Moscow Orientation – Day 1 – The Refuseniks

We met at the Center this morning. Arkady showed us a film about Andrei Sakharov, the last days of the Soviet Union, and we discussed it afterwards with him.

Sakharov was the father of the Soviet atomic bomb project, and as such a major hero. However, he turned against the Soviet regime and got himself into hot water with the authorities, including several years of internal exile and house arrest. During Gorbachev’s liberalization in the 1980’s, though, he was rehabilitated and brought back to Moscow, where he in effect became the central figure in a democratic movement. He died in 1989 just as the sun was setting on the system that he so despised.

It was an interesting post-film conversation because Arkady was there during those days and worked closely with many people in the film, including Gorbachev and Sakharov himself. In fact, many of Sakharov’s papers were in Arkady’s possession until the establishment of a Sakharov museum a few years back. We discussed whether or not Sakharov’s vision of the future was realistic or not, and whether Gorbachev could have held things together if he had done things a little differently – like stand for election instead of putting Yeltsin into a powerful position.

After lunch, we met with Edward Lozansky, head of the American University here. He was also a dissident during the 1970’s, and was exiled to the US for about 8 years. Again, Gorbachev’s liberalization allowed him to return to Russia. He told us a fascinating tale of how dissident organizations work in a totalitarian state, and how on his return he began to recognize that the USSR was crumbling.

We also got into contemporary political discussions with him since he is a frequent commentator in the papers and on TV. He is slightly critical of some of Putin’s policies, but on the whole not nearly as alarmist or critical as those who say that Putin is establishing some sort of dictatorship. In fact, Lozansky often criticizes those people in the press. His point – after all, things are way better than they were during the days of the USSR. And he means that in many ways – freedom of speech, access to government, ability to comment on policy before it is implemented, etc.

Political discussions here are fraught with difficulty. Russians assume that Americans will immediately begin lecturing about democracy, and they really don’t want to hear it. In order to forestall that, they’ll say some pretty incendiary things generalizing democracy in the US; the rich are in total control of your country, minorities are treated badly. Certainly, these are continuing issues in the US, but they’re not nearly as bad as the Russians think they are; they border on thinking that rich people can kill minorities in the streets with impunity. The real problem with these arguments is that they’re exactly the same ones the Soviets used all during the Cold War.

In terms of developing democratic institutions, the Russians also often point to the political history of the US. After all, they say, it took several years to adopt the first amendment to the constitution. True, but the delay was a reflection that the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, were adopted all at once. And it was a revolutionary statement about what the role of government should be in the lives of ordinary people.

Of course, the Constitution had things like slavery in it. That’s another point you’re likely to hear during a conversation like this. Certainly right – it reflected the political and historical realities of the time. But that doesn’t excuse any country nowadays from not paying heed to the intervening 200+ years in the development of the theory of the rights of man, codified elequently by the UN in 1948.

Also, the Russians point out that the US has had more than 200 years to develop its democratic institutions and civil society. Agreed – and it hasn’t always been a pleasant process. But I reject that argument in that it presupposes a permanent second place for Russia. It’s as if you resign yourself to always been 200 years behind when you make that argument.

Now, that being said, I don’t lecture people on democracy. There’s more than one model for the development of a civil, law-based, society. And hopefully Russia will come up with one for itself.