Russia on the Edge: The U.S. Interest : West would clearly suffer if march to democracy is halted

The power struggle in Russia between President Boris N. Yeltsin and the Parliament is now in its decisive phase. President Clinton and other Western leaders, even as they have hastened to express their support for continuing the political and economic reforms that they believe Yeltsin exemplifies, are finding they can do little to concretely influence the course of the confrontation. Yeltsin will either survive this showdown and emerge the stronger for it or his political career will come crashing to an end. In the latter event new and proper doubts and alarms will be raised over Russia’s relations with the world outside.

Yeltin, refusing to bow to the legislature’s efforts to strip him of most of his authority, has defiantly proclaimed that he will govern by “special rule” until his claim to popular support and his determination to put Russia under a new constitution are voted on in a referendum he has called for April 25. The Constitutional Court, Russia’s highest legal body, is expected to find Yeltsin’s assertions of special powers illegal. That would clear the way for an impeachment vote by the Congress of People’s Deputies, whose 1,033 members were chosen three years ago, when the Communist Party still presided over an intact Soviet Union. But after impeachment, what? The Parliament might well find that it can’t enforce its will, nor Yeltsin his, in the absence of open support from the armed forces. For now the military and security services say they won’t mix in politics. But continued governmental paralysis could change that.

The presidential-parliamentary conflict is one of intense legal murkiness. Yeltsin, the country’s only democratically elected leader, is invoking powers he does not possess. A Parliament in which old Communist apparatchiks, industrial managers and others with a vested interest in slowing or sabotaging reforms are heavily represented is a Parliament with only the most modest connection to democratic legitimacy. The national vote that Yeltsin wants a little more than a month from now would seem to provide the surest test of the popular will. But that vote would be a gamble. Many voters, fed up with endless political bickering and falling living standards, could shun the polling places. Many others, non-Russian inhabitants of that large number of increasingly separatist-minded autonomous republics, regions and areas that make up the vast Russian Federation, have their own reasons for feeling divorced from the Moscow power struggle. So a referendum as a true test of democratic opinion could turn out to be considerably less than Yeltsin hopes for.

Russia’s move to free markets and democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Monday, is the “greatest strategic challenge of our time.” For America and the world, “the stakes are monumental.” They are indeed, and not just in the foreign-policy arena. A newly hostile Russia could stymie any chance the United States has to reduce the deficit by cutting back on military spending. For when all is said and done, Russia--still the repository for tens of thousands of nuclear weapons--may yet come under the control of those who mourn the contraction of the Soviet empire and scorn closer ties with the West. Yeltsin may not be the only alternative to such regression. But for now he is the foremost exemplar of the reforms the reactionary forces want to derail, and for that alone he merits continued U.S. and Western support.