By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW, the "White House", September 24 — As the rouble crashed and opposition newspapers were shut down, Russians on the fourth day after President Boris Yeltsin's coup d'etat were pondering a future of shattered links between the provinces and the centre, continuing power struggles at national and regional levels, and preparations by an openly authoritarian government to hold meaningless elections.
As I write these lines within the "white house", the building of the Russian parliament, the mood is grim and tense. Volunteers carrying assault rifles keep watch over strategic points. Hot water supplies and outside telephone lines have been cut off, and staff are urged not to use lifts because electricity supplies may cease at any moment.
After voting by 636 to 2 to strip Yeltsin of the presidency, the Congress of People's Deputies remains in session, debating a proposal to make a compromise offer of early elections. But Yeltsin is not looking for compromises. Talking to reporters on September 22, the president dismissed the idea of dialogue. "Not with the parliament", he stated. "They no longer exist."
Nor, in any real sense, is Yeltsin looking for elections. The new parliament he hopes to convene after the polls he has called for December 11-12 will not be a democratic institution. This has become blindingly obvious in the past few days, as the press has admitted that elections for the projected upper house will not take place for another year.
In the meantime, the upper house will be made up of the legislative and executive heads of Russia's 88 republics and regions, plus heads of local authorities. Most of the executive heads are direct appointees of the president, and all have been warned since the coup that they will be sacked if they disobey presidential orders.
Yeltsin has ordered quick elections for the lower house of the new "State Duma" even though one of his own aides, political scientist Georgi Satarov, argued strongly several weeks ago that autumn elections were impossible "for technical reasons"; the time was simply too short. One of the reasons for the president's haste was pinpointed on September 22 by Igor Yakovenko, co-chair of the normally pro-Yeltsin Republican Party. Yakovenko argued that the only political group that was ready for elections, either organisationally or financially, was the pro-presidential Choice for Russia bloc.
Finally, the unrepentant pro-Yeltsin bias of the Russian mass media excludes any possibility that elections held under conditions of presidential dictatorship will be democratic.
Since Yeltsin declared the parliament abolished, the heads of Russian state television have refused to broadcast addresses from opposition leaders Rutskoi and Khasbulatov. The Parliamentary Hour, which used to provide the legislature with limited TV air time for its views, has been dropped. The parliament's well-written and informative daily newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, has been suspended. So, according to some reports, has the more vitriolically anti-regime Sovetskaya Rossiya.
But if it is one thing for the president to call elections and deal himself all the strong cards, it is something quite different for him to ensure that these elections actually take place. For the polls to be held, local apparatuses will have to move purposefully into action throughout Russia's republics and provinces. And here, Yeltsin in brought back to square one; much of the reason for the political crisis in Russia has to do with the reluctance of local leaders, who are strongly represented in the parliament, to implement government decisions which they see as harming local interests.
Since the coup, elected local soviets around Russia have voted heavily to condemn Yeltsin's actions. Local executive chiefs, under intense pressure from Moscow, have generally spoken out in favour of the president.
Meanwhile, local leaders from both sides have sought to use the crisis in Moscow to boost local autonomy. Parliamentary sources report that "many" republics and provinces have stated that orders coming from the capital will now be carried out only if they are specifically confirmed by local decision-makers.
For someone who desperately needs support in the provinces, Yeltsin in his decrees since the coup can hardly be said to have pandered to provincial economic interests. On September 23, the central government reneged on an earlier decision to compensate farmers for inflation by indexing grain prices. The denial of indexation will devastate farms and local economies throughout much of the country.
Provincial authorities are likely to hit back by refusing to remit revenues to the central treasury, a ploy that already has a considerable history. In addition, they can refuse to collaborate with the Moscow electoral authorities. Especially in provincial areas, dissatisfaction with Yeltsin's policies is quite capable of turning the December elections into an obviously illegitimate farce, or more likely, of forcing their postponement.
The later elections are held, the greater the likelihood that the opposition movement, together with international criticism, will force the president to allow real campaigning to take place. And the later the poll date, the more dismal the prospects for the president and his supporters.
In the coming months, cuts to subsidies for industry will drive unemployment up towards 20%. For all the difficulties of conducting industrial struggles in these circumstances, the impossibility of living on $50 a month wages means that industrial militancy will continue and increase. Without the parliament to blame for the results of his errors, Yeltsin will become the undivided focus of a popular anger that is increasingly mobilised and self-confident.
Most of this, however, lies well in the future. A radio report has just stated that Yeltsin has issued a decree ordering the disarming of the White House defenders. There could be shooting, and I am being urged to leave. Those of us in the White House are not the only ones under threat. I have just been told that across the river on Leninsky Prospekt, the building of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia is also under siege, with its telephone lines cut off.
In historical terms, Yeltsin's position is desperately weak, as the economy collapses and the fracture zones in the Russian national state groan and shudder. But for those in Russia committed to battling the new Yeltsin dictatorship, there are agonising times ahead.