Russia's presidential election comes to an end and we breathe more easily, confident after yet another crisis that democracy and free-market forces will yet prevail in that country. President Clinton is jubilant.
Having gotten 54 percent of the vote for their man, members of Boris Yeltsin's team hail the reforms and tell their communist opponents to "go to hell." With 40 percent, a gloomy, somewhat relenting Gennady Zyuganov assures the world nevertheless that communism in Russia is alive and well.My discussions during June with Russian voters all the way from St. Petersburg in the north to Sochi on the Black Sea convince me that neither candidate can claim much of a victory. Votes were cast largely against rather than for the candidates.
Yeltsin won, not because of himself or his reform platform, but because the people fear a return to Soviet-style communism. Others voted for Zyuganov because they despise Yeltsin. And why? For the reason that he divided the people into "haves" and "have nots." Only Mikhail Gorbachev, who brought about massive changes without solutions, is more hated.
The real problems in Russia today have been shunted aside in the rush to get re-elected. Those in power fiddle while the country burns.
To be sure, the urban marketplace has taken on a new look with makeshift window dressing, obtrusive signs touting Western products and an abundance of unaffordable consumer goods in endless kiosks. Moscow and, to an extent, St. Petersburg, bustle with building activity from an infusion of foreign capital.
The physical infrastructure in other cities, however, continues to deteriorate. Not only are the people demoralized by the new Russia's meager pensions, unemployment and unpaid wages, they sorely miss the cultural ideals and national purpose of an earlier era.
I doubt that Russia will ever become another America or any other hotbed of capitalism. Already it shows signs of turning inward to more traditional forms as it resists the tide of Western individualism and materialistic values flooding the country.
Russia is unlike the other former communist countries in the way it clings to unique national institutions such as orthodoxy, communal life and Motherland. One might conclude then that to understand Russia, a person really ought to witness the piety and devoutness of orthodox believers at worship; partake of their social graciousness at table; and visit a memorial dedicated to those who sacrificed their all for country in the Great Patriotic War.
It was a long climb up hundreds of steps before my friends and I reached the rotunda with its eternal flame and honor guard paying tribute to the heroic defenders of Stalingrad. The soft strains of Schumann's "Traumerei" blended with images of the thousands who perished during those bleak days in 1942-43. Exiting from the circular walkway above and beyond the flame, we looked up to see the most remarkable statue we had ever seen. There Mother Russia stood, sword in hand, over her precious children.
Lynn R. Eliason
Logan