By Franz Schurmann

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Prediction for Tuesday, March 9th,1999

Russia Will Save Itself by a Red-Brown Alliance and Re-armament

• Introduction:
  

  In his San Francisco foreign policy speech President Clinton urged Russia and China to maintain prosperity and stability. There is a lot of disagreement in the West whether China can or will do so. The opinion gap on Russia is much wider.

  Why is clear. Both sides agree that Russia is standing perilously at the edge of a chasm.

  Last August when the ruble went into free-fall there was fear Russia would fall in. That fear remains but a new disagreement has arisen. Some say the result would be chaos. Others, like Russia expert Moshe Lewin writing last November in "Le Monde Diplomatique" and Andrew Higgins writing in the March 8 Wall Street Journal see a battered but alive Russia picking itself up at the bottom of the cliff.

  The list of things chaotic in Russia contains every pathology one can think of, including a precipitate decline in male longevity (now at age 55 contrasted with 72 in China and 74 in Cuba). Yet Russians and Russia survive. One reason, as Higgins states, is that the old system is still largely in place and keeps chugging along, providing goods and services through barter. But Higgins also adds that "Russia's volatile politics are the wild card."

  Just about every historian sees the Russian state as always looming enormous over everything and everyone in the realm. And often the "state" is just one man, be he czar or president. The state's one man ruler now is the illness-ridden Boris Yeltsin. He could die at any time and he knows it.

  When he came to power in 1991 he surrounded himself with Westernizers. But by late last year mafia capitalism, corruption and rampant poverty --- 53 percent of the population lives below the poverty line --- had brought Russia to the edge of the chasm. The rich and powerful Boris Berezovski remained Yeltsin's chief Westernizing prop. But Yeltsin also made the Orientalist (Arabic studies) and former KGB chieftan Yevgeni Primakov (pronounced Pree-mah-koff) his Easternizer countervailing force.

  However, a few weeks ago he fired Berezovski and just a few days ago powerful voices hinted that Primakov too may soon have to go. That would leave the sick Yeltsin alone as czar.

• Prediction:
  Russia will save itself by a red-brown alliance and re-armament

  Sometime during the period from now till September a big political change will occur in Russia. It will be sparked either by Yeltsin's death or the moves he is now making to rid himself of both Westernizers and Easternizers.

  If he is still alive the specific form this change will take will be a dramatic turn-about by the fiercely anti-Communist Yeltsin towards the Duma (parliament) dominated by Communists and Nationalists. If he is dead this rapprochement will occur anyway. But if there is no rapprochement and the rot and infighting continue then Russia itself may well die.

  The new political direction will be what Russians call "red-brown." "Red" refers to the old Communist system which is still substantially in place in Russia. That means expanded roles for the state at all levels. "Brown" means Russian nationalism --- some Russians say it means "fascism."

  A major new practical direction will be revitalization of the old Soviet/Russian military-industrial complex. That means re-armament.

• Outcome:
  "Russia will save itself by a red-brown alliance and re-armament"

  "Sometime during the period from now till September a big political change will occur in Russia. It will be sparked either by Yeltsin's death or the moves he is now making to rid himself of both Westernizers and Easternizers.

  If he is still alive the specific form this change will take will be a dramatic turn-about by the fiercely anti-Communist Yeltsin towards the Duma (parliament) dominated by Communists and Nationalists. If he is dead this rapprochement will occur anyway. But if there is no rapprochement and the rot and infighting continue then Russia itself may well die.

  "The new political direction will be what Russians call "red-brown." "Red" refers to the old Communist system which is still substantially in place in Russia. That means expanded roles for the state at all levels. "Brown" means Russian nationalism --- some Russians say it means "fascism." A major new practical direction will be revitalization of the old Soviet/Russian military-industrial complex. That means re-armament."

  *****

  The several segments of the prediction will be evalued separately:

  *Between May and September there will be a big political change in Russia. --- There have been several political changes at the top but not a big one.

  This segment of the prediction was wrong.

  *The big change will be sparked either by Yeltsin's death or his purge of Westernizers or Easternizers in the government. --- Yeltsin remains alive. Yeltsin has one by one gotten rid of pro-Western figures (Chernomyrdin, Kiriyenko, Stepanin) and a prominent Easternizer (Primakov). But he has not made an alliance with the Duma.

  This segment of the prediction was in the main wrong.

  *The new Red-Brown direction has not come into being. That being the case there is now no salvation of Russia by a Red-Brown alliance.

  This segment of the prediction too was wrong.

  *So far as I can see there is no push for rearmament in Russia. In fact Russia appears reluctant to get militarily involved anywhere, especially in the new war in the Caucasus.

  This segment of the prediction also was wrong.

  A Pentagon expert on the Russian military over a year ago wrote:

  "The Russian Ministry of Defense's (MOD) driving force today is the fact that the larder is bare. With little left to barter and saddled with a cash-strapped government, the MOD has no choice but to shrink and consolidate its forces (Russia List #2209, 8 June 1998)."

  Therefore, as an ex-professor, I must give myself a grade of D- for Prediction #4.

  But as one who looks into futures I wonder whether there was a reason beyond a clouded crystal ball for my poor prediction. September 7th's Prediction #29 is about Islamic fundamentalism, especially in the regions of the former Soviet Union and nearby countries like Afghanistan. Maybe the "Wahhabis" are hoping that "democratic" and "capitalist" Russia will fall into a state of such rot that a new Islamic Leninism can take power.

Aristotle distinguishes between ultimate and material causes (one might say underlying and surface causes). The ultimate cause of the predicted political change comes from the most basic fact about Russia's make-up and history. Russia, even after shedding the Soviet Union, is still geographically and psychologically made up of European and Asian parts. Yet historically Europe never accepted Russia's European parts as legitimate and Asia always regarded Russia's Asian parts as trivial. That has given Russia and Russians a kind of "split national personality."

For centuries Russia suffered from this push-and-pull. It was only a century ago that its intellectuals espied alternative directions. While Marxism seemed one of the alternatives, in the end only one survived: nationalism.

Nationalism, wherever it appears, gets strong popular and populist support. Nationalism also appeals to elites because it calls for strong states. And inasmuch as nationalists are in awe of strength nationalism once in power leads to military-industrial complexes.

The material causes for the predicted change come from the deplorable fact that the Westernizers have little to show for their eight years at the helm. At the same time the Easternizers have long been discrredited because they are seen as practitioners of "Asiatic despotism."

Both Berezovski and Primakov, each in their own way, are, respectively, caricatures of a Westernizer and an Easternizer. Berezovski is ridiculed in Russia as Boris "Oligarchovitch" Berezovski. And Primakov, combining a lifetime as Orientalist and as KGB operative, reminds Russians of their oppression under "Tatar (or Stalinist) hordes."

Another material cause is the fact that worldwide arms budgets are going up. Clinton has upped the Pentagon's budget; Japan's right wing, now in the government, wants once again to make Japan a military power; India has a big and swiftly expanding military program; and so has China making many outside observers see a new "China threat." A lot of Russians figure why not re-join the global elite club they once were members of during the days of the Soviet Union.