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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
THE CURRENT CRISIS IN RUSSIAN SOCIETY HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT of all manner of scholarly investigations, essays and editorials. But the clear economic reverses, distinctly felt by all, have caused analysis to focus almost exclusively on this aspect of the crisis. A more constructive approach to the problem might be to examine it as a process, as an objective result of all aspects of the country's development and contemporary civilization as a whole.
This approach presupposes that the rejection of socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe, the major reforms in China and Vietnam, and the dead-end situation in Cuba are not chance, but form a pattern. In each case, the crisis is a function of the transition from one social system to another. This transitional crisis is all-encompassing; its economic component is no more important than the political, social, ethical, cultural, or that of daily life. A transitional crisis is the harbinger of a Time of Troubles when all of society — not just isolated elements — is thrown into turmoil.
This is the text of the 1994 Government and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro lecture. Because of the sudden death of the author’s wife it could not be delivered.
* A reference to the civil and dynastic wars in Russia in the years 1605-13, known as the Time of Troubles. (ed.).
1 For a more detailed description by the author of scientific-industrial production and its incompatibility with state socialism, see Gordon, L. A. and Klopov, E. V., ‘Stalinizm i poststalinizm’ in Osmyslit kult Stalina, Moscow, 1989Google Scholar; Gordon, L. A. and Nazimova, A. K., Rabochii klass SSSR: tendentsii i perspektivy sotsialno-ekonomicheskogo razvitiya, Moscow, 1985Google Scholar.
2 See ‘Chetvertyy S’ezd Narodnykh Deputatov SSSR in Byulleten No. 5, 19 December 1990, p. 24.
3 The basis for this diagram appears in Gordon, L. A. and Nazimova, A. K., ‘Perestroika: kakiye varianty vozmozhny’ in Obshchestvo v raznykh izmereniyakh, Moscow, 1990Google Scholar; Gordon, L. A. and Nazimova, A. K., ‘Perestroika in Historical Perspective: Possible Scenarios’ in Government and Opposition, Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 1990, pp. 16–2910.1111/j.1477-7053.1990.tb00741.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See 1987–88 documents published in Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, Issue 28, Moscow, 1988, and Issue 29, Moscow, 1989.
5 Gorbachev, M. S., ‘Net inogo vykhoda, kak pomenyat vlast’ in Rossiyskaya gazeta, 19 08 1993Google Scholar.
6 See Ekonomika sodruzhestva nezavisimykh gosularstv v 1993. Kratkiy spravochnik, Moscow, Statkomitet SNG, 1994.
7 In a conversation with reporters in 1994, A. N. Yakovlev stressed the general ideological basis of the reformers’ policy before and after 1991. ‘The stage announced by the revolution of 1991’, he noted, ‘has not produced a single new idea’. Vladina, K., ‘Ded epokhi’ in Nezavisimaya gazeta, 10 08 1994Google Scholar.
8 Yeltsin, B., Zapiski prezidenta, Moscow, 1994, pp. 11–12Google Scholar; ‘Oktyabrskiy putch: tochka zreniya spetssluzhby’ (Izvestiya correspondents talk to the administrative head of Moscow’s Security Ministry, Ye. Savostyanov) in Izvestiya, 2 November 1993; Yakov, V., ‘Kuda ukhodit “Vympel”’ in Izvestiya, 18 05 1994Google Scholar.
9 Official findings on the state of organized crime are cited in Stat. press-byulleten, Moscow 1994, No. 4, p. 87. See also ‘Akula v rybei stae’ in Obshchaya gazeta, 1994, No. 29; and ‘Stranoy upravlyaet ne stolko pravitelstvo, skolko klany organizovannykh prestupnikov’ in Izvestiya, 18 May 1994.
10 The author’s estimate of the cost of the transformation in the 1920s and 1930s is cited in Gordon, L. A. and Klopov, E. V., Chto eto bylo? Razmyshleniya o predposylkakh i itogakh togo, chto sluchilos s nami v 30-40-e gody, Moscow, 1989Google Scholar. For an analysis of the social burdens of the current transitional crisis, see Zaslavskaya, T. I., ‘Dokhody rabotayushchego naseleniya’ in Ekonomicheskiye i sotsialniye peremeny, Moscow, 1994, Nos. 1, 2Google Scholar; L. G. Zubova, N. W. Kovaleva and L. A. Khakhulina, ‘Bednost v novykh ekonomicheskikh usloviyakh’, ibid., 1994, No. 4.
11 Yeltsin underlined this aspect of the matter with great expression in his memoirs: ‘Caidar’s reform secured macroeconomic change, namely, the destruction of the old economy. It was a wildly painful break, surgically crude, with the rusty grinding sound of pieces of old parts and mechanisms being ripped out together with the flesh, but the break occurred. Most likely, it simply could not have happened any other way. We had virtually nothing to work with aside from Stalin’s industry, Stalin’s economy, adapted to the present day. And its make-up dictated precisely that sort of a break over the knee. The system was destroyed the same way that it was created.’ (B. Yeltsin, op. cit., p. 300.)
12 ‘Ob ukrepleniye Rossiyskaya gosudarstva. Poslaniye Prezidenta Rossiyskoy Federatsii Federalnomu Sobraniyu’ in Rossiyskaya gazeta, 25 February 1994.
13 Migranyan, A., ‘Dolgii put k evropeiskomu domu. O modeli perekhoda ot avtoritarizma k demokratii’ in Noviy mir, No. 7, 1989Google Scholar.
14 ‘Rezultaty vyborov deputatov Gosudarstvennoy Dumy po obshchefederalnomu izbiratelnomu okrugu’ in Byulleten Tsentralnoy izbiratelnoy komissii Rossiyskoy Federatsii, Moscow, 1994, No. 1 (12).
15 This article was written before the outbreak of war in Chechnya.
16 The use of measures of this sort is envisaged by the Presidential Decree of 14 June 1994, ‘O neotlozhnykh merakh po zashchite naseleniya ot banditizma i inykh proyavlenii organizovannoy prestupnosti.’ (But according to statements in the press, certain conditions of this Decree need to be amended.)
