WALKING up the Novy Arbat to the White House of the Russian parliament
I passed the spot where the three young demonstrators were killed during
the Moscow coup. A small, pink marble stone stands on the bridge over
the ring-road. Its inscription reads: ''To the heroes of August 21,
1991''. For months after the deaths and before the little monument was
erected, the bridge was strewn with flowers: huge wreaths from political
organisations, small bouquets, in odd numbers for the dead, placed by
individual citizens.
In those days President Yeltsin and Vice-President Rutskoy stood side
by side in defiance of the ''State Emergency Committee'' which had
usurped power from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The president
dramatically climbed on to a defecting tank to address the people, the
vice-president stood in the lobby of the White House, revolver in hand,
urging the defence of democracy which at that time was synonymous with
the Russian parliament.
Yesterday the little monument over the ring-road boasted a single
bunch of flowers, so withered as to be unidentifiable, the headquarters
of the parliament, now branded as pro-communist, was ringed with the red
flags of the communists and the black, yellow and white banners of the
nationalist movement, Nashi which translates as ''Ourselves'', or,
ironically, ''Sinn Fein''.
The posters read ''Down with Dictator Yeltsin'', and ''Deputies Yes,
Yeltsin No''. A solitary icon of Christ Pantocrator floated above the
political masses.
At the Moscow City Council building on Tverskaya, the former Gorky
Street, the Yeltsin supporters carried banners denouncing the State
Emergency Committee of Rutskoy. President Yeltsin, having made his
dramatic move to introduce ''special rule'' and hold a ''vote of
confidence in the president and vice-president'', was quickly given a
vote of ''no confidence'' by the vice-president.
Mr Rutskoy went on TV at midnight with the Constitutional Court
chairman Valeriy Zorkin, the parliament's deputy chairman Mr Yuri
Voronin and the procurator-general Mr Valentin Stepankov. Their message
was that the president had acted unconstitutionally.
So, in the space of less than two years, politicians who stood
together in the face of an coup d'etat have become resolutely opposed to
each other.
The process has been a gradual one and can be put down to a number of
factors, ranging from the plight of the people under the merciless shock
therapy of Mr Yegor Gaidar to personal political ambitions, notably
those of parliamentary chairman Mr Ruslan Khasbulatov, but to some
extent those of Mr Rutskoy and some of the younger radical reformers in
Mr Yeltsin's cabinet.
The inexorable collapse of the Russian economy, the fall of the rouble
from 30 to 700 to the $1, 2400% inflation and price rises which have
averaged three times the increase in wages, have created a vast pool of
dissatisfaction among ordinary Russian citizens.
In a country raised on agitation it is not surprising that this
dissatisfaction has been exploited. Hard-line communist Colonel Viktor
Alksnis of the National Salvation Front put it succinctly: ''They (the
democrats) won't get people on to the streets to support the
impoverishment of the people. We will get them on to the streets to
oppose it.''
More constitutional politicians have seen their chance too. Mr
Khasbulatov, whose chances of gaining power by democratic means are nil,
has used the remnants of the Soviet system to empower himself beyond his
wildest dreams.
Mr Rutskoy, who has real personal popularity, particularly in the
armed forces, has adopted a strong line against shock therapy for some
time now and has, to some extent, enhanced his standing with the people.
His strongly pro-Russian stance in ethnic disputes on the periphery of
the Russian federation has done him no harm either.
The ''irreconcilable opposition'' of old-style communists and the
newly emergent nationalists has grown too, but to describe the
parliament as a hot-bed of ''red-brown'' or pro-communist forces, is an
over-simplification of the situation.
The current crisis, and it will undoubtedly not be the last one, stems
from more than a year of hardship and political inertia leading to an
erosion of the president's power at the December congress of people's
deputies, due mainly to the amateurish approach of the Yeltsin camp.
This led to a totally adversarial congress this month with the
centrist forces of the Civic Union group finally breaking with Mr
Yeltsin.
The collapse in Civic Union's support has come as a result of the
hints from the Yeltsin camp before the congress began that military
involvement in politics might be necessary in order to push through
reforms.
A letter from Chancellor Kohl of Germany to Western leaders, leaked at
the start of congress, asking if they would support Mr Yeltsin if he
took on emergency powers incensed Civic Union leader Arkady Volsky who
described it as an ''insult to Russia''. But since then Mr Volsky has
come out in favour of what he described as ''liberal economic reforms
supported by a strong executive'', adding that ''you cannot build
democracy in a hungry country''.
This point of view is one that is being heard consistently since Mr
Yeltsin's move towards special powers. It is understandable, coming from
those who want to break the deadlock in power and get on with the
business of economic and political reform. But moves away from
democracy, ''for the sake of democracy'', have gone badly wrong in other
countries and this could happen in Russia too.
* Seamus Martin is Moscow correspondent for the Irish Times.
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