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Joseph Sramek put up a note in our discussion area, regarding his concerns with his travel plans to Russia next summer. Since this speaks directly to the whole point of this column, I thought I would devote this article to my answer. Nothing's going on now that can't wait until after the Fourth of July;
Premier Sergei Kiriyenko seems to be on top of the financial crisis. The impeachment proceedings against President Boris Yeltsin are going steadily. Indeed, they may even be completed before the end of Yeltsin's term in June 2000. Meanwhile, Yeltsin has once again volunteered emphatically that he will not run again. The lady doth protest too much, methinks...
But, they're good for the general traveller, and for describing the current situation, or at best predicting likely outcomes a few days or weeks in advance. They're meteorologists. It's up to us climatologists - political writers, political risk specialists, and so forth - to give specialized information, often for long-range needs. I've expressed serious concern for Russia's future in my previous articles. In particular, I've been concerned about Yeltsin's repeated and frequent purges of his upper echelons - especially as they involve breaking his repeated vow to retain then-First Deputy Premier Anatoly Chubais at least through 2000. Doing that will give your underlings doubts about your credibility and your loyalty to them, and if taken far enough can give you incentives to adopt policies so outlandish and risky you wouldn't even consider them otherwise, but which for precisely those reasons - they are far from the norm and not subject to change no matter what - can help show once again that you are good for your word. The same goes for billions of rubles in wage arrears. Not only does Moscow have thousands, perhaps even millions, of desperately poor workers and pensioners on its hands (a good constituency for extremists), but it shows once again that its word is not its bond. This is exponentially worsened by the fact that this is at least partly due to failing tax collections: the simple fact is that Russian firms aren't paying the taxes they owe, and at least up until now they have been mostly getting away with it. They, too, do not have reason to believe that the Russian state means what it says.
The copyright of the article The Scope, Meaning, Causes and Implications of Political Instability in Russian Politics is owned by . Permission to republish The Scope, Meaning, Causes and Implications of Political Instability in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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