "a 'gatherer' of interesting people and the sould of society into a lonely man" (William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times, 2017).

His speeches fell flat. He took too much comfort in chatter with foreign diplomats and domestic intellecturals. He despised and under-estimated Yelstin leading to the disastrous events, including the coup, the agreement between Russia Belorussia, and Ukraine, and the engineered collapse of the Soviet Union. This was the disastrous year of 1991 when Gorbachev’s vision of a democratic Soviet Union fell apart. He was committed to rebuilding the unified Soviet Union through a middle way between sclerotic socialism and predatory capitalism, and reunified with a “Common European Home,” even potentially a Federated Western and Eastern Europe. But he could not control the demons unleashed by democracy and Western interference. He had the vision, but not the skill of democratic governing.

Second, Joe Biden delivered the extraordinary speech that some have called the Red Sermon. Even the Whitehouse gave the speech the post-totalitarian title of “Remarks by President Biden on the Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation.” Another day I might discuss this speech at length. But for now, let us just mark the undemocratic temper of these remarks and their staging. At its heart this speech defined the opposition as an enemy within. It showed an inability to work with amity and comity. Democratic governing must assume that people can disagree on fundamentals but still work within one state. Jo Biden has failed this test by defining his opponents as enemies of the state.

Both events show the difficulty of democratic governing. They might prooke gloomy thoughts But thinking of democratic governing as a skill is an optimistic thought for me. Our troubles may not be systematic. They might be solved by leaders with different skills and more concilatory, less manipulative dispositions. But then again perhaps not, maybe we are a post-democratic society - a thought I have reflected on in the Burning Archive blog here.

Death and Life of Mikhail Gorbachev

Gorbachev's death was a notable event for those of us who lived through the end of communist Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet union and the apparent close of the Cold War. Regrettably much of the mainstream media coverage has been trivial to the point of insulting. One Sky News Australia segment featured Gorbachev’s appearance in a PizzaHut advertisementand a clip from some concert from some band, and a few banal words such as “he was so different to Putin.”

There is clearly an attempt by Western media to portray Gorbachev as the pro-Western Russian leader who was betrayed by the anti-democratic Putin. An example of such an effort to enlist Gorbachev in the West's policies towards Russia is Robert Horvath’s dreadful piece in The Conversation website. Horvath writes:

Putin may have levelled Russia’s democratic institutions and pulverised its civic landscape, but he has been unable to extirpate one thing: the memory of the democratic experiment that Gorbachev set in motion.

But it was not that simple.

In particular people should remember how hard he fought to retain the Soviet Union in a new more social democratic incarnation of glasnost and perestroika. He organised a referendum that got a large majority support, but the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and Belorussia, against the wishes of their own people arranged a nationalist, extreme liberal revolt, cheered on and no doubt covertly supported by the Anglo-American intelligence bloc. The West failed to offer Gorbachev practical support to rebuild USSR - they were already planning the break-up and the pillage. Yeltsin then unleashed economic shock therapy, kleptocracy and social breakdown on Russia. And his democratic credentials did not last long. By 1993 he was deeply unpopular and when the Russia Duma protested against his disastrous policies he sent tanks to shoot at the Duma.

In his memoir, Gorbachev writes:

The assault on Parliament was a turning-point in the evolution of the regime created in Russia after the disintegration of the USSR, starting a slide towards authoritarianism under the cover of the Constitution, which practically granted Yeltsin licence to act without any controls, indeed arbitrarily. I was therefore amazed that Western Governments justified and even approved of this barbaric action, contradicting all democratic and humanitarian actions. (p. 885)

Yeltsin though was backed by the West who then interfered in the 1996 election to secure his return to power. More than anything it is Putin's self-strengthening and his turn to Eurasia that the West cannot forgive, that and the shrewdness he had that Gorbachev did not.

I will write a longer piece on Gorbachev on the Burning Archive that explores the idea that Putin is perhaps the true successor of perstroika and glasnost. He has mastered a skill of Russian democratic governing that neither Gorbachev nor Yeltsin had.

Book recommendation

I responded to news of Gorbachev’s death by reading parts of his memoir that I had never really finished way back in the late 1990s, and also reading parts of William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times (2017).

In his 1995 Memoirs, Gorbachev wrote about how Yeltsin betrayed his democratic reforms by turning tanks on the Duma in December 1993, and how by backing Yeltsin Clinton and the West betrayed all Gorbachev tried to do. He wrote:

The assault on Parliament was a turning-point in the evolution of the regime created in Russia after the disintegration of the USSR, starting a slide towards authoritarianism .under the cover of the Constitution, which practically granted Yeltsin licence to act without any controls, indeed arbitrarily.

And then, the punchline:

I was therefore amazed that Western Governments justified and even approved of this barbaric action, contradicting all democratic and humanitarian actions." Gorbachev, Memoirs (1995), p. 885.

Do not be amazed. Do not be fooled by the ignorant west-washing of Gorbachev by Western leaders today. Read his memoirs, and acquaint yourself with the disaster the West wrought in Russia and many post-Soviet states during the 1990s.

Podcast/Video Recommendation

To that end I would highly recommend to readers of The Art of Governing The Russians with Attitude Podcast. They have done episodes on Russia in the 1990s, many episodes on Ukraine, and a special series on Putin. If you want to understand one of the crucial poles of the multipolar world, subscribe to this great podcast. RWA on Russia in the 1990s/Putin

Page from History - Moscow 4 Ocober 1993

Let us remember - only a month ahead of the 29th anniversary - how the West's first post-Soviet kleptocrat - Boris Yeltsin - shelled the Russian Duma (its Parliament) on 4 October 1993.

You can read two accounts. The first detailed and critical here at George Washington University’s National Security Archive, “Yeltsin Shelled Russian Parliament 25 Years Ago, U.S. Praised “Superb Handling” (National Security Archive, gwu.edu).

U.S. backing remained constant after the disastrous election results in which Yeltsin’s party received only 15 percent of the vote and the Constitution barely passed the referendum.  The system that emerged was essentially super-presidential, which did not worry most senior U.S. officials as long as a true democrat, in their view, held the post of president.

The second is a Radio Fee Europe - NATO proganda video - with many common elisions and excuses that we still hear today - “25 Years Ago: The Day The Russian White House Was Shelled - YouTube.”

Gift of Literature - Shvarts, Fox

The Russian poet, Elena Shvarts survived the Soviet Union to witness the crumbling of her society amidst her new freedoms. Her poem, The Freeing of the Fox” may have been a fable of Russia learning to live in democratic freedom. You can read it in full in Birdsong on the Seabed (2008 trans Sasha Dugdale

She describes a fox caught and wounded in a trap. Despite being left three-legged fox “runs towards the shining summit… now a seething one-legged teenager/Now once more a beast in pain.”

There, at the summit, and waiting, her freedom
Heavenly Petersburg,
Familiar faces.
Fox runs, staining the clean snow
Howling gently
At the icy heavens.

Elena Shvarts “The Freeing of the Fox”, Birdsong on the Seabed (2008), p. 153

What’s Happening in my Writing World

This week I have made good progress with the final edit of From the Burning Archive. I think publication is 4-6 weeks away.

I have also been developing a writing course that I plan to offer online. If you have ideas for things you would like help for a writing course specifically geared to the thinking person in government. Comment below.

Don’t forget to listen to The Burning Archive podcast and to subsribe to Substack

Image Credit: Gorbachev shaking hands with Putin (October 2001) By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5319591