A Miracle Wrapped in Danger

By Strobe Talbott

- "It's winter here," said Boris Yeltsin to Bill Clinton in a telephone conversation just after the U.S. election. "And you know, winter is always hard for us."

The President of Russia was not just talking about the weather; he was acknowledging a force of history. The Romanovs' throne, Alexander Kerensky's provisional government and Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union all came crashing down when the snows were swirling, the days were cold and the nights were long. In each case the implications for the world -- and the U.S. -- were immense.

Now it is Yeltsin's turn to contend with the conspiring adversities of nature, economics and politics. Once again, the whole world has a huge stake in the outcome.

When temperatures fall in Russia, food is harder to find in the cities and prices rise. The sting in the air makes shopping even more of a hardship. As citizens trudge from store to store in the dark, their frustration is, as it has always been, aimed at their leader in the Kremlin. But unlike the Czars and the General Secretaries before him, Yeltsin does not rely on terror to enforce the silence and passivity of the populace. Instead, he has to address its grievances and contend with its elected representatives.

Real democracy, however primitive and messy, has come to Russia. That achievement, imperfect and fragile though it is, is nothing less than a miracle. But it is a miracle wrapped in danger inside a dilemma.

Yeltsin is sometimes said to be presiding over the Second Russian Revolution. But that understates and oversimplifies the challenge facing him and his people. Russia is actually in the throes of three transformations at once: from totalitarianism to democracy, from a command economy to a free market, and from a multinational empire to a nation-state. Any one of these would be arduous enough all by itself. Undertaking three revolutions simultaneously with so little warning and preparation has overloaded the circuits.

After all, the newly independent U.S. wrestled for decades with the concepts of constitutionality, federalism and individual rights. It also had to fight a devastating civil war before it could claim to be a fully representative democracy. For its part, Russia is trying to cast off, virtually overnight, the legacy of more than a thousand years of absolutism; and it is trying to create, virtually from scratch, the institutions, traditions and political culture associated with the rule of law and popular government. No wonder that this, more than any in years, is the winter of Russia's discontent.

Nor can Moscow count even its modest accomplishments secure. For months there have been warnings of a showdown between reformists and reactionaries. Russians and Russia watchers alike talk about "the December scenario." The opening act will take place during the Congress of People's Deputies that begins this week. Yeltsin's opponents are expected to launch an all-out offensive to restrict his personal authority, reverse his main policies and remove his key ministers. In the scarier versions of the scenario, the maneuvers against the Russian government could be a prelude to a parliamentary upheaval or even a putsch.

Yeltsin goes into this week's meeting full of fight and determination. His critics and foes have not closed ranks behind an alternative program or leader. He has already proved both tough and deft. Former communist that he is, he may follow Lenin's old motto of two steps forward, one step back: a few tactical concessions to keep reform on course. He will have to take care to avoid Gorbachev's fatal mistakes of excessive vacillation and indecisiveness, but a certain amount of compromise and even inconsistency is necessary, given the complexity and magnitude of what the President is up against.

Yeltsin has had less than a year to grapple with the consequences of a seven-decade experiment in economic absurdity. He has applied remedies that are as painful as they are necessary. Because of the political revolution, there are new limits to the sacrifices that a leader can demand of the citizenry in the name of the economic revolution -- and new opportunities for mischief making by opposition groups. Knowing this, Yeltsin has tacked back and forth, endeavoring to skirt both mass unemployment and galloping inflation. For the time being at least, he has decided that inflation is the lesser of two evils. But in the long run it could be the greater. The evaporation of a currency's value means the eradication of personal savings, the resort to barter, the end of any hope of foreign investment, the loss of public confidence in governmental authority and a political climate conducive to the ambitions and intrigues of would-be dictators.

The parallel to the doomed Weimar Republic, where hyperinflation paved the way for Adolf Hitler, is much on the minds of Russians these days. They speak openly of their fear that Yeltsin will be swept aside and power will pass to an unholy alliance of the so-called Reds and Browns, unreconstructed communists with a nostalgia for the bad old days of Soviet power and Russian chauvinists with distinctly fascistic tendencies.

That nightmare is more likely to come about if the economy continues to deteriorate. That is why the industrialized democracies, led by the U.S., must assemble a more generous and potent package of emergency-assistance measures, including incentives for Russia to climb back aboard the wagon of monetary and fiscal temperance. Otherwise there could be a January or February sequel to the December scenario: in the name of restoring social order and averting economic ruin, a cabal of hard-liners might seize power. This time, unlike the high summer of August 1991, the conspirators might be able to count on significant support, or at least acquiescence, from a cold, angry, exhausted people.

Even the most retrograde post-Yeltsin leaders imaginable would have neither the desire nor the ability to threaten vital Western interests the way the pre-Gorbachev ones did. Yes, they would still have a formidable nuclear arsenal, but the new men in the Kremlin would no doubt affirm the end of the cold war, if only because they could not afford to start it up again. They would disavow any claims to Eastern Europe, not to mention far-flung leftist client states in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

But Russia's behavior toward other parts of the old Soviet Union is a different and altogether more troubling matter. In trying to redefine their own nationhood, many Russians have not yet been able to accept the idea that the 14 non-Russian republics of the U.S.S.R. are today independent foreign countries. Russian politicians have even coined a new phrase -- the near abroad -- to distinguish between the former republics and the rest of the world. The Russian sense of special rights and responsibilities in the near abroad is more than a matter of imperial postpartum depression. Some 25 million ethnic Russians live outside Russia but within the borders of the old union. The dominant local nationalities now treat these Russians as second- class citizens or worse.

The notion that Russia has a mission to protect these kinsmen is by no means confined to Reds, Browns or crazies. It is a mainstream sentiment and a powerful force in the deliberations of this week's Congress. The U.S., the West Europeans and the United Nations must use their own considerable influence with the newly independent states to protect the rights of the Russian minorities there. Otherwise, Russia may take matters into its own heavy hands. If so, the world would surely suspend whatever help it is giving to any government in Moscow, which would only deepen the crisis in Russia and accelerate the vicious cycle of economic distress and political extremism.

The result might be the first full-scale international headache for the Clinton Administration. What an irony that would be. Clinton won election as President largely because of the Second Russian Revolution and the end of the cold war. If Moscow had still been the capital of the global archrival in 1992, George Bush's constant flashing of his diplomatic credentials might have saved his campaign. But since Americans no longer see Russia as a menace, they decided on Nov. 3 that they could afford to replace a foreign-policy President with a challenger, untested on the world stage, who promised to give priority to the American economy.

But if the U.S. is going to reap domestic dividends from the end of the cold war, Clinton must help Yeltsin prevail on his own home front. That means more than just coping with cataclysms -- it means heading them off by helping Russia manage its peaceful metamorphosis on a month-to-month, even day-to-day, basis. And that, in turn, means Yeltsin and Clinton have a lot more to talk about, on the phone and in person, before this winter is over.