Crossroads for Russia

The date to watch in Russia is Dec. 18. That’s when voters will choose the 450 members of the Duma, the lower house of parliament, a choice that could do much to shape their country’s future, including its relations with the West. With Boris N. Yeltsin’s presidency a shambles and the Duma dominated by the naysaying Communist Party and its allies, Russians growing ever more desperate for better lives appear ready for change. Election of a centrist Duma could foreshadow the outcome of next June’s presidential election, which will end the Yeltsin era.

The key figure in the new political equation is Yevgeny M. Primakov, who served eight months as prime minister before Yelt- sin fired him last spring, partly because he was becoming too popular, partly because his anticorruption efforts were reaching too close to Yeltsin’s inner circle. Primakov will head the new Fatherland-All Russia electoral alliance. He promises to increase the Duma’s powers while reducing those of the president, to enact stronger anticrime measures and to improve Russia’s notoriously inefficient tax system. In polls, no one stands higher in public confidence.

But however sweeping the political changes that might occur, Russia’s monumental economic woes will remain. The government reports that 51 million Russians--one-third of the population--live below the poverty line, on an income of less than $38 a month. Millions of pension-dependent elderly Russians subsist on no more than $18 a month.

Western efforts to ease Russia’s transition from communism to democracy and a market economy have too often been ineffective or ill considered. They have also been repeatedly frustrated by bureaucratic sabotage and the systematic looting of Russia’s resources by criminals and economic oligarchs. As loans and credits from the International Monetary Fund and other sources have trickled in through Russia’s front door, tens of billions of dollars have been spirited out the back. Moscow’s foreign debt, a staggering $150 billion, remains essentially uncollectable.

The Clinton administration’s Russia policy has been consistent, if uninspired. Pondering the alternatives, it has opted to stick with the erratic and ineffectual Yeltsin. There are some valid reasons for doing so. As Stephen Schwartz, the publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes, implementing strategic arms reduction agreements and financing the dismantling of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal remain essential U.S. interests. Yeltsin is cooperating in these efforts. Some who aspire to succeed him might not.

The West can’t pick Russia’s leaders; it can only hope Russians will have the sense to reject extremism. Margot Light of the London School of Economics and Political Science remarks that there is still room “for cautious optimism about Russia’s democratic prospects, just as long as Russians continue to defend their democracy, using only democratic means.” The December election will be another exercise in democratic practice. If it sets Russia on a strong and responsible centrist course, the future should look brighter.