The Ideological Roots of Elite Political Conflict in Post-Soviet Russia

Europe-Asia Studies

Volumn 46, Issue 6, 1994, Pages 929-953

  Kullberg, Judith S ^a  

^a OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84937311195     PISSN: 09668136     EISSN: 14653427     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09668139408412210     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Consensual unity denotes agreement upon the rules of political competition and the norms of political life. See John Higley & Michael G. Burton, ‘The Elite Variable in Democratic Transitions and Breakdowns’. American Sociological Review, 54 (1989), pp. 17–32
2. and John Higley & Richard Gunther, Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1–37.
3. A few facts illustrate the extent of this cooperation. After El'tsin was elected Supreme Soviet chairman at the First Congress of People's Deputies in May 1990, he nominated Ruslan Khasbulatov for the position of first deputy Chairman. Khasbulatov won the position and the following year was selected by El'tsin to succeed him in the position of Chairman after El'tsin's victory in the Russian presidential election of June 1991. While in the Supreme Soviet the two men collaborated in fundamentally amending the Russian constitution. They were assisted by Aleksandr Rutskoi, also elected to the Russian Congress of People's Deputies in 1990, who in early 1991 created and led a block of deputies he christened ‘Communists for Democracy’, which sided with the pro-El'tsin ‘Democratic Russia’ group of deputies to create a reformist majority in the Congress. Rutskoi's record as a ‘democrat’ led El'tsin to choose him as his running mate in 1991. Rutskoi was also one of the initiators, along with Eduard Shevardnadze and Aleksandr Yakovlev, of the Movement for Democratic Reform in July 1991. Furthermore, during the coup, Rutskoi played a significant role on the El'tsin side as heroic defender of the Russian White House, captor of coup plotters, and deliverer of Gorbachev. For Khasbulatov's 1990–91 political role see G. Ivanov-Smolensk, ‘Rossiya: suverenitet i rynok’, Izvestiya, 1 August 1990, p. 2;
4. I. Demichenko & G. Shipit'ko, ‘S'ezd narodnykh deputatov RSFSR prerval rabotu’, Izvestiya, 28 March 1991, p. 1;
5. and R. I. Khasbulatov, Byurokraticheskoe gosudarstvo (Moscow, Megapolis, 1991)
6. a well developed and coherent statement of liberal philosophy. For Rutskoi see the following sources: A. Zuichenko, ‘Demokraticheskii Platform v Rossiiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 4 April 1991, p. 2;
7. Lyudmila Aleksandrova, TASS in English, 19 July 1991
8. ‘Russian Vice President Calls for New Party’, FBIS Daily Report—Soviet Union, 19 July 1991 (PrEx 7.10: FBIS-SOV-91-139; p. 70);
9. Mikhail Tarasov's interview with Rutskoi, ‘DPKR: zashchitit' ne ot rynka, a s pomoshch'yu rynka’, Rossiiskaya gazeta, 2 October 1991, pp. 1–2;
10. and V. Stepankov & E. Lisov, Kremlevskii zagovor (Moscow, Izdatel'stvo Ogonek, 1992), pp. 208–209
11. See Vyacheslav Nikonov, ‘Na blizhnykh podstupakh k vlasti: razmyshleniya o rossiiskom “partstroitel'stve”’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 7 August 1992, p. 5;
12. Evgenii Krasnikov, ‘Mozhet byt', politicheskii tsentr nikuda ne provalilsya?’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 3 July 1993, pp. 1–2.
13. The research team adopted the method of focus group interviews to achieve two ends: first, to simulate the debate and dialogue particular to the in-group context of the various elites, and, second, as a means of identifying themes and concepts contained in elite political dialogue. We decided that an open-ended interview approach was essential for the identification of the underlying structures of elite world-view essential for the future construction of useful standardised measures of attitudes related to the question of integration. An additional reason for the use of the focus group interview is that it is a mechanism for producing more candid comments and statements from participants. In a properly directed focus group, participants perceive themselves as talking with one another, rather than with an interviewer, thus reducing the problem of interviewer bias, which occurs when an individual responds to questions in a way which he or she thinks will be pleasing to, or is expected by, the interviewer. See Richard A. Krueger, Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research (Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications, 1988).
14. The Russian population figure is for 1989. RSFSR v tsifrakh v 1989g (Moscow, Finansy i statistiki, 1990), p. 128.
15. In 1991 9.1% of the Soviet adult population were party members. See Politbyuro TsK KPSS, ‘O rabote partiinykh organizatsii po ukrepleniyu svoikh ryadov i obnovleniyu sostava KPSS v usloviyakh uglubleniya perestroiki i politicheskoi reformy’, in Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, 30th ed. (Moscow, Politicheskaya literatura, 1991), 113–116.
16. Clifford Geertz, ‘Ideology as a Cultural System’, in David E. Apter (ed), Ideology and Discontent (New York, The Free Press, 1964), p. 64.
17. The ‘dilemmatic’ conceptualisation in particular sees ideology as more or less open discourse that is continually altered by the collective input of individuals as conditions and problems of society and personal life change. See Michael Billig, Susan Condor et al., Ideological Dilemmas: A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking (London, Sage Publications, 1988).
18. See Giovanni Sartori, ‘Politics, Ideology and Belief Systems’, The American Political Science Review, LXIII, 2, June 1969, pp. 398–411.
19. See Judith Kullberg, Origins of the Gorbachev Revolution: Industrialization, Social Structural Change, and Elite Value Transformation, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1992.
20. Geertz, p. 64.
21. See the entry ‘Demokratiya’ in Kratkii politicheskii slovar', 4th ed. (Moscow, Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1987).
22. James Millar, ‘The Little Deal: Brezhnev's Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism’, Slavic Review, 44, Winter 1985, pp. 694–706.
23. See Philip Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in the Mass Public’, in David E. Apter (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York, The Free Press, 1964), pp. 206–261, especially pp. 206–215
24. and John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 22–28.
25. Held refers to early liberalism as the model of ‘protective democracy’. David Held, Models of Democracy (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 36–71.
26. Ibid., pp. 72–104.
27. See Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 21–71.
28. Since these are dichotomous or binary variables, the cluster analysis was conducted using a simple matching similarity measure. The method of average linking within groups was used to form the clusters. See Mark S. Aldenderfer & Roger K. Blashfield, Cluster Analysis, Sage University Paper Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Science, series no. 07–044 (Beverly Hills, CA, and London, Sage Publications, 1984).
29. See Kullberg, especially pp. 266–349.
30. The justification for this has been that those seeking moderation of reform are in reality the opponents of reform. Just as the Westemisers in the elite sample disparaged those who still believed in elements of the socialist economic system as stooges of the old order, almost as some sort of ‘class enemy’, members of the El'tsin government have accused their opponents of being closet communists. Indeed, the government has often used the spectre of a return to communism as justification for its failure to compromise. For example, the Economics Minister, Andrei Nechaev, commented in November 1992 that the Civic Union's correctives to the government's economic policy would inevitable lead to the reestablishment of ‘raikomy, obkomy and gorkomy’, the regional and local organisation units of the old CPSU. Andrei Lekant, ‘Prozhekt’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 17 November 1992.
31. Indeed, there is doubt whether El'tsin can successfully pursue a programme that neglects the preferences of a majority of the political elite. Samuel Huntington argues that successful transitions are to be characterised not only by an elite settlement on the institutional features and powers of the new regime, but an ability of various elite actors to collaborate. ‘The stability of democratic regimes depends, first, on the ability of the principal political elites… to work together to deal with the problems confronting their society and to refrain from exploiting those problems for their own immediate material or political advantage.’ Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK, The University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), p. 259.
32. The policy alternatives were first packaged as ‘correctives’ to the Gaidar programme, but later presented as a self-contained programme of reform. For the correctives see Aleksandr Vladislavlev, ‘Reformy na poisk realisticheskoi strategii’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 11 July 1992
33. and ‘Kontury grazhdanskogo soglasiya’, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 23 September 1992.
34. The economic programme of the Civic Union was published as Grazhdanskii Soyuz, Programma deistvii po vyvodu ekonomiki Rossii iz krizisa (Moscow, 1992)
35. For examples of the ideology of the red/brown opposition see the interview with Aleksandr Nikolaevich Sterligov, leader of the nationalist Russkii Sobor, N. Zhelnorova, ‘General Sterligov’, Argumenty i fakty, 36, September 1992;
36. and the unsigned editorial, ‘Front zashchitit Konstitutsiyu, narod zashchitit Front’, Den', 8–14 November, 1992.