Democracy in Russia Remains a ‘Family’ Affair

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s resignation speech was filled with fine words, but “democracy” wasn’t one of them.

In fact, while he referred four times to the constitution and six times to national elections, Yeltsin made no mention Friday of what the constitution and elections are supposed to bring: participatory democracy in which the will of the people determines who rules.

The omission is telling because Western observers usually credit Yeltsin with bringing at least an elementary democracy to Russia during his eight years in power, listing it near the top of his achievements.

But in Yeltsin’s own words, what he accomplished as president was to create “a vital precedent for a civilized and voluntary transfer of power from one president of Russia to another, newly elected one.”

Which raises the question: Is this transfer of power, in addition to being voluntary and civilized, also “democratic”?

Yeltsin’s supporters would say yes. They point to Russia’s regular elections, to the fact that ballots have multiple candidates and that since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has built many of the institutions needed for democracy.

But Pavel I. Voshchanov, a former Yeltsin press secretary, points out that although Russia got a new president Friday, power hasn’t really changed hands.

Acting President Vladimir V. Putin was picked and groomed and promoted by the same set of Kremlin power brokers who have stood behind Yeltsin. Known popularly as “The Family,” they include Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, media tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky and Yeltsin chief of staff Alexander S. Voloshin. One of Putin’s first moves as acting president was to name Voloshin his own chief of staff.

“The Yeltsin epoch isn’t over yet,” Voshchanov said. “The people who are loyal to him are still in power. The Family is still in charge. And they have no intention of ceding the reins of power to anyone else.”

Some might even ask whether the Kremlin has, in fact, hijacked the democratic process.

Kremlin leaders would defend themselves on legal grounds. They stress, as Putin did in his first address to the nation, that Yeltsin has scrupulously followed the current constitution. In an interview with Echo Moscow radio, Constitutional Court Judge Nikolai Vedernikov went so far as to proclaim Yeltsin’s resignation and hand-over of power “legally pure.”

Certainly, Russia has the constitutional and electoral procedures needed for democracy. But when analysts evaluate their outcome, it becomes harder to call Russia’s political system a true democracy.

For one thing, constitutionality and democracy are not the same thing. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was also scrupulous about his constitution, and millions of Russians went to their graves or to near-death in Siberian labor camps with their paperwork meticulously listing which articles of the constitution they had violated.

Elections and democracy are also not the same thing. In Soviet times, Russians voted more regularly and with a far higher turnout than they do now.

In fact, while voters are expected to elect Putin president by an easy margin in March, the election is likely to be little more than a public endorsement of a succession worked out in private in the Kremlin. It’s a system political analyst Liliya F. Shevtsova calls an “elected monarchy.”

“There is no democracy in a situation when outgoing czar Boris Yeltsin appoints his heir and tells his people that he wants this person to rule the country in the future,” said Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. “The people do not really have a choice but to elect the protege of the ruling regime, the person who has unlimited access to all the resources of the state.”

Russia’s current presidential succession can appear eerily similar to those of the past. In medieval times, powerful lords called boyars were the power brokers behind the throne. In the imperial period, courtiers often played a decisive role, especially when the czar was enfeebled. And the Putin succession even echoes the Soviet system, when the Politburo picked the next Kremlin leader and had its choice rubber-stamped by the rank and file.

The fact that Yeltsin’s resignation came so abruptly on the heels of last month’s parliamentary elections can also seem undemocratic because it will limit Putin’s potential rivals. Other parties and movements have little time to muster their money and energy for a serious challenge to the Kremlin candidate.

“In a sense, such elections are very similar to those under Soviet rule--people are free to vote, but there are no alternate candidates,” Shevtsova added. “Everything that has happened in Russia in the last two days has demonstrated the victory of the ‘elected monarchy’ and a defeat of liberal democracy in which everyone is supposed to have an equal chance.”

Nonetheless, it would be impossible to argue that the current system is less democratic than what came before. And there’s always the possibility that in time, with enough practice, Russia’s democracy will acquire function as well as form.

“Yeltsin’s main achievement is that, despite all the ordeals that have befallen the Russian people in the 1990s, he has dismantled communism and helped the feeble shoots of Russian democracy survive and develop,” said Alexei G. Arbatov, a deputy in the Duma, parliament’s lower house, with the liberal Yabloko faction. “Moreover, for Russia--a country with no democratic traditions--the shoots of democracy have proven to be sturdier than one could have imagined.”