Russia: A Superpower In The Dark Ages

With vast natural resources, an educated population that has produced talented scientists and writers for aeons, and the world's attention, it makes no sense that Russia continues to stagnate in authoritarianism.

Here are the facts:

• Despite the famous fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has NEVER passed power through free democratic elections. Never. Instead, one strongman after another takes power by usurping it from the previous rulers, or by inheriting it. The people of Russia have never had a real voice in their government, and they know it.
• All the brilliance in Russia has historically been concentrated around its ruler, whether that ruler was the Tsar, the Communist Party, or Stalin. The idea has therefore cemented that in order to be successful in Russia, one must hold fast to the current or soon to be ruler.
• When the brilliant people did not adhere to the Communist party line in the 20th century, they were systematically rooted out and sent to the gulags, or executed. Stalin was the worst, murdering millions of Russians just because he thought they might pose a threat to him. This robbed Russia of many of her greatest thinkers, scientists, and leaders.

How can Russia recover from the horrors of her past?

The Free Market

Right after the fall of the Soviet Union, the burgeoning capitalism that started immediately seemed very promising indeed. First the black market came out of the underground, and Western products were hawked by young entrepreneurs on the street. Western business started springing up, and the West began to invest in Russia.

Then Russian entrepreneurs began to build their own businesses, creating a framework on which the future of Russia could be stretched. Entrepreneurs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who'd had a promising future in the Soviet government before it fell, seized their opportunities – and, by all accounts, sometimes the money from the Soviet treasury – and started building empires.

Thus once more, Russia had one of those contradictions that so mark its history: the most promising entrepreneurs of the country were helping rebuild Russia by involving themselves in criminal activity. And because of the way Russia was structured at the time, it may have been the only way to do it. Jobs were created; ordinary Russians suddenly started seeing their lives improve with the opening up of the market.

But the criminal activity was a ticking time bomb for Russia's new entrepreneurs. When some entrepreneurs, like Khodorkovsky, started making political statements and what may have been political maneuvers, the government was able to use this scarred past as an excuse to start arresting people. Within only a couple of years, Russia was starting to look like the USSR again, as the government swallowed up business after business, most notably the oil company Yukos.

Today the business climate in Russia is stagnant again, as the businessmen of the last decade sit in prison or in self-imposed exile, or scramble to maintain a hold over what they still have. And the Russian people, very understandably and despite the West's tendency to dismiss the arrests as politically motivated, support the government's maneuvers to control the businessmen.

Of course the Russian people are right; after so many abuses, how can they not support the rule of law? But one must question whether arrests and confiscations are really the best way to encourage a healthy business climate. This is the reason reprieves and pardons were created: to allow for a fresh start. Russia, more than anything else, needs a fresh start.

Today, Khodorkovsky sits in a Russian prison, anticipating a release sometime in 2009, which is just long enough for Putin to solidify another term as president, interestingly. How many more Khodorkovskys must be imprisoned before Russia's hopes for the future are locked away with them?

More importantly, was Khordorkovsky singled out to let the other powerful businessmen who still hold on in Russia know what they could expect if they sought political power as well as financial power? Without a number of people currently in the Russian government, Khordorkovsky and others could never have involved themselves in crime to build their empires. Who is going to prosecute them? There are many questions in Russia today with no answer.

Education for Everyone

In the West, there are two types of people who rise through education: the children of immigrants and the children of the poor. The children of immigrants, interestingly, tend to do very well with the first generation of education. The poor established citizens, however, take two generations. The first generation of educated children generally stop somewhere in the middle class. It's almost always the second generation that show brilliant success: industry leaders, great scientists, brilliant writers and artists.

The same model will probably hold true for Russia, for the same reasons. The generation that is living now in Russia is trapped in the totalitarian ideals that held sway for so many years. The youth who are coming up, however, will not remember Stalin, the Cold War, or the United States as a bogeyman/ heaven. These are the children who will not be crippled by their expectations of the state as a harsh nursemaid.

But only if we let them educate themselves.

It is their children, who remember the ideals of their parents and who are taught by their parents that they can change the world, who will change Russia in the end. They will be the ones who will bring Russia into the 20th century. Can they receive an enlightened education in Russia, one that encourages them to think for themselves? Only if Russia stays free long enough for at least one generation to come out of it.

Ethnic Hatred and Racism

Russia is suffering under more than just stagnation, hopelessness, and a soul-crushingly authoritarian regime. For the first time in centuries, it's dealing publicly with racism and ethnic revolution.

Chechnya holds oil reserves and important gas pipelines that make Russia want to hold onto it; in addition, because of its history as a part of Russia it was never given the opportunity to legally break away, as the other Soviet Socialist Republics did. But its history goes deeper than that. For nearly a thousand years, the Turks and the Mongols and other Asiatic tribes launched attack after attack upon Russia. The first great Russian leaders, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, conquered it and solidified their rule in the 1700s. Over and over again throughout history, Chechnyans rebelled against Russia.

Today, the civil war situation in Chechnya, as well as the problem with terrorism and the tension between Muslims and the rest of the world, have resulted in a great deal of bad blood between the Chechnyans and other Russians. And it's not just the Chechnyans; there seems to be a real upswell of racism and the bad kind of nationalism in Russia that isn't being addressed by the government.

The "Elections" of 2008

It is unlikely that Russia can have a fair and free election in two years. Putin and his government clearly want to maintain control in the country, and they have no clear rivals for power.

They do, however, seem to be creating some bogeymen. They are pointing at a danger of totalitarianism, of a Nazi-style rival who will wipe out the ethnic dangers posed by Chechnya and other regions with racial and ethnic restlessness. Yet they're pointing at these dangers in a surprisingly lackadaisical sort of way. It's as if they are giving the Russian people an enemy to hate.

Of all the dangers the Russian government is talking about, they are completely ignoring the possibility of having free and fair democratic elections. Will it happen? Putin's supporters are saying that maintaining him in power in 2008 is the best way of ensuring that the dangers of totalitarianism and complete economic collapse do not occur. Some think that Putin will soon take on the position of prime minister, a nonelectorial position that holds the real power in Russia, so that he can allow free presidential elections while ensuring his position.

More frightening even than this, the current Russian leadership seems to be turning Russia in on itself yet again, rejecting the West as evil and encouraging, or at least not denying, the new Russian mentality of "Russia for Russians." If this happens, all the progress that has been made over a decade and a half could be completely reversed. The possibility of this depends largely on the will of the Russian people – can they bear another revolution? For it may come to that.