[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 52 (Tuesday, March 21, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E637]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   CHARLES GATI ON A TROUBLED RUSSIA

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                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 21, 1995
  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to take note of an 
excellent op-ed in the Washington Post of March 17 by my good friend 
and highly respected foreign policy analyst, Charles Gati. As we 
reevaluate our relationship with Boris Yeltsin and a rapidly changing 
Russia, Charles Gati provides an invaluable perspective on the internal 
disintegration of Russian society and its effect on Yeltsin's ability 
to govern. While not making excuses for the mistakes Yeltsin has made, 
we must understand that, as Charles has put it, ``Yeltsin's about-face 
[on reform] is a symptom, not the cause, of Russia's plight.'' I 
commend Charles for his incisive and thoughtful analysis and urge my 
colleagues to read this excellent piece:
               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 17, 1995]

                             Weimar Russia

                           (By Charles Gati)

       In his astute analysis of Russia's predicament [op-ed, Feb. 
     22], Peter Reddaway convincingly shows that President Boris 
     Yeltsin has all but abandoned the course of reform he began 
     in 1991.
       The point that needs to be added is that Yeltsin's about-
     face is a symptom, not the cause, of Russia's plight. As the 
     transition from one-party rule and the command economy to 
     today's chaotic conditions has benefited few and alienated 
     many, public support for reform has yielded to pressure for 
     retrenchment.
       In Moscow, members of the small biznis class can afford to 
     rent a dacha for more than $5,000 a month, eat out at a 
     fashionable Swiss restaurant where the main course costs $40, 
     and pay $3.25 for a slice of Viennese torte. By contrast, the 
     vast majority of the Russian people, who earn less than $100 
     a month if employed, are worse off than they were under 
     communism.
       The nostalgia they feel for an improved version of the bad 
     old days of order, however oppressive, and the welfare state, 
     however meager, is as understandable as it is unfortunate. 
     They walk by Moscow's elegant storefronts that display 
     expensive Western-made goods priced in dollars, not in 
     rubles, wondering what has happened to their lives and to 
     their country. They look for scapegoats at home and abroad.
       Showing disturbing similarities to Weimar Germany of the 
     1920s, Russia is a humiliated country in search of direction 
     without a compass. It is smaller than it has been in three 
     centuries. Both the outer empire in Central and Eastern 
     Europe and the inner empire that was the Soviet Union are 
     gone, and Moscow must now use force to keep even Russia 
     itself together. As its pitiful (and shameful) performance in 
     Chechnya has shown, the military has been reduced to a ragtag 
     army, with presumably unusable nuclear weapons. Four thousand 
     five hundred rubles--worth more than $4,500 only a few years 
     ago--are now gladly exchanged for one dollar. For its very 
     sustenance, Russia is at the mercy of the International 
     Monetary Fund, which can palliate but surely cannot cure the 
     country's economic ills.
       Worse yet, Russia is deprived of pride and self-respect. 
     There was a time, during World War II, when the whole world 
     admired the Soviet military for its extraordinary boldness 
     and bravery. There was a time, in the 1950s, when several ex-
     colonies of Asia sought to emulate the Soviet model of rapid 
     industrialization and when Soviet science moved ahead of the 
     United States in space research. There was a time, from the 
     1920s through the 1970s, when many--too many--Western 
     intellectuals and others believed that Soviet-style communism 
     was the wave of the future. And there was a time when then-
     Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko claimed that no significant 
     issue in world politics could be settled without Moscow's 
     concurrence.
       To appreciate the present mood of letdown and frustration, 
     imagine that our currency became all but worthless; that our 
     stores identified some of their wares in the Cyrillic rather 
     than the Roman alphabet, showing prices in rubles; that our 
     political and economic life were guided by made-in-Moscow 
     standards; and that our leaders were lectured by patronizing 
     foreign commissars about the need to stay the course in order 
     to join their ``progressive,'' which is to say the communist, 
     world.
       In the final analysis, the condition of Weimar Russia is 
     alarming because it is at once a weak democracy and a weak 
     police state, pluralistic and yet intolerant, pro-American in 
     its promise but anti-American in its resentments. The 
     public--its pride deflated and its economic needs unmet--
     craves order at home and respect abroad. The authoritarian 
     temptation is pervasive, and so is the urge to be--and to be 
     seen--as strong once again.
       The West may defer the day of reckoning, but it cannot 
     obviate the Russians' eventual need to compensate for the 
     humiliation that is their present fate.
     

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