LEARNING FREEDOM

By John Kohan

Trading has been brisk in Boris Yeltsin futures at the Russian stock market in downtown Moscow. Every day at 4:36 p.m., youthful brokers with code names like "Father," "Moon" and "Winter" buy and sell contracts pegged to whatever percentage of the vote they believe the Russian President will receive on election day. Since item Ye-1606-V began trading April 22, Yeltsin's projected total, registered in flashing orange lights on a big digital board, has jumped 10 points, to around 28.50--about equal to the quote for the Communist candidate, Gennadi Zyuganov. These speculators may care more about making a profit than about who wins and what it would mean for Russian democracy, but they at least have some stake in the outcome. Not all their countrymen feel that way.

After more than 10 years of political turmoil, during which Russians have gone to the polls five times in free parliamentary and presidential votes and three times in national referendums, democratic habits of thought and behavior remain far from established in Russia. The voters still tend to view elections as onerous rituals that are likely to bring new troubles upon them. Tens of millions will probably cast their ballots with the hope of electing a strong leader who might limit or revoke the right to vote itself. They would consider it a small price to pay to end the chaos they believe has resulted from the country's latest experiment with democracy.

Demokratiya, konstitutsiya, parlament and Prezident are all foreign additions to the Russian vocabulary. And although Russians can boast of ancient proto-democratic institutions like the village mir or the veche of Novgorod, where consensus decisions were reached at a kind of town meeting, centralized rule by an all-powerful executive--whether Czar or Communist Party General Secretary--has been the political norm throughout Russian history. The country simply has no democratic culture. It experimented briefly with limited parliamentary democracy before the 1917 revolution. The present era of quasi-democratization was inaugurated by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 with elections for a new Congress of the People's Deputies. But these two periods offer a flimsy tradition on which to build stable, Western-style institutions of government.

As Russians continually point out, America has been in the business of electing Presidents for more than 200 years, while Russians have had less than a decade to learn the trade. The excuse has also often been made that authoritarian rule is more suited to a nation as large as Russia, where a loosening of centralized controls could result in anarchy. Anyone who has ever witnessed reform-minded political groups engaged in endless debates about what kind of slogans to use on their campaign posters would certainly come away convinced of the truth of that argument.

Russians have little good to say about the so-called democrats who came to power after the aborted hard-line coup of August 1991. The Kremlin reformers were largely unprepared to rule, and many soon proved the equals of the apparatchiks they replaced in enriching themselves at public expense. Very quickly, the word democrat became synonymous with incompetent and corrupt. Ask anyone on the streets of Moscow what they think of Russian democracy today and the most likely answer will be "What democracy?" Western diplomats may resort to sophistry in explaining how Yeltsin remains the country's best democratic hope, but few Russians have any illusions now about Yeltsin, who is known, not quite accurately, as their first "popularly elected" President. To them he seems to have reverted to his former role as an imperious, provincial party boss. Indeed, many Russians view the contest between Yeltsin and Zyuganov not as a battle that pits reformist and reactionary forces against each other but as a squalid struggle between corrupt rival Communists.

To find Russian-style democracy, one must seek it not in the political system but in the new openness of Russian society. It can be glimpsed in the marches against the war in Chechnya by mothers of draft-age men, in the anti-Kremlin diatribes printed by tabloids that leave an unpleasant ink smudge on the fingers. There are less appetizing signs as well in the thuggish youths wearing gym suits who hawk alcohol and cigarettes in sheet-metal kiosks, keeping one step ahead of the law, and in the smug young bankers who make million-dollar deals in currency exchange.

If a real democracy is ever to take root in Russia, the country's political establishment will have to open its doors to the dynamic new social forces that have so far been excluded from a game largely played by former Communists. No matter whether Yeltsin or Zyuganov triumphs in the presidential race, few Russians believe they will live anytime soon in a society where the rule of law prevails and where the leaders take the demands of the electorate as seriously as their own self-interest. Such crippling pessimism is understandable, given centuries of oppressive rule by the Kremlin.

And yet, taking the bleakest view is not entirely warranted. More than 500 years ago, Grand Duke Ivan III, the founder of the Russian state, silenced the special bell that summoned the Novgorod veche, but its notes have sounded, however faintly, throughout Russian history. The same nation that bowed down to Joseph Stalin also produced fearless spokesmen for freedom like Andrei Sakharov. Today, for the first time, democracy is of concern to a large number of people, not just a small group of dissidents. Long used to viewing freedom as a gift to be bestowed from on high, ordinary citizens have begun to make their own decisions, decide their own fates. Many, perhaps most, have found the experience shocking and unpleasant, but many others now hold dear their independence. The events of the past decade have enlarged freedom's circle too much for anyone to close it completely.