Editor's Introduction

Abstract

This issue reflects many of the recent currents in Russian political life pushing President Yeltsin and the entire Russian political system further to the right, or at least further in the direction of the dispossessed and their political allies, the so-called "power ministries." In the Manichean world of Aleksandr Kazintsev, there are only "democrats" and "patriots." Arguing in favor of a "red-brown" alliance of the far left and far right, he believes that the Communist Party, however reconstituted, is "destined to become the party of state patriots." As for the "democrats," he considers that they have presided over the death of democracy as a result of the October 1993 storming of the Russian parliament building. He notes that the press attacks on Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, by advertising his being in disfavor with the regime, had the same effect as similar attacks mounted by Gorbachev on Yeltsin several years ago: he became the champion of the little people. But Kazintsev's view of Zhirinovsky as "useful to the West" (by justifying the arms race and a cordon sanitaire around Russia), coupled with his belief that the West seeks the extermination of the Slavs (by Slavs), exudes a chilling paranoia. Relatively comforting, by contrast, is the measured statement by everyone's favorite Marxist, Roy Medvedev, that he opposes "the pro-Western domestic and foreign policy" of the Yeltsin government.