Leon Aron: Can Medvedev Emulate Gorbachev?
[Leon Aron, resident scholar and director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author, most recently, of "Russia's Revolution: Essays 1989-2006."]
The security of the United States continues to be tied to decisions in Moscow, as evidenced by President Obama's touting of the pending strategic arms-control agreement with Russia in his State of the Union address. And those decisions, in turn, will hinge on Russian domestic politics. The central question is whether President Dmitry Medvedev's increasingly radical rhetoric will begin to translate into policies that would spell a decisive break with those of his predecessor and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin.
Could 2010 become Medvedev's equivalent of Mikhail Gorbachev's 1987 -- the year when, also after only two years in the Kremlin and against very strong opposition by hard-liners, Gorbachev began lifting totalitarian controls over politics by declaring glasnost and democratization?...
Like Gorbachev in 1987, Medvedev faces tough odds. His speeches are still contaminated by the bluster and outright propaganda lies of Putinism. Moreover, unlike Gorbachev -- who had the awesome power of the office of the Communist Party's general secretary -- Medvedev's authority still appears to be on loan from Putin. It's as if Gorbachev had ruled with Leonid Brezhnev watching over him.
And yet, just as unmistakably, in the last few months, Russia's president has not only dissociated himself from key tenets of Putinism but challenged and repudiated them, in effect chipping away at the legitimacy of the political and economic order he inherited. Medvedev's critique was especially pointed and concentrated in his September article, "Rossiya, vperyod!" ("Russia, forward!"), posted on the opposition Web daily Gazeta.ru -- and more or less reprised, alongside propaganda cliches, in a November address to the Russian parliament....
In perhaps his most impassioned posting -- an Oct. 30 video titled "The memory of national tragedies is as sacred as the memory of triumphs" on Medvedev's personal blog -- he castigated the creeping whitewash of Stalin and Stalinism under Putin by declaring that no "state interests" could justify the "destruction of their own people" and "millions of ruined lives."...
This will not be an easy task. The most damaging legacy of Putinism has been the pervasive cynicism born of daily powerlessness amid lies, corruption and cruelty. The reaction of the Russian independent media (confined largely to the Internet) to Medvedev's rhetorical offensive epitomizes this attitude: Cautiously hopeful comments have been more than counterbalanced by skepticism or even outright dismissal and derision because of the glaring mismatch between words and deeds.
What might some Medvedev deeds include? Gorbachev began by releasing Andrei Sakharov from exile in Gorky in December 1986. Medvedev's equivalents might include an unconditional pardon for the former leading Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is facing a kangaroo court's sentence of up to 22 years in jail. The murderers of the opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 need to be brought to justice, and the masterminds (not just those who carried out the order) tried in open courts....
If Medvedev is indeed determined to follow in Gorbachev's footsteps, his rhetoric must be a prologue to actions. In 2010, his glasnost must be followed by perestroika policies -- or he will fade into irrelevance.
Read entire article at LA Times
The security of the United States continues to be tied to decisions in Moscow, as evidenced by President Obama's touting of the pending strategic arms-control agreement with Russia in his State of the Union address. And those decisions, in turn, will hinge on Russian domestic politics. The central question is whether President Dmitry Medvedev's increasingly radical rhetoric will begin to translate into policies that would spell a decisive break with those of his predecessor and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin.
Could 2010 become Medvedev's equivalent of Mikhail Gorbachev's 1987 -- the year when, also after only two years in the Kremlin and against very strong opposition by hard-liners, Gorbachev began lifting totalitarian controls over politics by declaring glasnost and democratization?...
Like Gorbachev in 1987, Medvedev faces tough odds. His speeches are still contaminated by the bluster and outright propaganda lies of Putinism. Moreover, unlike Gorbachev -- who had the awesome power of the office of the Communist Party's general secretary -- Medvedev's authority still appears to be on loan from Putin. It's as if Gorbachev had ruled with Leonid Brezhnev watching over him.
And yet, just as unmistakably, in the last few months, Russia's president has not only dissociated himself from key tenets of Putinism but challenged and repudiated them, in effect chipping away at the legitimacy of the political and economic order he inherited. Medvedev's critique was especially pointed and concentrated in his September article, "Rossiya, vperyod!" ("Russia, forward!"), posted on the opposition Web daily Gazeta.ru -- and more or less reprised, alongside propaganda cliches, in a November address to the Russian parliament....
In perhaps his most impassioned posting -- an Oct. 30 video titled "The memory of national tragedies is as sacred as the memory of triumphs" on Medvedev's personal blog -- he castigated the creeping whitewash of Stalin and Stalinism under Putin by declaring that no "state interests" could justify the "destruction of their own people" and "millions of ruined lives."...
This will not be an easy task. The most damaging legacy of Putinism has been the pervasive cynicism born of daily powerlessness amid lies, corruption and cruelty. The reaction of the Russian independent media (confined largely to the Internet) to Medvedev's rhetorical offensive epitomizes this attitude: Cautiously hopeful comments have been more than counterbalanced by skepticism or even outright dismissal and derision because of the glaring mismatch between words and deeds.
What might some Medvedev deeds include? Gorbachev began by releasing Andrei Sakharov from exile in Gorky in December 1986. Medvedev's equivalents might include an unconditional pardon for the former leading Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is facing a kangaroo court's sentence of up to 22 years in jail. The murderers of the opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 need to be brought to justice, and the masterminds (not just those who carried out the order) tried in open courts....
If Medvedev is indeed determined to follow in Gorbachev's footsteps, his rhetoric must be a prologue to actions. In 2010, his glasnost must be followed by perestroika policies -- or he will fade into irrelevance.