The Time of Monsters – Russia’s Failed Experiment With Democracy

By Matthew Beylinson

Shots rang out across Moscow. The forces loyal to the Parliamentary faction were holed up in the ‘White House’: Russia’s Legislative Building. They shoot volleys of small arms fire at the Russian Military controlled by Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. Yet like two warships in an 18th-century naval engagement, Yeltsin’s army wheeled out its great cannons and returned a volley to the defenders. Tanks have been deployed along the historic Novy Arbat bridge as well as a nearby playground and have just shelled the top floors of the White House (Felkay 2002). As thick black smoke billows into the sky, the president’s forces stormed the Parliament to the sound of more gunfire. The political change is palpable; Russian democracy is dead, and while no one knows it yet, the path has been laid for a new unknown political actor named Vladimir Putin to take and hold power. To fully understand this event, we must first examine the period when Russian democracy was an almost achievable dream and it seemed that the end of autocracy was near. We know how this story ends, but where does it begin and when did things go so terribly wrong?

Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously said, “The old world is dying while the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” (Zizek 2010). Here Gramsci was referencing the tumultuous conditions during the 20th century at the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second. It is equally applicable to Russia in the early 90’s. Here we have a situation in which the Cold War, the driving ideological conflict of the latter half of the 20th century, had ended with the defeat of the USSR and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991. Yet the Russia we know today, defined by Putin’s personalistic dictatorship, had not been created yet. It would not be for another 6 years when the aging Yeltsin would choose the up-and-coming politician as his replacement to save him and his family from his political opponents (Rutland 2000).

So what happened in the two short years from 1991 to 1993? Why did they end with the chaos just described and increasing autocratic rule? The simple, perhaps surprising answer is democracy–or at least the closest Russia has come to democracy in modern history. Understanding the failure of Russia’s democratic experiment is key to unraveling the years that followed. Russia today is without question a deeply personalistic, autocratic state, these two years can serve as to part of an explanation for why that is. More importantly, it is a period we can learn from. Examining the failures of democracy, may, when the time is right inform new growth toward democracy in Eastern Europe by allowing us to learn from old mistakes. 

The tail end of 1991, and the years leading up to it was an exciting change for Russians and the world alike. The great behemoth of unchanging soviet bureaucracy faltered and fell as the great gears of change started to gradually turn. For much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union had been, as Alexei Yurchak calls it, an ‘Eternal State.’ Nothing changed–reform never came, and the state itself was believed to be immortal. It was only when Gorbachev’s monumental democratic-leaning reforms were well underway that illustrated to the public that change was coming. A sense of excitement then gripped the Russian people, inspiring a literary and political renaissance (Yurchak 2005). It reached a fever pitch with the simultaneously dramatic yet then-expected collapse of the USSR.

March of 1991 would also see another major event in the history of the short-lived Russian democracy. The popular democratic reform politician Boris Yeltsin would call for elections for a Russian President within the USSR. In June the election took place, with Yeltsin winning a decisive victory, having held 57% of the vote out of 6 candidates (Felkay 2002). Yeltsin’s victory was driven by him being the antithesis of all that the USSR had represented; an outspoken advocate of a Western style of democratic government and capitalism.

However, Yeltsin and his liberal reform supporters would face an incredible challenge that would color the rest of his presidency and remain a mark on Russian politics today. This was due to his infamous economic reforms. Russia had never been an industrial capitalist nation like those of Western Europe and the United States. Its most recent transition was from a semi-feudal monarchy into a rapidly industrialized communist state. Yeltsin, however, was eager to catch up to the rest of the world, and his solution was removing most market restrictions to promote rapid capitalist integration; or as it is more commonly called today, “shock therapy”.

Yeltsin’s Monster, the Troubles of A New Economy

All are familiar with the story of Frankenstein, where an obsessed scientist revives a long-dead amalgamation of beings using electricity. Victor Frankenstein would of course be shocked and horrified by his creation as he did not create a functional human being as he had intended, but something else, a monster. Yeltsin, though, perhaps unfamiliar with the story had a very similar idea to the fictional Victor Frankenstein. The Soviet Economy existed as a behemoth heavy industrial system, but one that was ill-suited for the modern world. Perhaps with a decisive shock of Western-style capitalism, this behemoth would once again rise. This of course was not what happened, instead, a monster was created.

The Shock Therapy strategy had many foreign supporters–including the IMF and American economists. They, along with many Russians in the Yeltsin Administration, were hopeful that it would energize the old struggling Soviet system and promote modernization (Rosalsky 2022). Unfortunately, this shock, instead of reviving the soviet economy, gave it something more akin to a heart attack. Almost immediately, the country would be gripped by massive inflation, devastating the personal finances of millions of Russians. A candy bar that would have been $1 in 1990 skyrocketed to an eye-watering $2000 only four years later (Rosalsky 2022). Despite the general population’s suffering and increasing government dissatisfaction, Yeltsin’s chief economic reform advisors, Yegor Gaidar, and Anatoly Chubais, pushed him to continue the shock strategy, thinking this period of struggling was necessary to achieve stable economic growth (Goldman 2004).

To help jumpstart business development Yeltsin, Gaidar, and Chubais created a scheme nicknamed “Loans for Shares.” Under this policy, the state would auction off its plethora of resources through private banks to enter the private sector. However, when implemented in a society defined by corruption and backroom contracts, the distribution was unfair. The banks would sell off the bulk of resources to deeply connected Russians who often had outsized control. This led to a new hyper-wealthy class of Russians who illicitly took control of formerly state-owned resources at a time of already extreme economic distress (Goldman 2004).

This new class of Russians used their wealth to increase their political influence, and in turn increase their wealth, as evidenced by their ‘generous’ campaign contributions that allowed Yeltsin to have a hold on power up till 1999 (Rosalsky 2022). Thus, a new class of Russian nobility was born, who utilized their wealth even more ostentatiously than the nobles of Tsarist times. Meanwhile, the quality of life plummeted for the majority of Russian people. The average life expectancy of an adult Russian man dropped from 65 before the collapse of the USSR to around 57 in 1993. The largest cause of this decline was the loss of key social programs and a sharp rise in alcoholism. Yeltisin’s reforms, once shining symbols of hope to Russians, were now undoubtedly the cause of a deep economic spiral, which would not start to recover until 1995 (Shkolnikov et al. 2001).

While this occurred, Russian democratic politics grew to be increasingly unstable. Yeltsin and his Western-style economic reforms had fallen into cronyism and the hope at the start of the decade had soured into a national bitterness. This was reflected in the legislature, where two highly unlikely bedfellows, the communists, and the nationalists, formed a broad coalition to remove Yeltsin from power. As time went on more parliamentarians joined the cause, leading to a notably massive multi-partisan political movement with the singular goal of stopping Yeltsin. Yeltsin attempted to extinguish this by dissolving the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies and Supreme Soviet in September 1993 (Brown 1996).

So dire was the atmosphere of Russian politics that the dissolution of the Russian Parliament, a highly unconstitutional policy, was on the table. At this point, Yeltsin truly had nowhere to turn. Yet the Russian Parliament was not dissolved, and increasing disagreement between the legislative and executive branches would continue to swell until one month later. On October 4th, 1993, while the Parliamentarians and their armed supporters were holed up in the Russian white house, Yeltsin made the shocking order for tanks to fire on the building (Brown 1996). The next day the siege was over and Yeltsin had taken a massive step into unknown, unconstitutional territory.

Following a common strategy of authoritarian leaders when the constitution no longer allows for their actions, Yeltsin decided to write a new constitution, signaling another move towards autocracy. The new constitution was approved by the now-pacified legislature with no further debate. This constitution, in keeping with Yeltsin’s most recent actions, massively increased the power of the executive (Brown 1996). An agreement was made that everyone would abide by the constitution until 1996 when the next election would take place, an election that Yeltsin would win thanks to the support of his Oligarch backers. 

With that, Russia’s tumultuous democracy had effectively ended. The executive held nearly all official power while a tremendous amount of unofficial power lay in the hands of the oligarchs. These two new powerful forces in modern Russia were the strategic webs of alliances that Putin would take over in 1999, and use effectively to further strengthen his position. For any cynical observers of Eastern Europe, this was an event that would substantiate the view that any attempt at a Russian democracy was doomed to fail.

Democracy was a flash in the pan, a brief shout from a people who thought that at long last, they could have a government for the people. However is this the end? Will democracy ever see the light of day in Russia again? These questions, unfortunately, remain unanswered. One day, perhaps after learning from the mistakes of the past, democratic reformers will arise again, and awaken the dream of 1991. If this democratic dream reemerges it must be a new Russian form of democracy and not an attempt at westernization. 

Attempting to build a Western liberal capitalist state in Russia failed because at its core Russia was not ready for such a dramatic transformation. The first step that must be taken would be the rooting out of the deep corruption that allowed for the oligarchical class to emerge. It is these feudal patron-client ties between oligarchs and politicians that led to the violent usurpation of Russian democracy. Russia must not and should never have been shocked into a new political and economic system, instead if this dream is revived it should follow a path of gradual reform and acclimation. Perhaps the ultimate lesson here is that while Rome was not built in a day, it took only two years for Moscow to leave democracy behind and again feel the tight grip of an autocrat.

References: 

Brown, Archie. 1996. “The Russian Transition in Comparative and Russian Perspective.” The Johns Hopkins University Press 63(2): 403–15.

Felkay, Andrew. 2002. Yeltsin’s Russia and the West. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Goldman, Marshall I. 2004. “Putin And The Oligarchs.” Foreign Affairs 83(6): 33–44. doi: 10.2307/20034135.

Rosalsky, Greg. 2022. “How ‘Shock Therapy’ Created Russian Oligarchs and Paved the Path For Putin.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how-shock-therapy-created-russian-oligarchs-and-paved-the-path-for-putin (December 2023).

Rutland, Peter. 2000. “Putin’s Path to Power.” Post-Soviet Affairs 16(4): 313–54. doi: 10.1080/1060586x.2000.10641490.

Shkolnikov, Vladimir, Martin McKee, and David A Leon. 2001. “Changes in Life Expectancy in Russia in the Mid-1990s.” The Lancet 357(9260): 917–21. doi: SS10.1016/s0140-6736(00)04212-4.

Yurchak, Alexei. 2005. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Zizek, Slavoj. 2010. “A PERMANENT ECONOMIC EMERGENCY.” New Left Review 64.