Abstract: Joan Barth Urban is a professor in the Department of Politics, Catholic University of America.The resurgence of the post-Soviet Russian communists was almost as unexpected for many in the West as was Gorbachev's liberalization of the Soviet political order. Surprise was unwarranted, however. In the Russian Federation of the early 1990s, hyperinflation triggered by price liberalization and institutional breakdown, on top of general economic collapse, deprived a great majority of Russian citizens of their life savings and social safety net. It required little foresight to envision that alienated, militant members of the Soviet-era communist party apparat would have little difficulty rallying electoral support for their reconsituted, restorationist Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). As it turned out, the CPRF's share of the State Duma's party-list vote rose from 12.4 percent in 1993, to 22.3 percent in 1995, to 24.3 percent in 1999, thereby giving the communists a near monopoly on the oppositionist voice in Russian politics.In this essay, I will assess the CPRF's prospects a decade from now. But first it may be instructive to glance back at the failure of most Sovietologists to anticipate the likelihood of massive change in the Soviet Union after the passing of the Brezhnev-era generation of leaders. In the early 1980s, the radical reforms of the communist-led Prague Spring of 1968 were still fresh in our memories, even as Solidarity challenged the foundations of communist rule in Poland, the powerful Italian Communist Party was rapidly becoming social democratic and in China economic reforms were gaining momentum. A comparative analysis of developments in the world-wide communist movement should have enabled more analysts to have anticipated that the geriatric Brezhnev regime's successors would be a variegated group, including both political-economic reformers and conservative old-liners. Hence my underlying premise in this essay is that a comparative perspective may likewise be helpful in discerning the shape of both Russian political culture and the Russian left ten years hence. While prediction is highly conjectural in political science, the delineation of alternative scenarios is both possible and incumbent on its practitioners.With the comparative approach in mind, my assumption is that over the next decade we will probably see the Europeanization, French-style, of Russian political culture. However perplexing it may first sound to posit the eventual (even French-style) of Russian political culture, the following considerations suggest that it is likely. First, of course, the geopolitical situation has changed dramatically from what it was two or even one decade ago. The relative stability of the bipolar era has been replaced by fluidity as policy disputes cloud Euro-Atlantic ties, Chinese power grows, and Muslims everywhere seek their place in the sun. In this context Russia appears to have little choice but to align itself with Europe. But in addition to geopolitical realpolitik, Russia's dependence on carbohydrate exports to Europe points in the same direction, as do demographics, with Russia's population becoming more concentrated in the European part of the country relative to the vast empty stretches east of the Urals. Furthermore, the new Russian economic elites and younger educated professionals have already been drawn to Western Europe's postindustrial, individualistic way of life, with their attitudes toward Europe as a whole being unencumbered by the ambivalence they feel toward the United States.Plainly, the ambivalence of even the younger generation of Russians to the United States relates directly to the above-mentioned notion of Europeanization French-style. However, evolving Russian political culture includes not only suspicion of America but also nostalgia for lost grandeur, endemic statist propensities, and a weak tradition of grassroots nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)--all features commonly associated with post-World War II French political culture. …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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